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
The Rise of Sustainable Giving & Why It Matters for Nonprofits with Dave Raley
Did you know 97% of recurring donor value occurs AFTER the first gift?
Author and nonprofit advisor Dave Raley is here to share why the subscription economy is reshaping recurring giving and how nonprofits can shift from a transactional mindset, to building engaging donor experiences that foster long-term retention.
We get into why you need a dedicated staff focusing on recurring giving programs (one of Dave's clients saw 6-figure year-over-year growth after implementing this!), how brands like organic perfumery Ffern are creating intrigue before a purchase decision, and how to prevent involuntary donor churn from declined or expired credit cards.
From refining onboarding processes to offering “upsells” and donor-exclusive experiences, Dave provides an inspiring roadmap for maximizing the lifetime value of monthly donors!
Dave also shares details on his book launch and how you can win one of 10 free signed copies. Click here to sign up and be automatically entered to win.
Resources & Links
Connect with Dave on LinkedIn and check out his new book, The Rise of Sustainable Giving: How the Subscription Economy Is Transforming Recurring Giving and What Nonprofits Can Do to Benefit. You can also sign up for Dave’s weekly newsletter, The Wave Report to be entered to win one of TEN signed copies of his new book.
One of Dave’s favorite recurring giving experiences is from the International Justice Mission.
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!
subscriptions don't exist if they can't keep customers. That's maybe stating the obvious. Put another way and I did this math for charities 97%, and that's not a made-up stat 97% of the value of your recurring monthly donors takes place after the first gift 97%. So if you can trick donors into giving one gift, just like subscriptions and we can all, by the way, share the experiences of subscriptions that essentially fooled us into buying in or accidentally buying in- I'm Dana Snyder, your host of the Missions to Movements podcast, and my path to philanthropy has been anything but traditional.
Speaker 2: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. Ah, we have a new first time guest today.
Speaker 2:Dave, I am so excited you're here because we are talking about one of, of course, my favorite topic, one of your favorite topics, and that is recurring giving, and this is leading perfectly timed into your exciting book launch. This is leading into the monthly giving summit coming up in just a week, a couple weeks at this point, which is very exciting. The Monthly Giving Summit is February 26th and 27th, and there's no one better than you that I'd love to riff with to talk about why, in the world, subscription, predictable revenue, sustainable revenue, matters so much, coming into a brand new year. Dave, welcome to Missions, to Movements.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dana. You and I have geeked out about this so much off mic, so I am so excited to geek out about it with you on a microphone and on your podcast, no less. I've been listening for years.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. I know I was like we need to get this stuff recorded. Honestly, a lot of our conversations have happened at conferences, during lunches, lunch lines a lot of times, as we wait to gather the goods, wish we would have had a microphone for some of those moments, but now we do. Will you please kindly give us an introduction to you and your company and your book that's coming out.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. 20 years in this industry I started. By the way, I'm originally from Southern California. I now live outside of Seattle. Many did not know that the quote unquote industry of charities, doing marketing, was something that you could get paid to do. And I had grown up in Southern California, went to school, was a double major in marketing and what we then called web and information technology which is now known as digital, and I just wanted to do something.
Speaker 1:I figured I had to work for some big company somewhere and just as we all did.
Speaker 1:Yep, through a series of candidly providential circumstances, found out that there were like advertising agencies that worked for charities, and that just blew my mind, so moved to Seattle, started working at an agency at that time called Masterworks, just helping charities do fundraising and marketing. Started in direct mail because digital fundraising was not really a thing when I started, but within about two years took over and built the digital team at the agency, and so fast forward 18 more years. I have run an advisory practice called Imago Consulting and we basically help charities and businesses that work for charities to grow through, and I always talk about sustainable innovation, and a big part of sustainability, as you and I both know, is what's been happening in recurring giving specifically for charities.
Speaker 2:Two questions from the background. Okay, so agency life forever ago Was recurring giving something talked about when you were advising organizations back then.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was, but it was really what I and I talk about this in the book, which I should mention at some point. The history is really candidly at that time there were only two major types of recurring giving programs. Two major types of recurring giving programs. One was what I would call one-to-one so sponsorship, child sponsorship, missionary sponsorship, like I give as a donor, and then there's a specific beneficiary and I know who they are and they're going to receive. I may literally know them because they're a friend, or I may know them because the charity said this is the child in.
