00:00:03Giving Tuesday and Nonprofit Data
00:15:10Revolutionizing Nonprofit Fundraising With Data
00:22:18Future Fundraising Trends and AI Readiness
OM DETTA AVSNITT
Explore the intersection of nonprofit marketing and global generosity with the Chief Data Officer of GivingTuesday, Woodrow Rosenbaum. Discover how data innovations like AI technology are transforming the world of fundraising, from decision-making to donor outreach - and how to implement them ethically!
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DonorPerfect:
0:03
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.
Julia Gackenbach:
0:14
Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. My name is Julia GacKenbach and I am here with our guest, woodrow Rosenbaum. Woodrow, thank you so much for being here. We're excited to have you.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
0:26
Thanks for having me, Julia.
Julia Gackenbach:
0:27
As Chief Data Officer for Giving Tuesday, Woodrow has been instrumental in shaping the global generosity movement and has led groundbreaking research and analytics for individual giving behaviors, which I, as a former fundraiser, see as so valuable, and I love thinking about the data that we'll learn about individual givers because of the work that you've done, Woodrow. Woodrow also leads the Giving Tuesday Data Commons, bringing together a coalition of more than 1,500 collaborators and 150 data providers to understand the drivers and impacts of generosity to inspire more giving of all types. Woodrow is a member of the Generosity Commission Research Task Force, is past co-chair for Global Impact Canada's Board of Directors, where he's now serving as a strategic advisor, and was previously a fellow at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Woodrow, you have been very busy. Thank you for taking the time to sit with us today.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
1:30
It's a pleasure. I'm happy to be here.
Julia Gackenbach:
1:31
Thank you. Okay, let's get started. There's obviously a lot to talk about. I'm really excited to dig into not only Giving Tuesday but also the Giving Tuesday data, all the things that you all are putting out about what we can learn and how we can look ahead for fundraising. But first let's start with your kind of origin story. How did you get into nonprofits, how did you get into data? How do we find ourselves here today?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
1:57
I mean by accident. My background is in commercial marketing, so that's what I was doing when I started working with a small foundation in Canada helping out essentially a little bit side gig, trying to help find ways to incentivize Canadians to be more philanthropic. And when Giving Tuesday launched in the US in 2012, we had been testing a lot of interventions and we thought, you know, we could try that here. And that's how my involvement began, and now this is my full-time thing. I'm running the Giving Tuesday Data Commons and working with the ELT at Giving Tuesday to help shepherd this global movement.
Julia Gackenbach:
2:43
Cool. When you were in marketing, were you always really interested in data, or was that something that you just stumbled upon as a necessity in nonprofits?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
2:52
So I mean, I will say we weren't an analytics firm but our work was very data-driven for the space we were in. And I will say, you know, it's not just a coincidence that this happened, because in commercial enterprise we have really good data about the environment in which we're working. And when I started working with Giving Tuesday and the various country movements and just trying to understand what is the impact of this intervention, we really ran up against the fact that the data environment in the non-profit sector is not nearly so robust. Those data just weren't available. In fact, starting the Giving Tuesday data commons really began simply as trying to solve the problem that we had in measuring that intervention and trying to provide for this movement and then more broadly the non-profit sector as that developed, the same kind of opportunity for insights and data-driven decision making that exists in the commercial sector and that I was so accustomed to just having at my fingertips when I worked in that industry.
Julia Gackenbach:
4:05
Yeah, it's interesting and you made a joke about it earlier about kind of accidentally getting into nonprofits. I have that same story, I think a lot of people have that same story about I just wanted to give back and I stumbled into whatever role I had and I don't think often people who find themselves in nonprofit think that they're going to be a data person. I never thought, oh, I can't wait to look at my reports and my numbers. I thought, oh, can't wait to raise money and affect change. But data is such an important part of nonprofits and so I'm really excited to get into that a little bit with you today. Before we go into the data, I want to talk briefly about Giving Tuesday, this amazing day of global giving. It's affected change all over the world. I want to hear a little bit about how it started, where it's gone since it started. Tell me kind of about how Giving Tuesday came about.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
5:00
Sure, I mean, it's pretty simple. Tuesday came about. Sure, I mean, it's pretty simple. Before, giving, tuesday was an organization and before it was this movement that happens year round around the world to build capacity in the social sector. It was an idea what if we had a day for giving back? And that spawned that kind of experiment and just open questions spawned that first day for giving, and it was different than the sector was used to. It was more open, it was co-created, it was an opportunity for people and organizations to come together and celebrate giving in every possible way, with no limitations on the creativity or the approach or the experience. And that turned out to be a simple but pretty powerful idea. What if we had a day for giving? Turned into something much, much bigger, both in terms of the intervention itself each year, but also with respect to the vast network of people who come together to co-create that day and then, beyond that, work together to advance the capacity and the effectiveness of generosity as a driver of community health around the world every day of the year.
Julia Gackenbach:
6:24
It's really a cool movement and it reminds me of what a lot of nonprofits do when they're trying to raise money. They think, okay, let's have a creative campaign, let's try and figure out a way to get people involved. And so you created that on a large scale. How has it grown? I know there's like over 100 countries that take part and billions of dollars raised. How has that grown over the last couple of years?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
6:53
Yeah, so we have. There are now 105 official Giving Tuesday movement leaders around the world and these are people, organizations, sometimes nonprofit associations, but just folks who have come together to say they want to advance their missions using Giving Tuesday and they want to support generosity in their country. And these are not people that are on our payroll. This is not about deploying or exporting Giving Tuesday from a central place. This is a distributed leadership network that come together to build this themselves and what we do is we support that network and we try to understand what is emerging from those practices in order to enable that cross-cultural learning and experience.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
7:43
In the US last year, over $3 billion was donated on the day of Giving Tuesday. 10s of millions of people get involved in. Critically, it's not just about giving money and the the. The spike in giving that, we see, is not despite the fact that there are other ways people can give, but in fact, is partly because of all of the ways you can get involved, and I think that that's an important lesson for the nonprofit sector more broadly. Giving Tuesday doesn't look like the rest of the year's fundraising and engagement efforts and it would be better if the rest of the year looked a little bit more like that. Most people who give on Giving Tuesday do more than one thing. In fact, what we see in the US is the most common behavior is giving money, but only giving money is the least common behavior, and I think that's part of the power of this is that it's just so open for people to experience and celebrate their generosity any way they want.
