The major gifts playbook: turn potential into power

Hi, everybody. Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are in the world. Thank you for joining us today where we are talking about the major gifts playbook, how to turn potential into power. We are giving folks a couple minutes to, pop in. But in the meantime, we would love to know where are you all calling in from, and what's the weather like in your area? It is a warm forty nine degrees in Indianapolis today. I was I I was taking a walk today, and I took my jacket off. So pretty warm for Indianapolis today. So please let us know in the chat where you're from. Tiara, what about you? Where are you calling from, and what's the weather like today? I am calling in from Denver, Colorado. We have had some really, really nice weather this past week. It's been in the sixties. Not a huge fan of that warm weather in the middle of December, but it is what it is. We're getting a lot of wind today. So kind of kind of an interesting weather day here in Colorado. Love that. Speaking of wind, windy. Is it windy where you are? I had that same thought when she said wind. Actually, I'm in Central Florida with a high of eighty. So speaking of warm, yeah, there's no Christmas feel here right now. What about you, Katie? It is getting colder, but it still is pretty warm for us. I'm in Boise, Idaho, and, normally, we'll have that had snow at some point by this time, except it was raining this morning. I'm not complaining. I get cold all of the time, so I'm enjoying the little bit balmier weather here in Idaho. Nice. Well, we hope you all are enjoying the balmy weather, if that's what you like, or staying cozy, if you that's what you would prefer. Before we start, we do have a couple of housekeeping notes. Before we begin, first, we are recording this webinar, so not to worry. We'll send you an email with the link to the recording and the slides, afterwards. Give us about twenty four hours to get that out to you. Also, please feel free to ask questions. Thank you all for engaging in the chat. I love the chat because that's a place where you all can talk to each other, share ideas, share best practices, ask questions of each other even. But we do ask if you have some questions for us, please put that in the q and a. That helps us make sure that we get to all, if not most, if not all of your questions because we wanna make sure we get your questions answered. But I love that. Please continue to talk in the chat. And speaking of chatting, if you wanna come see us in person, we are going to be in Saint Louis in May for GiveCon. If you haven't been to GiveCon before, this is really we're the best in giving gather. We're gonna have a lot of speakers from the industry. We have a lot of resources and speakers from within Bloomerang as well. It's a great place and way to connect with each other. I was at GiveCon last year. Thank you to those who said hi last year. We hope to see you again this year. And it's just a great place to learn about what's going on in the industry, check-in on how each other are doing, and learn about what's new at Bloomerang and how we can help you do what you do best. And so today, what we are going to talk about is well, I mentioned we're gonna be talking about major gifts. So we're gonna go through some of the challenges that we're facing today. And, also, what does a new donor experience look like, and how does that donor journey look like from becoming a new donor to becoming a major donor? And then we'll take a look at some of the solution and tools that BloomRank can help with your, major donors, major gifts initiative. We'll share customer story, and we'll have q and a at the end. Now I'm not gonna be alone in this. My name is Diana Otero. I'm with our product marketing team. Again, for those of you who have joined us in other webinars before, thank you for coming again. But I'm not alone in this, and I have a couple of folks helping out today. I'll let them introduce themselves starting with Katie. Thanks so much for the the welcome, Diana, and for being here. As well, my name is Katie. I'm the director of product marketing. I've been with Bloomerang now for three years based in, Boise, Idaho and but loved nonprofits pretty much all my life. I've been volunteering for years, and I am so excited. The major gift, experience, the journey, and how you cultivate major gifts can be really transform for your organization. So I'm really excited for us to go through this playbook with you today. And I will kick it over to Wendy to give an introduction for herself. Thanks, Katie. So I'm Wendy. I have been with the Bloomerang team for a little over seven years. I get to work directly with our clients every day as a solution consultant and learn more about your challenges. And I gotta tell you the questions that come up so often are about how do we get more major gifts. So I'm really excited about our conversation today. So I will send things over to Tiara. Hello, everybody. My name is Tiara. I've been with the Bloomerang team for a little bit over four years, and I started out kind of content writing. So I've definitely done a couple of dive ins into major gifts, and I know how important they are. So this is such a fun topic, and I'm really excited to get into things today. