Issue 8: It's All Connected

Do you struggle with context switching??

I’ve started hearing more about this term, which has its etymology in computing terminology, but it basically means that when you are hopping between different tasks, apps, or projects and need to realign what the focus should be and why it should be prioritized.?

This isn’t to be confused with multitasking, though they are related. Context switching means that instead of managing multiple tasks that relate to a single project this is hopping between completely different items in a rapid manner.?

The reason for all this moving around is simple: there’s too much demand on our attention. According to the 2022 Anatomy of Work Index, over half of workers (56%) feel that they have to respond to notifications immediately. Additionally, workers are switching between nine apps per day, and they feel overwhelmed by them. Which makes sense—nine apps is a lot to juggle.??

These tools and technologies are designed to make work easier, faster, and smarter. But too many disconnected apps have the opposite of the intended effect— they slow everything down and make work more complicated.

So, for this week’s newsletter, let’s slow down and start thinking about identity and its relation to your work a bit more intentionally. Stepping back and understanding that the best work is connected will help tether your daily activities toward a larger reason for being.?

Generosity in Action

If you’re like many of the nonprofit folks I talk with, donor motivation is not easy to pin down with confidence other than anecdotal evidence or just assuming it’s because they like your cause. Motivation is much deeper and more interesting if you implement a data-driven process.?

That’s why I’m thrilled to be putting on a special interactive workshop on February 26 at 1pm Eastern. This free session will focus on:

• Decipher Donor Motivations: Learn to identify and appreciate the diverse motivations of donors and their influence on fundraising strategies.
• Navigate the Donor Journey: Understand the different stages of donor engagement and how to align your approach with their current stage.
• Adapt Fundraising Tactics: Gain skills to modify fundraising tactics based on a donor's evolving motivations for more effective engagement.

I’ll also outline my process for building out a special Donor Motivation Archetype Card deck that I plan to debut later this year.?

Register here, and I’ll choose two folks to live coach - I’ll be reaching out tomorrow, so this is a great day to RSVP and tell a friend!

Tips & Tricks

I’ve been having a lot of great conversations to help plan out some regional workshops about recurring giving. This has gotten me thinking about the power of geographic identities and how those connect with other groupings.?

City, state, and regional identities can be very strong. For a fun example in your own life, ask anyone from Kansas City, Texas, the Carolinas, or Tennessee their opinions on barbecue. National identity can, likewise, be a potent aspect of a person’s identity, but so can their international identity as someone who is connected to the struggles of people in other countries.

Academic research also points toward strong inclinations for donors to support causes in their local communities. In a 2015 edition of Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, an article outlined the influence of how long a donor has resided in their community around the donation choices they are making. The article summarizes previous academic research by stating:

● Where one donates has been empirically linked to where one lives in relationship to recipient nonprofits

● The greatest portion of giving takes place within a donor's own community and helps support activities in which the donor is directly involved

● Suburbanites tended to support the creation of new nonprofits in their local suburban areas, moving philanthropic dollars away from older inner-city nonprofits where they used to live

● Geographic proximity to a disaster increased the likelihood of individuals donating to disaster relief

The researchers proposed a hypothesis that indicated the stronger local ties were, the more likely the donor would give to nonprofits in their community. They found that the longer an individual stays in the community that they live in, the more likely they are going to give to arts and human services organizations where they live.

When appealing to a donor using an identity-based fundraising approach, the key feelings to activate are autonomy, competency, and connectedness to your organization.?

A gift that allows a donor to express their identity will conjure the kind of warm-and-fuzzy feelings that will stick in their memory far more strongly than the details of the gift itself.

Ideally, your fundraising strategy will cover donors across numerous different identity groups. This is where donor segmentation—the practice of tweaking and targeting your message to different groups based on your donor data—will be critical to getting the right message in front of the right donor at the right time.

Data Dive

I love working with Cherian Koshy for a variety of reasons. He not only pushes me to be a better presenter but also a much better thinker about the problems that our sector is facing. That’s why I was thrilled to have him join us for a webinar last week on donor motivation.?

