Missions to Movements
This isn't just another nonprofit podcast - it's your weekly invitation to think bigger, take bold risks, and create lasting change in an ever-evolving social impact landscape. Meet Dana Snyder, your guide through the evolving landscape of nonprofit innovation. She's on a mission to help change-makers like you push the boundaries of what's possible in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Each week, Missions to Movements serves as your personal mastermind session, delivering actionable insights and bold strategies that challenge traditional nonprofit thinking. Dive into revolutionary approaches to digital fundraising, discover how to build magnetic monthly giving programs that create lasting donor relationships, and learn to amplify your voice as a thought leader in the social good space. Whether you're reimagining your organization's impact or forging game-changing partnerships, you'll find the ideas, insights, and inspiration to take your mission further than you've ever imagined. Ready to turn your mission into a movement?
Missions to Movements
How Every Shelter's GivingTuesday Quiz Generated 170+ New Contacts & Automatic Gifts with Lauren Hanson
How can you use a quiz to elevate your nonprofit’s fundraising goals?
I’m excited to bring back Lauren Hanson from Every Shelter, to share the nuts and bolts of their successful GivingTuesday quiz that generated 170+ new contacts AND counting.
Inspired by The Adventure Project, who deployed a similar strategy (see Episode 7!), Lauren breaks down the easy-to-use quiz maker she used, and the 4-part email sequence that follows, inviting participants to join their monthly giving program, The Haven.
From crafting recycled billboard bags with Ugandan refugee tailors to painting a powerful mural in Brooklyn, collaboration is at the heart of all of Every Shelter’s campaigns, amplifying support for displaced refugees in East Africa.
This episode proves that with a little creativity and a compelling quiz, nonprofits can create lasting impact and inspire change.
Resources & Links
Learn more about Every Shelter on their website and on Instagram. And don’t forget to take their quiz and get a FREE sticker! Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn.
Tune in to Episode 91: Increasing Monthly Gifts & GivingTuesday Ideas to hear my first conversation with Lauren.
Lauren’s GivingTuesday strategy was inspired by Episode 7: How To Attract New Donors with a Quiz and Social Media Ads with The Adventure Project’s Tesi Klipsch.
This show is presented by LinkedIn for Nonprofits. We’re so grateful for their partnership. Explore their incredible suite of resources and discounts for nonprofit teams here.
Monthly Giving Awareness Week is May 12-16! Join me, RKD Group, and GivingTuesday for 5 days of FREE resources to help you launch and grow recurring gifts.
Are you still dreaming about building your monthly giving program or refreshing your current one? Applications are now open for my “done with you” Monthly Giving Mastermind. 4 spots are open and we start in July. Click here to apply.
My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.
Let's Connect!
For Giving Tuesday. We kind of had two campaigns. We had a campaign towards our Haven community where we were asking just for that next special gift over their monthly gift and we had a board member write that appeal. And we even had a match involved with that. People who were not part of the Haven who had maybe only given under a certain amount or had not given at all not yet donors. Before Giving Tuesday I sent an email to our Haven members and I treated them like a part of our group and I was like I need your help. Here's what I'm gonna do on Giving Tuesday. I need your help sending this to people. Get people to take this quiz.
Speaker 2:I'm Dana Snyder, your host of the Missions to Movements podcast, and my path to philanthropy has been anything but traditional. This show is your weekly mastermind, designed to give you the ideas, insights and support you need to push the boundaries of what's been done before in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Whether you're looking to build a magnetic monthly giving program, elevate your personal brand or create partnerships that amplify your impact, this space is for you. I'll bring you solo episodes and conversations with industry leaders offering actionable strategies and fresh perspectives that will move you and your mission forward. Let's turn your mission into a movement. Hey, hey, welcome back to Missions to Movements.
