This episode is sponsored by RoundTable Technology - the Nonprofit IT Partner. On January 26, they are offering a free webinar on the exact steps required to secure and protect your nonprofit IT in the New Year. RoundTable Technology is a managed IT and cybersecurity services organization focusing on the nonprofit sector, with over 200 nonprofit clients. Head over to NonprofitIT.com/best-ever to save your seat now.
Donor retention is the rate at which donors maintain their relationship with your organization and continue to donate over time. While the overall number of donors is climbing, repeat donor rates keep falling. What can we do to keep more of the donors we worked so hard to attract?
Madeleine St. John works with clients to develop communication strategy and content that centers the donor experience. Today's donors crave engagement – which means today's nonprofits have a special opportunity to intimately invite donors into their mission as partners and participants.
In this episode, you’ll learn Madeleine’s best tips to:
Connect with Madeleine:
About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:
Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.
She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.
Julia’s online courses, webinars, and keynote talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and how to do effective marketing in the digital age.
Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
This episode is sponsored by RoundTable Technology - the Nonprofit IT Partner. On January 26, they are offering a free webinar on the exact steps required to secure and protect your nonprofit IT in the New Year. RoundTable Technology is a managed IT and cybersecurity services organization focusing on the nonprofit sector, with over 200 nonprofit clients. Head over to NonprofitIT.com/best-ever to save your seat now.
Donor retention is the rate at which donors maintain their relationship with your organization and continue to donate over time. While the overall number of donors is climbing, repeat donor rates keep falling. What can we do to keep more of the donors we worked so hard to attract?
Madeleine St. John works with clients to develop communication strategy and content that centers the donor experience. Today's donors crave engagement – which means today's nonprofits have a special opportunity to intimately invite donors into their mission as partners and participants.
In this episode, you’ll learn Madeleine’s best tips to:
Connect with Madeleine:
About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:
Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.
She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.
Julia’s online courses, webinars, and keynote talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and how to do effective marketing in the digital age.
Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
Julia Campbell 0:00
The cybersecurity seemed like a terrifying topic, we'll have no fear. This episode is sponsored by round table technology, the nonprofit it partner, and for the seventh year in a row, they're offering a free webinar to teach you and your staff exactly the steps to make your it more secure in the new year. Round Table technology is a managed it and cybersecurity services organization, focusing almost exclusively on the nonprofit sector with over 200 nonprofit clients. So make it your New Year's resolution to get your entire staff free cybersecurity awareness training, head on over to non profit it.com forward slash best dash ever to save your seat now. And here's to a wonderful 2023 Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started.
Julia Campbell 1:39
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to nonprofit nation. Thrilled to be here with you today. I am your host, Julia Campbell. Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics strategic communications, and more specifically, how to keep more donors through strategic communications. And my guest today is Madeleine St. John. After nearly a decade in nonprofit development, Madeleine left her office job and moved to Kolkata, India to volunteer and study with a local organization providing dance movement therapy to survivors of gender based violence. And if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I worked in agencies, I've worked across gender based violence agencies for a lot of my development and marketing life. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart. And while in India, Madeline established her consulting practice St. John consulting, which helps nonprofits increase their impact through donor engagement. So important today, she remains internationally based and continues to volunteer in several corners of the globe, taking St. John consulting with her wherever she goes. And I definitely want to talk about digital nomadism. I think it's so interesting and something that a lot of people want to hear about with a nonprofit career history spanning major gifts, prospect development, donor data management and volunteer engagement. Madeleine approaches, fundraising and community cultivation with a robust understanding of what it takes to make an impact. And her mission is to help nonprofits achieve theirs through strategies that feel good for everyone. Madeleine, welcome to the podcast.
Madeleine St. John 3:25
Julia, thank you so much for having me. It's truly my pleasure to be here.
Julia Campbell 3:29
Yeah. So how did you get into this work? And I have a feeling you're gonna say you fell into it, which a lot of my guests say, but I'd love to hear your journey into nonprofit work and fundraising.