Julia Gackenbach:
8:44
That is so cool and what an interesting statistic that most people do more than just give. That's really interesting.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
8:53
I think it's really critically important. The vast majority of those donors are taking some other action as well, and when we look at people's giving behavior more broadly across the year, what we see is that's normal. That's actually how people want to show up, and I think nonprofits can take advantage of that desire to be involved by giving more on-ramps to their mission, not just on Giving Tuesday, but all year round. This is it's that connection between fundraising success and an open dialogue and engagement with a broader spectrum of people is not just a Giving Tuesday thing, it's just it mostly happens only on Giving Tuesday. We have a power to. We have power to change that Giving Tuesday is the single biggest day for donor acquisition all year, and not by a small amount, by a huge margin.
Julia Gackenbach:
9:47
That's really cool. I love that and I love thinking about the opportunities that a nonprofit could provide on that day, beyond giving. When I was a fundraiser, I think I only asked people to give and now I'm feeling like, wow, I think I missed an opportunity. So Giving Tuesday 2024 is just around the corner, december 3rd. For our listeners, and for maybe those who haven't been part of Giving Tuesday in the past, what would you recommend for them to get started? How could they be involved this year?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
10:18
yeah, I mean, one of the important things to recognize is that, yes, you can take months and months to create a campaign and you can do something that is completely standalone, but the most important thing is just to not miss out on the opportunity and not be absent from this moment.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
10:34
It's an amplifier of our activities. One of the ways we see that is small. The smallest organizations actually get the biggest bang for their buck on Giving Tuesday, and I think that that's important to understand, first of all because it shows us that there isn't a big barrier to entry. And the fact that there's a lot of big organizations making a lot of noise on the day is actually an advantage for those smaller and mid-sized organizations more connected to community, perhaps to ride that wave of interest in giving and provide an opportunity for people to give to a cause that's very close to them. So do something is the first thing, and don't worry about how big it is. Work within your capacity and think about Giving Tuesday as an important inflection point in the rest of the year. We know that Giving Tuesday, acquired donors are more likely to give again before the end of the year. That means that we should be thinking about this as an ongoing, a really important pivot point in an ongoing engagement with our donors and supporters.
Julia Gackenbach:
11:50
Those are great points. I think the first time my nonprofit took part in Giving Tuesday, they didn't even know it was Giving Tuesday. They saw a post on Instagram and so then they made a post on Instagram and raised money and it was. We hadn't planned it, we didn't know what was going on. We just said, hey, you could give today if you want. And people took part. So I really agree with step one is just showing up for the day and maybe not putting too much pressure on yourself the first time around. Yeah.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
12:20
Or even the second time around. Right it is. Not only is it okay, it's actually a best practice to think about this iteratively what can I do this year? What's within my capacity? How does it fit into what else I'm doing and the objectives that I'm setting? We have lots of resources, examples and small campaign ideas. All of that is available on the website, of course, givemetuesdayorg. But the other thing to think about is set a goal. So, even if your campaign and what you're able to sort of roll out is modest compared to your aspirations, what we did find was setting a specific and measurable goal was the most important component in an organization organization success.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
13:05
On Giving Tuesday Again, this is not just Giving Tuesday advice. This is just good advice. But at the same time, don't be afraid to be ambitious with that goal. I think on Giving Tuesday we do kind of get special permission to reach a little bit further, and it's more interesting to come close to a really ambitious goal that you've set with your community than it is to just sort of accomplish something mediocre. So setting that goal and thinking about how you're going to achieve it will help you actually to focus your efforts on what's going to drive the most impact for you on the day and beyond.
Julia Gackenbach:
13:41
Yeah, that's a good point, and for me it was interesting because I really had to wrestle with what a goal might look like. So my first Giving Tuesday I set a monetary goal. I wanted to raise X amount of dollars. But then my next Giving Tuesday you mentioned this I was really focused on donor acquisition. I wanted to find new donors, and so asking for a large amount of money wasn't going to accomplish my new donor acquisition goal, and so, instead of setting a monetary goal, I set a. You know, I want 100 new donors, and so our ask was a $2 ask Because, like you said, these are long term givers.
Julia Gackenbach:
14:23
So my hope was we would raise $2 from this person on Giving Tuesday and then they'd give again before the end of the year, like you said. So I love the idea of setting a goal and I would encourage our listeners to be creative in that goal. It doesn't have to be only monetary. It could be donor acquisition, it could be some sort of peer-to-peer engagement, maybe them posting on their social media, you know things like that. So it was always exciting for us to think up our goals because it could be so unique, because Giving Tuesday is so unique. This is very cool.
