How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Jiří Krupa (& Jesse Marks) on using fundraising to win campaigns

• James Özden

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0:00 | 1:16:02

This is a new kind of episode! I am trialling something where I am asking other people to be the interview host, rather than me. This has many benefits, one of them being you get a break from hearing my voice. But you also get to hear from a broader range of talented advocates who know much more about a certain area than I do, giving a much richer conversation. 

The first guest-hosted episode is run by Jesse Marks, Program Officer at The Navigation Fund, who interviews Jiří Krupa, who runs the Growth & Impact Group.

This episode focuses on how campaigning organisations can better engage their supporters, members and activists, to win more campaigns. Jesse & Jiří both discuss the power you can build via better supporter engagement, as well as the strong financial engine of regular monthly donors to support your work long-term.

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Intro: more effort means more impact 
(00:08:17) - Pros and cons of grant funding / major donors 
(00:10:45) -  of Regular Donors in Campaigns
(00:17:29) - Supporter-centered communication
(00:21:24) - Misconceptions about fundraising
(00:30:47) - How to balance fundraising and campaigning
(00:34:14) - Training the trainers 
(00:46:03) - A concrete story of the importance of engagement 
(00:53:50) - The value of sharing failures
(01:02:14) - Understanding the health of an audience
(01:10:12) - Closing questions 

Links & resources from the episode:

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Effort Signals Power In Campaigns

Jesse

Individualized messaging to decision makers and how much it can help the targets of campaigns perceive the effort that people have put in. And it seems to me like part of what you're looking for is for people to actually put in effort because you think that it makes them more committed to the cause. Or like what is it that makes you think that we need people to put that effort in?

Jiří

Well, I think I read it multiple times already that like you know US uh mobilization groups and you know political activists, they have this kind of um flow or a rate, meaning that one knock on a door of a congressman equals 10 phone calls, you know, equals 1,000 emails. Basically, if you make an action kind of easier to do, you are devaluating its power. So it's just shifting the rates, nothing actually changes, and like showing to a target that a person outside of a movement was able and willing to invest their time and resources, that's what wins campaigns.

James

Hey

Guest-Hosted Format And Big Questions

James

everyone, this is a different kind of episode. So something I'm trialing is I'm asking other people to be the interview host rather than me. And this has many benefits. Uh one of them being you get to have a break from hearing my voice. But in addition to that, you also get to hear from a broader range of awesome advocates who know much more about a certain area relative to me, hopefully giving a much richer conversation. And excitingly, the first of these guest-hosted episodes will be run by Jesse Marks, who is a program officer at the Navigation Fund, and he'll be interviewing Jiri, who runs the Growth and Impact Group. And Jesse will introduce Jiri properly, but in a nutshell, this episode focuses on how campaigning organizations can better engage their supporters, turn on people for their campaigns, and also how they can build a strong financial engine of regular monthly donors to support the group's work in the long term. So let me know if you enjoy this type of episode. And we have one more on the pipeline coming soon, so please stay tuned for that. And without further ado, enjoy the conversation.

Jesse

I'm

What Growth And Impact Group Does

Jesse

joined by Yiddie Krupa, based in Czechia. Yiddie is an engagement, mobilization, and fundraising consultant. He's worked directly with at least 15 animal welfare groups across Europe. He's the founder of Growth and Impact Group, often referred to as Gig, an organization that the navigation fund where I work supports. And Gig is an organization that increases the number of engagement practitioners in the movement and alongside them the amount of regular donors and supporters on mailing lists. Yiddy, welcome to the podcast.

Jiří

Well, uh, thanks for inviting me, Jesse, and thanks for this introduction. I wouldn't write it better myself.

unknown

Great.

Jesse

Well, it's great to have you here and um to be talking. To get started, I'd love to just have you explain what Growth and Impact Group does for people who don't know.

