How To Turn Event Attendees into Lifelong Donors with Chad Barger, ACFRE

Are you tired of pouring resources into events only to see attendees come and go without making a lasting impact?

In this episode of Nonprofit Nation, fundraising master trainer Chad Barger, ACFRE, shows us the secrets to converting event attendees into loyal donors.

The data shows that events are unparalleled in their ability to engage attendees. A study by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) found that 84% of event attendees believe that face-to-face interactions are crucial for building stronger, more meaningful relationships.

Drawing from years of experience, Chad reveals the strategic approach to building long-term connections with event attendees, ultimately transforming them into passionate supporters of your cause.

About Chad Barger, ACFRE

Chad Barger helps nonprofit professionals fundraise more efficiently and effectively.  He is the founder of the firm Productive Fundraising, which focuses on bringing actionable, research-based fundraising tactics to small and mid-sized non-profits. He is a top-rated conference speaker and webinar presenter as well as a master trainer of boards that “don’t want to fundraise.” Chad is also a strategic advisor and coach to many non-profit fundraisers, executive directors and board members.  He takes pride in being a qualified curator of top-notch fundraising news and research through his weekly fundraiserchad e-blasts and popular free monthly webinar series.  Learn more at productivefundraising.com.

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Transcript

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This show is sponsored by Bloomerang, a solution that helps nonprofits like Shower up, which is a nonprofit providing mobile showers and personal care for those experiencing homelessness to efficiently manage their volunteers and donors in one place. And thanks to Bloomerang, Showerup increased their volunteer signups by 60% and first time donors by making it easy to give right on their site. Showerups executive director Paul Schmidt said Bloomerang is an ideal marriage of volunteer and donor management. The deeper we get into it, the more we love it. And if you want to see how Showerup easily manages their volunteers and donors with Bloomerang, just go to jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang. That's jcsocialmarketing.com. B l o O M E R A N g or visit the link in the show notes to learn more. All right, let's get to the show. 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. Hello. Hi and welcome, or welcome back to Nonprofit NaTIOn. This is Julia Campbell. Today we're going to be talking about something that I think is incredibly important. How do we turn event attendees or, you know, people that have that one touch with us into lifelong donors. So what I see in the sector, development directors, marketing directors, a lot of organizations pouring resources into events only to see attendees come and go without making a lasting impact. And certainly that was my experience and many of the events I organized when I was a development director. But in this episode of Nonprofit Nation, we have a fundraising master trainer, we have a productivity expert. We have an events expert who I will introduce soon to show us the secrets to convert event attendees into loyalty donors. And what I think is really interesting is I recently read a study from meeting professionals International that found that 84% of event attendees believe that face to face interactions are crucial for building stronger, more meaningful relationships. So if you have these face to face events or if you have these virtual events, I think it's really a huge opportunity to build and transform these attendees into passionate supporters of your cause. My guest today is Chad Barger. C f r e a c n P, which I don't know what that is. Chad, can you tell us what ACNP is? That is advanced certified nonprofit professional, and. Chad helps nonprofits fundraise more efficiently and effectively. He's the founder of the firm productive Fundraising, which focuses on bringing actionable, research based fundraising tactics to small and midsize nonprofits. He's a top rated conference speaker and. Webinar presenter, as well as a master. Trainer of boards that you can't see my air quotes don't want to fundraise. Chad's also a strategic advisor and coach to many nonprofit fundraisers, executive directors, and board members. He takes pride in being a qualified curator of top notch fundraising news and research. Through his weekly fundraiser, Chad E. Blasts. I'm going to put that link in the show notes. I subscribe. I read it every week and popular free monthly webinar series so you can learn more@productivefundraising.com. And Chad is a dear friend, an old friend, and thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you, Julia. It's great to be back. I'm so excited. So let's talk about nonprofit events. My first question is, how have you seen them change since the pandemic? Like, how? What are we seeing? They changed because they had to change. You know, we were forced. You know, over 70% of nonprofits did a virtual event during COVID pandemic times. 