Julia Gackenbach:
14:55
I hope that our listeners have some things that they can implement for this year, for 2024. Again, giving Tuesday is December 3rd, 2024. Really looking forward to see how our world steps up to make a change, so I'm very grateful for that. Now let's move on a little bit. You talked a lot in the beginning about some of the data commons, and I really want to dig into that. I think that is a, like I said, an area that maybe fundraisers don't think of as often, and so I want to show the accessibility of this. So in what ways have Data Insights reshaped the nonprofit fundraising and what are some practical steps that organizations can take to start using data to improve their own fundraising?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
15:38
Yeah, I think you know, since I started getting involved in this, I have seen a bit of a shift in the sector. That I think is quite positive. As I said, when we started this work, we were just trying to solve a measurement problem of our own and encountered this issue of lack of good access to good data. We've been working really hard to try to solve that issue and got to the point where it wasn't just about. Now we can measure Giving Tuesday, but now we have a wealth of data that allows us to look at generosity and giving behaviors around the world every day of the year. So what can you do? Well, we have products that we create for this. These are free to the sector to help the nonprofits navigate and make those data-informed decisions that were out of our reach before. So the Fundraising Effectiveness Project is a really important example something that DonorPerfect actually was one of the launching partners with before we came on the scene many years before Giving Tuesday that we now administer in partnership with the Association of Fundraising Professionals. We have big, big plans for that, but already what that provides is a really high fidelity. Look at the trends in fundraising that it can help nonprofits and fundraisers to benchmark their efforts against the industry and understand where they're at we are going to. We already use that information to drive a lot of our other insights and resources and recommendations, and we'll be creating a lot more. I think what's important there because we could get into the there's a million ways that you can use the specific data. Because we could get into the there's a million ways that you can use the specific data what is most important, I think, is a bit of a shift in expectations or approach that we are beginning to see in the nonprofit sector but, in my opinion, really needs to be accelerated.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
17:41
The fundraising effectiveness project is not the weather report. This is not what happened to us. We really need to start thinking about this in terms of. This is our report card. This is what we accomplished. So it's helpful to reframe that because we, as we've seen from our other data and research, we have a lot more agency in the nonprofit sector to drive better results, and the fact is, the macro trends that we see in the FEP data are not very positive. But again, this is not happening to us. This is what the system is getting. It's getting the outcome for which it's designed. If we want a different outcome, it's incumbent on us to change our practices. So acquisition is poor, except on Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is the single biggest day for acquisition Great. What are we going to do about that? Because Giving Tuesday is special, but it would be great if it was a little less special in that respect.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
18:45
And our other sort of main report element and sort of core product is our Giving Pulse reports, and I think this is really an important contextualization of what we're seeing in the fundraising results, which only looks at money and only looks at money to nonprofits.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
19:05
People's giving is a lot more diverse than that and Giving Pulse gives us a real-time look at all of the ways that people are bringing themselves to make positive change in communities giving money and time and things and advocacy giving to nonprofits and individuals and lots of other mechanisms like mutual aid. We need a much better understanding of this if we're going to tap into that generosity. And I think what is key to understand there is you can look at the field guides and you can get practical advice and learning from the Giving Pulse report. But again, what is necessary is a reframing of our approach. What we have seen in this data is that the many, many ways that people give and the many opportunities, which are becoming more prolific, that people can leverage their generosity are not competitive with nonprofit fundraising. It is quite the opposite. So we need to lose the scarcity mentality and recognize that there is, in fact, untapped abundance in this marketplace. But we're going to have to approach that market and those givers differently if we want a different result.
Julia Gackenbach:
20:22
Absolutely, and actually, this Giving Pulse report that you're speaking about talked about there being a gap in potential donors being asked to give. Why do you think that gap exists and how can nonprofits make sure that they're capturing those people? I mean, if there are people out there that are willing to be asked to give and would participate, how do we find them do that? How do we close that gap?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
20:47
I mean, that's really that was one of the more important recent findings that not only were we seeing consistently that there were a lot of people who are not being invited to participate, that we can predict that the that a large portion of those people would respond with generosity if they were invited.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
21:12
Why are we not? I think because we have an over-reliance on large donor stewardship, and this isn't about abandon that. But if we continue to focus on large donors to the exclusion of grassroots, broad engagement, then this is the result. We're going to see fewer people giving more. If we don't like that, the best thing to do is open ourselves up to more ways people can get involved in our mission and more opportunities for different people to get involved, and what we see is that that you can get a really rapid result Again. Giving Tuesday the day is a perfect example of where the entire sector engages very differently and we immediately get a different result and it is more equitable and it's more inclusive and it's more sustainable, because if we are continually relying on this shrinking pool of high value donors, we are not as resilient economically as a sector. So more people, more different opportunities to give more often is kind of the prescription for shifting that negative trend.
Julia Gackenbach:
22:18
And you mentioned the FEP project, maybe showing some trends that aren't super encouraging. I know. For me as a fundraiser sometimes it was so hard because I would feel maybe I was missing the benchmark or things don't look good for the future of fundraising things like that. What would you say to a fundraiser who maybe feels discouraged by some of this data? How can they use the data for a positive thing instead of feeling like they're missing the mark?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
22:53
Yeah, I would say two things. First, the good news is you can make this change, that there is clearly, as I said, there is untapped abundance, so we don't have to feel like we're in this situation where we have a less and less generous population or there's more and more competition for donor dollars. The data do not support those concerns at all. So, good news, you can do something about it and the opportunity is there. And then I think it's important to recognize that we can only we can only take incremental steps. Right, we're not going to transform our organizations overnight. What is important is that we do something, in the same way that it's important that you just don't sit out giving Tuesday. There's that we need to just begin where we are able to begin.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
23:43
It also comes down to goal setting, and I, you and what you said about being specific about what you were looking for on Giving Tuesday. Now, there might be many ways that you activate your various constituencies in order to achieve that objective. Maybe you're getting people to volunteer as a way to drive donor retention. We know that works. But being really specific about what outcome you're looking for, using the data to benchmark your progress toward that objective, can really help you be effective and also kind of lose the concern about, well, I could be doing everything and I can't compare myself to every metric yeah, that's right, you can't. So identify what's going to move the needle for your organization and learn as you go.
Julia Gackenbach:
24:29
Well, I do also want to shift gears here a little bit, because another thing that Giving Tuesday has put out recently is the AI readiness report of 2024. I know that a lot of nonprofits are either scratching their heads over AI or avoiding AI as a whole, or relying completely on AI. It's like a whole spectrum of understanding of AI. So why don't you share a little bit about this report and some of the highlights that you see when it comes to using AI?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
25:01
Yeah, so our AI working group has over a thousand collaborators in it. This is where we're looking at how can we support the nonprofit sector in both adoption of this technology but also help to ensure that solutions are built by and for our community against validated needs, with assets that are built from the ground up for nonprofit and social sector purposes and not kind of off-label applications of commercial product, and to help inform that. We wanted to kind of understand what are people doing now in nonprofits and how are they engaging with this technology. And there is quite a lot of skepticism that that was clear in the sector, but also, I think, a surprising amount perhaps, given that skepticism, of people who were at least trying something out, they were doing some experimentation in their organizations. I think what was most interesting to me was to find that the the best indicator of kind of readiness for AI adoption and I think this probably goes beyond just AI and is actually a kind of a tech adoption and tech capacity issue but the an organization's overall size and kind of resource capacity was not the best indicator of whether they were ready. So just being big isn't really what's important, and that's interesting to know, both in terms of identifying what the obstacles as well as the opportunities are for better tech adoption.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
26:44
What mattered more was whether an organization had very specific expertise in that org for data, essential data management functions, and I think that that's really important as we think about how we're going to use these tools in ways that are responsible and effective, is that that core function has to be there, and if it is, it unlocks a lot of benefit.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
27:14
So now we can start thinking about what that means for a big organization that, yes, could maybe afford a lot of things but can focus on what's going to be most effective at moving the needle.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
27:24
Mid sized organizations that need to sort of can't invest really broadly, but here's an opportunity to do something that, frankly, is going to have a lot of other extensible benefit, because just having that core expertise, that data management, that data function within an organization, is going to have lots of other benefit besides just the ability to leverage new AI technology. And then, as a sector, I think we need to think about the many, many, many small organizations who don't have that in-house, and how can their vendor partners and the funder community support getting that kind of core expertise at scale for those smaller organizations who are frankly, just not going to hire somebody with those skills in-house, and so that's as we look at how to navigate this. I think that's what's most, that's what's important. And then you know, recognizing that a lot of the skepticism and concern is healthy and valid, and using that to guide the development of these products so that we do so ethically.
