The Nonprofit Email Strategy That Works with Sara Hoshooley
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Feeling lost in the noise and chaos of social media? Let's shift our perspective and rediscover the power of emails. In today's episode of we'll explore why emails remain a timeless tool for building meaningful supporter connections. While social media can be attention-grabbing, it's through emails that genuine conversations and long-lasting bonds are nurtured.
Our guest, Sara Hoshooley is a fundraising consultant and coach with a passion for small nonprofit organizations. As a former small charity Executive Director, she understands the challenges and opportunities facing small but growing nonprofits. Her unique approach uses each organization's strengths to grow fundraising in an authentic and achievable way.
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Key Episode Highlights:
Acquire Donors Through Email: Unlike the fast-paced world of social media, emails offer a cozy space for meaningful conversations with your supporters. Learn why having a strategy to grow your email list is essential.
Growing Your List: Provide valuable resources like checklists or guides in exchange for email sign-ups. Sara explains how this exchange can kickstart trusting relationships with supporters.
The Strength of Recurring Donations: Small, monthly gifts can have a big impact. Sara reveals how starting these campaigns can provide steady fuel for your nonprofit's growth.
Building a Community, Not Just Numbers: Email collection isn't just about quantity. It's about nurturing a community of supporters aligned with your mission. Each email is an opportunity to strengthen this connection. Use clear, simple communication.
Email Etiquette - Respect Boundaries and Laws: Sara discusses the importance of complying with local and national regulations. It's all about understanding what is consent and ensuring recipients are happy to hear from you.
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Links and Resources:
Connect with Sara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Sarahoshooley/
Sara’s Website: https://www.charityshift.ca/
Email: Sara@charityshift
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariario/
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/208666/supporters/new
Transcript:
00:00:00 Sara: Getting people to who may not be donors, may not be on the email list, but we're putting that advertising out to them to say, will you sign this petition to say, yes, I believe people with this disease deserve access to medication that can help them. And then we know, so not only have we now been invited into that person's inbox, but we also know that they are really passionate about the particular cause. We also will likely know that they're more interested in probably the scientific, the pharmaceutical, the research piece, they might not be as interested in some of the, maybe local fundraising events. We wouldn't make assumptions, but we can kind of pull that based on how they're choosing to interact with us. So that's one example that I have, but I know that you've got some from your past work as well.
00:00:49 Maria: Hi friends. Ever wondered how you could turn your big ideas into results? I'm Maria Rio, your go-to guide for helping small nonprofits have real world impacts. Together, let's reimagine a better sector, tackle systemic issues, and yes, raise some serious cash. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit, the podcast where your passion meets action.
00:01:19 Maria: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Small Nonprofit Podcast. Today, I am joined by Sara, who is a really good friend of mine and an expert fundraiser. So I'm really excited to have her share her expertise with you all because she's been doing some stuff that I hadn't even heard of. Like I'm really excited about what she's doing. So hi, Sara. Thanks for joining us today.
00:01:42 Sara: Hi, thanks for having me on the show.
00:01:43 Maria: Sara, tell our audience a little bit about you. What do you do? How do you do it? Who are you?
00:01:49 Sara: Yeah. So I am Sara, I'm based in Toronto, although I recently moved here from Vancouver. I am a fundraising consultant. My company is called Charity Shift, and we help small to midsize Canadian and US nonprofits with their fundraising. So specifically that looks like fundraising plans and fundraising coaching. I've worked in the nonprofit sector for the last about 15 years and really love working with small to mid-sized organizations. So being on the Small Nonprofit Podcast is perfect.
00:02:21 Maria: Yeah. And you've been on the podcast before. I think you have had like two episodes. It's really exciting to have you back with a different person to speak to. And I was just wondering, could you tell us a little bit about how you also got into fundraising? Because I just love to hear those stories.
00:02:34 Sara: Yeah. I love to talk about that story because it's like a lot of people quite a roundabout story. So 2009 I was without a job. I used to work in financial industry and so after the recession didn't have any work and I actually went to Belize and lived and worked there for a couple of months, volunteering actually. And the organization that we worked for, my job was to recruit volunteers from around the world, which was such a cool job. I got to talk to so many different people that were coming to the project, some for a week, some for six months.
00:03:09 Sara: And what happened was within about the first six weeks that I was there, they had a truck that was used to deliver food to a lot of people in the community that lived remote, that lived rural, a lot of people that were living with HIV and other health issues, and the truck that we had actually broke down. And so it was gonna be about $1,000 to fix it, which was a lot of money for that community. And so we were doing little grassroots fundraisers, bake sales, talent shows, that kind of thing. And one day it kind of hit me like, "I'm talking to people from around the world who have a bit of disposable income if they're able to come to a project and volunteer."