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Before we jump into major gifts, I do want to ask everybody a question. And if you could put in the chat, please, how confident are you that you know which donors are ready to give more? A, are you very confident you have a clear system and you know exactly who they are? B, somewhat confident, c, not very confident, or d, not confident at all? And I just wanna front load with this with there are no right or wrong answers here. I just wanna get a baseline of where everybody is. So go ahead and put that in the chat, a, b, or c. I'm seeing a lot of d's come in, a lot of c's, some b's. And did I see an a sneak in there somewhere? No? But a lot of you are at that c and d and some are in b. And I wanna say that's fine. I also hope this gives you some level of comfort that you're not alone where you are because this is a challenge that's being experienced by everyone in the industry right now. We need to acknowledge the real world challenges that fundraisers like you are facing today. And we know from the FEP reports that donor behavior has shifted. Fewer donors are giving annually. Teams like you are stretched thin, and it's harder than ever to really understand where to focus your limited time. So this is the environment that we're operating in, and it what's really what makes a clear, insight driven strategy so essential. So thank you for being vulnerable and being honest. Again, no right or wrong answers here. We see you, and that's why we're here to help. Now, you've probably heard of the Pareto principle in some form before. Right? This is eighty percent of outcomes typically come from twenty percent of effort. And for in the fundraising world, this isn't far off. I think right now, it's about eighty eight twelve even. Right? Fundraising follows the same pattern. A small percentage of donors drive a substantial share of revenue. The problem is that most teams can't easily see who those high potential donors are. Everyone looks equally important in the system. That means your donors who are ready to grow, who could become your next major donors, they don't receive the timely personalized cultivation they need to move up that giving ladder or pyramid. This is the plateau almost every nonprofit hits. So, again, it's okay. It doesn't matter where you are. It's acknowledge it's good to acknowledge where you are so you know what to do moving forward. Most of you do have the signals that you need. This is the interesting thing. They're just buried in disconnected systems or spreadsheets or manual notes or in people's brains even, making it nearly impossible to act on them consistently. So why does this plateau exist? The problem really isn't effort. We all know how much you do, and you are some of the most hardworking people that we know. The problem really is insight. You're flooded with donor data, but the information that matters, right, who's actually warming up, who's deepening that engagement, who's ready to give more, all of that is hidden. Why does that happen? First, there's a visibility gap. The data does exist, you know, but so you can see things like engagement. You can see people who are loyal. You can see the giving history. But it's really difficult to dig deep into that, to see who's really engaged and who's ready to give more. Secondly, there's a prioritization gap. When donors aren't clearly tiered or everybody looks the same, it's hard to know where to focus your limited time and energy. And third, the systems are disconnected. When your tools don't talk to each other, you don't have that full picture, and cultivation becomes inconsistent, and you tend to lose that momentum that you've built. And it's hard to keep that momentum that you've built. So when these gaps stack together, even great funding raising teams like yours struggle to break through. And this is this is a problem because major gifts are your biggest growth lever because they fundamentally strengthen the long term financial health of your organization. They bring higher lifetime value. You know, these donors tend to give more over time, creating that lasting impact that we're all working toward. They come from stronger, more resilient relationships. These are the donors that stay deeply connected to your mission and often grow in their giving as that trust builds, and they generate more predictable revenue, which gives you the ability to plan strategically instead of reacting year to year. Now I know there are some things that happen in the industry that we do need to react to, but it's all the more important for your revenue to become predictable because things like that are going to happen. So within a very small segment of your donor base, there's truly transformational potential. Just a handful of those right donors can reshape your entire trajectory, but only if you can identify who they are and cultivate them intentionally. So let's jump into our playbook. But before that, I have another question. Thank you all for playing along. And please put in the chat, how would you describe your major donor strategy today? Is it a, structured, proactive, and data informed all the way to d? We don't really have one. Seeing a couple of d's come in. A b. That's great. B c d. Yep. And it's totally perfectly fine and normal to be in between levels as well. So we're getting some b's. We're we're getting some d's, b c's. We have an a. That's fantastic. Lovely. Not as surprising that we're still getting some b's here based on the earlier question that we had. Right? So, again, good to know where you are and how you can I love that b, but getting closer to a because that's the goal? This is where you are now. Now what strategies can you employ to keep you going up that level? And it's also important to know that if you're at a d now, it's okay that you're not at an a next year. It's going to take some work to build you up to that level, and that's perfectly fine. But you know where you are, you know what your starting point is. So how do you we unlock that potential from our major donors? We're gonna walk through a practical major donor playbook. This you can use this as a framework for identifying, cultivating, and stewarding your high value donors. First, you're believe it or not, I think most of us already know this, though, your most promising major donors are already in your donor base. The key is knowing who's ready. So the first step here is start with who you know. Use those predictive giving insights. Right? That's where that matters. By combining engagement and generosity indicators, you can quickly surface donors who