Julia Gackenbach:
28:30
Yeah, that's a big burden, isn't it? Trying to figure out how to carry this ethically into nonprofits, because we're dealing with real people and real causes, real money, you know, and yeah, we want to protect all of those things.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
28:44
We do, and I think the most important thing not maybe not the most important thing, but a critical factor is that burying your head in the sand or hoping that it will go away is going to backfire.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
28:55
These tools are going to start impacting every part of our work.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
29:00
So you know, the framework that the fundraising AI folks put together that's on fundraisingai that you can sign on to is a helpful guide in figuring out how to do ethical fundraising with AI, and also just simple policy templates are available, right. So think about what do I need to tell my staff to be aware of? Don't upload our personal files to this tool. You know, keep things in house, use this and not that. And I think really importantly to think about that policy not in terms of absolute carved in stone, black and white, forever, but rather saying to staff if, if you, if the tools that we have provisioned or that we've vetted or that we're have an account for aren't doing the job you need, then let us know what else you're interested in using so that we can help to find that solution, because prohibitions are just going to backfire. People are going to have deadlines and they're going to do something, and if they don't have good practices in the organization, then the risk is they're going to do something that could be harmful.
Julia Gackenbach:
30:08
Good point. Well, we've talked about a few reports. So we talked about the FEP, we talked about the data commons. We talked about the FEP, we talked about the Data Commons. We talked about the AI Readiness Report. Where can people find those?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
30:18
So all the work that we do at the Data Commons is at givingtuesdayorg slash data Easy to find.
Julia Gackenbach:
30:25
Easy, okay, great, okay. I have one more question for you. With all of your Giving Tuesday insight and with your data from Giving Tuesday comments, you have a really unique perspective on where philanthropy is headed. Can you give us a bit of insight into some of the trends that fundraisers should be aware of, should be looking forward to? What can we kind of look to when it comes to the future of fundraising based on your data and experience?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
30:55
So first I'll talk about a couple of opportunities that we have our eye on. One is recurring. I think recurring is under leveraged in the nonprofit sector. There's clear evidence that it can drive a lot more value. I think it's telling that door-to-door fundraisers pretty much exclusively require recurring. In that environment, where the cost of acquisition is highest, that you need that return on investment. But that shouldn't be any different. When the cost of acquisition is low, you should still be seeing a much higher return on investment from recurring giving. So I think that we're not yet leveraging that as to its full potential.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
31:38
De-seasonalization, I think, is critically important. In the US we see a slump in the middle of the year. That slump is due to lack of activity from the nonprofit sector. It's also a great time to kind of shift up how you're engaging and experiment with new things, and I think that there's a big untapped opportunity in the middle of the year and we would like to see more broad grassroots engagement as we head into the final months of 2024,.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
32:06
I have a couple of concerns. One is that we can't just switch on our supporters like a tap. We do see you can ramp up broad engagement pretty rapidly, but we need to be more consistent and more frequent in our engagement with supporters year round, because every year what we're what's happening is we're trying to suddenly activate on a smaller base of support and we're having to build that backup every time. That's not sustainable. So we we are, we're kind of we're coming into the this giving season behind the eight ball because we haven't done that work of engagement well enough in the rest of the year. And yes, there are many, many external factors, externalities that are that help to drive that. But but we have to do something about that. We are just not going to be sustainable otherwise. Something about that. We are just not going to be sustainable otherwise.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
33:13
So the opportunity is there to take advantage of it. We're going to have to think about building those movements for our organizations. Good news is you're not really in competition with all the other things people are doing all of the time. So this is a great opportunity to celebrate all of the ways that people give and to recognize that that is not a threat, it's an opportunity. And then that brings me to.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
33:34
You know what is my expectation for the rest of the year? There's untapped opportunity. There is abundance in this market. So it comes down to whether we go out and get it, and so whether we'll see a reversal of negative trends, whether we'll have a big end of year, whether that will translate into higher retention and more engagement in the coming year, is entirely incumbent on us to do that work. So if we show up, I think that we have every reason to believe the opportunity is there for great success. Believe the opportunity is there for great success. We're not seeing suppressing factors to a degree that are going to hinder that. So what it looks like is under our. It's kind of up to us. It's up to us how the rest of this year and next look.
Julia Gackenbach:
34:30
Yeah, I mean, that's really encouraging to me. Like I, I want to leave this room and go offer people an opportunity to give, because there's so much, like you said, untapped and we have an opportunity to invite people into our mission, which is pretty cool because our mission means something to us. Why wouldn't it mean something to other people? Let's give them an opportunity. So those are great points.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
34:55
I mean and really thinking about it as giving people an opportunity to be generous and to make change, that's really critical right that, if you're thinking about your engagement as somehow intrusive, maybe it is, and people or that's probably not your right donor. Right or not, the right approach? Right, and that's the thing is that that people do want to have agency over the things they care about in their community, and you, if you think of yourself as an opportunity for them to do so, I think you'll find you have a lot more success.
Julia Gackenbach:
35:30
And and feel a lot more encouraged. You know you're you're passionate about this, and they are too. So let's bond together, you know, make the world a better place. Well, thank you so much, Woodrow. This has been excellent. I have learned so much and I'm excited to go to the givingtuesdayorg slash data website and download some of this information, check some of my benchmarks and figure out what things I can do for the end of the year to help people be more involved in their communities. So thank you for those very practical ways to do that.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
36:02
Thanks for having me, Julia.