00:03:48 Sara: And so I thought, what if I just ask 50 people to give $20? That would be our thousand dollars and we'd be fine. And so, and this was before the days of crowdfunding and peer to peer, like this was kind of a newer thing. And anyway, so we started doing that and we raised more than enough for what we needed. And then I thought, "I really like this. I wonder if this is something that I can do for a job." And then a couple of months later, came back to Canada and started my nonprofit career and really kind of focused on fundraising from that point forward. So yeah, totally found it by accident, but I'm so, so grateful that I did.
00:04:23 Maria: That sounds like such a beautiful start, like in Belize and doing something so actionable where you can see the results of your fundraising right in front of you almost right away, I would assume.
00:04:34 Sara: Yeah.
00:04:34 Maria: Oh, that's so exciting. Good for you. So today I wanted to chat to you a little bit about, you know, strategies that work for smaller nonprofits that maybe they don't have time to implement or maybe they don't have the knowledge to do it. So I wanted to talk a little bit about social media and email collection. What have you seen when it comes to emails? Are people using them? Are they stewarding their donors or they're connecting with new people? What does that look like?
00:04:58 Sara: Yeah, such a great question. And it's really funny when I'm talking to small nonprofits and I mean, nonprofits in general and where they're at with their social media versus their email. Those are areas I think that are changing almost constantly. But one thing that really remains true is that regardless of the platform, social media, people use the analogy that it's like building on rented land. So social media algorithms can change, systems can go down.
00:05:29 Sara: I don't know if anybody remembers, I think it was two summers ago, and Instagram and Facebook went down, I think for an entire day. So there was a lot of people, if they had businesses that were launching things, if they had big events that were happening that day, social media just didn't exist that day. And I think it really highlighted for people that if we're putting all of this effort into social media, and that's where we're working to speak to our audiences, our donors, our supporters were really missing out because we don't actually control who's seeing that content.
00:06:01 Sara: And so I think from that moment, it really helped for me personally to better understand why using email to directly connect with people is best. And on top of that, there's been a lot of studies recently with donors and asking how they most prefer to be connected with an email always above and beyond any other method. And that's for all generations, I think. Sometimes we think it's, "Oh, that's a millennial thing. Oh, that's a Gen Z thing," but really for all generations, email is the number one way that donors and our audiences like to hear from us.
00:06:32 Maria: You know what's funny? You always hear specifically board members, you know, say social media is such a low hanging fruit. Like we should start there. We should really focus our fundraising efforts on, you know, having the next ice bucket challenge.
00:06:45 Sara: Yeah.
00:06:45 Maria: I don't know if you've encountered that, but I feel like I definitely have heard that multiple times. So when it comes to things like that, have you seen a lot of fundraising effort, sorry, fundraising success when it comes to social media?
00:06:56 Sara: I think that social media is a step into connecting to an organization. So I think that what happens is when we think about social media, it's such a passive thing, right? So when we're scrolling through social media, we see something that piques our interest, and then we might learn about it, right? But this idea that people see something on social media and click and donate, rarely, if ever happens, it's not enough to just see something and then donate unless you are already familiar with the cause.
00:07:28 Sara: So if it's something, you know, if there's something going on in the world and you want to support and you know that the Red Cross is actively working there or it's a disaster or something that's going on in the world, you've already heard about it and then you see something on social media to give that might be the point that you're viewing something and then directly to donating, but very rarely does it happen that we learn about an organization through social media and in a split second, we're giving. And I think that's the real disconnect, thinking that social media leads to giving.
00:07:59 Sara: And I think the other thing too, is that because we don't control how social media, how our posts, our reels, our stories, how everything appears, we don't actually know who's even seen our stuff. So we might come up with the best Instagram story, post, whatever it happens to be. And for whatever reason, the algorithms are deciding that's not information that we wanna show to an audience today. We might not even have people seeing that content.
00:08:28 Sara: Whereas with email, especially if you're using an email service provider, which I think most organizations do, you can at least see what the open rates are. You can see what people are clicking on. You can see how things sort of lead to action as opposed to with social media, where of course you can see clicks and you can see views and that sort of thing, but you don't necessarily know exactly what people did once they saw that content.