are showing the right signals. Instead of you digging for what those signals are, use tools like predictive giving insights. You'll also want to consider, of course, volunteers, board members, staff referrals. These individuals typically have higher affinity and deeper connection to your mission. So this makes major gifts far less intimidating and far more achievable because you're beginning with those warm relationships already instead of starting off with cold or cold prospecting. Right? Earlier, we said some of you might already might be in d in terms of your strategy. It's gonna be harder to get to an a from there. You kinda have to build through those levels. So same with your donors. If they're already warm, it's easier to get them to the next level. Another tip that I have for you, before I share that well, it's already here. Tier and prioritize your portfolio. But I have a question for everybody again. Right? How many major donor relationships are you personally managing? Like, how many of those relationships are in your portfolio? A, zero to ten, all the way up to e, a hundred over a hundred. Again, no right or wrong answers here. We have right off the bat, we have an a, we have e, lots of e's, a c's. Literally starting from scratch, has never had a development team before. Well, Amy, good luck. I hope you pick up some good tips from us today as well as from everybody in the chat. Use that to ask questions of each other. Lots of ease, some say some in between. You know, some in the a might just be starting out, which, again, totally fine. From research, I think it's about a hundred and fifty is the average, or that's at about it's gonna start getting difficult the more you have in in your portfolio. So most fundraisers manage up to a hundred and fifty donor relationships. I don't know about you all, but I the thought of managing a hundred and fifty of those donor relationships seems a little bit daunting. So how do you know where you can focus your time so that you can create that big greatest impact? So I have a suggestion here. Like, you can tier your donors or you can segment your donors based on kind of their level of readiness. Right? Once you've identified that potential, the next step is prioritization. Because not every donor is gonna need the same strategy. They don't have the same starting point. So for example, segment one, these are your donors who have high capacity plus or at a high readiness already. These donors may require high personal highly personalized cultivation. Your segment two, these are the ones that are gonna benefit from warm, consistent touchpoints. And your segment three, maybe they need a little bit more warming up, so they should be nurtured over time through scalable automated engagement. And this is how you can focus your time where it creates the greatest impact, especially when your team is small. And you'll receive a copy of these slides as well so you can take a look at this. And you can adjust this. I recommend you taking a look at, okay, if you're one of those people who are managing over a hundred relationships, try to tier them a little bit more and segment them a little bit more. How many do you have in each of these segments to help you prioritize? Because, really, at the end of the day, the heart of major donor fundraising isn't the ask, it's the relationship. And the relationship doesn't end when they give that major gift. Your highest potential donors need momentum building touch points. The asks should be aligned to their donor readiness. It should be based on their history, their preferences, and that engagement. And personal personalized gratitude as well matters deeply. You know? Again, this is about those relationships that you're building over time. Tailored thank yous, updates, and involvement opportunities build trust and long term commitment. So it's really consistent, thoughtful cultivation is what drives that growth without burning out your team. So at this point, that's a quick run through of the strategy. And, again, I invite you go back to these slides and think about list out your donors, see where they are in that segmentation, and to help you prioritize better. So at this point, you know, you have a clear strategy or is starting to take, to take shape, and you know what questions to come back to your team with you can formulate your personalized strategy. But strategy alone isn't enough. For major gifts to actually work, you need the right systems behind you. First, you'll need to be able to identify which donors are likely to give more. That means seeing real signals of engagement, loyalty, and readiness, and not just guessing based on gut instinct or outdated reports or, again, what's been in someone's brain that hasn't been translated to your to your systems. You also need to prioritize outreach based on real donor readiness. Because donor behavior is constantly changing, your priorities need to update with that. Otherwise, your time and energy gets spread too thin. Once that opportunity is identified, you need to move to seamless so you need to be able to move seamlessly from insight into action. That means planning your outreach, tracking touch points, managing those follow ups without jumping between, tools or losing that context. You also need to ensure that no donor opportunity is missed, and automation is a great way to do that. And, again, automation is great for those consistent touch points that you might otherwise miss. So no one should fall through the cracks simply because a reminder was forgotten or a process was manual. And finally, fundraisers need to manage the full donor relationship in one connected system. So your cultivation, your history, and next steps all live in one place, and relationship feels relationship building feels intentional, not fragmented. So when when your needs aren't met by connected systems, even the best strategies stall, which brings us to the real question. What does what