Madeleine St. John 3:40
Absolutely. I'm really grateful for this question. And the falling into it is a little bit of a yes and no, I actually like to say that my relationship with social impact work began as a high schooler, I grew up in a religious environment and in religious education. And as a young person, I had the opportunity to go on several international and domestic mission trips, hence the travel that stepped into my life later on. And I during this process, I really deeply fell in love with cross cultural exchange through service. But I also noticed that some of the work we did was actually more culturally harmful than it was helpful. And it was this realization that prompted me to begin what has now been a 15 year journey to determine how we as humans can do good well, but it also prompted me to look at nonprofits who were prioritizing sustainability and cultural sensitivity. So my first gig in nonprofit was actually with World Vision. I was fortunate enough to intern with them straight out of high school, and I continued to work with World Vision across the balance of my undergraduate education.
Julia Campbell 4:40
That's absolutely fantastic. I love your journey. And I love that it has that international flair to it, because mine does too. You know, having served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, that's where I started working with NGOs and creating fundraising campaigns. And really, actually we were working in public health have marketing campaigns. So that's really kind of how I started as well. And I know that donor communications is your specialty is your focus. And for people that might not understand what donor comms is, in particular, why focus on this aspect of fundraising and resource development?
Madeleine St. John 5:22
I think that this is a really strong question Julia. And with most of my clients, I'm actually working on a combination of things that compiled donor engagement. But donor communications is such a core focus, because we know that strong communication is at the core of any strong connection, it's the key to good relationship. We also know that fundraising is all about relationship building, ergo, good communicators make good fundraisers. And if you've been in this industry for more than a day, you've probably heard someone refer to fundraisers as fundraisers. And I think there's a reason for that. It's because inviting people into exchange with your organization, or into a philanthropic experience of your organization, requires connection and communication. I have a colleague who likes to say that fundraising is mission rooted friendship. And I really love this because isn't that good? Mission rooted friendship, Mission rooted friendship? That's Julie Ordonez, who is a fantastic major gifts officer. And I really love this because it reinforces the idea that people give to what is giving to them, they're invested in that which is investing in them. And they return value to what is giving value. And I think that this pattern of exchange is part of why communications is such a foundational part of donor engagement.
Julia Campbell 6:37
People give to what is given to them, I just wrote that down. So many fundraisers think that asking for money, it's not a value exchange, similar to you know, I buy my shoes at Target, or whatever I do. I buy my Halloween decorations somewhere, because they've sent me an email. So that's a value exchange, like, I give them money, they give me this, but I love that people give to what is giving to them. Because I think and I know you think the same thing is giving is joyful and should be meaningful for the person that is giving and for the person that or for the organization that is receiving the gift. So I just I want to talk about donor retention, because I think that a lot of fundraisers get this wrong, especially in the work that I do. So I work a lot in social media marketing, and digital fundraising, and it can be very transactional, it can be very much, okay, we set up an ad, we pay this much for the ad, we get this much return on investment for the ad, we send out this many emails, we get this much back. It's very transactional. It's not as relationship building mission rooted friendship building, I think as it should be. So first of all, if people don't know what donor retention is, it's the rate at which donors maintain their relationship with your organization and continue to donate over time. And while the overall numbers of donors is climbing, thankfully, but repeat donor rates keep falling. So Madeleine, what can we do to keep more of the donors that we've worked so hard to attract?
Madeleine St. John 8:17
Again, really grateful that you're asking this question, Julia, because I think it's a huge growth opportunity for nonprofits. And you're correct, when you say that our donor base as a sector is growing, that's absolutely true, we've proven that we're doing a good job of inviting more folks into the fold, and motivating them to make gifts and be involved with our organizations. But here's the sad bit, the average overall donor retention rate is 40%. And the average first time donor retention rate for nonprofits is 20%. Which means that we do all of this work of bringing someone in, but then we're essentially just going back to the drawing board and doing that all over again, versus continuing to invest in the inner circle of people who have already committed to making a gift to our cause, and have shown us that there are invested in our success. So part of the reason that I focus on donor retention in my nonprofit consultancy is because I believe that donor retention, and even more importantly, donor engagement, getting people involved with your organization, from multiple angles is the way in which we're ultimately going to garner new donors, we need to begin by looking within in order to from the inside out, build a larger giving circle and ultimately raise more money.
Julia Campbell 9:33
So how can we convey what the donor receives by giving? And how can we do this in our communications?