00:08:50 Maria: And I think with email too, like you depend much less on algorithms, right? You know exactly how it works. You send it, they get it, the end. But with social media, the way that I have found to be successful on there is to spend as much time on it as possible. So it definitely rewards your level of engagement with the platform, but also the things that it rewards consistently change. So before it was just the number of likes, like on Instagram. And then, then it was the number of saves.
00:09:22 Maria: Currently it's the number of DMs, right? And reels and that kind of content. So it keeps changing and for small nonprofits to see a breast of that and be able to have someone who full time is feeding into the algorithm by engaging with other communities and responding back to every single comment. I feel it can also be a barrier to being successful when it comes to fundraising on social media. So emails are really easy way to go when it comes to social media.
00:09:53 Maria: So you collect the emails from social media and then you implement a strategy. Are there many ways they see organizations currently collecting emails? I've seen a lot of people just resort to events, honestly, and not really dig into that digital strategy. So I really want to focus on the digital strategy piece of that email collection today.
00:10:14 Sara: It's such a good point. And I think it's something that I mean, you're a small business owner. I'm a small business owner. We see it a lot in sales, especially in small businesses with consultants, that sort of thing, where we're really working to grow our email list. And so what I've kind of done with some of my clients is translated what's happening with small businesses and really figuring out how do we take those ideas, those strategies, and how do we bring that into nonprofit.
00:10:45 Sara: So it's probably quite familiar to everyone listening or most people listening to this idea that you're on a website or you're interested in buying something new. You're looking maybe into, I don't know, getting service for your home or whatever it happens to be. You're looking into different services and you go to the website and it says, oh, you can get this free document, you can get this list for packing for your next holiday, you can get this 10 step check to make sure that your car is ready for winter, whatever it happens to be. And all that you need to do is give your first name and your email address, right? We've all probably all seen that.
00:11:21 Sara: And so what I've done is taken that and kind of brought it into the nonprofit sector, specifically to build audiences for nonprofits, because I think when we take a look at our emails, when we take a look at our donors and our audiences, not a lot is really happening in terms of growing our audience base. And so, and we know donor retention, unfortunately, continues to be fairly low. So the number of donors giving one year versus the next year, it tends to, we tend to lose donors. So we need to continually be building the pipeline. And so by getting people to opt into these emails, that's one way that we can continually be building our pipeline and bringing more people into our organization.
00:12:07 Maria: How do you feel about an organization buying an email list, like buying 50,000 emails versus collecting their own and creating their own email list?
00:12:18 Sara: I would absolutely not recommend it. I know large organizations that used to do that and sometimes still do that with Canada Post. It's so incredibly obvious. And it happens in the US as well. I know some of your listeners are in the US where there's list trading, one hospital foundation is trading with a large health charity, that sort of thing. Yes, it happens with emails as well. It's very, very low return. I wouldn't personally recommend it because I think also with email and I'm not necessarily on the technical side of things.
00:12:54 Sara: So there's probably more people that could speak a little bit more on this, but you do impact your email deliverability when you are sending to people who do not engage. So for example, if you send an email to a person and they flag it as spam, that tells the email service provider, "Oh, wait a second, if someone's flagged this as spam," and they didn't want to get this and they didn't subscribe to it. It does negatively impact. So I would not, I would really not advise that, especially if you're looking to do that to grow your donor base, because people could say, well, how did you find, how did you get my email?
00:13:30 Sara: And if you say, well, we bought it, you know, it doesn't come across as very genuine. And from the beginning, your relationship with that person is not one that's built on trust. So personally, I wouldn't recommend it, but I know what happens.
00:13:45 Maria: Yeah. I know that there's some laws and regulations in some places where like person's email needs to be acquired through explicit or implicit consent. So I don't know if there's a way to have implicit consent from people when you're buying their email address unless they know and they're opting in to have their email address shared with as many nonprofits as possible, which I've personally never seen on a donation form. Share my email, sell it.
00:14:09 Sara: Yeah. And I would say, so GDPR, which is in Europe and the UK is very, very strict. And so, we in Canada are heading towards that very high level of security and data protection, which I think is a good thing. In the US in certain states, it does vary. So whether or not the email implied, again, it's not my area of expertise. So I'm not quite sure. But it is a good point that how are people opting into that as an option, I don't even know if they can.
00:14:40 Maria: So let's talk about strategies of actually getting people to opt in and consent and be knowledgeable and engage with the organization from the get instead of, you know, how did I get this email? Who are you? Leave me alone. Spam, spam, spam, right? How can we actually start collecting those emails? So maybe the two of us can discuss some strategies that smaller organizations can implement and actually start seeing those low hanging fruit opportunities, low cost, high impact, high value strategies when it comes to email.