Speaker 2:Guatemala that you're sponsoring Very GivingUSA-esque.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the other kind back then of historical recurring giving program was what I would call membership and that's like public television, public radio, zoos, museums, aquariums, content. I work with a lot of charities that create content and do sort of education essentially as their mission. Those have historically had pretty strong recurring giving programs because it's like, oh, I'm a donor and I receive ongoing literal benefits, either physical goods or services or content, and there's kind of a reciprocal, almost product relationship there. So, yeah, so 20 years ago that was the thing. But if you weren't one of those two types of charities, tough rocks, you're on your own, good luck.
Speaker 2:That was it. That was it. I'm not going to let people wait until the end. I will mention the book. So if you picked up the Monthly Giving Mastermind, this is another one to add to your shelf, fresh, hot off the press. The Rise of Sustainable Giving, how the Subscription Economy is Transforming Recurring giving and what nonprofits can do to benefit. And something that you and I both talk a lot about is and you mentioned it, it's two times in your title, or sorry sustainable and then subscription, and I also have subscription. How much do you think, and I'd just love your thought on this, your opinion what do you think, and I'd just love your thought on this, your opinion, the subscription economy has played into the result of what's happening in the nonprofit sector. If the subscription economy would not have grown as much as it has, do you think we would still be seeing what we're seeing in our space?
Speaker 1:No, great question. I believe that the subscription economy has completely changed the game. I mean, there's a reason I just spent the last three years putting together this book, and that was, you know, when you and I, I think, mutually discovered that, probably about a year and a half ago, I was like, oh, thank God, somebody else is not only seeing this, because I don't pretend to be the only person seeing this, but taking this seriously enough to say this is different. This is not the same thing as 20 years ago when I entered this industry. This is a different opportunity, and it's different because of this thing called the subscription economy. Just fun fact subscription economy really started about 12 years ago and it started with companies like Netflix and then later.
Speaker 1:Amazon Prime and Pandora and Spotify, and I talked about this in earlier Birchbox I'll never forget Birchbox Stitch Fix. Did you do Stitch Fix?
Speaker 2:I never did Stitch Fix.
Speaker 1:I didn't afford the birches and the stitches, but I loved the idea Birchbox.
Speaker 2:I think it was like $10 a month.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a $10 a month.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm thinking.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I was thinking of Stitch Fix, like where you got the like clothing item, but then the clothing item was like, as a dude who's fairly frugal, I'm like what.
Speaker 2:It looks good, but I'm not paying that much. Oh my gosh. I need to just talk about this with you for a second, because this is so timely for our conversation and listener, I just want you to think for a second like, what's your favorite subscription? Like what just like gives you, like the feel good vibes and, yes, I can totally be your subscription to do good. I hope it is every single day, every single month but also the ones that just are like this is just part of me. This is literally like part of who I am as my DNA, and I want to share this experience that I had with you. I wrote a LinkedIn article post about it. I don't know if you saw it. Just over the holidays, I got targeted on Instagram and I'd love to break this down with you.
Speaker 2:As somebody else who nerds out about recurring giving and how we can make this relevant to nonprofits, I got targeted on Instagram by this perfume brand called Fern F-F-E-R-N. They have quarterly fragrances that are based on the seasons and their ad imagery was these ice skaters on this gorgeous I don't know where they were this gorgeous lake with mountains, and it was about this winter 2025 scent and if you are interested, you have to join their ledger to be one of their members. Ledger Interesting word choice. And then I was like okay, I'm interested. I'm not a perfume person. I literally own one bottle of perfume that I've owned for like five years. So this is like.
Speaker 2:I don't know how I got targeted, but I did and I signed up for their ledger to be accepted. I got a text message that was from Owen, their founder owner, and was like thank you so much for joining the ledger. We'll let you know when a spot opens up. A couple of days later I got another text message just saying hey, so glad you're here. Here's a little bit about like the fragrance. This time we see you're on the list. We'll let you know when a spot opens up. Then I don't know if it was a week later and it said oh God, it was so profound. It was something about like you're invited, your spot's been opened, the language they use.
