From data to donations: craft personalized year-end appeals

Margie Worrell: All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our webinar. We’re so glad that you’re joining us here today, where we’re gonna be talking about “From Data to Donations: Craft Personalized Year End Appeals.” So appropriate for this time of year. We’re really, really happy to have you join us and learn more.

If you would drop into the chat and tell us where you’re joining us from, maybe let us know what the weather is like where you are. I’m in Indiana right now, and it is chilly this morning. We started off in the forties, but we’re up to 59 today. So, Jacob, how’s the weather where you are?

Jacob Wantland: I am in sunny Colorado here, so it’s always sunny. But, yeah, it’s that time of year where this morning I woke up in the thirties, but it’s gonna be close to seventy today. I think on Sunday there was a fifty-degree difference from morning to afternoon. So it’s the time of year with the big swings for me.

Margie Worrell: Yeah. A little bit of something for everybody, right? No matter what you like.

Jacob Wantland: Oh, yeah.

Margie Worrell: That’s perfect. I love this. I’m seeing all of you chiming in. We’re so glad that you’re here with us today from all over the country. It’s really exciting. Oh, Florida, 83. I’m a little jealous, I have to say.

All right. I’m gonna run through a few housekeeping items before I turn it over to Jacob to really get into all of the important and vital information for today. We are gonna be emailing you a recording of this session today, so please don’t worry about that. You don’t have to write everything down to remember it. We’ll be sharing that with you. If you have any questions, please drop those into the Q&A section. It’s along the bottom of your screen. We’re happy to answer those. It’ll probably be towards the end of the presentation, so please don’t worry if we’re not answering right away. We’re just holding them until we can answer them all at once. If you would like a copy of the slides, you can connect with Jacob later, and he’ll be able to provide those for you. And please keep the chat going. I love when people get into the chat, and Jacob’s the same way. Help each other learn. Talk about how you’re using Bloomerang and what’s been successful for you. If you’re having a problem, you can use it as a space to come in and say, hey, I’m having this problem, have any of you solved for it? There’s a really great sense of community in the chat, so we love for you to just keep that chat going throughout the session today.

A little bit about us. I’m sure most of you are familiar with us. If you’re not, Bloomerang is a giving platform that’s built for purpose. We’re here to help nonprofits thrive, build stronger relationships, and have greater impact. We have tools like donor and volunteer management, online fundraising, and peer to peer campaigns, and a lot of these things are available to you to help your organization no matter what size you are, no matter the work you do. We really believe that when you have the insights and time you need, you can really focus on what truly matters, and that’s helping your communities. If you’re interested in hearing more about one of the different areas of products that we offer, we’re gonna have a poll at the end of our session today. Feel free to answer that poll and connect with us to get more information.

Also, you’re here today because you love to learn, and we love that. But if you wanna learn even more, we have an event for you. It’s called GiveCon, and it’s a very exciting event. How many of you have been to GiveCon? Chime in in the chat and let us know. Just say yes if you’ve been to GiveCon before. It’s a really great place to come together and develop a sense of community. It really does develop an immediate sense of community. I’ve seen some of the session outlines that we are preparing, and it’s going to even outdo last year. I see that Nicole was there last year in Orlando. So if you’re interested, scan this QR code, and you will be able to get more information about this exciting upcoming event in May.

Without any further ado, I am going to introduce to you the man, the legend, and probably my favorite presenter, Jacob Wantland. He is just an amazing person, but he is also a wonderful teacher and onboarding specialist here at Bloomerang. So, Jacob, without any more fanfare, I’m gonna turn it over to you so you can help us learn more about those year-end appeals.

Jacob Wantland: Thanks, Margie. Yeah. So, love the courtesy shot of me out hiking. Always appreciate sharing my adventures in the mountains. Yes, I’m from Colorado. I’ve got Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods, and Pikes Peak behind me. I very much love being out here, but I also love, as you mentioned, being able to teach others and work with others as well. So I’m excited for today. Let me go ahead and get my screen shared here.

Margie Worrell: Perfect.

Jacob Wantland: Are you all able to see my presentation screen, “Data to Donations”? I can’t see anybody. But as long as we’re good to go, Margie, we got it?

Margie Worrell: Yes. We’re good, Jacob.

Jacob Wantland: Perfect. All right. Margie, I’m gonna pick on you. You’re the only one that I can kind of see, so I may pick on you throughout the call. But for everybody else, once again, as Margie mentioned, please feel free to chime in in the chat. We really do want your feedback and input. I have a couple of questions throughout the call, so please make sure you’re utilizing the chat as much as you would like. But “Data to Donations,” let’s go ahead and get started.

Crafting personalized year-end appeals. This sounds like a real fancy title, but really what this is about is the people that you work with and how you’re gonna talk to them. We’re gonna make sure that we’re talking to them appropriately and segmenting them in the right way, to make sure that you are connecting with the people for your year-end appeal.

Here’s a little bit about what we’re gonna talk about today. First things first, we’ve got our donor categories. We’ve got our approach types and data-informed suggestions. We’ll talk a little bit about automations, and then we’ll have some Q&A at the end where we’ll be here to answer some questions.

This all sounds like great objectives, really fancy things that we’re gonna be covering today, but that’s not how I wanna think about this, and that’s not how I want this presentation to go. I wanna put myself in your shoes: hey, maybe I’m a first-time fundraiser or somebody who’s looking to up my game a little bit. I want this to be digestible and I want this to be relatable. As I’m thinking about you, who’s receiving this presentation, I want that to be the mindset that we keep throughout the entire day today: okay, who am I talking to when I’m talking to my donors? What is the message that I’m saying to them? I wanna break this down and make it as digestible as possible for everybody, so the barrier to entry is at the lowest level it can possibly be.