00:15:13 Sara: Yeah, definitely. So I have a few examples that I want to share. And one, I've actually pulled the numbers for you because I thought that would be helpful just to kind of illuminate for listeners. And so what we do is we take a look at an organization, we take a look at who their audience is. So for example, it might be if your organization is a local food bank, likely your donors live in your city, likely they care about certain things and not about others. I wouldn't go too deep into, you know, figuring out exactly who these donors are, but I think in most organizations, we could do some pretty broad assumptions of who our donors are.
00:15:56 Sara: If it's, you know, an environmental organization, we can make some assumptions if it is an organization that I worked with was doing advocacy for cycling and safer routes. And so, you know, we can take a look at organizations and start to sort of make assumptions about their audience and things that might be of value to them. So what you're looking for when you're collecting email addresses, and again, this is no different than businesses or different services, is you're offering something of value in exchange for their first name and their email address.
00:16:27 Sara: So what I did with one of the organizations that I'm currently working with, it's a pet organization. And so we could pretty much assume that the majority of people in our audience have pets at home, not all, but the majority of them. And so what we did is, and there's two audiences that I really wanna speak to. So the first one that I wanna talk about is we took a look at our own audience and then we made some assumptions about who those people are, what they're interested in, what would be a value of them. And then we did some targeted advertising to target people like them.
00:17:03 Sara: And I think that's the really key thing for anybody that's listening, that Facebook ads is pretty common. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at, okay, who are the people who on Facebook, they like pets, they are following organizations that support pets, they're, you know, liking posts that show cats and dogs and pets and that kind of thing, they might even be posting pictures of themselves with their pets. These are people that we're pretty sure like pets.
00:17:29 Sara: And so what we did is with our advertising is the freebie that we had was a pet emergency sticker. So a small little sticker, you can put it in your window so that if anything should ever happen, it notifies first responders, it notifies first responders that there's a pet inside, which, I mean, is such a brilliant thing. Anyways, I didn't come up with this idea. The organization had created this in previous years, but it's not something that most people have.
00:17:57 Sara: I would say for a pet owner, it's something that you think, oh my gosh, yeah, I need that. And it was relatively low cost for us to create. So we had these Facebook ads. We targeted people that we were pretty sure cared about animals. And then we created a landing page. So if so, we had our ad that said, you know, what would you do in the case of emergency? Here's a way to keep your pet safe. Click on the link. You fill in your name for this particular one because we were mailing it out. We had your mailing address.
00:18:26 Sara: And then we also asked like, tell us about your pets. Like what kind of pets do you have? What are their names? And then so from that, I have my numbers here. So we had 2,267 people click on the link. In terms of how many people it was shown to. I think it was about 30,000 people who saw the post. So 2,267 people clicked on it. 1,168 people gave us their email address for the very first time, 1,168 brand new people onto our email list. In addition, we had 156 people who had been connected with us one way or another.
00:19:04 Sara: So they might have previously been on the email list. Maybe they were a donor a long time ago. Somehow they were in our system, but we weren't currently in contact with them. So they had updated their information with us. So what's that roughly? Like just over 1,300. And so what we did is... so you put in your information and it would say, thanks so much for ordering. And then we had a QR code. So we told at that point, we told a little bit about our organization.
00:19:30 Sara: And I think this is what's really key that a lot of organizations. It's not the first thing that you might think of, but a lot of organizations, we always wanna talk about ourselves, right? We do this, we do that, we need money cause we're doing this and we need your support. And so with these freebie strategies, which is what I call when you're giving your email in exchange for something free, you shouldn't be talking about your organization. That's not why people are giving their email address. They're giving their email address because they want the free thing that you're offering.
00:20:00 Sara: And so once people ordered, we thanked them, we told them approximately how long it would be until they received the sticker. And then we had a little QR code and also a link and about two sentences about our organization. So kind of starting the process of stewarding these audience members to become donors. And so we had a few people click on the link, a few people give, it wasn't huge, but to me it's not really the point. Like the point was that we've brought in this huge new base of people.
00:20:33 Sara: And then, so what we did is with the sticker, we included a letter and did a mail merge so we would have the pet's name in it. So it would say, thanks so much for ordering this sticker to keep your cat Buttercream safe. Did you know our organization does blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you're interested in supporting Every Dollar Helps, here's a link and also here's a QR code.