97% of those said they were successful. So we kind of got a new tool in the toolbox, and then we instantly wanted to revert back to just how we used to always do things. And for me, it was kind of a mentality shift that we have other ways to raise money. We did that during that time. Events are a tool, but what are they really best at? And they're best at introducing new people to our cause. It's the easiest way for our current supporters to invite other people in. It's our big public thing. We get some media coverage for. It's easy on social. We can invite people. You know, our annual appeal doesn't do that. Our donor newsletter doesn't do that. So for me, when it was time to kind of layer in these events, back in, it was a shift of let's worry less about making money off of this and more about getting new people. So, like, a successful event for me, yes, it needs to make money, but I really want to see, like 30% to 40% of people at an event being people I've never seen before. And I absolutely love that. I think that's such an important point because I'm not going to share your appeal letter with my friends. I mean, maybe I will if it's really great, but I really doubt it. But I might invite them, and this happens all the time, especially where I live, where I get invited to the Beverly Bootstraps fundraiser, or I get invited to an auction for the local animal shelter. And I might not have supported these organizations in the past or given to them, but I go because a friend of mine invites me, or I've heard about it because it's an event. So I think you made the point perfectly where we're not really forwarding your email newsletter or sharing your annual appeal or your annual report with our friends, but we might be more likely to share an event with them. So it's sort of like a low investment touch point, especially if we ask. Our current supporters to do that. I mean, we share with our board, our event committee, our volunteers, that one of our primary goals through our event is to introduce new people to this. Cause, you know, a lot of them would be happy to do that. They just think their job is to show up and buy the $100 ticket like they do every year and bring the same three couples they brought for the last ten years. And all of those people would probably give to us in other ways. Let's find those new people. So what trends are you seeing in events? Are we going back to in person? Like, what are you seeing? We are definitely back to in person. But even this fall, kind of, you know, two to three years later, they're still down. There's still about 20% of people that are just missing. And I think it's people that just learned, hey, I don't really have to do this. There's other ways to support it. I don't want to give up my Saturday night, you know, five times a year and put on the uncomfortable clothing and, you know, all of that. I had multiple clients who had virtual events and then went back to their normal gala a year later and had people calling them saying, hey, you know, you remember last year when you dropped off the bottles of wine at the house, and then we got on Zoom and had the fun wine tasting with the Samoye, and then a little party, and it was a half hour, and we were good, and I still spent $500. Yeah, I want to do that again. So we have this group, and now we're just saying, oh, no, that was a one time off. We're doing things as we always did. So I'm kind of recommending some kind of mix. Like, yes, you can go back to your normal events. Hopefully you've brighten them up, refresh them. But you have this tool that lets you reach people that you don't otherwise reach. Why would you not use it? It doesn't have to be a boring. Putting a camera in the back of your gala is not the answer. But designing something, especially for virtual, and designing it with attracting new people in mind, something kind of fun and different. So I like kind of. For small shops, I love like two normal events per year and one kind of virtual. Even if it's like a behind the scenes tour or your CEO reviewing the latest research in your field or something like that. It can be educational, but something use the tool. I think that's such a great point. So at the school board here, we were having all our meetings on Zoom, of course, and COVID, and people really were joining them and watching them and commenting and things like that. So we instituted like a Zoom citizens comments to increase, you know, accessibility and also inclusiveness, but also so more people could participate in citizens comments if they can't come to the meeting. And I think what you just said is so important. Like, we have to learn the lessons and get all of the good stuff that we learned. Hopefully during the pandemic, maybe we learned that people love that little virtual wine tasting. But also there are people that love the face to face. So I think that's super important. So today we're talking specifically about converting event attendees into donors. So can you elaborate on this concept of donor conversion? Sure thing. How does it differ from, like, our traditional event fundraising strategies? So when my mindset shifted on the purpose of events going from raising money to getting new people engaged, then that whole kind of reinventing the event experience came in. Because just attending one thing that someone invites me to is probably not going to get me engaged, especially if it's like a golf tournament. And we're really horrible at infusing mission into golf tournaments because most people show up, play, and maybe bid on a silent auction, but still don't really know what they're supporting. So, you know, that doesn't work. So really had to think through this whole lifecycle of the event, you know, starting with pre event communication at the event itself, and then post event and taking them through this process to educate, inform, engage, involve, really get them in before that solicitation comes. Because what most nonprofits do, somebody attends my event, it's a new name, so, you know, they're going to get the event correspondence, I'm going to throw them on my email newsletter list. And then the next time we do a solicitation, they're just going to get the normal solicitation in the mail. That doesn't work because we haven't engaged informed. They still really don't know what we do. We haven't shown them the impact of the support that they gave through the event. So it's a process, but kind of created this donor roadmap, which I'll walk through a few of the steps today, but we can also put a link to that in the show notes for folks, if you like that, Julia. So they can get the full roadmap and check it out for themselves. Oh, absolutely. I will definitely put the link in the show notes to the roadmap. So these