Here’s what I actually mean when I say these objectives today. When I say donor categories, we’re just gonna talk about how we’re classifying our constituents. How are they grouped together? How are we segmenting them? How are we thinking about the people that we’ll be connecting with?

When I talk about the approach types, I’m really talking about what message you’re sending them. What is your way of speaking to them? What is the way that you’re gonna talk about things? We just wanna talk about our message and how we’re going to approach that.

Data-informed suggestions, really, means: what is the end goal that we’re working toward, and how are we gonna get there? That is a big piece of advice that I always have, especially working with a lot of customers here at Bloomerang. I always ask folks, what is your end goal? Where are you trying to get to? Because if we know our end point, we can work backwards and use that backwards design model to help us get to where we want to go.

Then automations. Automations are here as a tool to make a long-term plan. Automations are not here to replace the human connection that we have, because at the end of the day, the people are the most important thing to our organizations. We want the connections to be genuine. We want them to be people-centric and donor-centric, but automations are here to help you with your long-term plan and to make your life a little bit easier.

And then lastly, I’m not gonna claim to be an expert who knows all the answers. I’ve got a whole lot of different life experiences. There will be certain things that I’m sure I could give you some advice on and my best opinion on, but really, I’m just here to help you as best I can, and I will do my best to answer anything that we can at the end of our call for you today.

All right. So, our objective: what is the point of today’s call? If I had to put this into a statement, our objective today is to help you raise more by thinking about your donors’ behavior, to help maximize year-end giving through specific, tailored approaches. I really wanna call out my italicized, underlined, fancy-looking text there: “behavior” and “specific tailored approaches.” The behavior of our donors is going to be a big driving factor that we talk about today. Being able to analyze it and identify it, and how that will then inform our decision-making process, is gonna be a big part of today’s call. That is a huge piece of what we’re gonna be talking about here.

All right. Now let’s actually talk about it a little bit, and please feel free to put some thoughts in the chat as we are doing this. My question for you all is: how do you segment your donors? Is it something that you do currently? How do you do it? Is this also a factor that you consider for your year-end appeal? Please feel free to put some thoughts in the chat, because I’d love to see what you are saying and how some of you might be thinking about this. You might see that some people are segmenting donors the same way as you. You might see it’s a whole lot different than you. So is it something like donor capacity? Are you segmenting your donors based on how much they are giving? Is it going to be people that give up to a certain amount, we’re gonna segment them this way, and that’s how we’re gonna approach them?

Is it geographical? I live in Colorado, in Colorado Springs specifically, so am I gonna focus on, hey, I wanna segment my donors that live in my town, and then I’m gonna focus on people a little bit differently if they live outside my town? Do you consider geographical factors?

Is it gonna be the method that they reply with, the appeals, per se? If you send out a letter and people respond via a QR code with the letter, is that how you then follow up, based on who responded to the letter versus who responded to your email or who showed up to an event? What are some of your main responses, and how are you segmenting?

Margie, once again, I’m gonna pick on you throughout the call today. When I say “segmenting donors” to you, is there anything in particular that jumps to your mind, for how you think about what you see most commonly here at Bloomerang? Or what are people saying in the chat, what common thread are you seeing?

Margie Worrell: Yeah. A lot of it revolves more around donations and the way that people engage through their donating. Right? Different levels. Who’s lapsed, who’s given this year, who hasn’t given this year, who’s a loyal giver, those types of things.

Jacob Wantland: I love it.

Margie Worrell: Yeah. These are really great things to think about. I’m also seeing that some people are saying they have trouble trusting their data, and so they aren’t so sure about segmenting, because they don’t wanna make mistakes with their segments. That’s another interesting thing that’s coming up as well.

Jacob Wantland: Oh, what a good thought.

Margie Worrell: Yeah. And then there are some that are very niche, and I love this, because that shows how much they’re thinking about their constituency. Right? Like, the small school says they have students with learning differences, and sometimes it’s hard to sustain contact for them. So we’re having a lot of really great interaction through this chat for different ways.

Jacob Wantland: Oh, that’s amazing. That’s what we want. I would say, and not to give the whole presentation away, but hint, hint, wink, wink, there’s gonna be a whole lot of this coming up in the slides too. So keep it coming. Stay engaged in the chat. We really do appreciate it. I love all the insights and the feedback that we’re getting here, and I’m gonna make a particular recommendation today on how I might recommend you segment your donors, and that is through the behavior of your donors. What is their behavior telling us, and how can we leverage that?

When I think about donors’ behaviors, and who our donors are, I wanna think about our donors in four distinct groups. That’s how I might start out.

First, we have our prospective donors. Our prospective donors are, to give you some definitions here, those that haven’t given yet. They could give to our organization. They’ve not currently given to us, but they have the potential to give. We have their information, but they’ve not given us a donation yet.

Your current donors are people that are currently and actively giving to you. Some people classify this in different ways, whether that’s through calendar year, fiscal year, or rolling year, but they’re the people that have given to you in your current time frame.

Then we have our retained donors. Our retained donors are those that have given us additional gifts, in the sense that they’ve given at least two consecutive years, whether that’s, once again, rolling, fiscal, or calendar. They’ve given at least two in a row, and they are coming back year over year.

And then lastly, we’ve got those lapsed donors. Margie, you called that one out. Great job on that one. Lapsed donors are those that have no transactions this year, but they’ve given before. So there are no transactions in the current period, but they’ve given to you in the past.

To standardize the way that we talk about this today, I’m gonna use the Bloomerang definition for how Bloomerang classifies these donors. Bloomerang automatically defines and groups these donors for you according to a rolling 13-month time frame. So in my examples today, when I’m talking about these donors, please know I’m talking about them in a rolling 13-month time frame. Going back to September 21, 2024 is the 13-month time frame that we’re looking at. That’s how I’m thinking about my donors today.