does a better way look like? And Katie's gonna share with us. Thanks so much, Diana. What we know today in this what's on the the screen you probably resonate with quite a bit is that donors who are connected with your mission are the ones who are going to give again and again and again. And that's all all of the things that we're doing, whether that's the tools that you have or the the prioritization of your time, is really focused on building that connection. A lot of, like, what Diana talked about in the playbook. And but you might be thinking, that sounds easy. Well, no. It's not. Why is that so hard today? Well, like Diana mentioned, donors' expectations are changing. The landscape is changing, and donors' expectations are changing. What we know is that today's donors expect more than maybe years ago. They expect personalized experiences because they're experiencing those elsewhere, like on Amazon or Spotify, personalized playlist at the end of the year. Or their favorite coffee app knows exactly their order before they even go into the store. And in addition to that, data also shows that fewer and fewer people are giving every single year. So that puts a really extensive pressure on you as a nonprofit professional to try to do more personalization, more communicating impact, making donors feel like you really see them with, frankly, less donors and fewer hours in the day. And how we see nonprofits cope with this is that they often find a lot of different tools in order to solve that problem. A marketing system that's for personalization or volunteers, managing your volunteers in another system or a CRM. And every single login might lead to a chance where a donor might fall through the cracks at one point in their process. So what I want to walk through is kind of two different scenarios. The first one is, ideally, how you would take a new donor and actually nurture that individual to become a major donor, and what are all the different touch points in their life cycle that you might take in order to get there. And then we'll experience why that might actually be challenging in your current climate today. Then we'll look at what that could be in a more of a connected system. So let's start and follow the path of Maria. Maria is new to your organization. She just gave she heard about your mission from a friend, and she gave her first gift by finding your website and donating online. But ultimately, Maria, in this example, could be really a major supporter if you have the right time and systems to cultivate her. Now the first step you have to do after Maria gives her gift is you have to add that data to your CRM. Let's see. Your fundraising and your CRM systems aren't connected, so that takes a little bit of a pain to go through. And then someone has to enter that data manually, and then you, you know, export it from your, fundraising system, import it into the CRM, kinda analyze some of those first gifts. And you use that to send a heartfelt thank you to Maria. But, again, you're trying to do that personalization. So all of the new donors you you had in the last week, you send personalized emails to each of them. Again, that takes a lot of time. Now Maria, you you look at in your CRM. You run wealth insights, and you see, oh, Maria is actually has the potential to be a really valuable donor for us. So you invite Maria to attend your annual gala. But, again, using personalization, you you extend those invites, and that takes quite a bit of time to set up and actually execute that invite. But, ultimately, after three hours, Maria not only accepts the invite, she attends the gala, and she gives at the gala, which is great. So you're making progress with Maria. Though, with that said, your auction system is separate from your CRM. So, again, we're back to exporting out of the auction and importing in and making sure that connects back to Maria's profile in your CRM. And, again, it just takes more time. Now you continue to cultivate Maria. You do a donation campaign at some point during the year trying to upgrade those individuals from the event in order to become more sustaining givers. Maria is so touched by your mission. She says, yes. Let's do it. And she actually becomes a monthly giver, which is fantastic. And again, using that wealth data that you had run earlier in Maria's journey with you, you know Maria has the potential to be a really major giver and a transformative for your organization. So you launch personalized outreach just to a select number of potentially major donors, but that takes a lot of time. You research her background in addition to all the other donors you're cultivating this campaign. You do meetings. You log notes. You introduce her to the board. You invite her to more events. It's just a lot altogether. But the win is that it works. And in time, Marie ends up giving a major gift to your organization. Now all in, add this process. This takes likely up to two years and fifty hours put together. Now in our time, it was obviously very quickly. But between each of these connected touch points, it's a long time. And, Maria, it takes her a really long time to kind of move through the full process. But the bigger challenge with it is that even despite all your efforts, this is an ideal scenario. And I know from each of you had put the chat where you're at with donors. And many of you had said, I don't even know how to figure out who is the right person to target to be a major giver. So it's very possible that at every step in this process, Maria might not actually give that final major gift. And she may not even become a monthly donor or be cultivated into something more meaningful. She may not attend your gala, and she may not even receive a thank you. Ultimately, because you may not have the visibility in your current systems to either, one, know Maria has the potential to be a major giver. And then, two, every single time we had one of those touch points, it's