Issue 1: New Beginnings

Ah, January. It is a time for well-intentioned BIG PLANS and the crushing reality that obstacles and problems will not magically disappear overnight.?

Our sector is in the midst of an identity crisis. We are adrift in many ways, with the vast majority of people who work in the sector knowing something is off but need help figuring out what to do.?

When I talk about empowering nonprofit leaders with insights and resources to create magical generosity experiences, I am ultimately talking about giving people the space to feel they can be their best selves in their work and communities.?

That’s why I’m changing up my newsletter with several vital shifts:

• A heavier emphasis on practical information and less philosophical meandering. I’ll shift those to dedicated articles or whitepapers that I write for Neon One
• Elevating the nonprofit voices that I interact with daily. You are the real stars of the show here, so I want to use my platform to break up the self-congratulatory posts by consultants or thinly veiled lead-generation activity of technology companies to spotlight the good work y’all are doing meaningfully
• Embracing that Generosity Experience Design is a unique point of view in the nonprofit sector, where when we speak about putting people first and not money, it is going to transcend every aspect of how the nonprofit sector should operate

I am thrilled to formally introduce you to The Generosity Compass, my new weekly digest that will spotlight leaders from small to midsized nonprofits, useful data you can act on, and some fun and games to keep things interesting.?

Welcome, and let’s dive in!?

Generosity in Action

It is no secret that the nonprofit sector's arts and culture segment has had a rough go since the pandemic. Yet, one of the most encouraging things I’ve witnessed is the embrace of innovation, creativity, and community that is uniquely “artistic” in its point of view of generosity.?

A lovely example drawn from our community is the Huntington Arts Council, Inc. with their Long Island Grants for the Arts program, which offers $1000 microgrants that fund extraordinary arts and cultural activities throughout both Nassau and Suffolk counties in New York.?

I asked Kieran Johnson , Executive Director of the Huntington Arts Council, to outline how they’ve made things easier for applicants.?

Simplifying the form was a major goal of ours. Especially with our new year round funding with the microgrant program. 18min for a $1,000 grant. We decreased hesitation from new applicants by functionality giving new or not previously funded applications points in the rubric. We saw 42 of 112 fundees were new to our grants program.

They also solicited grantees to participate in the Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 Survey, spearheaded by the Long Island Arts Alliance and the The New York Community Trust - Long Island . Especially if you’re interested in the arts, this is data you do not want to miss.?

Do you have any Generosity in Action you want to spotlight? Please reply with a comment in the newsletter or DM me.

Tips & Tricks

One of Neon One’s most popular downloads is our annual calendar, yet I wanted to call out something that usually gets missed in content planning - the willingness to suspend your scheduled plans.?

While you should be dedicated to hitting the dates scheduled in your content plan, there will always be times when the plan needs to be put on hold. Natural disasters, conflict, economic uncertainty, or other current events may require suspending your content plan for a period of time.?

And that’s okay! The best reason to have a content plan is that it will help you produce content promptly and effectively. A nonprofit content plan saves you time, results in better content, and creates an overall better experience for donors. If you have to hold off on publishing content for a while, you still have it ready to go when the time is right.

While it’s essential to plan your content in advance, it’s also important to be flexible enough to change the plan when required. You should never feel pressure to publish content because it’s “in the plan” when you have a compelling reason—like an ongoing natural disaster—to hold off.

Data Dive

As vice chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, I deeply look into the giving trends in the nonprofit sector. The quarterly reports are essential reading but need to be understood in their tactical utility.?

Let’s take what Q3 2023 tells us:

• Q3 data shows a continued steep decline in donor counts, with a Q3 YOY drop of 7.6% after late data adjustment. This trend began in 2021, after a large uptick in donations and donors in 2020. New Donors (down 16.9%) and newly retained donors (down 18.7%) were responsible for most of this decrease, whereas Repeat Retained donors, who represent 41.9% of all donors, dropped by 7.4%.
• Despite this overall decline in donors, dollars saw only a marginal year-over-year decrease of 1.1% in Q3. This decline was largely caused by a decline in Small and Micro donors (those who donated less than $500), substantial donor groups that accounted for 83.6% of all donors.
• There is still a disparity in organizations' performance based on their size. Smaller organizations seemed to perform relatively better this year compared to bigger ones.

While we won’t fully know what 2023 looks like until later this year, it is widely accepted that prioritizing new donor engagement is a great investment of time and energy for the first quarter.

Are you looking for something concrete to focus on for the month of January? Then, dive into honing or rolling out a new donor welcome series for folks who donated for the first time in November and December 2023.

Want to get a leg up on turning your one-time donors into raving fans? Then check out this fantastic session by Christina Tzavaras Edwards that we hosted last year.

Community Spotlight

Consistent feedback loops are critical for any company like Neon One to be able to plan both its product and educational roadmap, so taking into account what people are struggling with is one of the most important questions we ask.

We ask people what they want to get assistance with after each of our webinars, and late last year, I took the entirety of those results and ran them through ChatGPT to analyze the most common issues people are having.

Here are the top five issues we heard from you about:

Yet, things can change, and I want to continue to be agile in how we can put together critically important content and resources for nonprofit practitioners like you.

I'd love to use this section to spotlight questions and insights from our broader community. To help kickstart this new format, I'd love to hear directly from you and have put together this simple short form video page so you can submit a question. I'll choose my favorite to answer and send you a special prize!

Upcoming Events

This is one that I plan on having a ton of great information about. Here's a preview of what we have in store for you in January:

• January 10: Corporate Philanthropy 101: A Nonprofit's Guide to Success
• January 25: Debut of our new monthly live stream (RSVP coming soon!)

Final Thoughts

The title of this newsletter is both to introduce the new format and what I feel will be an ongoing theme throughout 2024. I hope that we finally confront the toxic elements that are slowly dismantling the good work that community-driven nonprofits have been doing.?

I was reflecting on the famous quote from Fred Rogers about “looking for the helpers” in times of crisis. The reality is that every single one of us has the power to be a helper. As we continue to confront a world hellbent on stamping out our sense of community in favor of consumerist individualism, the nonprofit sector needs to embrace that the solutions offered you by the for-profit world are not working.?

I’ll be outlining a vision of change soon, but I want to encourage every single one of you to embrace that not only are you a helper but that you are not alone in that momentous responsibility.?

Puzzle of the Week