Jiří

I found, thanks to the help of my colleague uh Jan from Denmark, uh a term I want to use, and that's a community of practice. A community of practitioners, basically, not an expertly led group of people who know what they are doing and are really good with their LinkedIn profiles or whatnot. It's a community of people who do hands-on work on engagement, on fundraising, on communication. And it is enabling those people to get connected with each other outside of borders, outside of groups, and kind of give them a bit uh shift in perspectives.

Jesse

Makes sense. And so when you're talking about an engagement practice practitioner, like we could engage a lot of different people, but just to make it clear to those who are listening, you're really talking about like supporters of campaigns, supporters of organizations. Is there anything else you'd say about like what you what you have in mind when you think of engagement?

Jiří

Yeah. So the end goal always is, and I hope always will be, is regular donors. Because that's the ultimate benchmark. If your group, if what you are doing, can convert people to and you know, make it seem like a good idea to send you 15 dollars a month or 10 euros a month as well, uh, then you are doing something right in terms of communication. And you kind of need to have robust systems in terms of using different tools and having the right staffers, and that kind of empowers your group overall. So it's an indirect benchmark or indicator, but still having regular donors means you are doing something right in your group.

Jesse

Got it. And so when you think about how organizations can get to having regular donors, individual donors, what are like the pathways that you work with groups on developing?

Jiří

Well, it's never switched into something else so far. So in the end of the day, it's emails and it's a name bunch of those, ideally combined with telefundraising and combined with integrated campaigning. That means having a fundraising follow-up after a person takes action, or either as well, signing a pledge or sending a letter to a target.

Jesse

You know, it's so funny. I remember when like social media launched. Like, I can remember back to MySpace days. I I don't know how proud I am of that. But um like we've just had this conversation for what 20 years of whether email is dead. And it's funny to me that we're still today saying, well, no, that's probably still the best way to raise funds.

Jiří

Yes, um, I think this takes us back to the beginning, right? Like the value of an action. Uh, when I'm sitting on my toilet doing this doom scrolling and you know, showing uh looking at a video or like you know, uh clicking a post of someone, like, yes, but that's that moment, and you know, that gives me a supporter some kind of a satisfaction. But unless there is a direct follow-up, you know, sense of me filling out the contact form, did it really happen? Was there an actual engagement? Is there a way how to capitalize on that? And I know we can always do the remarketing and you know play with analytics and all that, but having a direct way of reaching someone that's uh valuable for a group.

Jesse

Yeah, I see a lot of organizations set goals just around engagement, but not really. Then how do you convert that into people who can take action over time?

Jiří

Yes. One of the things that like I would really love for someone to crack, and at least in Europe, it seems to me we are having um a bit of an issue with that, is that it's surprisingly easy to do a video that has a million views or to do content that really gets somehow viral, and and you know, it seems and all the business manager metrics are showing it to us that yeah, this was successful, people like it. But then you look at your traffic on your website with your call to action, and you know, suddenly out of 1 million views, you get 10,000 visits, and from 10,000 uh visits to a website, you get 5,000 uh signatures. Out of that, 4,000 confirmed leads, you know, opting for your mailing list. And this kind of escalates to numbers that are not reliable for a long-term growth.

Jesse

All right, I'm gonna pin this. I actually want to come back to you and ask you about um how you get high-quality leads. But I I think we might be jumping ahead if I jump into that now.

Why Regular Donors Beat Grant Dependence

Jesse

So, what I'd love to ask you just to set the scene is, you know, I think like right now, and you know, I'm got guilty of contributing to this, well, like, I don't know, guilty, responsible something. You know, a lot of groups rely on major grants to fund most of their work. And if major funding is available, I would really love to hear your perspective on why groups should even bother investing in small gift donors and regular giving.

Jiří

That's a super cool question, and I can see your conflict of interest here.

Jesse

Well, in full honesty, I joined, I took, I took my role in part because I thought that major major giving had some downsides for groups and didn't necessarily think I could fix it, but um was very curious in that problem. Yes.