a chance for something to fall through the cracks. We fundamentally believe that even though your heart's in the right place, it really shouldn't be this hard to build relationships. And there is ultimately a better way. Imagine if every point in this process, through a connected donor journey, Maria's could never be lost in the process. Imagine after she gave that first gift, there was a journey that automated, that made sure that she got to that next stage. She was thanked. She was engaged. And she was invited to the next event. And then from there, there was another campaign that engaged with her. So she became an engaged supporter, a sustaining donor, and then ultimately a major donor. Imagine it because of that, how much more Maria would give over her life cycle and how much more with that you could actually do with your nonprofit. So that's the promise of the Giving Platform. In the Giving Platform, imagine if every event, gift, interaction actually made your fundraising smarter over time. So instead of living in silos like fundraising, volunteer, data, it actually just connects automatically, and you don't have to do any more guesswork. You can actually immediately see who's engaged, who's ready to upgrade, and you know exactly when to act all in the same place. And the best part is that the Giving platform was built from individuals who have extensive experience working with nonprofits like yourself, for nonprofits like yourself. So that means that you don't actually have to overhaul your process as it is today. We can really work within your existing process and ultimately just give you the answers that you deserve, making the interactions you have every day with donors into real, actionable growth. By bringing together all of these things into one place, voluntary management, fundraising, CRM into a unified giving platform, this actually lets you do things that previously might have taken you months, like personalizing your campaigns or even considering volunteers potential champions and donors and uncovering new opportunities that exist in your CRM. And just like Diana was was saying earlier, that by bringing together systems, data, and automation, this is really giving you the opportunity to manage the full donor relationship through a single connected system and giving you the ability to be consistent. Because like like Diana said, consistency is really what ultimately makes, you win and makes you build stronger relationships with donors. So with that in mind, without further ado, Wendy, do you wanna take it away? I'd love us to see what this looks like in the delivering giving platform. I sure do. So let's go ahead and jump in together. So, Jess, I saw you ask the question. Are we gonna be able to actually take a look at what it takes to set up these these segments together? Absolutely, we are. So let's start right here where everyone who, logs into Bloomerang ends up the first at first. Right? We're right here on our dashboard. So if there are there are a couple things that are probably gonna stand out right away. And one of those is exactly a question that Alex asked in the chat. So what are you calling a major donor? Right? Because we see our general, mid, and major supporters right here on our dashboard. But what determines general, mid, major? The good news is you do. Because I'll bet with everyone on this call, we all have different ideas of what a major donor is. So right here within your getting settings, you actually have the ability to come here and set up those parameters, and then we're gonna follow those moving forward. So when we come back to the dashboard, if we make updates, that's how they're gonna be identified right here. So great. We have general. We have mid. We have major. What we wanna really do is be able to start that segmentation. So what I'm gonna focus on today is that segment two that Diana mentioned, that high capacity or high readiness, the one that we're gonna want that warm and consistent communication. So what I'd like to do is talk about what I'm gonna do, but why I'm gonna do it at the same time. So I'm gonna pop over here to my groups. And we know we wanna take a look at current donors because those are gonna be those folks that are displaying the higher readiness. So if I come in to my current donors, you might notice a couple things right off the bat. We have our major. We have our mids. We have engagement scores, generosity scores. But when I start to take a look at them more closely, my mid donors, my major donors, You'll notice a lot of these don't even have a relationship manager assigned yet. They fell through the cracks. Right? Same thing for my major donors. Not all of them have that manager that's tracking everything. So that's one thing we're definitely gonna need to do. But what I'd also like to do is talk about what some of those indicators are and how you're gonna be able to find them within our platform. So first, let me go ahead and just pull up Carol. Because if you're not super familiar with Bloomerang fundraising, let's talk about some of these indicators and how you're gonna be able to see them and what they mean. So in Harold's profile, I can see right off the bat, he's a mid level donor. He's current. He even has a recurring donation. Fantastic. He is super engaged with our organization. And because we have this all in one platform, this means he's doing things like opening his email, maybe volunteering. He's a recurring donor. He is doing all the things we want him to do to be super engaged. And he's also highly generous. We know this based on his generosity level here that's pulled from donor search. In fact, because he's on fire, I know right away he's given at least five thousand dollars in a single transaction to another nonprofit. But for us, he's only mid level. He is perfect for someone to fall into this kinda segment too. So we wanna cultivate him for that major donor. Right? We also see, by the way, that