00:20:58 Sara: So it's this idea that people would open this letter, they're reminded again about the organization and if they choose to donate, fantastic. And if they don't, that's okay too. There's a lot psychologically that goes on, it's called reciprocity where when you're given something, we feel like we need to give something in return. It's why when we're shopping and we get a free sample or you get a free trial of something and you think, well, I should, in the back of your mind, you kind of think, "Oh, I should probably give something back. I got something free." So that's one of the things that's at play there.
00:21:27 Sara: But at the end of the day, if these new audience members, if they don't end up giving, that's okay. We've built our email list. And for this particular freebie, because it is something that's visible for people who are putting it in their window. It is branded. So anytime that someone comes to the person's house, they're now going to see the brand. They're going to start a conversation about it. And so it might not lead to donations immediately, but it's brand recognition and it's that continual reminder about our organization.
00:21:59 Sara: So we only finished it a couple of weeks ago. And to be honest in terms of a strategy, I would recommend a digital product as opposed to a mailed product. Just to put it in scope, we spent about $500 in our Facebook ads, which is not much at all. However, the amount of time that it took to mail, merge those letters, send them out, do the addresses was a lot. So I would say, plus our executive directors time, my staff time, I would say it probably cost us about $2,500 for that, which is about $2 per email address that we gained, which is not a lot.
00:22:44 Sara: So for those donors, if we get 10% of them to give at some point in the next year, it's more than what we spent. And there's so many other pieces of it that's benefiting the audience and also benefiting our organization. So to me, it's all kind of win, win, win all around. So we'll be tracking that over the coming years to see how it impacts. And because people use the signup list, we also were able to tag in our email system who these people are, so that when they do donate, we're able to make that connection, that these are people who got the freebie. So yeah, so that's just one of the strategies that we used this year.
00:23:23 Maria: I'm obsessed. Oh, thank you so much for sharing all those details. There's so many things that in my mind, I'm like, you know, the dopamine hits when you're talking. Oh, you do research on the audience and you target those specific people already. So you like pre-qualify people before they even see your lead generation. And then you did have a 50% drop off from the click to the sign up. Those people are extra committed and you're getting their pets' names. So you're like learning their why as you go. So why are they committing to this transaction of like, I'll give you my email for the sticker because of Buttercream the cat, which is also perfect for future appeals, right?
00:24:07 Maria: I hope Buttercream as well. Let's donate so you can keep other families like yours and buttercreams together. It's just so chef’s kiss. It's so amazing. I love everything about that. And for it to only cost $500 to get so many emails is incredible because we know that acquiring new donors, I think is something like 10 times the cost to get someone to read gifts, someone who's already on your list. So building that list in such a smart, targeted way is amazing. Good for you.
00:24:40 Sara: Yeah, thanks. It was a whole lot of fun. And I will say though, and I really want to reiterate for anyone listening, is that I would highly recommend doing a digital product instead, where you can instantly deliver it by email. Some of the things I've done with other organizations that I've worked with. One was a local environmental organization and it's really focused around kids. So we did, it was just a digital, like a PDF that said, here's the top 10 hikes to take with your family this summer. Knowing that most people have kids, most people are looking for outdoor activities.
00:25:15 Sara: I've worked with health charities where there's certain food restrictions or certain diets that are more helpful for people that have that particular illness. So we would do like a holiday recipe guide that would fit within the dietary requirements of that particular community. So there's so many different creative things that you can do that will likely be very valuable to your audience. But again, if you have volunteers to help out with the mailing and the stuffing the envelopes, absolutely. But I would highly recommend a digital product just to save yourself some time and money.
00:25:49 Maria: So I want to ask you a question and then we'll go back into the strategies. In case anyone doesn't know why you should be collecting emails, can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:26:00 Sara: Yeah, definitely. So like I said at the beginning, so many different researchers have connected with donors and connected with audiences for different nonprofits. All the time we hear that people's most, their favorite way to hear from their nonprofit connections is through email. And so I think that not only is it an invitation.
00:26:21 Sara: So when people give us their email addresses, they're inviting us into their inbox, which I think is a really important nuance compared to social media, where we're just kind of like blasting information out there and hoping that people see it email is somebody saying like, Yes, Maria, I want to hear about what you're working on. So here's my email, and here's my name, so that you can personalize your content to me. And I want to hear from you. So it's a lot more of an invitation.
00:26:47 Sara: It also allows for two-way conversation. And that's something that we didn't do in that particular sticker example. I mean, beyond asking people for the type of pet and their pet's name, we didn't really engage with them. But what you could do, and we could even do this with the sticker example, is write back to the list that downloaded them and say, oh, send us a picture of your sticker, or what window did you put it in in your house? What door did you put it? Really engaging that two way conversation.