Speaker 2:Today we have a fun repeat guest and we were just talking backstage. Just some fun kind of background that sets up our conversation today with Lauren Hansen from Every Shelter that we previously recorded an episode on October 4th of last year prepping ideas for Giving Tuesday last year. This episode today is going to be on their Giving Tuesday strategy of this year. That was inspired if you're with me, listener that was inspired from episode seven from April of 2022 with the Adventure Project. So it's super cool to see like the full circle story of actual ideas being shared on this podcast and then to hear from people like yourself, lauren, who are like that sounds like a good idea, let's actually try it and execute it, and then to come back and share the results with everybody. So welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1:Yay, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, for a context setting for those that did not listen to our previous episode, if you want to go back, it was October 4th and specifically it was episode 91. So you go back to episode 91. If you want to hear the original conversation with Lauren, we're talking about giving Tuesday ideas and around specifically increasing monthly giving gifts. Lauren, will you share a little bit about yourself today and what is EveryShelter?
Speaker 1:yourself today? And what is Every Shelter? Yeah, so yes, my name is Lauren Hanson and I am the community manager at Every Shelter, and Every Shelter is a nonprofit organization that works with refugees who are displaced and who live in settlement camps or in like an urban squalor, and right now we mostly work with refugees in East Africa, and so what we do is we are about designing shelter solutions so that they can create home wherever their new home is, as they are in their displacement. We're kind of like the research and development of the refugee aid world within the shelter space.
Speaker 2:You do very cool, very important work and they have an incredible monthly giving program called the Haven, so highly recommend you go check it out. Setting up the story for this year, what did Giving Tuesday look like last year? Do you remember what you guys did? I know it's like it could be like forever ago and yesterday all at the same time.
Speaker 1:Right. So you're asking what we did in 23 or in. Yes, okay, one of our products is that we take recycled billboard material and we make it into really durable tarps. And as we were testing out this material and trying to figure out how to manufacture it, we were working with a refugee tailor in Uganda and they asked if they could make bags out of the scrap material that we were using in our tarp making. And so we said, of course, that would be so cool. Why don't you make us some and see like what they look like? And so we've started making bags out of billboard and we give it now the billboard vinyl. It's the like, really sturdy material.
Speaker 1:We make them into bags. They're called the every shelter bag. This one is actually called the Lauren bag because, as we were testing it out, we named it after ourselves. So we have like the Lauren bag because, as we were testing it out, we named it after ourselves. So we have like the Lauren bag. We have an Austin bag and we have a Megan bag.
Speaker 1:Mine is the Lauren bag and that's one that we give to our Haven members as a kind of a thank you when they joined the Haven. They get this bag and it's more than just like a this bag and it's more than just like a here's a free thing. It's like a story, because it helps people see that billboards can have a second life. And it's also a story of like refugees made these and they're incredible and they're gifted. And also it's just like a really good bag.
Speaker 1:It's a great like swim bag for parents who have kiddos who take swim lessons, like it's a beach bag. It's very durable. You can get wet, all those things. So it's a good way to like thank people. But also it tells our story, which is awesome. So, anyway, we were using that kind of as an incentive to try to get our Haven members to increase their monthly gift. And you know, we just I think we did just a general giving Tuesday big push last year and I remember you helping me kind of figure out like, yeah, let's try that Haven to add that gift of the second bag. Yes, with our giving Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was last year that was last year, Okay, so I just want to talk about. And then this year you sent me an email that you deployed a strategy based off of episode seven, which was with the adventure project, that they created a quiz and from that quiz they had a donor where for each person who took their quiz, that supporter would donate. I forget how much theirs was, but like X number it was $5. $5? Yeah, okay, you're like, I know exactly what it was.
Speaker 2:I know it $5 on behalf of the person who took the quiz as an appreciation for the support and you would get. It's a big lead generation tool, so walk me through the logistics and the strategy of how you decided to come up and test this.
Speaker 1:It came back on my radar because the Adventure Project did it again for their Labor Day campaign.
Speaker 1:They had a campaign where they were trying to raise money for like their mother project, for helping men who are pregnant, and so that was kind of like their incentive where it came back into my inbox and I was like, oh, wow, they're doing this again. And then this time they are also doing a sticker to also kind of incentivize people to participate. And so I did the quiz. It was similar to the last one. It was maybe geared a little bit more towards their program that they were trying to fund. So I did the quiz and I just saw how easy the steps were and I was like, wow, this would be just really interesting if we tried it. And the hardest things that we have with our work and probably other people can relate to this is that our work is completely out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker 1:So, we're helping people who you'll never meet. We're helping a problem, solve a problem that here in the States we'll never see or feel, and so we have to really do a lot of education. And so I knew that like a quiz, where we have like these big points that we try to get people to understand, and we've been using these questions, as we've been doing a lot more like in-person events. We've partnered with some architecture firms in Houston and I've had some like happy hours and our CEO, scott, will start with these questions and he'll actually have people write down their answers.
