Episode 225: Creating a Systematic Feedback Loop with Donors – Post Gift
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
It's an honor to have you join me, Randall, for this edition of A round with Randall. We take a leap into something that may be new. Don't think it's controversial, but certainly something to consider when we think about deepening our transformational long term relationships. With our donors. And today, we want to spend a little bit of time talking about the idea of creating a feedback loop with people who have already given us money.
What is a way to systematize this process? To get interesting information about how we do what we do as an organization, but also about the individual relationship building process that our gift officers go through. It's critically overlooked when we think about how we build relationships all too often, because we tend to be organizationally too transactional. We stop the relationship when we get the gift.
And as we've talked about in previous podcasts, particularly with the changing nature of money and who has it, it's a smaller group of people making a bigger difference. And number two is unless people are giving just overall that these relationships and maintaining them or have a higher level of importance than they ever have. Also, if we really believe that our industry and philanthropy nonprofit space is all about relationships and not transactions, then the essence or the heightened nature be Mount Everest is when that donor trusts us at the highest possible levels, and that it's an engagement relationship rather than a monetary one.
And to show that sometimes we can look at the options of what might be possible after the gift comes to fruition. So let's kind of start with the philosophical, and then we'll get into the tactical day a little more tactical about how to do this. Why is it you want to have a process survey. Maybe your stewardship office following up with certain levels of donors individually, creating a strategic relationship that goes beyond the money in terms of how we engage our donors and what it could mean.
Well, the first is, is that what we know from human nature is, is that when we allow feedback to be part of our relationship, that that a person's voice matters, not just their money? That deepens that connection. Let's pivot for just a minute and posit this or connect this to, at least for me, an incredibly good marriage. Our relationship, my wife and I is, as a friend of mine said many years ago.
I've always kind of kept it in the back of my head. It's 9010 both ways and we don't keep track. Meaning that for the 25 years I've been honored and privileged to be married to Mary Lynn, we are always trying to figure out where do we step in to help each other. For individuals, for being a parent, for being a child, in terms of our own parents, how do we pull together and we don't keep track?
Like, well, I did three things yesterday. So you got to do three for me today. That's the 9010 and you don't keep track. It is what it is. But let's talk about that feedback loop. There's nobody that I trust more on this earth than my wife. And part of the reason our relationship and I think a lot of really strong relationships, good hearty, healthy relationships sometimes between parent and child, sometime between significant others, sometimes between friends, is based upon the fact that they feel like they can give you criticism.
And in my case, there's plenty to be given back to me when my wife makes suggestions. Maybe I've been all too hard on my kids, or set the standards too high, or maybe not listened quite as well. Well, I don't like hearing that. I'm not that benevolent. I've never been offended by it. The relationship deepens when we trust the person so much that we're willing to listen to how they think we could be better.
And the same is true of donors, is that if we do this correctly, this feedback loop deepens the relationship because we legitimately are telling them their voice matters to us, not just their money, but what we did, how we did it. How did we build the relationship? That is how you get into massive levels of intimate stewardship. Remember what I tend to tell people?
Not the end of my podcast, but the other thing I tend to tell people if you ask somebody for money, you'll get advice. If you ask them for advice, you'll get money. So the first thing is, is that it builds a deeper relationship. When we ask for their advice about how we could do what we do better. Number two is that philosophically, if we ask donors what they think about how we built a relationship with the gift was like the process.
We increase retention and probably upgrade gifts. And here's why. We can listen to a donors perspective about where the pain points are. Where is it that we limited their options. And this is something I've talked about many times, that we need to talk about more about their passion and less about what we need. And then when we hear about their passion, we connect it back.
But the point is, is that sometimes they can tell us, hey, I wanted to do X and you wanted me to do why? And while they're close, they aren't the same. Or I assume this because you said that and then it didn't happen. Or a myriad or unlimited number of other things. These pain points can help us be better the next time.