00:27:20 Sara: So not only does that build connection with your donors and really open up a more genuine relationship, it also from a technical perspective shows your email service provider, oh, people are engaging with this content. It makes your deliverability that much higher because you basically verified people wanna hear from us. And not only do they wanna hear from us, they wanna reply back. So it's a really good way to engage with people.
00:27:47 Sara: And the other thing I think, I know you and I were talking about this just the other day is about unsubscribes. And I think people get really, really nervous when they see unsubscribes. And I just wanna highlight that unsubscribes from emails are very normal. 1 to 2% of email unsubscribes is pretty standard. People unsubscribe for so many different reasons. And I think it's easy to think like, "Oh no, we offended people," or, "Oh, they didn't want to hear from us," or, "Oh, we contacted them too much." But there's so many different reasons of why people unsubscribe. It's just part of the work that we do.
00:28:19 Sara: I think the other thing with email is that I do see with nonprofits and this happens all the time where nonprofits send out, you know, like a newsletter and they'll have 10 different stories and eight different calls to action. If you're doing that, please stop. Like that's not the ideal way, especially, I mean, it's, it's fine if you're advertising your programs or you're maybe getting people to engage the work that your nonprofit is doing.
00:28:49 Sara: But if you're doing that to communicate with your donors, I would say definitely focus it more on having one call to action in every email that you send and mix it up a little bit. I would also say sending text only emails, which I think a lot of nonprofits, they think, oh, we need to have it branded. We need to have our header. But you know, you think about it, Maria, like when you and I email each other, when you email a friend, even when you email someone that you're working with, there's no graphics, there's no header.
00:29:20 Sara: You might have a link, a highlighted link to something, you might have an attachment. But when we're just talking human to human, we don't have branded, templated content. So yes, you'll wanna have that sometimes, but I'd say for the majority of times like plain text email and asking the person like, hey, what do you think? Like write me back and let me know is so engaging for people. And it's surprising because we don't get emails like that very often from nonprofits or businesses or that sort of thing.
00:29:50 Maria: Just to add on what you're saying, something else that I find really valuable from emails when it comes to fundraising is that people don't change their emails. It's the same reason why we want, you know, a bank account versus a credit card. The credit card will expire. But how often do you change banks? Same thing with emails and addresses. Like it just becomes so much more valuable than a social media profile where, okay, now that person isn't interested in Instagram, now they're only on TikTok. And oh no, we don't have a TikTok strategy. So bye.
00:30:22 Maria: But having that really valuable piece of information allows you to connect with them for years to come. So it's not about that initial, "Oh, they didn't donate the second they got to know me, boohoo." Like it's about years of building that partnership with them. And then, hey, they're listening, they're learning, they're interested in what you're doing, and then they're making a gift.
00:30:44 Sara: Exactly. And I would also add to that as well as to think about, so it's called a nurture series or a welcome series, is that, so once you do acquire that new email is to have a preset pre-scheduled set of emails that really introduces people to your organization. So keep in mind, using this strategy that we're talking about, these are people who are brand new. They've probably never even heard of your organization. So for them to all of a sudden get put into your main mailing list, they're just going to say, like, what the heck is this, right?
00:31:17 Sara: We need to sort of connect the dots from somebody who's brand new, never heard of us, orders in this case a sticker. And then in their mind, they're thinking, oh, this is some kind of pet safety, not exactly sure, we need to bring them along the journey and explain to them what we do, who we are in really small tidbits. It doesn't need to be huge and lengthy, really, you know, short, snappy, engaging content and bring them along the journey before we plop them into our regular email list. That's one thing I would say.
00:31:47 Sara: I think I see organizations make that mistake often is, you know, somebody signs up for the newsletter or somebody becomes a donor and then they just get put into a list. And we do really need to warm those people up and bring them closer to our organization, especially if they've never engaged before.
00:32:04 Maria: So we've talked about mailed freebies and digital download freebies. I'd love to talk about petitions, giveaways, contests, and evergreen content. Is there any examples that come to mind? If not, I can rattle off a few.
00:32:19 Sara: Yeah. I know we talked before a little bit about petitions, advocacy. I've worked for a lot of health organizations where advocacy is such a big thing. So having something that says, yes, I believe all people with this particular disease deserve access to medication in every province in this country. And so for a lot of especially rare diseases, there's a lot of medications that come out and then it's decided province by province, who gets it, how they get it, is it covered, that sort of thing. And people are really passionate about that and understandably so.
