WHAT THE FUNDRAISING
134: Donor Engagement: Understanding Benchmarks & Behavior Through Neuroscience with Jill King, Steve Agauas & Brian Kissell
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“Your business is people; you’re trying to connect with people and get them to give funds to these various organizations.”
– Brian Kissell
Episode #134
Overview
In this episode of What the Fundraising Podcast…
Are you tired of ineffective strategies for improving donor engagement? Do you want to achieve better donor engagement through a blend of creative and analytical strategies? It might be time to revolutionize your approach with learnings from neuromarketing techniques that tap into the psychology of donor behavior. And if so, you’re in luck. Today, Steve Agauas, Jill King, and Brian Kissell from Moore Neuro Fundraising Lab are here to reveal some secrets behind enhancing donor involvement through the balance of data-driven insights, testing, and innovative thinking.
As the Neuro Fundraising Lab explores the elusive world of predicting donor behavior through neuromarketing techniques, they grapple with the challenge of using data to understand the emotional and unpredictable nature of altruistic giving. And in this episode, we’ll show you how to balance creativity and science to craft powerful fundraising campaigns that connect with donors on a deeper level to exceed your goals.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
- Introducing the Neuro Fundraising Lab Team
- Importance of Nonprofit Specific Research
- Types of Studies
- The Role of Context
- Context in Fundraising
- Limitations of Research
- The Impact of Context
- Authentic Emotional Connections
- The Fine Line of Execution
- Importance of Emotional Appeal in Fundraising
- Responding to Negative Feedback
- Importance of Benchmarking
- Creating Personalized Benchmarks
- Identifying Goals and Metrics
- Creativity and Science
- Goals in Mind
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- I am so excited to be partnering with Neon One to be bringing you this mini-series all about how we improve our donor communications and create more engagement. There is so much wisdom in this series from how to create more engagement in your email campaigns to how to incorporate community centric fundraising practices into your communication. But another resource that I love is the 2023 Neon One Email Report which is designed to give you practical strategies for creating compelling emails to help you improve your email campaign performance. There are great benchmarks, analysis, and tips and tools all in one place so check it out TODAY!
- If you haven’t already, please visit our new What the Fundraising community forum. Check it out and join the conversation at this link.
- If you’re looking to raise more from the right funders, then you’ll want to check out my Power Partners Formula, a step-by-step approach to identifying the optimal partners for your organization. This free masterclass offers a great starting point
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TIPS AND TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT TODAY
- Stay up to date on current events and news cycles that may impact your fundraising campaigns. Context is really important, it doesn’t mean that you shouldnt send that email you were planning on, but it might need to sound a little different.
- Test and evaluate your fundraising content regularly to ensure it is resonating with donors and meeting your goals.
- Consider comparing your organization's fundraising efforts to those of similar organizations to gain a better understanding of how you can stand out and differentiate your mission and values. But be careful not to rely on too heavily comparison data when it comes to creating benchments. Neon One’s email report has incredible insight around email engagement for nonprofits and it’s a valuable first step to look at those benchmarks, and then get ready to create your own benchmarks for your organization.
- Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods to gain a comprehensive understanding of the donor experience.
- Prioritize developing specific and tangible calls to action in your fundraising content to encourage donors to take action and support your cause.
- If you have the capacity and means, consider incorporating biometric technology into your fundraising research to gain a more holistic understanding of donor behavior and response.
FAVORITE QUOTES
- "Fundraising is consumer psychology with a twist." - Steve Agawas
- "Your business is people; you're trying to connect with people and get them to give funds to these various organizations." - Brian Kissell
- "Your self perception can be hard to vocalize or even notice, much less if you're being asked about it later." - Jill King
- "Context is everything that isn't the content." - Jill King
- "People are really their brains, their psychology" - Brian Kissel
- "We're using this technology to get a better, more real time measure of the donor experience" - Steve Agawas
- "How does a person feel in this moment about giving money to this particular set of values is something that's much more complex" - Jill King
- "You're not always fully aware of your own experiences and how best to measure them." - Jill King
- “People think of creative and science as, like, completely different worlds when I really don't think they're that different. You have ideas that you're testing when you make a piece of creative, and we have to be creative in coming up with tests.” - Brian Kissell
- “You do have to have a large enough sample that you know whether or not one person's negative comment is meaningful or did that one piece of content not appeal to that particular person.” - Steve Agauas
- “And I think sometimes they don't always know how to benchmark for themselves and I tend to lean towards them creating their own benchmarks.” - Jill King
- “But I think you just have to know what [the benchmarks for your organization are] and have realistic expectations about how far you're going to be able to move the needle [and how long it’s going to take].” - Brian Kissell
- "Biometrics help us find out how people are experiencing creative content, direct mail, websites, etc., from a physiological perspective." - Jill King
- "We're trying to connect with people and get them to give funds to these various organizations who are worthy of receiving that." - Brian Kissel
RELATED CONTENT
Get to know Steve Agauas, Ph.D.:
As the Director of the Moore Neuro-Fundraising® Lab, Steve oversees a talented group of researchers who provide cutting-edge market research services that help clients better understand how donors engage with their creative materials. In addition to his consultation work, Steve also provides internal and external education on the advantages of neuromarketing techniques, research methods, and testing. Steve specializes in Cognitive Psychology and spent much of his training using eye-tracking technology to explore how people process meaning as they read and how action affordances may influence reading and visual processes.
Get the know Jill King, Ph.D.:
Jill is a cognitive neuroscientist who earned her doctorate from Tulane University in New Orleans in 2021. Specializing in visual attention processing within multimedia environments, she enjoys applying her research skillset to the unique questions presented by neuro-fundraising.
Get to know Brian Kissell, Ph.D.:
Brian Kissell, Ph.D. is an experimental social psychologist and quantitative researcher. Brian is passionate about utilizing best scientific practices, along with robust experimental and data science techniques, to help clients find accurate answers to meaningful questions.
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I teach nonprofit fundraisers to bring in more gifts from the RIGHT donors… so they can stop hounding people for money. Fundraising doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.
- CEO & Creator of the Power Partners Formula™
- Disruptor in the funding sector, changing lives everyday
- Relentlessly committed to the movement of money into the nonprofit sector
- Focused on win-win partnerships that allow fundraisers to be authentic and empowered in their work
- Over 15 years working in nonprofits (managing director and ED of multiple fast-growth organizations)
MALLORY ERICKSON