All right. Now we know the players of who we’ll be working with, so let’s move on to the next step, which is the message that you’re gonna have for your players. For the people that we’re working with, I wanted you to think about what the message is. What is your way of connecting with them, and how are you gonna talk to these people?

Once again, I’m bringing up my handy-dandy slide, asking you to participate in the chat: is there a particular tone or approach that you like to take with your donors? While you’re all responding in the chat, I wanna share a story, because it might help to give some insights and examples here. I wanna share a story about myself and my wife, Kirsten. Some of you, especially if you went to GiveCon last year, may know that Kirsten went and also presented at GiveCon. She’s tremendous. But one thing that Kirsten does not have a whole lot of background in is sports, and that is something that I quite enjoy. I grew up playing sports, high school, college, and still stay engaged. For better or worse, I’m a Chicago Bears fan. I grew up outside Chicago. One thing we’ll do now is watch football on the weekends together, and I’ll say to Kirsten, hey, did you see that run, off right tackle? They got a first down. And she’ll look at me like I’ve got multiple heads. She’s like, what did you just say to me? I did not understand a word you just said.

That made me think a lot about this presentation. Some of you may be like, why is he talking about football right now? But because of the specific language I needed, the way that I talked to somebody who did not have the same background knowledge would be different from the way I talk to my best friend, who’s also a Bears fan. The way that I approach things and the way that I talk to donors is different depending on their background knowledge. So the language that we use is going to be an important consideration here. Are we using a lot of jargon? Maybe that’s great for people who have the same background knowledge, but does everybody know those definitions? Does everybody have the same barrier to entry? Once again, think about your donors. Put yourself in their shoes. Do they have that background knowledge here?

Another example I have is the tone in which I talk to people, because you always wanna be positive. No matter what, a big takeaway from this is positivity. But something else to think about is the way that we are explaining things. In my background, I’ve worked a lot with students, whether that’s in teaching or through summer camps, things like that. I’d work with my best friends all day who were ten years old, and then I’d come home and be talking to my wife, Kirsten, and she’d say, hey, you’re explaining this to me like a fourth grader. Once again, I had to take a step back and realize my tone is different depending on my target audience. So, keeping those perspectives in mind, of our tone and the way that we’re talking to people, I wanna talk a little bit about the two types of approaches that we can take with our donors and how we’re gonna factor all that in here.

The first approach that we could take with our donors is an impact approach. An impact approach is where we are making a donor-friendly correlation to the impact that they are making. The most important thing about our impact approach is that it is always done in second person. Second person is using words like “you” consistently. We are talking directly to the donor. You did this. Your impact is doing this. Your contribution is allowing this to happen. We want it to be always in second person, directly relating to the donor, so they know the impact that they are making.

The second approach is going to be an educational approach. As you can infer, an educational approach is educating them about the org. The best way to think about this is: if you had thirty seconds and you had to give your elevator pitch about what your org is, what would you say? What would you say is the most important thing? How would you describe your org if you had to just give a thirty-second pitch? How would you educate others on what your org’s mission is and define that? Thinking about that perspective of “what is my elevator pitch” is how I want to educate those about my org, and that’s gonna be one of our approach types.

No matter what, even if we’re differentiating between our two approach types here today, the most important thing is that we keep a donor-centric approach. It’s not about what you are doing, your impact. It’s all about the donor. It’s so important to make it donor-centric. You always want to make sure that they are the priority and they know the impact that they are making. So it’s always positive. It’s always donor-centric.

All right. Now let’s combine them. Now we know our people. Now we know our approach types. Now let’s talk about the behaviors that are gonna connect these two together, because our types of donors and the approach we are taking are brought together by the behavior that they are telling us. Our donors are so much more than just those that are contributing to us. They’re giving us so much more information, subconsciously. The way that they are interacting with our org is telling us so much about them.

For example, let’s start with prospective, right at the very top. If we have prospective donors, then what I wanna think about is: what is a prospective donor’s behavior? Well, they have no giving behavior. They haven’t given to us yet. But a lack of a behavior, a lack of giving, is still a behavior. That’s informing me that, hey, they haven’t given to us yet. They don’t know potentially enough about our org to contribute. So what type of approach do we wanna take at this point? Well, this will be an educational approach. This is where we need to educate them about our org, to make sure that they know what they are contributing to and what the mission is. We need to educate our prospective donor groups.

For these next ones, I wanna go ahead and play my favorite game: we’re gonna guess the approach type. I’m gonna tell you what their behavior is, and in the chat, I would love for you to guess the approach type. Word on the street is that Margie was taking Venmo accounts to send money out to the winners. No promises on how fulfilled that gets, but Margie may be willing to send out some prizes here. So please contribute in the chat what you think the correct answer will be.

For our current donors, what is their behavior? Well, they’re actively giving. They are contributing to us present day. They are actively giving to us in the moment. So, thinking about that, what is that going to tell us about their approach type? What approach should we take? I’m seeing different answers in the chat come through. Margie, is there anything in particular you’re seeing an overwhelming response for, for the different approach type we should take for our current donors?

Margie Worrell: Yeah. It’s almost 100% impact. They really feel strongly that impact is the answer.

Jacob Wantland: Man, I like this crew. We got a good crew today, because they are absolutely correct. It is an impact approach. We want to correlate the impact that our current donors are making. We want to reward them for actively giving to us. And in that second-person language: your contribution is doing this.

All right. Now, retained donors. What is their behavior? Well, their behavior is consecutive giving. Not only have they given to us this year, but they’ve given to us in previous years as well. They have come back for more. What type of approach should we take here? What do we think in the chat? I’ll give you all thirty seconds here. If we were to contribute, are we thinking more educational for our retained, or impact for our retained? What are we seeing, Margie?

Margie Worrell: Well, I’m seeing a lot of impact. I’m getting some hybrids. I’m getting some that feel like maybe it could be a little bit of both.