Madeleine St. John 9:41
So I think that this is a really strong question, because the idea of leading with value is something that I think, another growth area or a growth opportunity for nonprofits and I think that part of the task is indeed communicating what donors are going to get, but I also think that it's about providing value upfront. So I have a couple of different leading questions. I like to offer nonprofits when they're thinking about creating value, adding content or value, adding communications, leading up to a campaign or even better yet, all year round in between their fundraisers, and just kind of to define value adding content for folks. This is any sort of communications that's providing resources to your audience. And I think as nonprofits, we have an especially significant opportunity to leverage the resources that we already provide, because we're already we're already solving some of the world's greatest problems, to serve our audiences in digital and print spaces. So some of the questions that you can ask is, what does your audience need to know before you make an ask? What stories or statistics best showcase the issue your organization solves? What is a creative way you can repackage your programs, your process your impact for your digital audiences? And then this is my favorite one. What does your organization already do with excellence? How can you repackage this as value adding digital content. And while I don't think that all business practices can or should be replicated in our sector, what I love about content marketing, and demonstrating value to our audiences is that this practice allows for communications to function as an extension of our mission, rather than something that is separate from our mission. I think that we can use content to serve communities and our unique and special capacities, while also offering something like I said, a value to all of our audiences simultaneously.
Julia Campbell 11:36
I 100%. Agree. And I know that as a donor myself, I rely a lot on the causes and issues that I support to let me know what's going on. I can't be on the forefront of every issue and cause that I care about. So especially even locally, not even nationally, I need to know what's going on how can I help? What are the greatest needs? And what's going on in the context of the cause? What's going on in the context of the issue. So you know, you might be a food bank working locally, I'm thinking of Beverly bootstraps. It's a local food bank, and they provide a lot of other services. But they're constantly talking about their work in the context of greater food insecurity, and greater equity issues, which I think is so important to, to put your work and show people that your work is bigger than just maybe the, you know, 300 people that you helped this year, which is really important. But your donors want to know that you're kind of moving the needle on a problem that they care about.
Madeleine St. John 12:40
Absolutely. I think that that's a really good point, Julia, because what I see often from nonprofits are a series of program updates. Yes, program updates, exactly correct. We're so eager to prove that we are doing what we said we would do, and that we're doing it well, and look here, how awesomely we're performing. And while I think that there's a space for those at some points, it really does need to be contextualized, with the larger landscape of what you're contributing to, and provide something educational for the donor so that they understand the depth and volume of impact that their gift makes
Julia Campbell 13:14
100%. So I talk a lot to my clients about the importance of regular donor communications, regular, consistent donor communications, in between campaigns and events in between asks, and I know that you talk and write about donor welcome series. And I think that's kind of a catchphrase people hear it, they don't really know what it means. And they get very confused. So why is well, what is the donor welcome series? And then why is it important?
Madeleine St. John 13:47
Absolutely. So a welcome series is an automated series of emails that someone receives right after either signing up for your email list, or in our case, making a first time gift, whichever comes prior. I believe that a welcome series is important because people are most primed to hear from you right after they sign up for your email list or make that first gift. And I love this practice, because it uses automation to help us with cultivation. And I really don't think it's leveraged by nearly enough nonprofits. So if you haven't set up a welcome series yet, I really encourage you to invest some time in creating a very simple email drip of just five to seven installments that can be automatically deployed, say across two months after somebody joins your community. And this email series will do the work of setting the tone for what those new members of your community can expect from you in terms of communication. And you can highlight several things but I typically recommend that nonprofits use one email to set expectations on what sort of future communications subscribers can expect another to educate them on your organization in ways that we were just talking about another diamonds Straight impact through a story or case study another to provide value using the examples and prompts that we mentioned a little while ago, and then another to offer an opportunity for engagement. And this is one of my favorites. Because once somebody has already taken the action to either sign up for our email list, or make a donation, we want to help them maintain the momentum by giving them the opportunity to engage as a volunteer, join us as a monthly donor, instead of a one time donor, attend to lunch and learn attend a webinar or attend an event.
Julia Campbell 15:33
I love that idea of educating and building that relationship, before lumping them into your email updates your regular email updates. So I think it's important like what you just said, I love my favorite welcome email series when I get them, which is, like you said is where they established that I'm in the right place, I made the right decision. I'm in a community of like minded people, I am going to get updates regularly. You know, I would say to people listening, don't worry, you don't have to say, we're send out email Quarterly, we send out email bi weekly, I would say you're gonna get regular updates and stories and impact. And then yes, give them more opportunities and ways that they can engage once they've become a little bit warmer and a little bit more familiar with your organization. So I think that's great. So what other technologies do you recommend? So what do you recommend, first of all, for the donor welcome series. But what are some other technologies we can use to steward and nurture donors, and I'm like a big tech nerd. So I love this.