And because if we ask the donors opinion and we are able to adjust, maybe we go from Y to X and the next gift because we have a better strategy about how to build a relationship based on trust at a much higher level. Number three is kind of what I would think of as an internal process improvement review.
In small organizations, nonprofits, one person or small number of people do a lot of different things, and that can cause a lot of holes, a lot of missed things that we tend to not think about until we hear about them. Donors can help us illuminate those. In large organizations were dependent on departments or areas that do that independently of the maybe the gift officer.
Stewardship is a good example. Gift recording is again a good example. Well, this is these internal processes aren't perfect. Are there ways we can improve what we do? Are there ways we can improve how we do what we do? Only when we have someone who's at the end result the only one that really counts the donor to give us that feedback.
Can we make the corrections? And yet, I don't hear a lot of people asking, what did we get wrong in the process? Fourth is what I think of or called risk mitigation, that early donor dissatisfaction before it becomes donor attrition can be critically important to building up better relationships with our constituents. If we're not listening to what they tell us, we get a gift one year than the second year, and then the third year they don't give.
And we haven't asked why or how they felt that was valued or how the process worked. Then at the end of the day is could it be argued that's more our fault on the institutional relationship side? On the nonprofit side? The best example of this is, and I've talked about this a number of times in the different podcasts, is the absolute dissatisfaction my wife and I have when it comes to making philanthropic gifts.
We tend to do it at the end of the year because of tax reasons and the business. We are not writing million dollar checks, but it's we feel like we're we're hopefully making a difference. And if they bothered those nonprofits to circle back with me, I would just. I was going to say like them up. But really it would be more constructive criticism that stewardship is important.
What do you use the money for? Somebody get back to me. And in fact, the one person who has done that is the dean of law school, Eytan. And he's out asking questions. He's new. What? He actually has done this. He sat down with me, with my wife, and we told them how we felt. We thought like an ATM.
Nobody bothers to do anything. And I'm not asking for, like, to change my grades back in law school and plenty of room to increase them. I'm just think it'd be nice to know where the money went. Does anybody going to actually tell me anything other than getting a magazine twice a year? It's changed. So this is all about relationship building, retention and upgrades, internal process improvements.
And lastly, risk mitigation. So we're now down to the tactical. How do we do this. So I'm going to break this apart into kind of pieces. Number one is what to ask. What are the core areas of feedback. And number two then how to ask how do we do it. So in the what to ask you kind of want to break this up into I think of four major parts or at least are options.
The first is acknowledgment communication. Did we acknowledge your gift in a meaningful way? Did you feel it was timely? Did you feel it was some level of personal? I would argue that sending if you have a $2,500 donor or a $5,000 donor and sending them an email to say thank you, you would find out for most who are making gifts at that level that this is exactly what we're talking about.
That that's woefully under personal, impersonal, not engaging. Were we communicating clearly and aligning with your expectations in that correspondence and in what we send? So you could do this in a way to find out. Are you acknowledging multiple levels of someone's need to be appreciated? There's the legal part, the over $200 required to send something. But if they're $5,000, is somebody writing a personal note?
You know, someone making a phone call. You know, it doesn't take much just to say thank you. So the first is acknowledgment. The second is impact. So post gift and even post tax letter or whatever acknowledgment there is asking maybe two questions. Do you feel comfortable confident that your gift is making a difference? And number two, have we provided you enough information about how your gift was used or we'll get to how to do this in a minute.
We're just talking about what to ask. Think about getting feedback on impact. That tells us we don't have a connection to donors because they don't understand how the money was used and they don't. Well, if they don't understand it the first time, third time, ninth time, they give, do you think they're going to give another time and even a higher level?
Are we centering what we do on the donor and the value of the gift that the impact that it makes, how it's changing lives? And what are the details of that? Now there will be some who say, well, we've got 10,000, $1,000 donors. Finding ways to say thank you can be done, whether it's artificial intelligence, creating individualized videos, whether it's group videos you've got to find a way to find out is the impact realized.
