Fundraising Voices from RNL

Rob Henry is one of the most passionate people I know about higher education. He cares a lot about making college available to more people and to more diverse people. He also knows that bringing new professionals into Advancement will help make that possible. As Vice President of Education for CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, he has a unique platform to help promote those goals. I’ve talked with Rob a lot about these topics when we see each other at CASE conferences every year, and I wanted to get him on the line to talk about the strategic goals of CASE, his feelings about diversity in our profession, and how we can welcome more young people as both advancement professionals and donors.

Rob offers some great insights into how we can create a pipeline of energetic new professionals in the field of advancement. The work that CASE is doing will be important – we need to really broaden our view of how we bring people into our profession in order to meet our diversity goals. Developing great ways to mentor and encourage young people who want to get involved in philanthropy, because as Rob reminds us, Millennials and young people will be dominant in our donor base in years to come.

RNL invests significantly in CASE because we know that sharing our experiences and successes is a key part of fundraising and donor engagement success. You can find us on the road at CASE events, conferences and even on CASE webinars. If you haven’t heard, the organization has opened up new resources and expanded their view of membership benefits this year. It’s a great time to head on over to CASE.org to check out what’s available. If you work at a higher education institution, you most likely already have membership through your Advancement division.

InsidePhilanthropy.com is an incredible place to find out about who’s funding what and why. That’s the mission that David Callahan, Founder and Editor has set out to accomplish. You can get fresh insights, about big funders as well as every day donors, daily on the site. David’s a font of knowledge about philanthropic trends, and I wanted to get him on the line to offer his insights on 2017 fundraising, and make some predictions about the philanthropic space.

David has just published a great book called The Givers. It’s an inside look at the world of our top charitable givers - mega philanthropists. You find the book on Amazon or your local book store.

David makes great points about the explosion of charities, and how funders can even tell them apart. We’re all facing this important need to distinguish our causes. And with donors expecting more transparency and results, we all need greater stewardship and data on the impact of giving.  Head over to insidephilanthropy.com to catch more daily coverage of philanthropy trends and fundraiser insights.

Getting in front of your donors to talk about your institution’s impact and the impact of their gifts is important. At Ruffalo Noel Levitz, we have an advanced suite of solutions to help you do just that. Whether it’s reaching out via digital channels, direct mail or the phone, we can help you put together a rock star strategy that gets your message notices. Head over to RuffaloNL.com to find out more today.

Here at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, we spend a lot of time looking at higher education alumni giving patterns. Loyal alumni drive a big part of the philanthropic support to higher education. They also tend to be the biggest athletics fans. So, the NCAA basketball tournaments each spring offer an interesting laboratory for us to ask some fun questions. Last year, one of our RNL consultants asked a really interesting one:

What if the NCAA brackets were decided based on alumni giving statistics?

So, we created our March (Alumni Giving) madness tournament to answer that fun question. It’s a fun way to look at how institutions compare in alumni giving participation percentages, donor counts, total dollars from alumni, and even online giving strategy. On today’s podcast, we break down the 2017 results that lead to victories for Penn and Northwestern. You can see all the results, with commentary, round by round at ruffalonl.com/givingmadness. I got Josh Robertson, Vice President here at RNL on the line to go through this year’s methodology and results.

Over 10 billion dollars – That’s what higher education alumni gave in 2016. That’s a huge portion of the philanthropy that makes a difference for students, faculty and all the great life-changing experiences that colleges and universities provide. It turns out that if you base the tournament on giving, not basketball, the winners end up a bit different.

If you’d like to see how you compare to peers on some of these statistics, drop us a line. You can head to ruffalonl.com/givingmadness to request a customized donor comparison report. And we’ll talk about how you can recruit your best possible alumni giving team for next year’s tournament.

If you’re an annual giving professional—particularly in higher education, you’ve probably heard about Annual Giving Network. Dan Allenby, founder of the network has done a great job addressing whatever is hot in annual giving strategy today while focusing on the fundamentals. With great content, webinars, a job posting network, and great member interaction, annualgiving.com has become a destination for those of us who want to stay educated about the best ways to engage donors. In fact, Dan comes off like he was born into annual giving. And based on what he told me, that’s not too far from the truth. I wanted to get Dan on the line to talk about AGN’s strategy and what he’s trying to accomplish with the network.

Dan offers a lot of great insights for how we can do the best job possible engaging, asking, and thanking our annual giving donors. Like he said, we restart every year in annual giving—but the fundamentals of a donor engagement strategy never go away.

Find out more about AGN:

www.annualgiving.com

And check out the 2016 insights report we talked about:

2016 Year in Review Report

Are you ready to take your annual giving to the next level? Ruffalo Noel Levitz has great resources, and a great team of experts ready to help you accelerate your annual giving strategy. Head over to ruffaonl.com to find out about our phone, multichannel and digital solutions which are designed to engage 21st century donors at your maximum return on investment.