he's even giving through a DAF. So he also gives through his DAF, and, maybe adds extra gifts that way. So you get a full holistic view here. So now that we know what we want to pull on, what are those parameters? Let's go ahead and jump over to reports and start doing some segmenting. So for those of you that aren't familiar, when we come into Blue Brain reports and set up a new report, we have a lot of best practices already established here for you through these reports. But where I like to start for this particular use case for major donors is with our high potential donor report. Because from here, look at what we're already pulling, those folks that are hot or on fire in terms of engagement or in terms of generosity. But I also wanna add another parameter in here. I want their giving level. I wanna say I want folks that are hotter on fire, that they're also in that mid level in terms of, where they are in the donor process. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that for both of these. Why am I doing it for both? Because it's or. Right? So you'll see here, I want them if they are hot or on fire and giving level as mid giving level as mid or highly generous and they're getting level as mid. So what I'm able to do here is see all of those folks that I definitely wanna make sure that I'm contacting. We need to cultivate these. So there are a few things I can do here. First of all, notice the action here. I'm gonna go ahead and change this to constituent because we wanna see all the individuals, not just households. So I'm gonna go ahead and say, I wanna add these to a group. That is going to say, alright. We want them part of our segment two group. Let's get them added. Once we do that and we go back to our groups, we're able to see everyone there who is highly engaged or highly generous and also a mid level donor currently. So now that we have that set up, what are we gonna do with it? Right? So what we wanna do is put to use some of those strategies that Diana was talking now about. So we're getting them on that donor journey that we just went through with Katie. And we're gonna do that by going to journey automations. So like Katie said, we wanna automate those journeys. We're just flipping those words around. And with Bloomerang, journey automations are not just, you know, a drip campaign. They are really that full strategy that you can put into place for easy, really reliable touch points along the way. So I'm gonna come down here and look at some things I've already set up. I have my segment too. We just added some folks to this segment, and I have an automation already set up. But how did I set this up, and what did I use? So from the very beginning, what is our entry source? There are a variety of entry sources into a journey automation, but for ours, I did select a group, which essentially is I wanna talk to my segment two folks. I do a start and end or a start date, and then I start automating. First of all, remember we talked about not all of them have a relationship manager? Let's go ahead and get that assigned automatically when they hit that mid level group. Additionally, let's get them out a really customized email that shows them what we've already been able to accomplish with their generosity. Then let's go ahead and assign that relationship manager a step of, let's figure out what's encouraging them to give, where they're most passionate, essentially, and how are they giving. Are they giving through a DAF? Are they normally just giving year end donations? Get a fuller holistic view of this particular donor. And you'll notice we have parameters set up here. Because as you probably noticed, on that original dashboard, all of our tasks are there so we can follow through them. It's gonna keep us on track. Next, we're gonna go ahead and schedule a call. Let's get a call on the books right there on their dashboard for them to be able to come in here and add notes that are then going to be on that constituent's profile so everyone has access to them. Post phone call. And then we're gonna follow-up with another email. After, we've waited twenty one days. We don't wanna bombard them with phone calls and emails, but we do want to continue to cultivate that relationship. By the way, each of these earning on journey automations can have twenty different steps, so put them to work for you. And, of course, the segment three is gonna look very different than what we have here with our, more our major donors that are already at that level, the ones that we're actually going to just be kind of stewarding moving forward so that we can can continue that relationship. So for these, we would do something a little bit different. We're still gonna use that group, that segment three. Right? We set that up exactly the same way. We're just using major instead of mid. We assign that relationship manager. Go ahead and send that email, and then they can do a CEO mobile video acknowledgment where your CEO can, right there within the Bloomerang app, record a video that tells them a very specific thank you and what their money is able to accomplish. Then maybe we start sending them impact reports on a quarterly basis. You know your supporters, so this is a way to really kind of get it in a way that it's easy to track and you know where everyone is is in each step of this process. We know what we're doing here. This is great. But I also want to introduce you to something that's coming beginning of next year, twenty twenty six, because we've walked through the steps. But how great would it be to have an AI assistant that helped with some of the segmentation? And they were to able to help you come up with this strategy. Well, this is where I get to introduce Penny. And Penny is not some pie in the sky idea. Penny is actually in beta testing with hundreds of Bloomerang customers right now, and we're gonna talk through a scenario. And it fits so well with what we're discussing today, major