Number three, personal connection and alignment. Or, you know, how do people line up with the gift officer and or the organization? Two questions. Do you feel more connected to the organization, to our mission after your gift? Number two, could you share with us what inspired you to give to this specific initiative to this particular area of need?
Do people choose to give to organization in general or to something specific that they're trying to accomplish? Generationally, we know the silent generation, the baby boomers, are more likely to give to the institution and trust them. But we know generation X, and in particular millennials are telling us it has to align more often with their personal code, their personal values.
So if you're not asking them donors why they gave and what the importance was to figure out, are they more old school, maybe a little bit more like me? Hey, I give you the institution and I trust you versus the majority who are telling us no. Philanthropy needs to be directly specific and engaging to the level of which I need to.
Feel as if the gifts are making a difference and aligns with who I am as a person, and the values I have when I'm asking that question. How do we then capture them at higher levels? How do we begin to segment the information that they may need or want to feel good about? Question number two about the impact.
All this is about that alignment of are we doing the things. Do they understand the connection that they need, that they're looking for in order to ensure that the gift is meaningful? Number four future engagement preferences. If we really, truly believe that one time gifts should be something of the past, then we need to be thinking about as I always try to talk about the next step.
Well, part of that next step is figuring out what they want in the future. Two questions. How would you prefer receiving updates about this program or these particular needs? What type of donor experiences or communications are most meaningful to you? Let me give you a personal example. We have recently been a little bit more generous to the Henry Dawley Zoo.
And yes, you can Google this. The number one zoo in the world here in Omaha, Nebraska. People always fight that. But Google. What's important to us. And I give the zoo credit because we increase some giving. We got a phone call. My wife got the call, and she says just along this line, they started asking about, well, yeah.
What is it you want that would connect you more to us? And what we said was we want to see the zoo from the backside, from the inside. My kids are fascinated by the zoo. How do you feed animals? How do you take care of them? I mean, my kids are at the zoo at least 15 times a year, minimum.
They've seen every aspect of the external. And they said, well, we have back backstage experiences. Would you like to come a couple times? And my wife leapt at it. Do you think that's going to engage us more or less. Are you asking how this could inform what you do in terms of personalization of the next connection, outreach, experience?
How do you deepen that relationship? So what to ask is about acknowledgment communication. Number two is about impact. Number three is about connection and alignment. Number four is about engagement. What is the most tactical is how to do this. Well there's there's two ways. Number one is personal. So maybe gifts major gifts personal gifts plain gifts. You have a stewardship office.
If you have enough people who make phone calls and they say, I'm I'm calling just to ask questions. And here are the questions. We'd like to know more about your experience and what we do. Think about those conversations that come. I think they'd be fascinating. So that's one way. But if we have a lot of donors, then we need to create a more automated process because we can't call every donor.
And so maybe below the major gift level or below a certain level, the major gift level, maybe it's some type of survey process. So for major donors above a certain level, it's maybe a senior leader or stewardship officer phone call with these kind of questions for mid-level and broad based annual donors. Maybe it's a 2 to 4 question survey, one question or with a Likert scale, which is the, you know, 1 to 7, seven being best, one being the worst with open comment.
All this, by the way, is incredibly cheap. It's a phone call which is basically free or using SurveyMonkey or, you know, whatever you can go ahead and have a survey online. It will tell you stuff. I think the other thing that comes from this is framing it correctly. I've used the word survey, and I probably should know because I actually advocate not calling it a survey.
What this is, is a way in which you can help us be better at what we do, and we want to appreciate your thoughts and find out how we can serve our community better.
The goal in all of this is to learn and to improve, not to gather data. Surveys. Gather data. This is about how can you help us be more effective at what we're trying to do in serving our donors and serving our community through the nonprofit mission?
If you really want to elevate, there is a third way. But this is highly at, intensive. There's nothing to say, particularly with some of the tools that are available in terms of recording and transitioning it to notes that you can't record or video record conversation sessions, and you can even assign categories and artificial intelligence now helping us do this where we can literally.