Jacob Wantland: Oh, I like that. Yeah. I’m trying to think outside the box here.

Margie Worrell: Yes. I like it.

Jacob Wantland: While at the end of the day, being positive and consistent with your donors is most important, I would classify this as an impact approach. We wanna correlate the impact that they are making to our org consistently. That language may be a little bit different from our current donors, because they’ve consistently made it. They’ve loyally made the impact now for a long period of time. But it’s still going to be that impact that they are making to our org.

And now for our lapsed donors. What is a lapsed donor’s behavior? A lapsed donor’s behavior is saying, hey, we’ve given to you in the past, but we haven’t given in the last rolling year. Thinking about our Bloomerang definition, since September of 2024, we haven’t gotten a donation from them, but they have contributed before, whether that was in the previous year or several years ago. Are folks thinking about this one? What type of approach should we take for our lapsed donors? Do we wanna focus on the impact or the education?

Margie Worrell: This is a good one too. There’s a lot of education, a few impact, but a lot of the hybrid again. They think we should be doing both for this type of donor.

Jacob Wantland: I feel like, Margie, you might have passed out my slides beforehand, so people were able to see the results, because that is how I also classify it. It’s a hybrid of both. This is a tricky one, because a lot of times I like to describe this as re-educating the donor. We need to re-inform them about what our current mission is. What is the impact that they made? What is the impact that they could make again by re-educating them? So it is gonna be a hybrid of both combinations here. Great job, everybody. Thank you for participating. I’m sure Margie will be sending out all the prizes momentarily.

All right. Now we have our donors’ behaviors. We know the type of approach that we wanna take with them, whether we’re gonna focus on educating them or correlating their impact. But how do we take it one step further? What are we going to do next? What could we do next? This is where leveraging all of your resources is going to come into play, because it is not just an either/or statement. Going back to the very beginning of this presentation, I talked about how you segment your donors. I don’t wanna just segment by their behavior. I don’t wanna just segment by their giving capacity. I want to leverage all of my resources to make the most informed segmentation possible. What I wanna highlight here is that donor behavior and donor data are meant to work together, hand in hand, to form donor-centric, data-informed decisions. That sounds like a whole lot of “data” and “donor,” a lot of D words I’m dropping in that sentence. So I wanna break that down just a little bit.

Data is not simply in your CRM or your spreadsheets. However you’re taking care of that data, however you’re classifying it and tracking it, it’s not in there just for the sake of having it. Sure, it’s great to have plenty of data. We want to make sure we’re staying on top of tracking everything and being diligent about documentation. But the data is in there to be leveraged. We should be taking that data to help inform our decision-making and to help us make the best decisions possible.

So data is meant to be leveraged. Not only do I want us to think about our donor behavior, but now I want to use it in tandem with our donor data, so that we are making the most data-informed, donor-centric decisions possible. Let’s talk about what that means for the different types of donor groups we were discussing earlier.

For our prospective donors, what is the goal of a prospective donor at year-end appeal? What is our end goal for these folks? Well, the end goal for a prospective donor is to simply turn them into a current donor who contributes to our organization. They’re currently not giving to our organization. We want them to simply become givers to our organization. On your screen, I have highlighted here that Bloomerang automatically defines these groups for you and has a whole section where these folks are categorized. If you go into your groups section in Bloomerang, for those of you that are Bloomerang customers, you’re gonna see all of these segments already done for you, which is some of that work already done. So for your prospective donors, we want them to become current donors. We don’t need to leverage any of their past giving data. We could run a report simply for your prospective donors so we can see who they are, and we are going to educate them about the org. We don’t necessarily need to segment further, because they don’t have any giving history. They have that lack of behavior, of giving, which is informing us that we just need to educate them, because that is what they are telling us here. You can certainly always segment further based on the communication channels that you have, whether that’s email, phone, or letter. But in terms of data-driven suggestions, we don’t need to segment further beyond turning them into current donors by educating our prospective group.

A little bit different story for our next category of donors, which is our current donors. Once again, what is our end goal? Where do we want to get these donors to? Well, for our current donors, we want to ask them to match their current giving or upgrade to a greater amount. Our current donors are those that we want to make sure can match or upgrade, because they are actively giving to your organization. So we want to correlate their impact.

However, not all current donors are made the same. Somebody who donates a single time here and gives a low amount could be a little bit different from somebody who gives a significantly larger amount. So how can we maximize our ability to segment within our current donors? Well, we have a nice tool here called giving levels, and this is where you can think about your donors in some different significant ranges. In Bloomerang, with our giving levels tool, we have general, mid, and major as our categories. I just wanna highlight that these are the amounts by default, but this is completely customizable. You can see that somebody who’s a current donor in the general category could be a lot different from somebody who’s a current donor in the major category. The way that you might talk to them, the way that you might craft your year-end appeal to them, is still going to be correlating their impact, but you can segment that out further.

To give you an example of what this might look like, if I were to run a report, I’m gonna see, hey, I’m looking for my current group who’s in the general giving level, which is up to $500. We’re gonna see at the very bottom of the screen that it shows me how many constituents I have, and that was 108 in my example. So I had 108 people that met my category for current donors in the general giving category. Maybe I focus a particular ask on them, because they’ve given up to $500. Maybe I tailor it to be specific to this group. Because if I take it one step further and ask, okay, what is my mid level doing? I only have five donors, but they’ve shown a higher capacity to give to our org as a current donor. So it would not be a huge ask to do something different for just these five individual people who fall into our current donor category at the mid-tier level. The way that we segment our donors based on their giving can really give us some insights into where they are falling and the way that we might want to talk to them.