Speaker 1:I will link to the LinkedIn post. We've selected you kind of a vibe We've selected you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just felt like ooh, like that's exciting, and how they described the scent was like deliciously elegant and it felt exclusive and intimate and it's $139 a quarter and I signed up for it. Now I am doing this as a case study, Right?
Speaker 1:You're a biased audience.
Speaker 2:But still, still, I am curious if the scent's actually gonna smell good. It comes with like tea and like a candle and this like ceramic piece that you can spray the scent onto, and it gives you a tester and it says test it, see if you like it. If you don't like it before you open the full bottle, send it back. We'll give you a full refund. So there's an out. Okay, there are so many things I love about this for nonprofits, but what's your like? I would love to hear your initial gut reaction to that.
Speaker 1:I love it and it literally illustrates so one of the chapters in the book. I talk about the six shifts that the subscription economy has created that directly relate to nonprofits. Okay, guess what Dana the number one shift is. It is from transactions to engaging experiences.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:So you had an engaging experience not only an engaging experience, but an engaging experience before you bought. Yes, right, you had multiple moments of like, wow, this is cool, this is interesting, you know, like before your actual purchase decision and it used to be- oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:I found the text message.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to read it to you real quick. Okay, owen, here from Fern, winter 25 just launched and we've reserved a limited number of bottles for new joiners. Yeah, okay, specific, your name has been chosen from our waiting list to receive the season's fragrance. And then it goes into. I just real quick, I want to read this and then we'll move on. Yeah, winter 25 imagines the scent of wild ice skating amid snow-capped peaks. Cool eucalyptus and lavender are warmed by sparkling pink peppercorn and Sicilian lemon, while a touch of amber rock rose brings depth to the blend, tempering its sharpness with a rosy glow.
Speaker 1:I mean just Please tell me that AI did not create that scent in that description. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think this goes into. When you're talking about experiences, I also think about very visual language with nonprofits.
Speaker 1:So I think it's very engaging. Obviously they're playing on scarcity and exclusivity and personal and obviously this is a text message relationship. You've had not to miss that.
Speaker 2:No emails.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fascinating. So here's the thing. I think it's awesome, the biggest question that they face as a business. I guarantee you and that if I were going to, if you said don't buy, I want you to invest, like you know, buy stock in this company, or whatever.
Speaker 1:I would say what's their retention, like, like what's going to happen over the next three to six months Because and this is so important for charities subscriptions don't exist if they can't keep customers. That's right. That's maybe stating the obvious. Put another way, and I did this math for charities 97% and that's not a made up stat 97% of the value of your recurring monthly donors takes place after the first gift 97%. So if you can trick donors into giving one gift, just like subscriptions and we can all, by the way, share the experiences of subscriptions that essentially fooled us into buying in, or accidentally buying in, because we did the trial and we didn't cancel in time and, oh shoot, did I forget that calendar note that I made?
Speaker 1:By the way, I just got a note from Apple, the app store, yesterday, saying your blank app subscription. I won't throw them under the bus, it's finishing soon. I was like darn straight because you tricked me last year. You suckers. So I think the biggest question and this is for charities too is what is the ongoing value proposition? What are you doing to get not just the first gift or the second gift, but the 12th gift and the 24th gift? And for this particular fern, I think the biggest question is can they keep people beyond the novelty of the first perfume experience?
Speaker 2:And the product actually, by the way, is going to have to turn out to be good, Otherwise. Forget that. Why are you going to work so hard on growth if people aren't staying with you for the long term? What have you seen be some really successful retention strategies when you've worked with clients?
Speaker 1:So retention is the second half of the equation after acquisition, and it probably gets 5% of the attention, by the way, in the nonprofit space.
Speaker 2:I would even say it's what you should think about first, before you even grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's an argument that could absolutely be made. For me, I think retention is a combination of things. It certainly is what your ongoing relationship is, and cultivation and what that experience is how you onboard and affirm your recurring donors.