And I did this in my dissertation work of where you're looking for segments of the same or kind of concepts or issues or challenges. You can tag them and then you can analyze those tags for some type of trending. This is incredibly time intensive. But I'll give you an example. You might hear often well, you know, the the the thank you note was engagement letter was a little impersonal here.
Four times. Does that get your infrastructure team to say maybe we should look at this.
So as you look at how to do this individual conversation, five minutes, ten minutes max. These questions, which we covered about what to ask for major donors, principal donors, and just people that are at the highest level because you can't get to everybody. Number two is creating an online survey that you can be pulling all the time about what people say.
Simple. Five minutes max. And then at the highest level, if you want it in the in person or over the phone, you could record them with approval to really tag things and begin a process of of data collection so that while I talk about it not being a survey, there is data that can be analyzed. All this is to say is that at the end, if you do this correctly, it actually will create a follow up loop.
You told us this. So we changed what we did. How do we do? Do you think donors are going to be more or less impressed or more engaged, or less engaged if you actually make their experience better because of something they told you? It also increases the number of touchpoints. And I'm not just talking like email. I'm talking about valuable relationship deepening conversations, meetings, visits.
It also may open up new recognition opportunities you don't even think about because someone says, I don't need my name in lights. But boy, if you did this and I'll give you the example back to the zoo behind the scenes tours, my wife and kids are dialed in for the summer with a couple of them, all because it was just offered.
I want to spend just 30s on pitfalls. What should you try to avoid if you're going to get feedback? Be willing to take it. There's nothing worse than giving feedback and then having nothing done. And the person thinks this was a total waste of time. Don't use canned or basic what I call follow up language. You have to make sure that it's legitimate and genuine.
Number three, don't try to collect too much data or information that it becomes overwhelming. I do love the saying paralysis by analysis. If you get too much data, it just becomes paralysis by analysis. And number four is don't do it so often or too often or poorly. Time where it becomes fatiguing. It has to be quick. It has to be immediate.
Couple weeks after a gift, maybe not at the holidays because there's a lot of things going on. You delay those. Think about how you time these things in a meaningful way. All this to say is, is that donor feedback, if done correctly, is an incredible tool. If we do it the right way for retention and stewardship, credibility and eventually elevation to higher level conversations.
And we have to be, as I talked about with my wife and I, willing to accept criticism to make changes because it's not about you, it's about the organization, and it's not about you. It's about the donor's experience with the organization. And at the end of the day, it's really about them. Mission of the organization. Helping people in the community.
Action step. Start with just ten people this year. Start with five people the next 30 days. Make it reasonable and small. Make it workable. All this is to say that if you're not asking, you're not listening. And if we want more transformational relationships, the idea of creating a feedback loop and not just a one time, a systematic process where we get donors to tell us how we did and what we did, where we can improve.
If we're not doing that and we're not deepening relationships. And yes, it could be a little challenging if somebody is critical of you. But as someone who is had many people be appropriately critical of, I'm not interested in as much of that as I am getting better so that I'm not wasting time, effort and energy and being the best that I can be.
Don't forget to check out the blogs at Health Links. Be two per week 92nd reads Alex Lane wspa.com. And if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast health philanthropy.com. All this to say is, is that what we're doing in the nonprofit world as it's it's a little more chaotic economically, certainly with things in the government, a lot of moving pieces, philanthropy has a way of filling that gap for those people who need it the most.
Don't forget my favorite saying, some people make things happen, then some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. Getting feedback loops is about getting more and more people to be people who make things happen. For what our mission and purpose is, is to help those people and organizations, things that are wondering what happened.
I'm hoping today it gives you an opportunity to think about how you can deepen relationships to do more of what we love. You do something important. It is a value and it's a difference maker. I'm hoping today gives you a chance to further heighten that as a part of your growth, to serve your community. I'll look forward to seeing you the next time, right back here on the next edition of Around With Randall.
And don't forget, make it a great day.