are some of the common challenges, because that was another question that I had. The common challenges, like, are there other common challenges? I mean, are there other pitfalls that nonprofits fall into, other than maybe just lumping these people into their email newsletter list? The big problem is just viewing them the same as their other donors. So when they first come to our event, they're a transactional donor. That was a transaction. They were paying money for a fun night to go out with friends to play golf. Whatever it is, they're not a relational donor. They don't have a relationship with us. My classic example is a golf foursome. In a golf tournament, you have one relational donor and three transactional. The one that actually bought it, signed up, probably knows more about us and is engaged. The other three, they're just there to play golf. So if you want them to become relational donors, you have to walk them through this process. They're very different, but we treat them all the same. What are some things that the relational donor can do to encourage maybe a deeper relationship with the transactional donors and I love between them? Yeah. For me, maybe it's not just, hey, come to this golf tournament, or I have an open spot in my foursome. I keep using golf tournament as an example. We have a table at the gala. Come out. It'll be a fun night. Instead, hey, we support this cause in our community. It means a ton to us. This is what they do. I hope you'll come out and join us. We'll have a fun night, but you'll also learn about this really important thing going on in our community. I don't think that's usually the conversation. I've seen it kind of both ways. I've seen it where people are almost downplaying it. So I've been invited to an event that was, oh, this is a fundraiser. Oh. But it's not really going to be pushy, and you're not really going to be asked for money, and it's really going to be a fun night. And almost being embarrassed about it being a fundraiser, that, to me, of course, as a fundraiser, is very cringey. But then I've also seen it the other way, which is fantastic. I'm just thinking of my friend, my lovely friend Maggie, who had a fundraiser for her niece who has a very rare type of lymphoma, and she was raising money for children's cancer research, and she did a spin class to raise money. But all of the posts that she sent and the emails that she sent were all, like, photos of her niece and the story, and she really did the research and was talking about the impact that this could have and the research that's been done. I was really impressed. Maggie's not even a fundraiser. And I was like, wow, Maggie, you like, do better than well, I think. What you're queuing in on there is passion. Right? She had extreme passions. That was so personal, and that came through. And I think when we invite friends to fundraiser events, all of a sudden we forget about that reason why we're going, and we're passionate about the cause. So maybe that's a big part of this. Let's infuse some of that passion back into it and really use that. You know, one of the things we always say, characteristics of a successful fundraising professional, they're typically passionate about their cause. Right. We do better if people can pick up on that from us. So we want our volunteers, our attendees to be able to do that with their friends as well. Exactly. And to be able to kind of tie it back, like, why am I here? You know, I'm here to have fun, but I'm also here because this means something to someone that I care about. So as long as those loops are being tied. But you do have a recipe for building long term relationships with event goers. I guess we can skip to the first step. So what are the key components of a successful pre event strategy that with the long term, because I think we have to think long term with the long term goal of converting attendees into donors. So for me, it's excitement. I got to build this up. It's not just like it goes on my calendar and then I show up that night. I want to communicate with them ahead of time, even if I don't have the contact information for the new people, I want to send it to the host and say, please forward this to all of your attendees. And it's not just, like, event logistics. It's like sneak peeks at what's going on, little snippets of our mission. I used to do, like, I had a silent auction, and we take, like, little photos of the corner of, like, an item and say, like, guess what? It is. Like, it was just fun and exciting. So by the time you showed up, you were, like, kind of amped up. And not just. Yes. Oh, it's that event I gotta go to. I saw that caterer on my instagram feed, and I'm so excited to eat this food or something. Yeah, yeah. Behind the scenes, you know, the office with, like, the boxes of all the giveaways piled up, and it's like, we've got a job to do, but it's gonna be an amazing result for all of you, you know, these little pieces, so get them excited ahead of time. And then when we get to the event itself, I want to infuse and keep that excitement going. I've seen so many events, people do a great job of setting it up. Then we get there, and it's the boring old annual dinner. There's not that infusion of fun and energy and most importantly, mission, getting them excited about that. What are the best practices for engaging with event attendees during the event? Because do we ask them to give during the event, or are we planning the seeds for later? Or is it a combination of both? I know this might be a question people are having, like, how to walk that line. So I like to infuse mission somehow. Whether we're fear hearing from a client, a beneficiary, a partner, whatever you call them, testimonials, video. You can't leave this event and not know what you're supporting. And then after that, multiple opportunities to take a first step. And they're typically small purchases, you know, an auction item, a raffle ticket, a wishboard, a wine pool, something that they can