Speaker 1:And then you know to kind of yeah, when you answer those questions it's like, oh, wow, I was really off, I didn't know that, and so that was like a big win having that quiz to like answer those that kind of need that we had to get people to learn about our cause. And then we also had a really cool thing happen in the summer, where people who are listening to me can't see this, but behind me I have a big mural.
Speaker 1:We had a mural done in Brooklyn, new York. We were gifted a mural from a wonderful team called Colossal Media and they do hand-painted murals. They're incredible advertisements and so they chose as their summer quarterly like nonprofit to work with. And so, oh, amazing, yeah. So we went for world refugee day, which is always on June 20th. We went to New York city and got to see the beautiful mural you know, have it displayed and get to see it in real life. It was beautiful.
Speaker 1:But we also got to partner with an amazing designer. Her name is Dana Tominacci and I mean, if you Google her, she's worked with Apple, facebook, starbucks, oprah, she's all of these like amazing people. But I went to college with her and so I gave her a nice cold email of like, hey, dana, do you remember me? And she responded and I think, because this was such a great opportunity for her to like also, you know, get to show her work on a hand painted she's wanted to work with Colossal. So it was a great partnership for her to work with us and to work with Colossal. So it was a great partnership for her to work with us and to work with Colossal, okay, so that happened and so we've had this brilliant mural done by Dana and we were like, okay, how can we keep using?
Speaker 1:this we had a big fundraiser in the summer that we were able to utilize a lot of the drawings to be a part of, like, our branding. I was like I knew I wanted to do something with her artwork and so I created a sticker, and that's kind of how it all fell in place. It's like we have this thing that we could give people. We want people to continue to get this beautiful art that tells about our work.
Speaker 1:The sticker says until every refugee creates home, and it has so beautiful flowers that are kind of made out of items that you would find in our stores that we have called shelter depots, so it's a really like beautiful tools to flourish. It's got a lot of like meaning behind it, and so that was. I think that was kind of like all of those things came together where it was like this just makes too much sense. We just need the funding. So we worked to create a proposal to a handful of donors to come behind us and help us fund this project to this campaign, and so they said, yes, I love it. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot of work in the front end to get it all ready, to make the proposal to our donors to be like this is something we need your help with and it'll be really cool.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Okay, so for yours it's a supporter. They're donating $10 for every quiz response, and so is that up to like X amount.
Speaker 1:This has been bigger than we thought it would be, so we have had good problem to have people come into the pool.
Speaker 1:So we'll say it that way We've kind of met our limit with the first couple and now we're yeah, we've had other people come in and want to help. So, yeah, it's $10 for every quiz taken. And yes, we wanted to get new people into our world. That was always the goal. But it's been a great tool also to have people who are already in our network take the quiz. I mean, they're learning things too. They're getting answers wrong, and then we're able to also gather just their address, which is sometimes we don't always have with somebody who's in our network. They've only given their email and so it's helped us maybe take that step further in our relationship with them. So it's kind of been a win-win with, like, new people and with previous people in our network.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and so, listeners, I will definitely share a link to the quiz right below in the show notes so you can click the quiz and you can experience exactly what Lauren and I are referencing. So I want to talk through some of the logistics of the building of the quiz and how you launch the quiz. My results are probably outdated from when you emailed me. So just before we get into the nitty gritty, when we had spoken, there was 150 new contacts. Is that still close?
Speaker 1:So we're probably at like 170 plus new contacts now, but we've had 281 people take the quiz.
Speaker 2:And so every day when I go in.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing new people taking it and so, who knows, I might even have more people as I get off this call Like it's still happening. I'd still open.
Speaker 2:So fun, Okay amazing.