Jiří

Uh what I really like as a way of thinking about this is that a grant could be a shortcut for what you want to build as a director, as a decision maker, as someone who builds a movement. Because, yes, like getting, for example, 400 regular donors that will allow you to hire one more person for a year, like that's tough work, that's a lot of work. So getting uh a grant from a funder that kind of helps you to be above the surface and you know not drown in your own sweat. And alongside that, building that capacity and you know, trying to get all those donors so eventually you can pay for your people for within your own country, within your own group, within your own regular donors. I think that's a long-term strategy, and you can take a shock. Yes, uh, I want to mention a specific example. Julia from Arde, a Spanish organization that's like you know, uh recently funded. Arde took grants, and you know, Arde is now a somehow mid-sized organization, but internally they are working really hard, and you know, that's Julia and the two friends as uh as a co-founders who decided to build the organization in a diverse sense, in an independent sense, and you know, to become uh resilient. So they are getting their leads, they are creating a mailing list, and they are having fundraising campaigns. So there was already a year-end one, there will be the next month, there will be a summer one, and of course, they will repeat a year-end at the end of this year.

Jesse

Very cool. Um, and I imagine that also helps them build the list that they can then mobilize for campaigns. Certainly, when I've worked on campaigns at organizations, it's often the same people taking action and giving. Is that your experience as well?

Jiří

Yes, just yes. Thank you for mentioning that. Yes, we have data on this. Uh, when you have a write-to-campaign asking people to write to targets, either companies or politicians, like your regular donors are the best activists, and it kind of makes sense, and it's not surprising. Like, if I'm giving to an organization like $20 a month, and they ask me to do something about the problem and they you know support me along the way with a good website, with a good action, I'm gonna do it. And uh, I will do it more probably than someone who doesn't do it.

Jesse

So it all sort of feeds back on itself, keeps people engaged. Yeah, I sometimes think about the like value of individualized messaging to decision makers and how much it can help the targets of campaigns um perceive the effort that people have put in. And it seems to me like part of what you're looking for is for people to actually put in effort because you think that it makes them more committed to the cause. Or like what is it that makes you think that we need people to put that effort in?

Jiří

Well, I think I read it multiple times already that like you know, US uh mobilization groups and you know political activists, they have this kind of um flow or a rate, meaning that one knock on a door of a congressman equals 10 phone calls, you know, equals 1,000 emails. Basically, if you make an action kind of easier to do, you are devaluating its power. So it's just shifting the rates, nothing actually changes and like showing to a target that a person outside of a movement was able and willing to invest their time and resources. That's what wins campaigns.

Jesse

Of course, I imagine that like not every group is gonna be a perfect fit for doing regular donor fundraising. Like, what would you see as like the attributes of an organization that are are a good fit?

Jiří

I don't believe there are like topics that cannot be translated into easy enough language that will take people's hearts. Of course, it's a trade-off if you want to be scientific or a lay uh lawyer-based organization. If you really want to do just the corporate work, whatever, like yeah, take the trade-off, get the grants, and do your specialized work. But then the limit is that you shouldn't be trying to be real good at communication or like you know, have big aspirations regarding a mailing list. Because what we see quite clearly is that the organizations that have the most regular donors are the ones who communicate the best, and that's kind of you know goes hand in hand. So expecting your lawyer, full lawyer organization to get 200,000 people on a mailing list just because of a one campaign, that's a bit ambitious a lot of times.

Jesse

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing is also like public facing being a useful criteria. Yes. Okay,

Community Of Practice Across Borders

Jesse

Yidi, you told me earlier about the fact that you're a community of practitioners. Can you just say more about what that means, what that looks like, who's involved?