do, because most people feel like, oh, I should do something. I was invited. It's a free dinner. This is still. This is another transaction on their part. They're not necessarily doing it yet because they're in. But this also lets me really make sure I can capture contact information, because a lot of times, the people that come, if we have a name, that's usually it. But when you're purchasing something, it's a way for me to capture at least an email address, if not mailing address for credit card information, all those kind of things. There's some small transaction that makes them feel like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing at a fundraising event. But more importantly for me, I have their contact information and now I can stay in touch. I really think the key here is just that great first impression you have to have. I mean, if you're inviting, like, what did you say? What's, what is the percentage that you encourage of new donors at an event? You said 40. I love, like 30% to 40%. That's great. Usually I find most events are like five to ten. I know, I know. And then people wonder why the event, quote unquote, doesn't succeed. I think, first of all, the goals are probably unclear. Like, is it just a fundraising event? That's fine. But I think thinking longer term, like you're talking about is going to be much more strategic and also much more lucrative in the long term, and it's going to lead to much more sustainability. So having that goal and then really looking at the attendance list and saying, like, do we have enough brand new people? But also creating that experience for these brand new people, like, it's gotta be great. You know, it's gotta be a wonderful, inspiring, like, fascinating celebration of everything you do and, like, the oscars. But, yeah, it has to be fantastic. I mean, it really has to be great. So when we're talking about follow up and engagement, what are some things we can do for this particular group to follow up and engage after the event to encourage future participation? Yeah. And this is really the key area, you know, in fundraising, we often say the fortune is in the follow up, and it definitely holds true here. And most organizations really don't do much to follow up. So after we give them that exciting buildup, that great event experience, that exposure to our mission, that opportunity to take a first step, then we go into our follow up sequence. So the things we typically do, you know, that immediately follow up email, I always have it drafted ahead of time because I'm exhausted the day after the event. So I just plug in a couple things and hit send that goes maybe a couple days later, a week or two later, there's that follow up, a bigger email with maybe some photos and the final results. But let's remember to infuse our mission into that, too. Like, oh, by the way, here's the video we showed at the event in case you want to watch it again, or here's the program that we were fundraising for in action. You can watch the kids doing whatever we were talking about, but really continuing to infuse that. So that's kind of the immediate follow up. Then I go into maybe a two to three month kind of. I call it the, like, you almost forgot about us, but we're reminding you process. So two weeks after the event, that email comes. Oh, okay. That's the final results. They think they're done. Maybe like, four to six weeks later, random thank you call or thank you note shows up, maybe from a board member event committee. This should be, like, the event committee's final step to, like, thank the new attendees for coming. So. Oh, wow, I forgot about this event, man. They must have really appreciated that I showed up. All right, maybe I'll go next year. Another like, six weeks go by, and then maybe I get an invitation to some kind of engagement activity. Come out and see, take a tour, breakfast, town hall. Maybe that's virtual. Maybe that's what we do. Virtual virtual engagement event. I can tune in at, like, seven at night and learn a little bit more from the comfort of my own home. Something like that. Then, okay, I did that. Maybe now I'm starting to care a little more. I feel like I understand more. And then my final step, I like to do this maybe about six weeks before we would normally solicit them. Normally send them a mailing or an email blast. Whatever we're doing, I like to send the impact letter. The impact letter. So this is a simple letter, no ask in. It says, dear Julia, thank you so much for attending our event three months ago. We wanted to let you know that since that time, we've put the dollars you helped us raise that night to work in our community. With your help, dot, dot, dot, dot. Four or five things have happened. Thank you so much. We hope that we have your support for the long term. We'd love to see you again in the future. Real general, it's not a fasc, as Lynn Wester would say. Right. It's not a thank you and an ask. It is just a thank you. And they don't get many of them. So they say, oh, my gosh. This organization not only thanked me the whole way through, they actually told me what they did with my money. You know, maybe I can trust them. I like them. You know, that whole buildup piece is there, and then I like to time it so it's going right in when we have a normal appeal going out from our organization. So they're going to get that appeal, but they get a different first paragraph. Their first paragraph says, thank you again for attending whatever event. As we've shared with you, your support has done. Da da da da da. And then it goes just into the rest of the appeal. So we've taken them down this path where we showed them what their support has done. We've given them opportunities to learn more. We've reported back, we've built trust, rather than just throwing them on our email blast and sending our solicitation. So it takes work. There's a process, but it's not super onerous. But we're kind of acknowledging who they are. They're their own segment. Until they