Julia Gackenbach:
36:04
Of course. Thanks so much.
DonorPerfect:
36:06
Thank you for listening to Nonprofit Expert presented by Donor Perfect. For more information and a special offer, visit DonorPerfect. com/ podcast.
0:03
Welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect.
Julia Gackenbach:
0:14
Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Expert presented by DonorPerfect. My name is Julia GacKenbach and I am here with our guest, woodrow Rosenbaum. Woodrow, thank you so much for being here. We're excited to have you.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
0:26
Thanks for having me, Julia.
Julia Gackenbach:
0:27
As Chief Data Officer for Giving Tuesday, Woodrow has been instrumental in shaping the global generosity movement and has led groundbreaking research and analytics for individual giving behaviors, which I, as a former fundraiser, see as so valuable, and I love thinking about the data that we'll learn about individual givers because of the work that you've done, Woodrow. Woodrow also leads the Giving Tuesday Data Commons, bringing together a coalition of more than 1,500 collaborators and 150 data providers to understand the drivers and impacts of generosity to inspire more giving of all types. Woodrow is a member of the Generosity Commission Research Task Force, is past co-chair for Global Impact Canada's Board of Directors, where he's now serving as a strategic advisor, and was previously a fellow at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Woodrow, you have been very busy. Thank you for taking the time to sit with us today.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
1:30
It's a pleasure. I'm happy to be here.
Julia Gackenbach:
1:31
Thank you. Okay, let's get started. There's obviously a lot to talk about. I'm really excited to dig into not only Giving Tuesday but also the Giving Tuesday data, all the things that you all are putting out about what we can learn and how we can look ahead for fundraising. But first let's start with your kind of origin story. How did you get into nonprofits, how did you get into data? How do we find ourselves here today?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
1:57
I mean by accident. My background is in commercial marketing, so that's what I was doing when I started working with a small foundation in Canada helping out essentially a little bit side gig, trying to help find ways to incentivize Canadians to be more philanthropic. And when Giving Tuesday launched in the US in 2012, we had been testing a lot of interventions and we thought, you know, we could try that here. And that's how my involvement began, and now this is my full-time thing. I'm running the Giving Tuesday Data Commons and working with the ELT at Giving Tuesday to help shepherd this global movement.
Julia Gackenbach:
2:43
Cool. When you were in marketing, were you always really interested in data, or was that something that you just stumbled upon as a necessity in nonprofits?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
2:52
So I mean, I will say we weren't an analytics firm but our work was very data-driven for the space we were in. And I will say, you know, it's not just a coincidence that this happened, because in commercial enterprise we have really good data about the environment in which we're working. And when I started working with Giving Tuesday and the various country movements and just trying to understand what is the impact of this intervention, we really ran up against the fact that the data environment in the non-profit sector is not nearly so robust. Those data just weren't available. In fact, starting the Giving Tuesday data commons really began simply as trying to solve the problem that we had in measuring that intervention and trying to provide for this movement and then more broadly the non-profit sector as that developed, the same kind of opportunity for insights and data-driven decision making that exists in the commercial sector and that I was so accustomed to just having at my fingertips when I worked in that industry.
Julia Gackenbach:
4:05
Yeah, it's interesting and you made a joke about it earlier about kind of accidentally getting into nonprofits. I have that same story, I think a lot of people have that same story about I just wanted to give back and I stumbled into whatever role I had and I don't think often people who find themselves in nonprofit think that they're going to be a data person. I never thought, oh, I can't wait to look at my reports and my numbers. I thought, oh, can't wait to raise money and affect change. But data is such an important part of nonprofits and so I'm really excited to get into that a little bit with you today. Before we go into the data, I want to talk briefly about Giving Tuesday, this amazing day of global giving. It's affected change all over the world. I want to hear a little bit about how it started, where it's gone since it started. Tell me kind of about how Giving Tuesday came about.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
5:00
Sure, I mean, it's pretty simple. Tuesday came about. Sure, I mean, it's pretty simple. Before, giving, tuesday was an organization and before it was this movement that happens year round around the world to build capacity in the social sector. It was an idea what if we had a day for giving back? And that spawned that kind of experiment and just open questions spawned that first day for giving, and it was different than the sector was used to. It was more open, it was co-created, it was an opportunity for people and organizations to come together and celebrate giving in every possible way, with no limitations on the creativity or the approach or the experience. And that turned out to be a simple but pretty powerful idea. What if we had a day for giving? Turned into something much, much bigger, both in terms of the intervention itself each year, but also with respect to the vast network of people who come together to co-create that day and then, beyond that, work together to advance the capacity and the effectiveness of generosity as a driver of community health around the world every day of the year.
Julia Gackenbach:
6:24
It's really a cool movement and it reminds me of what a lot of nonprofits do when they're trying to raise money. They think, okay, let's have a creative campaign, let's try and figure out a way to get people involved. And so you created that on a large scale. How has it grown? I know there's like over 100 countries that take part and billions of dollars raised. How has that grown over the last couple of years?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
6:53
Yeah, so we have. There are now 105 official Giving Tuesday movement leaders around the world and these are people, organizations, sometimes nonprofit associations, but just folks who have come together to say they want to advance their missions using Giving Tuesday and they want to support generosity in their country. And these are not people that are on our payroll. This is not about deploying or exporting Giving Tuesday from a central place. This is a distributed leadership network that come together to build this themselves and what we do is we support that network and we try to understand what is emerging from those practices in order to enable that cross-cultural learning and experience.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
7:43
In the US last year, over $3 billion was donated on the day of Giving Tuesday. 10s of millions of people get involved in. Critically, it's not just about giving money and the the. The spike in giving that, we see, is not despite the fact that there are other ways people can give, but in fact, is partly because of all of the ways you can get involved, and I think that that's an important lesson for the nonprofit sector more broadly. Giving Tuesday doesn't look like the rest of the year's fundraising and engagement efforts and it would be better if the rest of the year looked a little bit more like that. Most people who give on Giving Tuesday do more than one thing. In fact, what we see in the US is the most common behavior is giving money, but only giving money is the least common behavior, and I think that's part of the power of this is that it's just so open for people to experience and celebrate their generosity any way they want.