Don’t be afraid to ask those five constituents for a higher level than you would for those 108. You’re able to ask those five for more of an impact, to match a higher gift or upgrade to a higher gift, because the data shows us that you can. They have given a higher amount. So we know that they’re a current giver. We know they need the impact approach. But you can ask for a higher amount, because you also are using the data to help inform that decision. We’re still gonna use our donor-centric language talking about their impact, but at a higher level. We’re gonna maximize what they can give.

Next, I wanna talk about retained donors. Once again, what is the end goal? Where do we want our retained donors to get to? Well, we wanna thank them for their loyalty and ask them to upgrade. Our retained donors in particular have shown us, hey, they’re invested. They are invested in your mission. They are invested in your org. We want them to consistently come back to your org feeling positive about their loyalty. So this is a loyalty-focused message, to thank them for the impact that they’ve made and ask for an upgrade, whether that is upgrading their amount or moving to a recurring giving situation. Loyalty-focused, asking for an upgrade or a recurring ask is what we are focusing on for our retained donors.

Just like before, we’re gonna be able to segment our retained donors based on their giving capacity. The amount that you ask them to upgrade to will vary. Here, I’ve got my retained donors in the major level. I have 36 particular people that have given above that $5,000 threshold, so I’m gonna focus my ask above that $5,000 amount. I’m gonna make sure I’m going above and beyond and not selling myself short and shooting below expectations for my major donor group in my retained section. Whether that recurring giving throughout the year is gonna equate to more than $5,000, or it’s going to be giving more than $5,000 throughout the year in one-time gifts, whatever is best for your org, don’t sell yourself short and undershoot it. Use the data to help understand and know the appropriate ask here.

Now for our lapsed donors. Once again, what is the goal for our lapsed donors? What do we want our lapsed donors to do? Well, we want our lapsed donors to simply come back to our org. They’ve shown in the past that they are interested, that they are invested, but we want them to come back. It’s okay if they downgrade, as long as they come back to your org. So this one does not necessarily have to be amount-specific, leveraging that past data. You do not have to segment out your lapsed donors into general, mid, or major, because at the end of the day, as long as they come back to the org, that’s what we are looking for. If they’re able to match their previous giving, that’s great. But the goal is to convert them to be a recaptured donor, which means they’ve come back and donated again to your organization. We want them to be able to come back to the org and just be a part of the org. Once again, we’re correlating the impact that they made, but we’re re-informing them. We are re-educating them to make sure that they know what their impact could be and what your current mission is.

Now, I know at this point some of you may be thinking, hey, this is great. I know that I can leverage my data along with some of these approach types, but I really don’t know what number to ask for. How can I find out what number I should ask for? How do I leverage that data? Well, I’ve got a couple of particular things that could help in that scenario.

Number one, I wanna focus first on a Bloomerang Fundraising specific option. In Bloomerang Fundraising, on a standard donation form, everybody has the ability to turn on what’s called smart amounts. Smart amounts are essentially unique, tailored amounts that are different for each person when they open the form. They’re established using a unique algorithm that Bloomerang has, which incorporates the visitor data and the historical giving trends across the fundraising platform from where they are accessing the form. Depending on the donor, and the giving trends of the area where that donor is accessing the form from, the amounts they see are automatically tailored to them to reflect their giving trends. Somebody with a higher capacity to give, who has given a lot before, will see much higher totals as suggested amounts, compared to somebody who is a newer donor, who may be a prospective donor or a low-end general current donor. This is a way you could automatically take some of that work off your plate and let the Bloomerang algorithm, along with the giving trends of the industry, help determine those asks. By linking to your Bloomerang Fundraising form and directing donors to give there, they’re gonna get those tailored amounts right there on their screen, directly correlated to them.

Now, for others, you may not feel comfortable with that, or you may not have Bloomerang Fundraising. There are also some ways that you can leverage your data too. I have some Bloomerang reporting options pulled up on the bottom part of your screen, and I wanna specifically talk about some of the things I highlighted, because these were all things I added to a Bloomerang report that helped me make an informed decision.

I wanted to see a constituent’s latest transaction amount and its date. I also wanted to see the sum amount of their transactions, whether that’s all time, the previous year, or this year. I had that choice. I wanted to see the average amount of their transactions. If I average out their giving, what is that showing me? Once again, whether it’s this year or all time, I had the choice. And then I also wanted to see the largest transaction amount, as well as that date.

Thinking about that type of data, your largest amount could be a good number to go off of for asking those retained donors for an upgrade. Saying, hey, you’ve given this amount in the past, would you be willing to give a slightly higher amount this time, naming that higher amount? Using the data that you have, search for it and say, I know this is the largest amount they’ve given in the past. I wanna exceed that number. I wanna ask for a slightly higher number than that. For my latest amount, maybe latest amount is one that you could use for your current donors to match or upgrade beyond. Say, hey, I know earlier this year I saw that you gave $100. Would you be willing to give $100 again? Or you could ask for an upgrade: would you be willing to give more than $100? Using the data to help inform the specific decisions could be as simple as: what was their latest transaction? When did it occur this year? What is their largest transaction? How do I want to exceed that? Use the data that you have to help inform what those numbers could be and make sure you feel comfortable with those asks. Smart amounts and leveraging your reporting options and your data are great ways to, once again, always donor-centric, always positive, make a particular, specific ask for that particular amount that you want.

All right. Now it is time to keep the momentum going. I had to change the slide name here for this one. I had “Now We’re Halfway There,” but Margie kept singing Bon Jovi every time the slide came up as I was rehearsing, so I wanted to make sure I changed it. I know Margie was on a roll. To be fair, she does a great job on Bon Jovi. But for today’s purposes, we would just focus on keeping our momentum going.

Right now is the time of year to think about 2026. Not in the sense of planning and what we are going to be looking forward to, but our current donors that we’re about ready to make this year-end appeal ask of. We want to already focus on our next-step plan for what happens after we make the ask. What happens next? In thinking about this, we segmented our donors. We’ve made the ask. Now what? What is your next step? If you had to put in the chat, what do you think is the most important thing that we could do right now that comes next?