Speaker 2:I like that word. Affirm, affirm, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep Appreciate and affirm that's the number one mission, candidly, of the onboarding strategy. But I think the other piece is simply and this is maybe not as exciting as it sounds but to prevent what the subscription businesses call involuntary churn, and so the number one. In my experience, the number one place that charities lose their sustainers is through no fault of the sustainer, and that is simply a credit card decline. Payment information changed, we changed donation platforms and lost our token the tokenization process where we can do that. I talked to a charity the other day that had lost 400 monthly donors through the course of a transition and you start to do the maths on 400, average gift of $40 a month
Speaker 1:$480 a year, 500 times 400. Like you're like oh no, that's not okay. So that's a big piece. And then I do talk in the book about how do you cultivate, how do you upgrade candidly? I don't know about Fern, but I do know that my other subscriptions not all the time, but they provide additional value If I move to this tier of service. They offer opportunities for you know, candidly upgrading. And most charities, again, are focused completely on how do we get people into our monthly program if they're focused on that at all. But then once they get them in, they like hand them to donor processing and they're like good luck, we got you and they move on.
Speaker 2:I think having a this is something. So I had a podcast episode that came out in January around Actually, no, that's a lie I think it came out on Christmas. That was my top five fundraising and marketing trends for 2025. And within recurring giving. One of them was on having a sustainer role Having somebody in the organization that is solely or primarily I want to say they can be doing other things, but like primarily focused on your recurring giving experience and whether that's a VA that you hire and they're doing that role for X amount of hours a month. Have you worked with any teams that have somebody that's solely focused on their recurring giving?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. One of the teams I don't have the stats offhand, but one of the organizations that I work with did a deep dive assessment. That's one of the things we do for clients is go really deep into their program, look at. There's 10 different components of their program. We look at and basically evaluate all those components. Long story short, we gave them about 40 recommendations. You can do this, do this, do that, do that, and we always prioritize that in the top 10, by the way, because 40 is overwhelming. So it's like top 10. And if I had to do three right now, it'd be these three. Guess what the number one recommendation was Dana.
Speaker 2:To hire somebody To assign. This was a big enough organization that it was like.
Speaker 1:somebody needs to feel the pressure of growing this program Because and this is a mistake that I don't know what percentage- but a very high percentage of charities, feel the excitement of growing the program. Oh, yes, yes, yes, that too, not the neck on the line part. Actually, this person, if they were on right now they would say I am jazzed up about this were on right now.
Speaker 1:They would say I am jazzed up about this, so that's not all pressure, but somebody does need to feel accountable and responsible for this thing. So this organization, that was the number one recommendation. That was one of the changes. I won't pretend it was the only change, because there were a lot of other recommendations we made.
Speaker 1:That organization is up six figures year over year. Wow, and again, not saying it was just the one change. There were some other very strategic things we did, but that was the, in my opinion, the linchpin, because there's so many, or oh, the thing I was thinking about was one of the mistakes organizations make is they treat they don't think of it this way consciously, but they treat their recurring giving program like their single gift program. So they're consciously, but they treat their recurring giving program like their single gift program.
Speaker 1:So they're like yeah, we do recurring giving, but the people that are responsible for recurring giving are responsible for getting the next single gift from donors, and those, while they seem alike on the surface, are completely different programs. And so, while most organizations can't put somebody full-time in that role to your point, I don't care if it's your full-time job Somebody needs to have the, not just in name or in title, but the actual responsibility of growing this program.
Speaker 1:And when you start to create that ownership internally, whether it's the executive director or preferably not the executive director, it is one of the linchpins because then that person can go and get your book and my book and they can like go to conferences and like think about strategically how to grow their program, and that's a real one. Lock.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that. Okay, you also mentioned upsells and I want to like dive into that real quick. Another prediction that I had was around bundles Now very common in the for-profit space for us to see subscription bundles Disney, hulu, espn, right Bundled together for this discounted price of blank. I think there's such a rich opportunity for a brand new way of partnerships when it comes to subscription bundles for nonprofits, what are your thoughts and have you seen anything like this happen? A random example could be just because we both wrote books like Book of the Month Club, which I love Shout out to them as a subscription, so like if you.