Julia Gackenbach:
8:44
That is so cool and what an interesting statistic that most people do more than just give. That's really interesting.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
8:53
I think it's really critically important. The vast majority of those donors are taking some other action as well, and when we look at people's giving behavior more broadly across the year, what we see is that's normal. That's actually how people want to show up, and I think nonprofits can take advantage of that desire to be involved by giving more on-ramps to their mission, not just on Giving Tuesday, but all year round. This is it's that connection between fundraising success and an open dialogue and engagement with a broader spectrum of people is not just a Giving Tuesday thing, it's just it mostly happens only on Giving Tuesday. We have a power to. We have power to change that Giving Tuesday is the single biggest day for donor acquisition all year, and not by a small amount, by a huge margin.
Julia Gackenbach:
9:47
That's really cool. I love that and I love thinking about the opportunities that a nonprofit could provide on that day, beyond giving. When I was a fundraiser, I think I only asked people to give and now I'm feeling like, wow, I think I missed an opportunity. So Giving Tuesday 2024 is just around the corner, december 3rd. For our listeners, and for maybe those who haven't been part of Giving Tuesday in the past, what would you recommend for them to get started? How could they be involved this year?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
10:18
yeah, I mean, one of the important things to recognize is that, yes, you can take months and months to create a campaign and you can do something that is completely standalone, but the most important thing is just to not miss out on the opportunity and not be absent from this moment.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
10:34
It's an amplifier of our activities. One of the ways we see that is small. The smallest organizations actually get the biggest bang for their buck on Giving Tuesday, and I think that that's important to understand, first of all because it shows us that there isn't a big barrier to entry. And the fact that there's a lot of big organizations making a lot of noise on the day is actually an advantage for those smaller and mid-sized organizations more connected to community, perhaps to ride that wave of interest in giving and provide an opportunity for people to give to a cause that's very close to them. So do something is the first thing, and don't worry about how big it is. Work within your capacity and think about Giving Tuesday as an important inflection point in the rest of the year. We know that Giving Tuesday, acquired donors are more likely to give again before the end of the year. That means that we should be thinking about this as an ongoing, a really important pivot point in an ongoing engagement with our donors and supporters.
Julia Gackenbach:
11:50
Those are great points. I think the first time my nonprofit took part in Giving Tuesday, they didn't even know it was Giving Tuesday. They saw a post on Instagram and so then they made a post on Instagram and raised money and it was. We hadn't planned it, we didn't know what was going on. We just said, hey, you could give today if you want. And people took part. So I really agree with step one is just showing up for the day and maybe not putting too much pressure on yourself the first time around. Yeah.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
12:20
Or even the second time around. Right it is. Not only is it okay, it's actually a best practice to think about this iteratively what can I do this year? What's within my capacity? How does it fit into what else I'm doing and the objectives that I'm setting? We have lots of resources, examples and small campaign ideas. All of that is available on the website, of course, givemetuesdayorg. But the other thing to think about is set a goal. So, even if your campaign and what you're able to sort of roll out is modest compared to your aspirations, what we did find was setting a specific and measurable goal was the most important component in an organization organization success.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
13:05
On Giving Tuesday Again, this is not just Giving Tuesday advice. This is just good advice. But at the same time, don't be afraid to be ambitious with that goal. I think on Giving Tuesday we do kind of get special permission to reach a little bit further, and it's more interesting to come close to a really ambitious goal that you've set with your community than it is to just sort of accomplish something mediocre. So setting that goal and thinking about how you're going to achieve it will help you actually to focus your efforts on what's going to drive the most impact for you on the day and beyond.
Julia Gackenbach:
13:41
Yeah, that's a good point, and for me it was interesting because I really had to wrestle with what a goal might look like. So my first Giving Tuesday I set a monetary goal. I wanted to raise X amount of dollars. But then my next Giving Tuesday you mentioned this I was really focused on donor acquisition. I wanted to find new donors, and so asking for a large amount of money wasn't going to accomplish my new donor acquisition goal, and so, instead of setting a monetary goal, I set a. You know, I want 100 new donors, and so our ask was a $2 ask Because, like you said, these are long term givers.
Julia Gackenbach:
14:23
So my hope was we would raise $2 from this person on Giving Tuesday and then they'd give again before the end of the year, like you said. So I love the idea of setting a goal and I would encourage our listeners to be creative in that goal. It doesn't have to be only monetary. It could be donor acquisition, it could be some sort of peer-to-peer engagement, maybe them posting on their social media, you know things like that. So it was always exciting for us to think up our goals because it could be so unique, because Giving Tuesday is so unique. This is very cool.
Julia Gackenbach:
14:55
I hope that our listeners have some things that they can implement for this year, for 2024. Again, giving Tuesday is December 3rd, 2024. Really looking forward to see how our world steps up to make a change, so I'm very grateful for that. Now let's move on a little bit. You talked a lot in the beginning about some of the data commons, and I really want to dig into that. I think that is a, like I said, an area that maybe fundraisers don't think of as often, and so I want to show the accessibility of this. So in what ways have Data Insights reshaped the nonprofit fundraising and what are some practical steps that organizations can take to start using data to improve their own fundraising?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
15:38
Yeah, I think you know, since I started getting involved in this, I have seen a bit of a shift in the sector. That I think is quite positive. As I said, when we started this work, we were just trying to solve a measurement problem of our own and encountered this issue of lack of good access to good data. We've been working really hard to try to solve that issue and got to the point where it wasn't just about. Now we can measure Giving Tuesday, but now we have a wealth of data that allows us to look at generosity and giving behaviors around the world every day of the year. So what can you do? Well, we have products that we create for this. These are free to the sector to help the nonprofits navigate and make those data-informed decisions that were out of our reach before. So the Fundraising Effectiveness Project is a really important example something that DonorPerfect actually was one of the launching partners with before we came on the scene many years before Giving Tuesday that we now administer in partnership with the Association of Fundraising Professionals. We have big, big plans for that, but already what that provides is a really high fidelity. Look at the trends in fundraising that it can help nonprofits and fundraisers to benchmark their efforts against the industry and understand where they're at we are going to. We already use that information to drive a lot of our other insights and resources and recommendations, and we'll be creating a lot more. I think what's important there because we could get into the there's a million ways that you can use the specific data. Because we could get into the there's a million ways that you can use the specific data what is most important, I think, is a bit of a shift in expectations or approach that we are beginning to see in the nonprofit sector but, in my opinion, really needs to be accelerated.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
17:41
The fundraising effectiveness project is not the weather report. This is not what happened to us. We really need to start thinking about this in terms of. This is our report card. This is what we accomplished. So it's helpful to reframe that because we, as we've seen from our other data and research, we have a lot more agency in the nonprofit sector to drive better results, and the fact is, the macro trends that we see in the FEP data are not very positive. But again, this is not happening to us. This is what the system is getting. It's getting the outcome for which it's designed. If we want a different outcome, it's incumbent on us to change our practices. So acquisition is poor, except on Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is the single biggest day for acquisition Great. What are we going to do about that? Because Giving Tuesday is special, but it would be great if it was a little less special in that respect.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
18:45
And our other sort of main report element and sort of core product is our Giving Pulse reports, and I think this is really an important contextualization of what we're seeing in the fundraising results, which only looks at money and only looks at money to nonprofits.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
19:05
People's giving is a lot more diverse than that and Giving Pulse gives us a real-time look at all of the ways that people are bringing themselves to make positive change in communities giving money and time and things and advocacy giving to nonprofits and individuals and lots of other mechanisms like mutual aid. We need a much better understanding of this if we're going to tap into that generosity. And I think what is key to understand there is you can look at the field guides and you can get practical advice and learning from the Giving Pulse report. But again, what is necessary is a reframing of our approach. What we have seen in this data is that the many, many ways that people give and the many opportunities, which are becoming more prolific, that people can leverage their generosity are not competitive with nonprofit fundraising. It is quite the opposite. So we need to lose the scarcity mentality and recognize that there is, in fact, untapped abundance in this marketplace. But we're going to have to approach that market and those givers differently if we want a different result.