Tim Sandoval, reporter for the Chronicle of philanthropy, has his finger on the pulse of where people are giving, and how fundraisers are marketing to their supporters. He regularly covers big trends, like tax policy and regulation, but also jumps headlong into tactics being used by the best organizations. You read articles from him almost daily in the Chronicle. I’ve had a few chances to talk with Tim in the past about philanthropy news and trends, and I wanted to get him on the line to talk about what he’s seeing in the first part of 2017, and were we might be going next.

Tim makes great points about reaching out to donors during a time of change. The Chronicle of Philanthropy is a great source for news, tactics and advice on how to shape your fundraising program. You can head over to philanthropy.com to see their coverage, as well as special reports and fundraiser tool kits. Monitoring the broad trends in philanthropy and public policy are important to deciding what to do next with both your annual and major donors.

www.philanthropy.com

www.ruffalonl.com

You just can’t book big gifts if your fundraising team isn’t productive. This is a top concern for fundraisers who are being asked to book bigger and bigger giving totals each year. Ruffalo Noel Levitz talked to hundreds of major and planned giving fundraisers in 2016 and heard some common roadblocks that are hold teams back: finding the right donors to talk to, supporting gift officers with good information and training, and preparing donors and fundraisers for great visits. Add in gift officer turnover, and many organizations are struggling to reach their fundraising potential.

So we embarked on the creation of a solution that’s great for both donors and fundraisers. This podcast features 7 RNL leaders providing a look “under the hood” to show how the solution came together.  They discuss what increasing productivity can mean for your aspirational fundraising goals.

Included are:

• How predictive analysis of your donor base can take you beyond wealth rating
• How warming up donors before a conversation makes a difference.
• Getting help with a first conversation to qualify donors and schedule a gift officer meeting.
• Why productivity matters for your overall goals.

Find our more about RNL major and planned giving solutions, including case studies and testimonials at: advance.ruffalonl.com

And read more about our take on major and planned giving productivity at blogfm.ruffalonl.com.

Online giving is growing rapidly. We’ve all seen our online donation activity rise, and this is a big transition for many fundraising programs, as online giving grows at up to three times the rate of over all giving. Mike Kim at iATS payments knows a lot about this. As one of the largest payment processing providers for non-profits, the company has seen a lot of growth in online giving, and is following the trends closely. I got Mike on the line to talk about payment integration, building trust and security with donors, how to optimize the online giving experience, and what’s next for online giving.

Included in the podcast are:

• How you're doing more than collecting gifts with your online giving.
• Keys to building relationships and trust with your online portal.
• Taking donors from interest to transaction completion.
• The difference between merchant accounts and payment aggregators
• New trends in online transactions

Web Links:

Ruffalo Noel Levitz

iATS Payments

Telling a compelling to story--highly personalized, evoking emotion, encouraging action right now--is a big part of fundraising success in the 21st century.

Caryn Stein, Vice President here at RNL knows this. She’s spent her career doing just that to help hundreds of charities. I got Caryn on the line to talk about the power of digital engagement, storytelling, and what she thinks is next for the future of fundraising.

She calls it storytelling "surround sound" and explains how engaging donors in a personalized, powerful way through technology can really amplify your results.

Covered in the podcast are:

• How telling a compelling story is important to your fundraising
• How using technology is a way to make this more personal
• The future of social and digital engagement with donors
• Taking donors on a personal journey
• How storytelling leads to donor action

If you want to find out how RNL uses these tactics to take your program to the next level, drop us a line.

Engaging our supporters in the digital world is really important for today’s fundraisers. We’re all reaching out via social media, email, on our web pages and giving pages to attract donor interest and passion. This supplements our more traditional appeals, and everything can get a boost in donor attention if it’s done right. But pretty soon, our donor rolls really will be dominated by a new group of supporters--younger people who have had mobile phones, tablets, and apps their entire lives. These have been dubbed the "digital natives," a group of young donors we’re all looking to engage. Matt Herzberger, Executive Consultant for Web Strategy and Interactive Marketing Services here at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, helps a lot of institutions do this. Matt talked about digital natives in a recent presentation, so I got him on the line to get a perspective on what courting this rising group of well-connected supporters means for fundraising strategy.

Acquiring new donors is important for any fundraising program. Encouraging new people to give every year is crucial. As fundraisers, new donor acquisition is usually not something we’re real excited about- in the first year it's expensive, but we do it anyway.

We wondered if these fundraiser assumptions are really true when you consider contributions over the long term. Do you really, when you consider long term donor value, lose money on new donors? Sean Shaikun,  Director of Market Research, recently embarked on a project to answer the question "Is donor acquisition really worth it?." He looked into millions of donor records from 16 institutions who used our RNL360 analysis program to see what new donors 20 years ago actually did over two decades. Sean joins us in this podcast to unpack the results.

You can download the study results  and read more on the RNL blog.

The RNL fundraising team has a passion for helping organizations capture donor passion and translate it into long term impact. Get in touch with us today to receive a customized calculator based on this study for what new donor acquisition can mean for you in the long term. We're ready to help make a plan for your great new donor engagement and retention program.