00:32:50 Sara: And so getting people to, who may not be donors, may not be on the email list, but we're putting that advertising out to them to say, you know, will you sign this petition to say, yes, I believe people with this disease deserve access to medication that can help them. And then we know, so not only have we now been invited into that person's inbox, but we also know that they are really passionate about the particular cause.
00:33:15 Sara: We also will likely know that they're more interested in probably the scientific, the pharmaceutical, the research piece, they might not be as interested in some of the... maybe local fundraising events. We wouldn't make assumptions, but we can kind of pull that based on how they're choosing to interact with us. So that's one example that I have, but I know that you've got some from your past work as well.
00:33:38 Maria: Yeah, so petitions I think are a really great way to find people who are values aligned. So I believe going to the grocery store shouldn't break the bank. And it's something that, yeah, we all believe that, I would think, you know, but you're attracting a certain kind of people who want to take action and want to be involved. So whether that action is solely signing the petition, depending on how your organization functions or maybe that puts them into another welcome series where it's like, okay, here's what we do. And here are the actions you can take, like call your elected representative, for example, send them an email.
00:34:11 Maria: And just building that deeper engagement as a partner, as an advocate for your organization and for your cause, I think is really lovely. But when it comes to evergreen content, that's something that I've utilized a lot as well on social media to collect emails. So for example, when I worked at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, it was a really hectic time. And anything that they post is actually really controversial for some reason.
00:34:38 Maria: So if they post like, we believe in abortion access, you have people on Facebook who are like, you monster. And you have other people on Facebook who are fighting those people. And it just really feeds into the algorithm of having engagement no matter what. Right? So at the time, anything that we posted was really, really primed to go viral because everybody has a political opinion and they wanted to argue in the comments.
00:35:03 Maria: So knowing that, I created a Know Your Rights Guide, because there was a lot of protests in the States and in Canada around the murder of George Floyd and land bag claims in Canada against pipelines. So I created a protest rights guide that was in two formats. One is one slide image for Facebook that has all this information of what to do if you get stopped by police, what information you have to give them, how do you identify to them, can you record?
00:35:33 Maria: So all these various things that people were really looking for information around that got a lot of saves, shares, downloads. And not only that, but it gave me the opportunity when people interacted with it to invite them to like the page. Yeah. So these kinds of campaigns ended up boosting the page from like 10,000 followers to 18,000 followers over, you know, a 12-month period which is wild, like you are attracting the right kind of people who are looking for information about their rights and freedoms, and you're slowly getting them into your page.
00:36:06 Maria: Once you get them to your page, you know, similarly to email, now you have a little bit more of the mind share that they're seeing on social media. And now you have another opportunity to collect their email, right? So it's all really interesting. Another example that I saw that I didn't have anything to do with was this food bank had an evergreen piece where you would go through a series of questions of like, do you know how many people are experiencing hunger in your city and things like that?
00:36:37 Maria: And at the end, to get your quiz results of how well you knew the issue, you would have to give your email as well. So there's a lot of pieces that can be reshared time and time again. Even your sticker example, they already had that as a product. So that's such a great way to utilize it and try to repurpose it.
00:36:57 Sara: And I would say too, like in your examples and the examples that I've given as well, it's not about the organization. So for the guide that you talked about for protests and for people to protect their own personal safety, that had nothing to do with you talking about your organization and how you're helping. It was all about providing value for that individual person, which is again kind of going back to like these are things that we are offering people.
00:37:26 Sara: These aren't things that are helping us as an organization. I mean obviously they will as we're building our list and hopefully building on our donor base. But these are things that are genuinely and truly building value for the people that we want to connect with best. So I really want to highlight that because I do think when I've talked with organizations,
00:37:48 Sara: And a lot of these freebies are also things I would recommend building into, if you have a monthly giving plan, a program with your organization, I would also take a look at what are some offers like this that we can provide value to people who are already giving monthly. And so sometimes what happens when I'm working with organizations is they'll say, well, we don't have anything like that. Or they create something and it's all about them. Like here's all the great things we've done.
00:38:15 Sara: And it really needs to be something that somebody might even pay money for. We're not asking them for money, but for your example, with that free guide for people to protect their own rights, people may have given you money for that. You weren't asking for it, it wasn't the point, but they could have. The same thing with our emergency sticker. There's other organizations, animal organizations that sell those for a couple dollars.