Julia Gackenbach:
20:22
Absolutely, and actually, this Giving Pulse report that you're speaking about talked about there being a gap in potential donors being asked to give. Why do you think that gap exists and how can nonprofits make sure that they're capturing those people? I mean, if there are people out there that are willing to be asked to give and would participate, how do we find them do that? How do we close that gap?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
20:47
I mean, that's really that was one of the more important recent findings that not only were we seeing consistently that there were a lot of people who are not being invited to participate, that we can predict that the that a large portion of those people would respond with generosity if they were invited.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
21:12
Why are we not? I think because we have an over-reliance on large donor stewardship, and this isn't about abandon that. But if we continue to focus on large donors to the exclusion of grassroots, broad engagement, then this is the result. We're going to see fewer people giving more. If we don't like that, the best thing to do is open ourselves up to more ways people can get involved in our mission and more opportunities for different people to get involved, and what we see is that that you can get a really rapid result Again. Giving Tuesday the day is a perfect example of where the entire sector engages very differently and we immediately get a different result and it is more equitable and it's more inclusive and it's more sustainable, because if we are continually relying on this shrinking pool of high value donors, we are not as resilient economically as a sector. So more people, more different opportunities to give more often is kind of the prescription for shifting that negative trend.
Julia Gackenbach:
22:18
And you mentioned the FEP project, maybe showing some trends that aren't super encouraging. I know. For me as a fundraiser sometimes it was so hard because I would feel maybe I was missing the benchmark or things don't look good for the future of fundraising things like that. What would you say to a fundraiser who maybe feels discouraged by some of this data? How can they use the data for a positive thing instead of feeling like they're missing the mark?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
22:53
Yeah, I would say two things. First, the good news is you can make this change, that there is clearly, as I said, there is untapped abundance, so we don't have to feel like we're in this situation where we have a less and less generous population or there's more and more competition for donor dollars. The data do not support those concerns at all. So, good news, you can do something about it and the opportunity is there. And then I think it's important to recognize that we can only we can only take incremental steps. Right, we're not going to transform our organizations overnight. What is important is that we do something, in the same way that it's important that you just don't sit out giving Tuesday. There's that we need to just begin where we are able to begin.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
23:43
It also comes down to goal setting, and I, you and what you said about being specific about what you were looking for on Giving Tuesday. Now, there might be many ways that you activate your various constituencies in order to achieve that objective. Maybe you're getting people to volunteer as a way to drive donor retention. We know that works. But being really specific about what outcome you're looking for, using the data to benchmark your progress toward that objective, can really help you be effective and also kind of lose the concern about, well, I could be doing everything and I can't compare myself to every metric yeah, that's right, you can't. So identify what's going to move the needle for your organization and learn as you go.
Julia Gackenbach:
24:29
Well, I do also want to shift gears here a little bit, because another thing that Giving Tuesday has put out recently is the AI readiness report of 2024. I know that a lot of nonprofits are either scratching their heads over AI or avoiding AI as a whole, or relying completely on AI. It's like a whole spectrum of understanding of AI. So why don't you share a little bit about this report and some of the highlights that you see when it comes to using AI?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
25:01
Yeah, so our AI working group has over a thousand collaborators in it. This is where we're looking at how can we support the nonprofit sector in both adoption of this technology but also help to ensure that solutions are built by and for our community against validated needs, with assets that are built from the ground up for nonprofit and social sector purposes and not kind of off-label applications of commercial product, and to help inform that. We wanted to kind of understand what are people doing now in nonprofits and how are they engaging with this technology. And there is quite a lot of skepticism that that was clear in the sector, but also, I think, a surprising amount perhaps, given that skepticism, of people who were at least trying something out, they were doing some experimentation in their organizations. I think what was most interesting to me was to find that the the best indicator of kind of readiness for AI adoption and I think this probably goes beyond just AI and is actually a kind of a tech adoption and tech capacity issue but the an organization's overall size and kind of resource capacity was not the best indicator of whether they were ready. So just being big isn't really what's important, and that's interesting to know, both in terms of identifying what the obstacles as well as the opportunities are for better tech adoption.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
26:44
What mattered more was whether an organization had very specific expertise in that org for data, essential data management functions, and I think that that's really important as we think about how we're going to use these tools in ways that are responsible and effective, is that that core function has to be there, and if it is, it unlocks a lot of benefit.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
27:14
So now we can start thinking about what that means for a big organization that, yes, could maybe afford a lot of things but can focus on what's going to be most effective at moving the needle.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
27:24
Mid sized organizations that need to sort of can't invest really broadly, but here's an opportunity to do something that, frankly, is going to have a lot of other extensible benefit, because just having that core expertise, that data management, that data function within an organization, is going to have lots of other benefit besides just the ability to leverage new AI technology. And then, as a sector, I think we need to think about the many, many, many small organizations who don't have that in-house, and how can their vendor partners and the funder community support getting that kind of core expertise at scale for those smaller organizations who are frankly, just not going to hire somebody with those skills in-house, and so that's as we look at how to navigate this. I think that's what's most, that's what's important. And then you know, recognizing that a lot of the skepticism and concern is healthy and valid, and using that to guide the development of these products so that we do so ethically.