gifts. So let's go ahead and use this. We're behind on our fundraising goals for a capital campaign. Can you help me build a strategy to reengage lapsed or at risk major donors? Please define major and lapsed donor, and please also create a priority based strategy and provide data to the potential impact of each strategy. We need to raise fifty k by the start of twenty twenty six for our building project. So let's say this is q four. Right? This is what we need to do. How is Penny gonna help? As your AI assistant, Penny is going to come up with that strategy for us. You're gonna notice Penny is a little pop out here, and we're putting in that exact prompt. And what is she doing? She's saying, alright. I'm able to find the forty seven major donors who have given a thousand dollars since January twenty twenty four. You see the data flying here. We're not pulling the constituents reports, the transaction reports. Instead, Penny is doing all of this for us and saving us not just hours or days, but weeks of having to evaluate that data because this is pulling directly from your database. And Penny is actually built on these playbooks that Diana went through today. So she's built on all of that nonprofit industry expertise. It's not just the same as putting something in Gemini or ChatGPT, but this is pulling from your data. So what what Penny has done here, she's come up with this strategy. Right? She's given us a plan, and she's told us, I need you to go ahead and do some segmentation and reach out just like what we've gone through today. How's she gonna help? If I come to my next video here, this is where it all comes together. So, Jess, those segmentations you asked about, let's have Penny do some of that work for us. So I'm gonna say, yeah. Go ahead and create some groups for me based on the strategy you you just outlined. So not only is she gonna define those groups for us, but she's going to create those groups for us so that you can then, moving forward, go ahead and set up those automations, set up that plan, put it into action that she's already outlined for us. So, really, like I said, it's an AI assistant that is really gonna work alongside you to help you achieve these goals. So I will go ahead and hand things back over right now to Diana. I will jump in as well, Wendy. I don't know if it's Diana or me. Both of us can take it. Diana, do you wanna oh, yep. No worries. Do you wanna go ahead to the next slide? Perfect. Awesome. So like like we just talked about, with the Bloomerang Giving platform, there's a lot of power that Wendy showed and that we talked about a little bit earlier. Whether that's in attracting new supporters from high converting forms or once you've actually gotten them into your mix, really, personalizing those journeys with journey automation to make sure that every single point in the process, you can continue to cultivate them and no one gets dropped off. Or getting a holistic view of those supporters with data, or then finally, like we showed, also activating those in really meaningful ways to if your ultimate goal is to to drive transformational gifts. And an example of a customer that did this really, really well is the harvesters reaching nation. Megan Thomas had mentioned when she she spoke with our team that Bloomerang and use the use of the giving platform not only helps them, retain boost an exceptional donor retention rate, but really ultimately boost major gifts as well. She said gifts are up for us over five thousand dollars, and those gifts were up seventy three percent over three years, because the things that she did with Bloomerang were everything that we showed, whether that was journey automation or even, I think, she mentioned using the smart AI assistant in order to build more effective emails, thereby saving time and really identifying the best donors in her system in order to upgrade them to become major givers. If we go to the next slide, I think we'd love to know if you are interested in learning more. So I think we've got a little question poll for you. You're interested if you're not currently a Bloomerang customer and you're interested in scheduling a demo, let us know. We'll get you connected with a member of our team right away. If, excuse me, if you, are aren't ready for that, but you just like to explore a little more, we've got these great online tour tool tours, excuse me, that, Tiara and another member of our team help build, let us know that. Or if you are a customer, we're also happy to connect you with another member of our team. And we'd love to take any questions or thoughts. The one thing I'll call out before that is that this is actually part of a series that we kicked off within this last quarter. Every single month, we go through a new playbook. So whether you've attended one of our other ones, thanks for coming back. Or if you're interested in joining for a future one, we'd love to see you in January. In January, we'll be focused on our new donor playbook, and that's just how do you acquire new donors. The February one, we'll focus on cultivation. How do you cultivate and grow your donors no matter where they are or the opportunity you have with them? And then finally, in March, again, we'll repeat our major donor cultivation playbook. So with that in mind, what questions did we have come through, Tiara? Yeah. Absolutely. We have quite a few questions in the chat. Our first question is from Kelly. Can you recap where to find the video capability to send a specific message to a constituent? I can actually answer this one. Kelly, you can find that capability in the Bloomerang CRM mobile app. So if you are a current Bloomerang CRM customer, if you download our mobile app, you will be able to send those customized, personalized video acknowledgments to any of your donors that give, and it is especially useful for cultivating those mid and major donors. They wanna hear from you. They wanna see your your face. They wanna