Speaker 1:I have to order more stickers. Yeah, we have about 170 brand new people to our organization.
Speaker 2:Amazing, amazing. And so those people get entered into an email welcome series with an invitation to join the Haven, their monthly giving program, and they get mailed this beautiful sticker with the amazing story behind it.
Speaker 1:So good so good One thing that the Adventure Project did that I appreciated is that they had a really beautiful mailer direct mail card with also an invitation to join their monthly donor community, and so I did the same thing with like a QR code, so there's a point of email ask and then also part of the sticker is getting a ask in the direct mail.
Speaker 2:I love this. Oh my gosh. You have to tell I mean, hopefully Becky, maybe you're listening If you are not already connected to Becky, who's their CEO co-founder you have to let her know that you're doing this, because I think she would love to hear it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to send her an email, let her know.
Speaker 2:Yes, you two should definitely connect. Okay, what tool did you use to build a quiz? Yeah, it's called.
Speaker 1:Interact Big fan of Interact, and it's the same tool that the Adventure Project used too, and I don't remember how I found out. You know, trying to figure out.
Speaker 2:I think we talked about it. Maybe I think we talked about it on the episode that's probably what you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I've used Interact too, I think, since then it's so easy. So if somebody is looking to consider doing this, how much time did it take you to build out the quiz?
Speaker 1:It didn't take long at all. It's a very easy process of like uploading pictures. I mean interact is a great program where they make you know they take out any kind of burden or hardship out of it. It's very easy to do.
Speaker 2:Okay, awesome, so that was easy to use. How did you roll it out? What was the launch approach to Because 170 new people, that's big Did you do just a social post email? What was the idea of getting the word out about it?
Speaker 1:When we made the proposal and we asked certain people, we had them go ahead and take the quiz and get familiar with it, and so there was some word of mouth there. For Giving Tuesday, we kind of had two campaigns. We had a campaign towards our Haven community where we were asking just for that next special gift over their monthly gift and we had a board member write that appeal and we even had a match involved with that. And then we had the appeal to people who were not part of the Haven, who had maybe only given under a certain amount or had not given at all not yet donors and so that was more of our like hey, we have this way that you can help on Giving Tuesday, just take this quiz. But what I did special this time is that I wrote before Giving Tuesday. I sent an email to our Haven members and I treated them like a part of our group and I was like I need your help.
Speaker 1:Here's what I'm going to do on Giving Tuesday. I need your help sending this to people. Get people to take this quiz. I love it, yeah, and so I said that to some people on our board, people who have been on different committees within our group. I sent it to this one lady who's our biggest cheerleader, she loves us, and I was like here is an easy way for you to help, like just send this to your friends. And she got six people to take it for me.
Speaker 1:So it was a lot of word of mouth. Scott posted it on his LinkedIn and that got a lot of. It was so beautiful to see people who were so impressed by it and they said that this Giving Tuesday like stood out, like this was a way that to break the noise of a lot of appeals, and so that was just so.
Speaker 1:Oh, it felt so good to hear that it was standing out to people and so I think that helped. It was all very like organic word of mouth, but then also we had that appeal that it went to an email. And then definitely social. I was posting it on LinkedIn, I was posting it on Instagram and because it was just going to a page on our website, it was very easy to share.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. That's incredible. Now that you've seen this success, it'd be interesting. The component that was shared in episode seven with Teshi from the Adventure Project was they ran a paid ad campaign. Now it depends on the backend if you have the donation to fulfill, what can happen when you put some paid behind it. But you could just use it if you remove the donation element and that's specifically towards giving Tuesday holiday time and you just use it as you can receive the sticker and it's a lead generation campaign. It'd be interesting to still raise awareness and education about the key issues that you're talking about, because I took the quiz and listen. I would love for you to test your knowledge too. I think I got nearly all but one wrong and was just completely floored at the statistics that you guys share, and this is amazing. This is amazing, and so just one another.