He always brings the research and I wanted to pull out a specific study he cited because of how excited folks were about the research. Let’s unpack the work of Chuan, Kesssler, and Milman entitled “Field study of charitable giving reveals that reciprocity decays over time.”

I’m going to encourage you to check out the whole webinar highly, but let’s pull out the most important quote from Cherian about this research:

The donor that you talk to today is not going to remember you tomorrow. So the focus of your activities has to be in jogging the donor muscle memory or the volunteer muscle memory that keeps your organization and cause top of mind. That doesn’t mean information overload. It doesn’t mean that you keep asking to give over and over. But we are acclimated in this digital age to accept a lot of information. Our inboxes are full. Our mailboxes are full. We are acclimated to that. And so if you’re designing generosity experiences without focusing on that donor muscle memory or volunteer muscle memory you are allowing the decay to continue.

This is a must-watch session:

Community Spotlight

I’m trying to push the conversations about data management and people management into better alignment, which means there will be some uncomfortable topics that need to be addressed.?

I did a video last Friday about divorce and data management that folks really got into, and I wanted to draw out a great insight from Christine Robertson on how a nonprofit can meaningfully and reasonably manage situations like divorce in their database.

Christine is extremely savvy and thoughtful about database management and after she shared her personal experience on the topic, I asked her to expand on what a database administrator can do to address divorce when it comes up in their own work:

?I know it sounds really basic, but triple-check every place where you store names to ensure they are all updated. I've seen alternate addressees or salutations and secondary systems (for email, events, etc) be culprits for not updating names appropriately.

That comment reminded me of a story from when I was working in a Catholic school in Chicago. We had a big donor recognition event and my job was to print the name tags. I used the First Name field in our database but noticed that one woman walking around the party had crossed off her name in favor of what was obviously a nickname.?

I immediately ran up to the second floor to update her record (this was before I even knew cloud-based CRMs existed) and also shifted our protocol to use the Nickname field if it was populated in situations like this.?

Little touches like this can lead to big impact down the line!?

Upcoming Events

Next week, Anna V. of Neon One and nonprofit communications expert Julia Campbell will join me for our February taping of Generosity Experience Live! I hope you can join us and click here to RSVP for the LinkedIn stream (we’ll also be doing it on YouTube and Facebook, your preference!)

• February 27 at 3pm ET: Neon CRM Monthly Release and this is a BIG ONE! Campaign management overhaul, grants management improvements, and VIP event ticket management

Final Thoughts

I’m working on some bigger picture projects and one is a more formalized articulation of what exactly is Generosity Experience Design and why a noprofit should care. I hate when companies just make things up, but its been hard to put into words the dizzying amount of intersections I’m seeing between generosity and technology.?

What I do know is that any approach a nonprtofit takes needs to center people first - in the budgeting, the strategies and tactics chosen, the words and phrases and reports that are run to articulate impact.?

There is a direct correlation between the mind, body, and soul with the work that we are doing in our sector. Technology, assets, and ultimately, people need to be reorganized in ways that make sense to the sector, not what some for profit entity thinks about solving the problem.?

It's all connected - the constant requests for random tech recommendations on Facebook groups, the frictions bubbling up around affluence in our sector, the disengagement that nonprofit professionals feel, the shifting behaviors of people looking to be generous, the importance of data as social currency, the socio-economic intersections around equity and resources. ALL OF THE THINGS.

This may sound contradictory coming from a guy who works at a tech company, but the nuances of who is “in charge” will become increasingly vital. My mission day in and day out is to listen deeply to what you, as a nonprofit professional, are struggling with and very loudly and passionately articulate that to the people who design our company’s products and services. Yet, we’ve seen repeatedly that as a company grows and receives more outside investment, those voices can get lost in favor of shareholder needs.?

That’s why I’m so thrilled with the strategic changes we started making in 2021 that are really starting to bear fruit in putting small to medium nonprofits in particular at the center of all decisions we make. The next few weeks are going to be a whirlwind of activity around our recurring giving report, so I hope y’all continue to keep me grounded on what matters most - your success.?

Puzzle of the Week