00:38:40 Sara: So these are things that people would pay money for because they're seeing the value and instead we're offering them for free. So I think that's just a kind of an important thing to keep in mind as your listeners are thinking about how they can implement this for their own organizations.
00:38:54 Maria: You know what I'm thinking about too is like, a lot of times a strategy like this would bring like, oh, donor centric super donor centric. But because you're targeting such specific people in your community, and their values align, like, I don't know, it's almost like building your community versus focusing on a person who might not understand why you're doing what you're doing. Maybe they don't share the values.
00:39:21 Maria: That's the difference that I see versus something like an event used to collect email addresses because they're coming for, you know, a friend asked them to come or they don't really know why they're there versus a values aligned strategy. I think that really just helps pull that partnership and push a lot of these initiatives forward.
00:39:38 Sara: Absolutely. And I think it also instills a sense of trust, which is one of the most important things that we can offer to our audience and to our donors, is that you're beginning the relationship essentially with a gift, right? Like you're essentially saying, oh, this is a thing that I think would be of value to you. Maria, do you want this thing? You do? Great, here you go. Will you give a gift? No, that's okay.
00:40:03 Sara: So we're already kind of like putting things in motion as opposed to, I like your example of an event where we think, oh, we'll have an event, we'll collect all these email addresses, which can work. But I will say a lot of people go to an event and they think, oh, good for me. Like I did something for the organization, I went to the event. Whereas the organization usually sees that as a starting point of the relationship. But people will think, well, I already went to your event, I already gave my time and attention. That's kind of the end of the relationship.
00:40:31 Sara: So it's just shifting the way that we're bringing people into the organization, into your point, finding people that are values aligned. I wouldn't, you know, for the sticker example, I'm not gonna try and share that with everybody on Facebook or say, well, you know, the majority of our donors are women who are 65 and older who live in Vancouver. I could have targeted that audience, but that freebie is irrelevant for someone that doesn't have a pet, right?
00:41:03 Sara: So we are really saying, okay, these are the people that we know a little bit about them, we can make some assumptions about them, and we think that this might be of value to them. And that's why we're offering it to them, and also thinking, and they might really resonate with what we're doing as an organization, because our values do align in a lot of different areas.
00:41:23 Maria: I love this conversation. I'm so happy that we were able to chat about this, because I was so impressed with your sticker campaign. Like, oh, that's something that I never thought of, like a mailed piece as a way to collect emails and addresses like super win. But I do see the value in so many of these different strategies of just getting started collecting emails. It's a long term strategy. It's a long term gain, but it's like an exponential gain.
00:41:51 Sara: It is. And I would say too, you know, Maria, it's right now it's November 30th. So we're just coming off of giving Tuesday, but I know that you'll be publishing this and putting it out to your listeners mid January and January is the perfect time to be growing or launching your monthly giving campaign. So I would highly recommend for anyone that's thinking about doing this, like this is now the time to do it because you are coming off of most likely a very busy fundraising season with end of year. And this is really the time to start building your list, to start reaching out to people.
00:42:26 Sara: And I would also recommend, you know, for these donors, these audience members that you might be bringing in as donors is to really direct them towards a small monthly donation as opposed to a one time gift because monthly is really what you should be doing in the first, you know, 90 days of every year anyways, is really to ramp that up. So I feel like timing wise, this is quite perfect that we're talking about this in what'll be January, where people can start thinking about how they want to use these strategies to bring even more people into their organization.
00:42:57 Maria: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. For anyone who wants to continue the conversation around these amazing strategies, where can they find you?
00:43:07 Sara: Yeah, great question. I'm very active on LinkedIn. It's my favorite social media. So Sara Hoosholey on LinkedIn. My website is charityshift.ca. My email's Sara@charityshift. So that's where my fundraising consulting. I'm also creating an online database for nonprofits in Canada. So if you are based in Canada, please take a look. It's Connect For Good. So Connect, F-O-R, good.ca. And it will be an online searchable database for nonprofit serving businesses. So resources, webinars, content, we'll be building that and fully launching that in the new year. So I'd love to see our Canadian listeners on connectforgood.ca.
00:43:50 Maria: That's so exciting. Well, thank you again and thank you all for tuning into this episode of The Small Nonprofit. I'm so happy to be able to share these tips with you and also if you want to see our lovely faces, we actually also put the videos up on YouTube. So youtube.com/@gofurthertogether. Until next time. Bye for now.
00:44:15 Maria: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit. If you want to continue the conversation, feel free to connect with our guests directly or find me on LinkedIn. Let's keep moving money to mission and prioritizing our well-being. Bye for now.