Speaker 1:Like great thing about interact is that you can use it to really educate. So when somebody gets the question wrong, you're able to really write in like here's the right answer, and here's like why, and here's what we're doing about it. And like so that's what's the right answer, and here's like why, and here's what we're doing about it. And like so that's what's nice too. It's not just like X, you got it wrong, it's you know. There's a way to keep learning, even if you got it right or if you got it wrong.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's so good, and when you actually click the link, you'll see that it's on your website. It's just embedded. It's an embed code, right? Yes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was really easy to do. I'm not the most. I did it. I didn't hire my web designer. I was able to figure it out on my own, so that shows that it's pretty easy.
Speaker 2:It's so good. Okay, this is everyone's task. Go take this quiz, like right now. While we're still on the podcast, you can click the link in the show notes open it up. What I also love about it is it looks beautiful on mobile. I think that's really huge. It's very easy to take on mobile and desktop. So if you're on your mobile phone right now listening to us, you can take this. You can see exactly the stickers Beautiful, I didn't know. Now I see it, looking at it, the design that you're talking about with the tools, with the flowers and the designer, and there's also a video that talks about more about their work and their shelter solution. So it's really, really well done. Lauren, are you going to keep like, repurpose this quiz for other things outside Giving Tuesday? You think?
Speaker 1:I think so, because it just it makes so much sense, like I would love for us to create different questions and to like go deeper into, you know, different aspects of the refugee crisis. This coming year in 25, we're really trying to do more education, and so we're. We're actually partnering with the Baker Institute at Rice University to like co-host some events where we're bringing in experts and we're sharing about just the problem and the solutions that we're trying to come at the situation, because it's one of those things, one of our questions on there is how many people are displaced and I've been in part of every shelter now for five years, and when I started it was around 70 million, and just in five years it has gone a lot more, and so this problem is not ending. It's not ending, and so we've got to come up with different solutions to help just the massive amount of people who are stuck in displacement.
Speaker 2:The answers to select from for that question are 78 million, 114 million and 120 million, and I'm not going to give away what the answer is, but by what she just said you can probably tell it's not 78 million.
Speaker 1:Right, and by next year it'll probably be. That will be the not a right answer on there. That's the sad thing. It just we can't keep up with the number. It just keeps growing.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm really looking forward to I have filled this out and getting the email welcome series. What, how many emails are in the email welcome series that you put together?
Speaker 1:It's four and that's another thing too. It's a nice like. The first one is very just like short and sweet, like thanks for you know, for taking the quiz. Look for me, I'll be sending you an email soon to share more. The second one is like about our video. We have an article that was written about us, so I share the article and a second one or a third one, and then our third or fourth one. We do introduce the Haven community and then I think on our final email is like the bag kind of component of when you join the Haven you can get a bag. So those are the four and it's exciting to see people starting to get those emails. We've spaced them out. So it's been cool, and I should also say one of the big pushes that we did this is we just changed our CRM and so now we're using Virtuous and so now we're using Virtuous, and so Virtuous has been great because we have the marketing is a part of Virtuous.
Speaker 1:And so it all really. When I look at somebody's contact, I can see what emails they're opening up or what they were just sent. It's all very together and that is exciting.
Speaker 2:It gives you a holistic look at someone, yes, which is very helpful, because then you'll be able to build a better rapport and relationship with that person probably too. Yeah, yep, awesome, lauren, this is amazing. I love it when like people just like A think outside the box or see something and they feel inspired and they're just like, yeah, let's do it, let's try it, let's see what happens, and then you have results like this. So thank you for A being somebody who tells me about these things that you're trying and testing and for saying yes to come on the show to share with others. It's such a positive light and testimony to who you are and the organization. So thank you so much for coming on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we're really better together.
Speaker 2:I totally agree, and go tell Becky she will be amazed and so grateful that something that they tried, that you've done. And now, listener, maybe you should try it too.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:Lauren, if people want to learn more about Every Shelter or connect with you directly, how can they do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we are at everyshelterorg and you can find us on Instagram at Every Shelter. And then LinkedIn. I'm Lauren Hanson on LinkedIn, but, yeah, I would love for you to check out Every Shelter and learn about our work.
Speaker 2:Amazing, beautiful Lauren. Thank you, and have a very happy new year. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review. Wherever you're listening, your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, too, so you'll never miss an episode, and until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