Speaker 2:Audible. Yeah, if you join our nonprofit, we have this partnership with Book of the Month and you'll get this discount as a member of our Like whatever. It could also be way more aligned, like X water bottle, because we're a water charity and you get a free one every quarter, or whatever it is like sent to you Thoughts.
Speaker 1:Oh, dana Friend, Dana, you are the one one of the ones, but probably the main one who I think is going to help make that happen. I don't know, and I'll explain why in a minute, but I don't know whether it'll be like 2025 will be the year where that is a thing, because I think there are some things that need to line up first, namely, the incentives between the brands and the charities. Yeah, but there are going to be charities in 2025, that, or actually more brands that see the value of that and partner with charities to provide that.
Speaker 1:But that is like you said. It's actually really relatively recent trend in the subscription space, the bundling. When you see Disney Plus and Hulu, which they're owned by the same company, but they throw Paramount in there, they're like okay, something's going on. These enemies are getting together and bundling their services. So I think it's going to happen and the reason I think you're a piece of that is because you have such a rich history and experience, candidly with brands and brand activations and the importance of bringing those things together, and so I do think that's going to be a trend. I don't know how big it's going to be in 2025 because, again, there's just some stuff that needs to develop, but I look forward to hearing about some of those. I don't know. Let's put our brains together and make it happen. Yeah, let's figure it out. Let's figure it out and create some next podcasts, Maybe. What an opportunity.
Speaker 2:We'll come back together and talk about all these creative partnerships that happened. Okay, I can't talk to you about recurring giving without talking about growth and a lot of organizations, when they're launching and they're growing, have a bunch of challenges that, listener, you could be up against. This could be your board mindset. This could be changing your donation platform because it doesn't actually optimize for recurring giving. It could be lots of different things. What would be your recommendations? Like I know you said before, you could have 40 different things to share with somebody From your research in the book. If somebody is just like I'm stuck, I feel like I've tried everything in the book but I'm up against a wall. What do I do to move past that and to get momentum and to have people trickle in and then hopefully just jump into joining as a recurring donor or trainings?
Speaker 1:or workshops is to try to like get everybody in the audience, right, because you'll have somebody that's like a grizzled veteran who's done this for 20 years and, you know, doesn't think there's anything new. And then somebody is a brand new and no idea what the lingo means, right, and so you try to write for everyone. Like that question is a little bit for me, like how do you grow, dana? But I have a couple sort of simple things that I would recommend to get you to the answer to that question. The first and I always like language, so I'll use the three words benchmark, evaluate, design, so benchmark like where are you?
Speaker 1:today. Like so many organizations, compare themselves to charity water. Right, well, I don't have 80,000. Like so many organizations, compare themselves to Charity Water right, yes Well.
Speaker 1:I don't have 80,000. We went from 82 monthly donors to 96, but Charity Water's got 80,000. It's like why, why One? You should totally learn from Charity Water. You and I both talk about them in the book and they're easy to pick on for good reason, because they've done incredible work. But where are you today? Another friend of mine, an author, said a phrase that was super helpful to me, both personally and professionally is never compare your beginning to somebody else's middle.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, thousand percent I was like, and one I liked the last part. I was like, oh, middle, because we're all in the middle, dana, you're in the middle, right? None of us are at the quote unquote end or the culmination or whatever. We all feel like we're in the starting place, so that's okay. But if you don't benchmark, if you don't know where you are today, then how can you know whether or not you're making progress?
Speaker 1:So I had one client we did a recent campaign. This was a smaller client and they finished the effort that we had talked about. It was a live event and we pitched monthly giving and they were kind of like disappointed, like I could tell they didn't say I'm disappointed, but it was like, oh well, we only got so many, x number of monthly donors. And I did some quick napkin math and I said, wait a second, in three hours on one day, with very little planning and you don't even have a program, yet we generated $10,000 in long-term value. And they were like, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way, like I'm like, this is incredible. Like I don't know what they had in their head. I don't think they had anything specific in their head Like, oh, it needs to be this number or it's not, but they were again kind of comparing themselves, you know, to others.