Madeleine St. John 16:42
Absolutely. I like this question too. And this idea as well. For the welcome series, I will say that that depends a little bit on the communication systems that you already have in place. For example, if you are using a CRM, like Network for Good that has communications built in, that's probably going to be your best bet for automation. But I know that a lot of nonprofits integrate Constant Contact or MailChimp with their CRM. I also really love Flo desk, which is a newer email technology. And that's what I personally use for my business. In addition to the welcome series, I think that that's part of stewarding a new donor after they make a first gift. But I also think that there are several additional inventive ways that we can be in touch with people. And specifically within the world of nonprofit technology. There are so many inventive ways to make a thank you. So we have bank view, which is now part of ever true that allows you to send video acknowledgments, loom is another great tool that you can use. And I also want to mention virtuous because their tracking and engagement software allows you to keep very close track of different donor touch points after they become part of your community, and I think are really effective for the thank you process. I also really like to mention, however giving experience because we typically think of donor experience as everything that happens after they've made that first gift. But that's not true in any other value exchange that we have. When we go to a restaurant, we make a decision on whether or not we're going to go back to that restaurant on how nice the experience was while we were there. And so I think that prioritizing a really seamless and frictionless giving experience is super important. And my favorite technologies for this are fundraise up
Julia Campbell 18:33
oh I love fundraise up. Cheers to fundraise up.
Madeleine St. John 18:36
Yes, this can integrate with a lot of CRMs. It is a donation platform that helps your donors make gifts faster. They have taken AI technology and applied it to the nonprofit space so that we can maximize the giving experience for all of our donors. I also want to give a little shout out to give butter because I know that we have smaller give good Yay. I know that we have smaller nonprofits in the house to need a free or low cost resources. And give butters user experience is just so smooth and seamless. And I think it because they're building it out now to not only just to be a campaign technology, but to also be able to track your donors and engage them through communications. It's a really good starter platform for nonprofits who are just building out their email list, but still really want to be able to engage donors mindfully.
Julia Campbell 19:30
This is something that I don't think I talked about enough and it's getting my wheels spinning for a conference that I'm actually speaking at in a couple of weeks. Because the donor process the cultivation process, should start with the donation experience. I never even thought of that. You think of you know, stores like now we can go back in person to stores if we choose to. I'm thinking of you know, the donation the experience of walk Going into like Nordstrom. Okay? Now granted, Nordstrom is expensive, and very has a lot of white space. But if someone wants to help you, they're not very pushy, they always will find your size very helpful. And that's whether or not you actually make a purchase, you get a good experience going there. So that's just me, maybe me personally having gone there. But then you think of other stores, other restaurants, other businesses that you've interacted with online where it's impossible to like make a wish list or it's impossible to check out. Or it's impossible to find the button where you can edit your checkout cart, that immediately will give you a bad taste in your mouth right off the bat. So this is so important. So using, using things like give butter, using this AI technology that fundraise up has making sure everything is mobile optimized, everything is designed with the donor experience in mind, that is a great first start, because first of all, that's going to help you convert more people to donors, when they actually click on the donate button from wherever they are, maybe your website, maybe social media, but also it's going to give them that warm and fuzzy experience. I also want to draw out what you said about video. Because I can I still can't believe that more nonprofits don't use video in this way. It's so easy to do, you can use thank you or COSMED loom like you said, you can use it in your Gmail, I have it's an I have an attachment or you know, an extension in my Gmail, where I can just record a quick video. So it doesn't have to be heavy, it doesn't have to be hard. But think about those ways you can surprise and delight your donors even before they make the gift. And then right after they make the gift. I absolutely love, love. Love that. So let's kind of pivot a little bit into talking about websites. Because this is another thing I'm very passionate about. This also as part of the donor experience. We all say we want to acquire new donors, we want more people to go to our website, we want to get website traffic from social media. We're paying for Facebook ads, Google Ads sending people to our website. So what do nonprofits get wrong in their website content? And what can we do about it?
