The History of Donor Data, Retention, and How Technology Can Empower a Transformation

WHAT THE FUNDRAISING

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95: The People Behind the Products: The History of Donor Data, Retention, and How Technology Can Empower a Transformation with Jay B. Love

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“I would always say one of the things that I really appreciate if I’ve been involved with a nonprofit for, say 10 years, is when in my thank you letter, they tell me what my lifetime giving is.”

– Jay B. Love
Episode #95

Overview

In this episode of What the Fundraising Podcast…

Note the disparity: while commercial businesses have a near 90% returning customers, the nonprofit sector has a staggering 40-45%. Surprising? Then you’ll want to spend some time with Jay Love, Co-Founder of Bloomerang, and my guest on this episode of What the Fundraising. After 11 years as the CEO and Co-Founder of eTapestry, Jay started Bloomerang specifically to address the donor retention issues we have in the nonprofit sector. In addition to our talk about donor retention, you’ll get insight into Jay’s 4-decade journey in this sector and his up-close look at the evolution of technology and data management. Jay walks us through the evolution of donor data storage from post-it notes and file cabinets, to disks and hard drives, and then finally to cloud storage. The history is eye-opening and helpful to understanding where we are today, why we see resistance in certain tech adoption areas, and how we can best utilize the incredible tools we have available to us.

Jay also shares valuable insight into what it takes for nonprofits to succeed in their fundraising, and what keeps donors engaged with their nonprofit partners. A lot of it, as you’ll hear, boils down to two things: authenticity and appreciation, both of which are made easier with the right technology partners. In this era of the digital revolution, data holds so much power and requires a lot of responsibility. Jay talks to us about the most important ways to maintain data hygiene and the right ways to utilize (and protect) donor data. He also explains why transparency and proper handling of data are a must in nonprofits to support donor trust and engagement. But don’t worry, data hygiene doesn’t mean ‘perfect data’ and we talk about the difference and the ways in which most donors have grace for nonprofits when there is an error in lifetime giving data or another metric. The opportunities we gain by utilizing our data and personalizing communications far outweigh the issues with small mistakes here and there. This episode will help you know what to prioritize and why!

Please note: This episode is a part of a very special series called The People Behind the Products. More than ever, nonprofits care about the company behind their technology and service providers. What’s the underlying mission and vision of the company? What do they stand for? And how are they thinking about the sector and serving nonprofits? This series is an opportunity to get to know some of my favorite nonprofit technology companies so that the next time you’re making a tech decision, you can understand a little bit more about the people behind the product. There is no sponsorship or industry money behind the production of this series and the editorial content was at the sole discretion of the What the Fundraising team.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

(08:01) The history of eTapestry, the first internet-based donor data management program, and what Jay learned about managing change, resistance, and technology adoption.
(11:00) Jay’s top tips for good data hygiene and how to utilize data in a healthy way.
(14:42) Letting a donor know about their lifetime giving is a kind gesture that’ll make them feel good about their collaboration with you and deepen their engagement with your organization
(17:36) Donor management becomes a lot easier and more trustworthy when you have the right systems and the right technology in place.
(18:12) Busting a common fear around the nonprofit sector: Some people believe that donor data isn’t confidential and that people could misuse it. However, especially after a few trust breaches.
(19:34) Why Jay came out of retirement to build a relationship management system designed specifically to address the donor retention epidemic in the nonprofit sector.
(21:18) How Bloomerang prompts users around donor retention best practices and is driving increased retention rates across their client accounts, and shifting the conversation in the sector as a whole.
(22:30) There's a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to increasing our donor retention numbers and technology makes it a lot easier to motivate and prompt donors while providing easy ways of donating.

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Jay B. Love

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Learn more about Bloomerang and sign up for a demo here.
Take my FREE Fundraising Superpower Quiz.
If you’re looking to lift your nonprofit to that next level, my Power Partners Formula offers a step-by-step plan to get you there, including how to identify the right partners and design the right campaign. This free masterclass offers a great starting point!

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TIPS AND TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT TODAY

Pick the right partner for your nonprofit’s data management to maintain proper data hygiene at your organization. Simple things like properly marking in your system when a person unsubscribes from your email list, matter a lot.
When you’re putting information into your database, make sure you have clearly defined what fields map with what information and keep it that way. You need to be using the same fields for the same information time and time again.
There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to increasing donor retention and technology makes this so much easier with automation, easy personalization, and other donor data tracking.
There should be three touch points in the first 90 days after a new donor gives to your nonprofit.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“I would always say one of the things that I really appreciate if I've been involved with a nonprofit for, say 10 years, is when in my thank you letter, they tell me what my lifetime giving is.” - Jay B. Love
“With the right systems and the right technology, it just becomes so much easier to use major gifts and move people from special event attendees into annual funders into major gift donors, as they progress up the pyramid.” - Jay B. Love
“Sometimes, if you pick the right partner, they help you with data hygiene. And that was something that we did and we just never looked back on.” - Jay B. Love
“So that's what brought me outta retirement. I said, let's build something that, first of all, every time you turn it on, it tells you what your retention is for the last 365 days. Because before that, none of the software packages showed you.” - Jay B. Love
“There's so much opportunity, I believe, around donor retention. And the technology has this incredible moment to be prompting fundraisers and reminding them to be using some of these best practices.” - Mallory Erickson
“To this day I love the emails and the notes saying, ‘Hey, we just hit 50% or we just hit 60% in donor retention.’ So I think that's the real story behind Boomerang, is that we wanted to have an impact in (donor retention), and I believe that we're continuing to do that.” - Jay B. Love

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