Speaker 1:So to your question how do you grow? The first thing is understand where you are today, because if you don't know where you are today, then you can't know where you're going in the future. Second is evaluate. And that's where that assessment does come in, like I can't say, well, it's acquisition, it's upgrading, it's you know, it's your token process, you know, or whatever. And that's why in the book I do literally go through those 10 areas. And so it's just to understand where you, what is your program today? So go on your own donor journey or, better yet, ask somebody else to go on your donor journey, because you know all the excuses. Why this?
Speaker 2:doesn't work. I love that. I will never forget. This was like years ago now. I used to do detailed digital social media audits. I don't do these anymore, but I had a client they're a pretty large organization and I had access to their Google Analytics account and I saw like, not surprising, 80% of their traffic came from mobile. And then I looked at the correlation of donations and I was like, in the majority by far, we're on desktop. And then I looked at the correlation of donations and I was like, and the majority by far were on desktop and I was like this is interesting, what's happening to all these people on mobile? And like the time spent was still good and everything. So I went on mobile. Dave, I couldn't find their donate button.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I was going to say like having just gone through December and given some of my own personal gifts and like why, why, why is this form this way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't find the button. You couldn't even find the donation button.
Speaker 1:It was hidden on mobile. It was hidden yeah.
Speaker 2:So I immediately like the first thing I said on the call is just wanted to let you know. I was like, before we jump into everything else, I'm going to just share this with you. And immediately their CEO was like get our CTO on this call right now, open up the screen, share. And she's like excuse yourself from the meeting. Please go fix this right now.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I can feel the room, but that is such a good reminder of benchmarking because I think we are so quick to jump into what's next before actually pausing and reviewing. This is actually relevant, and I have a Slack group, the Sustainers that you're familiar with.
Speaker 2:That's a Slack group just for nonprofits, building recurring giving programs and sustaining them and somebody in there was sharing their goals and was excited about what they had accomplished and they're ready to plan for next year and trying to figure out where to start and I was like that's amazing. You had a great year. What worked? Check the emails that you wrote, what subject lines performed best? What landing page are we drawing them to? She's like oh my God, yeah, I've never paused.
Speaker 1:And this is part of the reason why having somebody that feels that responsibility, it's like not of course you would do that, but like that's something that would more naturally happen. If everybody's responsible, the way I say it in the book is, if everybody's responsible, then nobody's responsible. Like, have you ever seen that old abbott and costello skit where, like the who's on first, this is a man? Why do I feel like the old guy in this conversation? This is before my time. So, abbott and costello, like famous black and white comedians, you have to. I'm going to send you this video.
Speaker 1:I actually include a link in the book because it's so hilarious. It's called who's on First and it's this whole skit where one guy is like a fan of the baseball team and the other guy is the manager of the baseball team and they're talking about the names of the players on the team and the trick of the part of the joke is that the player on first name is who, like who is on first, and what is on second and I don't know is on third, and so it becomes this hugely just a hilarious comedy sketch of like who's on first? How do you not know who's on first, like you're the manager of the team? Blah, blah, blah. The long story short is if everybody's responsible, like who's on first, like who is going to be thinking about? To your point, yeah, maybe we should look at what we did over the last year. Now, obviously you can have a consultant, but there's only so much we can do from the outside. Right, it becomes so, so, so critical.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love. Oh my gosh, I could talk to you forever about this. Okay, we're getting to the end of the conversation and I have to ask I know you are a recurring giver yourself Is there an incredible experience that you have been a part of as a recurring donor.
Speaker 1:Okay, there's a couple, the one that comes to mind, and you will know this one, so I'm going to try to tell the story in a way that you can't figure out who they are at first. So this one, actually this one begins with my wife. So my wife went to a conference in Dallas this was eight or nine years ago now and it was a conference women coming together just around their faith and just speakers and all this kind of stuff. So it was really conference women coming together just around their faith and just speakers and all this kind of stuff. So it was really cool.
Speaker 1:She's followed it for years. It's been something that's super powerful for her. And she went to this conference and this organization got up and that, even the way I just said, that is not right. This organization was just a part of the program, so had some onstage moments, talked about the work that they did specifically, had somebody that had benefited from their program telling her story and then had this, the most incredible moment of like. How can we stand with this organization to make this a reality, this vision a reality and I'm really beating around the bush to not say the organization, because the organization is International Justice Mission.