Madeleine St. John 22:20
Sure thing, Julia, the first thing that I would say I noticed most frequently is an unclear flow of information that fails to lead to a call to action. This kind of goes back to the idea that we were talking about earlier of these update posts. I think nonprofits are so eager to showcase what we do and how well we do it that sometimes we forget to invite folks into the fold and say, we're doing things really well. And here's how you can be part of it too. So I think it's really important to have very clear calls to action that help people navigate through a site and a very obvious donate button, because it's highly likely that if people are exploring your site, they are interested in some form of engagement. So when I've worked with nonprofits in the past to redo their websites or rewrite their copy, I like to begin with the end in mind and really think about what are our goals for our audience? And what what do we want them not only what information do we want them to take in but what do we want them to do? Or what do we want the end experience to be. And from there, we build out the content and the structure of the website. So that's kind of the first piece of information or tip that I would offer to nonprofits who are rethinking this component of their engagement as you do. So I would also ask folks to consider which information is most essential. I often see a lot of outdated information or information that will quickly become outdated. Creating a website that can be evergreen I think will be really essential to make sense. Lots of nonprofits operate with Lean teams. And so choosing what is going to be most relevant over time, I think is a really important strategy. Another thing that I'll add is a lack of story and statistics. Sometimes when I'm doing a website audit with folks, I'll notice that they're really strong in their blogs, and they have a lot of stories and testimonials from clients, but no statistics to backup, why they're doing the work that they're doing in the space that they're contributing to, or vice versa. We'll see just statistics alone without any story to augment those statistics. And I really think that the marriage of those two when those two things come together, that's what ultimately will motivate action in the visitors to our website to make a donation. I also recommend that folks make sure you're designing for both mobile and desktop. I know that when we are working as scrappy nonprofits, people might be designing our website who are not professional website designers. We've got a lot of folks on Wix and Squarespace. And as you design your website, just make sure that you're making it compatible for both mobile and desktop because most people these days are visiting websites on their phone Then the last thing that I will just reinforce is creating a seamless donation process. Far too often, I see an arduous donation process that begins with that lack of call to action, it's too hard to find where to donate, you have to go to a page, and then scroll down and then click a button. And then you get to your Donation page, make sure that that process is seamless. But also make sure that you're using a technology that is indeed user friendly.
Julia Campbell 25:22
We need to start thinking about websites, like we just need to start thinking about our donors as consumers. So they are consumers going to places like Amazon, going to Instacart going to DoorDash, going to any website, really, Amazon and Netflix. And we're used to that seamless experience either of signing up or finding what we want at least searching for what we want. So if your website is a static brochure, with tons of PDFs, and not searchable information, then it almost becomes like, you know, a library catalog and you really it doesn't become that relevant, really urgent, call to action, it doesn't have that piece of timeliness, that you're saying, you know, it should have a reason for a person to be there. Like why am I here? What am I doing here? What am I looking for? And it's up to us to really tell people what to focus on. Because, you know, if you have 25 programs and services, I'm thinking of an organization I work with that has 12 different departments 25 programs, and they don't know what to focus on the homepage. And my advice. And Madeline is love to hear your advice is always focused on the problem that you're solving, like what ties all these programs together? What is the reason? What is the vision, what is the north star of your organization, because if you focus on the nuts and bolts too much, people can get kind of tied up and wrapped up in that and then you lose, it kind of distills the essence of your mission.
Madeleine St. John 26:58
Absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly. And I would add an addition to the problem that you're solving the unique way in which you are solving it. To go back to our store analogy, there are a lot of department stores out there. And Nordstrom is uniquely equipped with certain brands and a certain form of customer service that might attract us. So understanding kind of where your impact is happening, yes, but also understanding or communicating how you in particular are creating a solution to that problem, I think is really essential.
Julia Campbell 27:32
Exactly. And kind of being almost unabashed about it like Don't be apologetic about what you're doing. I see a lot of nonprofit websites that really are not talking a lot about the problem, or they're not talking a lot about the solution. They're saying more you know, what their annual report and some numbers and maybe some media coverage that they received or some award that they received, but they're not stating what the problem is. I'm thinking of a client I work with Rosie's Place in Boston, fantastic organization. Their mission is to help every single woman or woman identifying person that walks through the door, no questions asked at all ever. And they don't accept federal money. They have total discretion over what they do. They rely on individual funds. And, you know, a woman could come there, as many times as she wants a woman could come there once. And that's their mission. And they they make it so clear across all of their communications, that it's something that I feel like their donors I'm one of them can really stand behind. And say this is what I believe in. This is something that I feel very strongly about. And I wish that more nonprofit websites were taking a stand like that almost like putting drawing a line in the sand and saying, you know, food insecurity is wrong. And we aim to stop it.