I know some of you, and, personally, myself, are like, boy, now it’s time to relax. We’ve done a lot of hard work. We’ve leveraged our data. We focused on the donor reports, and we’ve got that ask in place. Time to take my foot off the gas. I’m good to go. But, as Jon Bon Jovi once said, now we’re only halfway there. Margie, what are some of the things you’re seeing people mention in the chat? What are people thinking our next steps might be?

Margie Worrell: Yeah. I’m loving this. They’re saying follow-up, thank yous, impact stories, and all combinations of those. So, just amazing. And I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to do my Bon Jovi.

Jacob Wantland: I know. I’m so sorry. Maybe next time. Next webinar, we’ll specifically put a little intermission in here for it.

Margie Worrell: Perfect.

Jacob Wantland: I love it.

Margie Worrell: Awesome.

Jacob Wantland: So now, I love what we’re hearing. I love that we’re all on the same page here, because this is our opportunity to get out in front of it. And I want to think about how we are going to leverage automations to help us in this process. Once again, automations are not taking away the donor connection here. They are a stewardship opportunity for our donors. Automations are simply for donor stewardship and for acknowledgments. I specifically have highlighted here a Bloomerang tool called Journey Automation. Journey Automation is a great way for you to get out in front of the donor stewardship that you’re gonna need in place.

For example, say I have first-time donors. Maybe I wanna focus on that prospective group, so I have an automation set up where the trigger is a first-time donation. Immediately, they’re gonna get a thank-you email, or a task that tells you to call them. Then you’re able to set a specific time frame between your next communications, and you’re gonna be able to stay on top of that donor communication. Maybe every ten days, you wanna follow up with an impact story. You wanna correlate that impact approach still for your prospective donors. You can go ahead and structure right now however many emails you want, four, five, six, seven, eight, to go out every ten, fifteen, whatever that number may be, days, because it’s going to keep you in line with that donor stewardship. It’s gonna take some of that burden off your plate, because you’re gonna have very successful year-end appeals and a lot of donors to follow up with, and you won’t have to remember to do this for each particular donor.

Automations are simply there to help us scale for volume. That’s what automations are used for. They are not taking away the donor connection. They are there to help us scale to reach a much larger audience and scale our year-end volume easily. We wanna keep these impact approaches in mind through this process. I’m focusing on these newer donors, and we wanna focus on that continued approach of correlating the impact that they have made once they become a current donor. We’re educating our prospective donors on our organization. They become current donors. We wanna start to take that impact approach now. What is the impact they are making? We want to positively reward our donors with these consistent communications on their impact, and consistently educate them to keep them up to speed. For those lapsed donors, we want to re-educate. We want to re-inform.

Don’t lose sight of the approaches, even within automations. They’re simply there to help us scale for volume, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is keeping in mind donor behavior and the approach that we are going to take to talk to donors about that. What are they telling us? How are we gonna talk to them? How are we going to make it, and continue to keep it, positive and donor-centric?

Thank you all very much. That is the main takeaway from today: making sure that it is all donor-centric and positive. I really appreciate you all taking the time today. I wanted to make sure we left some time at the end here, so I’ll turn it over to Margie at this point, as we’ve got some time for Q&A. If there’s anything in particular coming in, please feel free to put that in the chat or the Q&A section, as Margie highlighted earlier, and we’ll help get as many questions answered as we can.

Margie Worrell: Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much, Jacob. Amazing. Somebody called out in the chat what a great presentation you gave today, so I just wanted to mention that. Very, very well done. We do have a few questions. Amy was asking, what’s your suggested approach to appeals when you’re not very confident in your data? Maybe you inherited bad data, and you’re working on cleaning it up. What would you suggest for an organization that’s in that state?

Jacob Wantland: Oh, what a great question. This got brought up early on, and I think it was the very first question I asked in the chat. And I was like, oh, man, what a tricky situation that is. First off, that is a challenging spot to be in. Okay, well, maybe we don’t trust our data. I’m thinking about maybe a couple-step approach here. Number one: at what point did you start, and at what point do we think our data is positive? Where is that particular cutoff point of, okay, I’ve been consistent up to this point, I know that from this point forward I’m good? So maybe there’s only some data that we want to leverage. Maybe we can’t utilize data quite the way that I mentioned in this presentation, where we can really leverage it. But what can we leverage? What do we have the ability to do? Don’t think of it necessarily in the deficit mindset of, hey, I’m out of luck. What can I do now? What does this give me an opportunity to do?

Well, maybe it gives you an opportunity for outreach, saying, I really wanna make sure I’m connecting with these donors now, to let them know that this is gonna be a priority of mine, to really make sure we’re tracking and connecting with them, because I want the most accurate history possible. So while it is a tricky situation in terms of leveraging data for year-end appeals, we can still think about donor behavior to help leverage year-end appeals and maybe keep it more general. And it also gives us an opportunity for potential outreach to those donors. How can I turn this into a positive for donor communication and donor connection, and let them know that I really see the value in them and want to make sure I’m as accurate as possible?

Margie Worrell: No, I love that. Looking at your data from the perspective of “what can I trust?” Right? What areas do I know and can I trust? That’s perfect. Thank you. So here’s another question. Can you elaborate on what you mean by educational approach, and why do you think this is the best way to convince not-yet donors to give? I’m coming from the knowledge that people make decisions to support a cause not because they know and think, but because they feel. That’s why storytelling is so powerful, which we agree on. Most people make emotional decisions, not decisions based on statistics and graphs. So what can educating look like in this case?

Jacob Wantland: Oh, man. What a well-asked question.

Margie Worrell: I know. Right? That was a thinker.