give, until they give to. Non related areas, they are their own segment. And I totally agree with you. They need to be treated as such. They cannot be lumped in with our other donors or with our other just general email lists, some of whom might never have attended an event or even expressed any interest in what we're doing. So being strategic like that and having a plan, and it's so funny when you walk through it, it really does sound simple. It just involves a lot, a little bit of planning on the front end and planning after the event and really just keeping them in a little separate file. Part of the event planning process is planning out this system in these steps. What are we going to do with them afterwards? Because after the event, you're exhausted, you're ready to put the event to bed for, you know, ten months or whatever it is, to plan it out ahead of time, have the groups, and then you just have to execute. So can you share any success stories or case studies of organizations that have effectively sort of done this on the donor journey? Yeah, my favorite one, they actually did it with a little bit of a spin in that their goal was to get them to be monthly donors at the end. I love that. So about halfway through the process, they started talking about their monthly donor club and what that does and supporting it. There was no ask. It was just informative. They had some social proof, like there was someone being interviewed. That was part of it. And then their impact piece was, here's what you did through the event, but here's what our, I forget what it was called, sustaining circle thing. You know, here's what they do on an annual basis. So it was just kind of planting a seed as well. And then, you know, they brought on, they're not all 40% of the new attendees, but a significant number of new monthly donors. And that's kind of become the twist on the event for them. We don't just want new donors, we want new monthly donors, because then retention goes from, you know, what is it, 42.6% right now, instantly up to like 85%. I think that's such an important point of having a goal. Having a goal. I mean, you have a fantastic event. You want to raise money, but you also want to build relationships. If you have brand new people there, you've already gotten their time and attention, which are hugely precious. You know, you can't put a price on that. But what are you going to do with that time and attention? And it's something that's really difficult to get right now, virtually or in person or otherwise. So having that long term strategy, I mean, my word for the year is intention. Everyone knows this. My podcast listeners have heard me say this like ad nauseam. And I really am encouraging nonprofits to be more proactive and less reactive. Like, I know we have a million plates spinning in the air. I know, trust me. And Chad and I both know this. You know, being former development directors, like, we know what it's like to plan events and get the balloons and have the speaker and then have, you know, tech fail or whatever it is and have fires without. But as much as you can plan ahead of time. So I encourage you to go my listeners into the show notes, get the roadmap, chad's roadmap, and walk through it. It's going to be simpler than you think. It will involve a little more time, but I definitely think it's doable. So I would encourage everyone to take a look at that. So, Chad, I know you work with really small organizations. You work with the small bootstrapping and mid sized organizations. So where do you recommend someone whose head is kind of spinning here, because I think that's really your wheelhouse. You take those whose heads are spinning and you kind of calm them down and you make them believe everything's okay. So where should they start first? With this, I'm also a huge proponent of. Well, I'll give you my three tenets for successful fundraising with small to mid sized shops. Productive fundraising is built on habits compounded daily. We figure out the right things to do, and we just keep doing them. Successful fundraising is based on lifelong learning. You learn something new every day. Thank you all for tuning in. You're doing that today. And the third one is that productive fundraisers can't be productive if they don't take care of themselves. So that self care piece is so important, prioritizing it. So I'm going to combine these together, print out the roadmap, get your favorite notebook, and pen, go to a favorite place, copy shop, lake, mountains, whatever it is for you. Sit down for an hour, brainstorm, take a little break, and then you're going to come back with fresh ideas and a fresh you ready to put this into action? Love it. Thank you. So exciting. This is just fantastic. It's so tactical. I love these tactical episodes. So where can people learn more about you, Chad, and work with you? Sign up for your newsletter. Sounds good. We'll put a couple links in the show notes for you, but productivefundraising.com is all of my stuff. The sign up for my free webinar resource library. All the stuff I give away too much for free. Go help yourself. And then I go by fundraiser Chad on social and I'm most active on LinkedIn and Facebook, so we'd love to engage with you there as well. All right. I encourage everyone to follow Chad, especially on the newsletter. There are just such great resources and free webinars and fun things coming up. Also, you know he's probably speaking at your local AFP chapter. He's a prolific speaker, travels all over the country. Check your local AFP chapter to see if he's speaking and you don't want to miss that. So Chad, thanks so much for coming on the show and for sharing all of your wisdom. Sure thing, Julia. Fun as always. Can't wait to see you on the circuit sometime soon. 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 a review, because this tells other people, 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. Uliacampbell 77 keep changing the world, you nonprofit unicorn.