Speaker 2:Yes, they are so good at this being integrated into events.
Speaker 1:Yep, and so, and my, by the way, I have the friend of mine who was at the organization at the time, who was spearheading that program. Tina Hudgens was literally apparently standing backstage just freaking out like, oh, I don't know, you know how's this going to go. This, you know all this kind of stuff, but nine years later I think I did the math We've ended up giving and this is not a bragging statement, this is just a point of long-term value yeah $2,700, $2,900, like almost $3,000 as not major donors, not middle donors.
Speaker 1:Just a moment in time. That was a powerful experience that has resulted in the case of International Justice Mission. You know a $3,000 donor who candidly like again, we're not in the major donor category, right?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, you know what's funny about this is. So I started, like my journey, with recurring giving with Dressember. Dressember went through a merger with IJM.
Speaker 1:Yes, I saw that.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so I've been a recurring donor with them. This will be my fifth year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:So that's so funny that it's the both of us Very powerful work. I know we're wrapping up our conversation but, listener, if you take a look at, or just Google search, lauren Daigle is a singer Pretty sure she was on American Idol and she did a whole campaign with IJM that has skyrocketed their recurring giving growth recently.
Speaker 1:Oh, super cool.
Speaker 2:Yes, very cool. Go check it out. She's doing it on her concert series. Again, just out of the box. Cool ways that you can grow and expand awareness for what you're doing with your program by partnering with people who have a like-minded audience to who you think might become your supporters. So with that I want to say, dave, thank you for writing a piece of work that nonprofits can read and soak in and share with others. Again, I will say the title and I will link to it in the show notes. The book is called the Rise of Sustainable Giving how the Subscription Economy is Transforming Recurring Giving and what Nonprofits Can Do to Benefit. Dave, where can people find you? Is there specific places you want them to get the book?
Speaker 1:Oh sure, yes, you and I have been talking about that offline as well. You can just find the book at sustainablegivingorg. Make it super simple and that will candidly send you to the Imago consulting website so you can see the work that we do there. But LinkedIn is such a beautiful platform. If you want to connect with me individually or just follow what I'm doing, linkedin's great. And then I do write a weekly column. I mentioned at the top of the show that really my passion is around sustainable innovation and, candidly, for nonprofits, the most important sustainable innovation of this era is recurring giving, so hence the book. But I care deeply about helping organizations innovate and grow and figure out how do we do what we do, how do we candidly bring in the revenue to make what we do better and be able to do more of it, and so I write a weekly column called the Wave Report. And yes, I am from Southern California. Even though I am a failed surfer for the most part, I have learned some lessons from riding waves.
Speaker 2:You would love my conversation with Chad Nelson at Surfrider.
Speaker 1:You know what I saw, that you had that, and I do and I need to like, find him and say like, hey, give me more wave, you know surfing tips or whatever. I have an entire keynote Dana called how Nonprofit Leaders Can Surf the Waves of Innovation.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:The metaphor goes deep. Is it real? Yeah, I only mention it because I do write that weekly and if you hit sustainablegivingorg you'll see a place to sign up for articles or weekly trends. If you're interested in that, I also cross post those occasionally to LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Awesome, amazing, dave, congratulations on the book and all of the goodness that you're doing, and just nonprofits. We are cheering you on, both of us so much with recurring giving. So if you have questions, like want to bounce off an idea, like want to be connected to somebody, please, please, please, reach out to Dave, reach out to myself. We'll connect you with each other, like all the things. So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1:Can I add one last minute thing?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:No, yes. What do you do with that? I didn't mention it, but we are going to give away 10 free copies of the book here at the launch. So if you're here in the first month or so of launch, you don't have to do anything to sign up other than just either download our free blueprint to growing your sustainer giving program, sign up for the wave report. We're going to basically do a drawing and give away 10 autographed copies of the book.
Speaker 2:I love it. Get on it. Download it Link in the show notes. Thanks everybody, I'll see you next week. 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.