Jacob Wantland: I would say that education is not limited to graphs of data. I don’t think that is all of what education is. As a former educator myself, thinking about it, if I have twenty people in front of me, all twenty are gonna learn differently. All twenty are going to need a different approach. So, to your point, leveraging people’s emotional connections is a great way to educate them about your org. We’re not trying to manipulate people, but you can leverage the empathetic side of your org’s mission and how you’re educating them about it. You are able to potentially fill in some gaps. You are able to correlate those impact stories within an educational approach, saying, here’s my elevator pitch about what we do and why it matters. Here’s a real-life example of that. So you are able to educate them in that sense. It doesn’t just have to be data. Don’t think of education simply as data: here’s what we do, here’s our numbers based on how we do it. It’s more than that. All of your missions are more than just the numbers that we can quantify you by. There’s no way to quantify a nonprofit’s impact simply by the numbers themselves. The emotional connections that you make, the lives that you’re touching, the real-life impacts that you’re making on people, you can’t quantify. So filling that into your educational approach is, I guess, how I might answer that question. I don’t know if that was exactly the answer you were looking for, but that’s how I interpret that.

Margie Worrell: No, I think that was perfect, and I think we do value storytelling. Right? As a component. I think that data can feed storytelling. But the fact is, at the end of the day, people care about people. They care about helping others, and so that’s an important component. I’m glad you called that out. I’d like to hear your thoughts on an approach where data is not trustable. Oh, this is actually a very similar question, so I think we’ve answered that. Let’s move to the next one. Here’s a good question. Where would you leverage engagement level and generosity score in this plan for your year-end appeal ask?

Jacob Wantland: Oh, man.

Margie Worrell: Calling out the specific Bloomerang sections. Love it.

Jacob Wantland: I love it. No, that is a great call-out, because combining those two together is a great way to leverage your end asks. Thinking about engagement level, that Bloomerang score is calculated based on donors’ previous giving and connections to you. Those interactions, those nonmonetary touch points. The more interactions, the more transactions they have, the larger the transactions, the higher the engagement level score. So think about the different ways that we can group those together. Who are our highly engaged donors? Also with a really high generosity score. If they are both on fire, hot in those categories, then combining both of those together in reports, those are good constituents who are highly engaged in your org and have a high capacity to give. Good candidates to ask for upgrades, to switch to recurring giving, things like that. Great candidates there.

We also may have constituents who are highly engaged but maybe have a low capacity to give. Then maybe we don’t necessarily want to ask them for major gifts or major upgrades, but they’re really engaged with your work. They care about your mission. They want to stay engaged with your mission. We wanna continue to ask them and keep them up in our organization as much as possible. So: matching gifts, making sure you’re staying in touch, and continuing to leverage the impact that they are making, because they do care. They are engaged in your organization.

On the other side of the coin, we’ve got maybe low engagement and high capacity to give. These may be people that you could look to cultivate long term. We need to educate them, because they do have a high capacity to give. We wanna leverage their ability to give, but they’re not engaged right now. We need to educate them about our mission and how we can do that. Same thing with low engagement and low capacity to give. That doesn’t mean they’re not important. People go so far beyond their capacity to give, in the impact they can make and the word of mouth they can share about your organization. But thinking about those donors, if maybe they haven’t given before, we need to educate them so they can become givers, prospective to current. If they’ve given before, maybe we want to ask them to match: hey, here’s the impact that you are making. If they’re lapsed, we wanna re-educate. We want to re-inform: hey, this is what your impact did. Here’s how we can re-educate.

Margie Worrell: No, I love that. That’s a great example of utilizing those elements within Bloomerang to really do some segmenting that is personalized and also very catered to the capacity that people have, which I think is a great call-out. I’m gonna go ahead and launch the poll, and then I’m gonna go back to questions. If you are here today and you are interested in exploring additional products, some of you were asking questions about our fundraising product, you can answer it here. You can also get an online tour of a product or feature. And if you’re okay for now, you can just answer okay. So thank you for that.

All right. Back to questions, Jacob. Does someone’s giving level generate from all their gifts over a year, or is it the size of their latest donation?

Jacob Wantland: Yeah. Great. As in, specifically, I’m thinking the giving levels within Bloomerang here.

Margie Worrell: I’m thinking that’s what she’s asking. Yes.

Jacob Wantland: Yeah. Great question. Right now, it’s cumulative. Looking at it, it’s going to be their largest cumulative year. Giving levels is actually a really new feature that we wanted to make sure we got out in time for year-end giving. Margie, correct me if I’m wrong, it may only be out for a couple of weeks now.

Margie Worrell: It’s only been out a couple of weeks.

Jacob Wantland: Yeah. So, brand-new tool, and it was important that we got it out before end-of-year giving, for this particular type of presentation and the approach that we could take with our donors, to make it easier on you. We have a lot of great resources on it, but right now it’s structured to be focused on their cumulative giving. It’s currently set to any fiscal year that they have.

Margie Worrell: Definitely. Emily’s asking a good question as well. She asks if these tips would differ whether you’re doing a mailer or strictly online fundraising. Do you think that any of your tips would differ for those?

Jacob Wantland: Good question. I would not change the core concepts of how I would approach it. No matter what, whether I’m putting it in written print and mailing it or doing it exclusively online, the fundamental concepts don’t change, which is why, to me, this is such an important thing, and why the webinar, I think, holds value: no matter what, you’re gonna be able to tweak it to your specific needs, whether it’s email, phone calls, or handwritten mailings. But the underlying base concepts and the core concepts are always going to be there. You’re always gonna be able to take the impact or educational approach route, depending on the types of donor behavior that you’re focusing on.