hear your voice. That really, really personalized thank you is gonna go a long way in building those relationships with your mid and major donors. So download that Bloomerang CRM mobile app, and, that ability will be in there, if you do have a giving platform bundle with Bloomerang. Carrie says, we soft credit constituents that give through a DAF. Therefore, they are missed in Bloomerang reports. I see you had gives through DAF on an example profile. Do you recommend that we enter DAF gifts differently? Wendy or Diana, do you guys wanna take this one? Sure. I can take that one. We had an update a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it's been a couple of months now, where you can actually track those DAF relationships within Bloomerang. So the best practice is you enter the hard credit on the DAF itself. And if you have connected the donor advised fund with the donor who gives through that donor advised fund, they will automatically be soft credited. So that happens automatically for you. Our giving, summary analytics have also been updated so you don't miss out on those, and they are properly reflecting the soft credits, from those staffs. And in terms of the reporting piece, there could be other things that are going on here depending on your filters. But if if something fishy is going on with your reporting and there are some donors that are getting missed, make sure to chat in with our support team, and they can help you fine tune that report to make sure that you don't miss out on those donors. Anything to add, Wendy? That was perfect. Amazing. Lindsay says, when do you estimate Penny will become available? I anticipate that a lot of people are gonna be really excited about Penny. So Yes. That is a great question. And in fact, if you are excited after Wendy's demo, put it in the chat. I I'd love to see how many of you thought that was pretty neat because we do. Lindsay, that's a great question. So actively right now, we're in the pilot phase with a limited group of customers. We have about two hundred customers that we're working with in the pilot. In January, we're actually opening that up to a larger set of customers. So if you look in the chat, I put the link to our waitlist. I would highly encourage you if you are a current customer, go ahead and put your name on that waitlist. We'll be looking at that for individuals who may be interested to participate in that next round of beta that we're opening up in January. And then over the course of q one, we'll continue to open this up more and more and more so more customers gain access to it. But excited to hear that many of you are interested. And then I think, Amy, I'll just jump to the next one. Tara had asked if there's an existing cost or is part of the existing bundles or would there be an extra cost. So, Amy, right now, actually, in in the start of twenty twenty six, we are planning to include, Penny for anyone who's part of the beta. We're using that as an opportunity to really understand how each of you plan to use Penny, gauge how much our customers are using it. But I think what we're really trying to focus on is that we believe the use of Penny in the CRM and long term and things like Bloomerang fundraising or mobile will fundamentally help you do better, as in help you raise more funds, help you connect with donors in more meaningful ways. And we're doing our best to make sure because that's such a powerful solution, that everyone can really take advantage of that level of power in your CRM. So we don't have a a pricing model identified yet. I think, again, we're we're learning a little bit more, but I think, philosophically, we're really aiming to provide that level of power to as many customers as possible as we move to come up with a model. Amazing. Thank you, Katie. Alright. Does anybody have any other questions? Feel free to put those in the q and a and the chat. In the meantime, I have a question for you, Diana. I'm curious what if we can dive a little bit more into those predictive giving insights, what are kind of the top donor behaviors that feed into those engagement and generosity predictive insights that any of our teams, any of our nonprofits can begin tracking today. Yeah. Love that. So two parts to that. Right? So your engagement and generosity. Engagement takes a look at this supporters' affinity with your organization. So it's tied to your organization and the activity that they do with your organization. So this takes into account their giving history and not just their giving. Right? Not just how much or if they're giving, but are they upgrading? Are they downgrading? Are they consistently giving to your organization? Are they volunteering with your organization? Are they opening your emails? Are they unsubscribing from your emails? Things like that, all of those are factored in. And then generosity looks at giving capacity and past giving history in general, not just with your organization. So that takes into consideration wealth markers, as well as giving to all types of nonprofits, not just to yours. And the great thing is because Penny has access to your data specifically, she can take that information and give you deeper insights as well. Great question. Awesome. Thank you, Diana. I am not seeing any other questions rolling in. Hopefully, we answered all of your questions today. If you have any more that you think of after the webinar, please feel free to reach out. Our team is always so happy to help answer any questions that you might have. We're all so passionate about topics like major gifts, so we will definitely get you answers to anything that you might wanna know more about. But otherwise, thank you guys so much for joining us today. We hope that you learned some cool actionable tips and tricks for cultivating those major gifts and building relationships with your major donors. And we hope to see you in our new donor playbook webinar in January. Thanks so much, everybody. Bye.