Madeleine St. John 29:01
Absolutely. Even the way that you phrase that just now is so Affirmative. An example of the way I think that nonprofits sell themselves sort is by saying we believe that food insecurity is wrong versus just stating food insecurity is wrong.
Julia Campbell 29:15
If you believe this to come join our fight, but don't right if you believe this too. But that's almost implied. Absolutely. So come join the fight. Come join the movement. Come join a group of like minded people that are working to solve this problem. That should almost be an invitation for people. When you visit a website, and you have to think about, you know, future donors present donors. People, we assume that everyone knows what we do, like if they make a donation, we assume that donors know all of the ins and outs and the facets and the problems. But it's our job to really, I think, educate people on what's important. What are the priorities, what do we need to pay attention to And you know, how can they really get involved? So, well, I do want to talk about being a digital nomad. So let's do that. And then I want to end with one of my favorite quotes that I read on your website. So tell me about being a digital nomad. I think it's like, it's just so interesting. And I know a lot of the listeners would be interested in hearing about your, your travels, where are you headed to next?
Madeleine St. John 30:23
Absolutely. So while I am an intentional fundraiser, I'm a bit of an accidental digital nomad, you mentioned in my bio that I moved to India a couple of years ago to volunteer and study with a local NGO. And at the same time, I birthed my consulting practice. And about a year ago, just over a year ago, due to these changes, post pandemic, I had to leave. And I realized at this point that I had a line of work that allowed me to, if it allowed me to be in India could allow me to be in other parts of the world. I am also currently working on my MA in expressive arts therapy. And that requires low residency stints of education. And so I have embraced the nomadic lifestyle, and been fortunate enough to spend my time in several parts of the globe throughout this last year and plan to continue for at least another year or two. I am next actually, on my way back to India. In the as part of working towards my master's in expressive arts therapy, I have the opportunity to run a program with a group of girls in a shelter home there.
Julia Campbell 31:27
That was so fantastic. India is on my bucket list is a place that I have not been I've been I've been a lot of places, but it's definitely on my bucket list.
Madeleine St. John 31:38
It is a beautiful, dynamic, rich country. And I feel fortunate that it is one of my homesteads.
Julia Campbell 31:44
Well, that's wonderful. So I want to end with this quote. And then I would love for you to talk about how people can connect with you online and learn more about your services. But I think this quote really sums up everything that I believe and a lot of what we talked about today. So you wrote where we are all seeking belonging, philanthropy is one way a powerful way in which individuals seek to be part of something meaningful, that is greater than themselves. And I think that really sums up the opportunity that we are providing to donors, I call an opportunity, when we ask them for a gift, not everyone's going to give, but people give, because they seek to be a part of something meaningful. And I just absolutely really love that quote. So I wanted to, I wanted to share it. So let us know where we can find you where we can learn more about you connect with you.
Madeleine St. John 32:43
Absolutely. The best way to learn more about my consulting practice, or anything that I shared here is to visit my website www.stjohnconsulting.com. And if you'd like to, I have a little freebie there for you called dialogue with your donors. It's a donor survey template that includes swipe, copy for a dozen of my favorite questions to ask philanthropists, I would love for you to pick that up so that you can start thinking that you can be engaged with your donors and start thinking critically not only about how you want to communicate with them, but about how they would like to be in communication with you. So you can hop over there and pick that up today. I'm also on LinkedIn, just look up Madeline St. John, that's S T period, space. JOHN and Instagram and Facebook as at St. John consulting.
Julia Campbell 33:29
Perfect, and I will link to all of that great information in the show notes. So that's of luck in your travels. And let us know how it goes. I will be following you on Instagram so I can see those great photos. And Madeleine thanks so much for being on the show.
Madeleine St. John 33:44
Thank you for having me, Julia.
Julia Campbell 33:52
Well, hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven seven. Keep changing the world you nonprofit unicorn