Margie Worrell: Perfect. Now, I know some of you had questions about the mid and major donors, the new giving level. I’m gonna drop an article right now into the chat that comes from our help center, so you can engage with that if you want some more in-depth information, because I know there are some questions about that as well. We do have a little conversation going in the chat and in the Q&A regarding current and retained groups within Bloomerang donors. The question is: is there overlap between those two groups? And if so, is there a workaround to help people send appeals without sending them multiple times between groups?

Jacob Wantland: Yeah. Great question. There’s always potential there. First, let me walk it back. First off, great job being mindful of not just sending things out into the oblivion and hoping for the best. Great job thinking critically about who we’re connecting with. That goes beyond anything that I could present in a webinar, so always critically thinking about your data, first and foremost, I applaud you for that. But to your point, there could be some overlap here. Maybe they are a current donor who then makes a second gift, so they become a retained donor while also giving in that last 13-month rolling period. It looks like Christine might have jumped in and answered the question for me in the chat. But you are correct, and that is the beauty of Bloomerang. I love reporting. Reporting is one of the first things I learned here at Bloomerang. Exclude filters are always more powerful than your include filters. If you are running a report for your current donors or your retained donors, and you’re focusing on a particular giving level, whether you are doing that or not, you can always add an exclude for the other groups to make sure there’s no overlap. The excludes will always trump the include filters and take out anybody that is in both. So you can always exclude particular groups or criteria that you want to make sure you’re not considering, to ensure that there’s no overlap and you’re not accidentally asking somebody twice.

Margie Worrell: Perfect. Thank you. All right. This is one I haven’t previewed, but I’m gonna go ahead and dive in, because we’ve got about four minutes left. “I’m the only development person on my team and the only one that can use Bloomerang. I pulled data from Bloomerang for a 2024 year-end appeal but found it difficult to customize email templates in Bloomerang. Last year, I partnered with my comms person to send appeals through Mailchimp. Have you seen more customers using Bloomerang to send out their email appeals, or are folks just using a combination of other platforms like Mailchimp to send their appeals?”

Jacob Wantland: Yeah. That’s a great question. I can’t thoroughly answer the question, as I don’t have the data in front of me to say, here’s what percentage of Bloomerang customers use third-party mailers like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. As Margie mentioned at the top of the call, I’m an onboarding specialist here at Bloomerang. I work with new customers. In my experience, I’ve seen a handful of customers come in and want to continue to use Mailchimp or Constant Contact. I think a lot of people realize that Bloomerang is able to do it all. They don’t have to pay for an external subscription. I’m not here to sell you anything. You do whatever is best for you, is always my advice to my customers as well. Whatever is going to be the most efficient way for you is what I’m going to recommend.

What I will say, in my personal experience, is that all of the data you’ll be sending to these constituents is already in Bloomerang. All of your donors, all of the data, is already in one place. The way that you send emails in Bloomerang is you filter for it. Thinking about some of the slides I presented today, on how I filtered groups, prospective, current, that’s an easy way to pull all of your donors into the emails right in Bloomerang, so you’re not bouncing back and forth between systems. The filtering in Bloomerang, with all your data in there, does make it very convenient. And I know that a lot of people sometimes are like, hey, it’s [unclear], it’s hard to figure out the templates, and I have to create so many now. I would always recommend that folks copy emails. Copy a previous email, and then just slightly tweak it and change it. That way, your ask is a little bit bigger in this email, but you don’t have to redo the wheel. You don’t have to start from scratch every time. Make duplicates of previous versions, and then just slightly tweak the only part that’s gonna be different between some of these approaches and the asks that you’ll be making.

Margie Worrell: I love that. And somebody’s calling out, too, that using Bloomerang for email is great because you can see the engagement levels on the back end. To your point, Jacob, if you see an email that performed well, that’d be a great one to copy and then restructure. Right? So you have that available at your fingertips. Great. One more question, and then we’re gonna stop. How many years back do you suggest targeting lapsed donors?

Jacob Wantland: Oh, man. Ending on a tough one.

Margie Worrell: I know. Sorry about that.

Jacob Wantland: No, that’s okay. It’s such a good question, but this is one of those questions where, as I said earlier, I always want to make sure I am doing what is the current best practice. Off the top of my head, I don’t have an answer that says, here’s the industry standard for what we might recommend, whether that’s four, five, things like that. This is all personal opinion and conjecture at this point, so take this with a grain of salt. I just wanna preface that answer. But I would say, think about it as far back as you potentially trust the data and as far back as you have a connection with the donor. I think it could vary per org. It could be different depending on each organization, and on the approach that you wanna take, whether it’s an email, a letter, things like that. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. Leaving it ambiguous might be my answer here, but I think as far back as you feel comfortable with would be totally appropriate, because at some point, they’ve given. They’ve connected. They’ve made this a meaningful connection in their life that they are choosing to give to you. So as far back as you’re comfortable with, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Margie Worrell: Absolutely. And while I’m closing out, if you wanna chime in the chat and tell us how far back you go for lapsed donors, that might be helpful to the person who asked that question. We are at the end of our time. First of all, Jacob, this was amazing. You’re just such a wonderful presenter, and I know people really valued what they got to learn here today. Thank you.

Jacob Wantland: Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. It was great to connect with everyone. I’m really glad to see the types of conversations happening in the chat today. This was awesome.

Margie Worrell: Yeah. Great. And, yes, thank you all for chiming in and being a part. We really appreciate it. It makes it a lot more fun when everybody gets in there and makes it a community. And finally, the last thing I’m gonna say, from Jacob and me both, is that we wanna sincerely say thank you to each and every one of you for the work you do in your local communities. You are unsung heroes. You don’t get to hear this often enough, but the work you do is vital to your communities. You help to make them better places to live. For that, we wanna say thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of that. We hope you’ll come back and join us for the next webinar. And, everyone, take care. Again, thank you, Jacob, and have a great day.

Jacob Wantland: Thanks, everybody. Have a good one.