Julia Gackenbach:
28:30
Yeah, that's a big burden, isn't it? Trying to figure out how to carry this ethically into nonprofits, because we're dealing with real people and real causes, real money, you know, and yeah, we want to protect all of those things.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
28:44
We do, and I think the most important thing not maybe not the most important thing, but a critical factor is that burying your head in the sand or hoping that it will go away is going to backfire.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
28:55
These tools are going to start impacting every part of our work.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
29:00
So you know, the framework that the fundraising AI folks put together that's on fundraisingai that you can sign on to is a helpful guide in figuring out how to do ethical fundraising with AI, and also just simple policy templates are available, right. So think about what do I need to tell my staff to be aware of? Don't upload our personal files to this tool. You know, keep things in house, use this and not that. And I think really importantly to think about that policy not in terms of absolute carved in stone, black and white, forever, but rather saying to staff if, if you, if the tools that we have provisioned or that we've vetted or that we're have an account for aren't doing the job you need, then let us know what else you're interested in using so that we can help to find that solution, because prohibitions are just going to backfire. People are going to have deadlines and they're going to do something, and if they don't have good practices in the organization, then the risk is they're going to do something that could be harmful.
Julia Gackenbach:
30:08
Good point. Well, we've talked about a few reports. So we talked about the FEP, we talked about the data commons. We talked about the FEP, we talked about the Data Commons. We talked about the AI Readiness Report. Where can people find those?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
30:18
So all the work that we do at the Data Commons is at givingtuesdayorg slash data Easy to find.
Julia Gackenbach:
30:25
Easy, okay, great, okay. I have one more question for you. With all of your Giving Tuesday insight and with your data from Giving Tuesday comments, you have a really unique perspective on where philanthropy is headed. Can you give us a bit of insight into some of the trends that fundraisers should be aware of, should be looking forward to? What can we kind of look to when it comes to the future of fundraising based on your data and experience?
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
30:55
So first I'll talk about a couple of opportunities that we have our eye on. One is recurring. I think recurring is under leveraged in the nonprofit sector. There's clear evidence that it can drive a lot more value. I think it's telling that door-to-door fundraisers pretty much exclusively require recurring. In that environment, where the cost of acquisition is highest, that you need that return on investment. But that shouldn't be any different. When the cost of acquisition is low, you should still be seeing a much higher return on investment from recurring giving. So I think that we're not yet leveraging that as to its full potential.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
31:38
De-seasonalization, I think, is critically important. In the US we see a slump in the middle of the year. That slump is due to lack of activity from the nonprofit sector. It's also a great time to kind of shift up how you're engaging and experiment with new things, and I think that there's a big untapped opportunity in the middle of the year and we would like to see more broad grassroots engagement as we head into the final months of 2024,.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
32:06
I have a couple of concerns. One is that we can't just switch on our supporters like a tap. We do see you can ramp up broad engagement pretty rapidly, but we need to be more consistent and more frequent in our engagement with supporters year round, because every year what we're what's happening is we're trying to suddenly activate on a smaller base of support and we're having to build that backup every time. That's not sustainable. So we we are, we're kind of we're coming into the this giving season behind the eight ball because we haven't done that work of engagement well enough in the rest of the year. And yes, there are many, many external factors, externalities that are that help to drive that. But but we have to do something about that. We are just not going to be sustainable otherwise. Something about that. We are just not going to be sustainable otherwise.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
33:13
So the opportunity is there to take advantage of it. We're going to have to think about building those movements for our organizations. Good news is you're not really in competition with all the other things people are doing all of the time. So this is a great opportunity to celebrate all of the ways that people give and to recognize that that is not a threat, it's an opportunity. And then that brings me to.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
33:34
You know what is my expectation for the rest of the year? There's untapped opportunity. There is abundance in this market. So it comes down to whether we go out and get it, and so whether we'll see a reversal of negative trends, whether we'll have a big end of year, whether that will translate into higher retention and more engagement in the coming year, is entirely incumbent on us to do that work. So if we show up, I think that we have every reason to believe the opportunity is there for great success. Believe the opportunity is there for great success. We're not seeing suppressing factors to a degree that are going to hinder that. So what it looks like is under our. It's kind of up to us. It's up to us how the rest of this year and next look.
Julia Gackenbach:
34:30
Yeah, I mean, that's really encouraging to me. Like I, I want to leave this room and go offer people an opportunity to give, because there's so much, like you said, untapped and we have an opportunity to invite people into our mission, which is pretty cool because our mission means something to us. Why wouldn't it mean something to other people? Let's give them an opportunity. So those are great points.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
34:55
I mean and really thinking about it as giving people an opportunity to be generous and to make change, that's really critical right that, if you're thinking about your engagement as somehow intrusive, maybe it is, and people or that's probably not your right donor. Right or not, the right approach? Right, and that's the thing is that that people do want to have agency over the things they care about in their community, and you, if you think of yourself as an opportunity for them to do so, I think you'll find you have a lot more success.
Julia Gackenbach:
35:30
And and feel a lot more encouraged. You know you're you're passionate about this, and they are too. So let's bond together, you know, make the world a better place. Well, thank you so much, Woodrow. This has been excellent. I have learned so much and I'm excited to go to the givingtuesdayorg slash data website and download some of this information, check some of my benchmarks and figure out what things I can do for the end of the year to help people be more involved in their communities. So thank you for those very practical ways to do that.
Woodrow Rosenbaum:
36:02
Thanks for having me, Julia.
Julia Gackenbach:
36:04
Of course. Thanks so much.
DonorPerfect:
36:06
Thank you for listening to Nonprofit Expert presented by Donor Perfect. For more information and a special offer, visit DonorPerfect. com/ podcast.
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