Jiří

Happily. This recording, and you know, we are recording this podcast on a day when a global call, global QA call, happened, and who was attending? It was almost 60 people from 29 uh countries. Very good. And all these people have been talking about year and regular uh donation, regular donor campaigns. And we do this call every year. It's kind of a preview, what's ahead with a year and regular donor support group, and that's actually a real practical thing. What gig does. We do a support group for everyone who is able and willing to do a year-end regular donor fundraising campaign. And this seems to be working in a way because a lot of groups are coming from a different context and they have different levels of problems. So we believe like they are capable of solving their own problems. What is needed is kind of uh encouragement and support, and you know, the ways of increasing an adoption rate, and just sharing a space or sharing the platform with people on your level, not the biggest experts, but people on your level kind of elevates everything into practice and you know helps you out with that adoption rate. So that's one thing I wanted to pinpoint a year and support group. Last year there was 26 countries, more than 5,000 new regular donors have been converted. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you. Of all the good work to the 26 groups who have been, you know, the people in them have been brave enough to get out there, agree to participate, and try new tactics. The other thing that we do as kind of an alongside year-round support of this is academies. And there was a spin this year on those academies because I really didn't want it for the experts to be preaching to people about topics, so we put it on its head, and now the academies, which is 48 workshops divided into four different streams throughout the year, they are covered by the people on the ground who are presenting their deep dives. So, for example, now we had three deep dives from three different positions about a Polish poor farming ban. Uh, we had a deep dive on on how Latvia calls people and how they do collatons. And we now, for example, have a deep deep dive on across Europe how much does it cost to get a regular donor through Meta. So that's what's happening in academies and alongside the academies. And I'm sure uh James or you, like you will build put the appropriate link somewhere around this podcast, right?

Jesse

Yeah, we can definitely link to the academies. Excellent. And you know, one of the things I've been really impressed with, and you even just sort of mentioned it uh in response to me asking you this question, is how much you work to uplift other people in the work you do. We will talk more about training groups and training people, and yeah, that's something that I want to come back to as well. In case people are curious and want to just like get a taste of the three different perspectives on the Polish verband, what are the like angles that these three people are bringing to the conversation?

Jiří

Yes, so we have Sandra, the digital marketing lead. Well, that's Meta, and then the content on socials. We have Magda, that's an angle from copywriting, and we have Ola, and she did an angle on engagement. So basically tying all this together. And what is really interesting in this is that with most of the groups, when they have a victory, we kind of find out from campaigners what happened, you know, what worked, and so on. But there is like all the rest of the professions and you know, all the rest of the people who already also worked on the campaign, and just allowing this to be out there for other groups to see and read and contact those people and share the knowledge helps tremendously. I've already mentioned Arde, uh, they have a farming ban campaign in Spain, and Julia is heavily using the stuff that uh this is available from Polish Anima French.

Jesse

Very cool, nice. Yeah, I am very impressed by the level of collaboration and sharing across the different groups in Europe to like help each other win more efficiently and more effectively and learn from mistakes.

Jiří

It's something that makes me impressed a lot of the times. For example, I've mentioned I've mentioned the global call today, and that was a bit where a person surprised me because they they did a calculator that predicted results of regular donors based on your mailing list for the year and regular donor fundraising campaign, and that's based on our data from the past three years. So we now have a predicting calculator that was a work that happened unplanned. And that's the thing. When you run things top-down, sometimes you suppress other ideas, other approaches, and all that. But when you work horizontally, like things will surprise you.

Jesse

I assume this is looking at like how active is your base, how big is the list, how frequently are they taking action, or like what are the how on earth does it calculate?

Jiří

Yeah, so it's a it's a it's a law, it's a law of big numbers uh and kind of like statistical basis. Uh, I don't understand this. That would be the person who created it, Ola. But most importantly, it's it's based by the data. So we now know that most groups which are small can get this kind of a conversion rate on their mailing grid. Most groups which are a bit bigger can do this conversion rate. So that's like simple heuristic, let's say, but it's a tool that was unplanned and that can now be used for the new groups thinking about joining the year-end regular donor fundraising group to you know set their goals realistically. Because in the past, we had groups who said, Well, I'm gonna do 500 regular donors, and then yeah, they had 5,000 people on a mailing list, and this map in math thing, basically.

Jesse

Yeah. Nice. Well, good to have that sort of develop over time with the community. All right.

Fundraising Is Relationship Building

Jesse

So, what are some things that you think people misunderstand about fundraising?

Jiří

That's a quite simple answer. Uh, for a lot of people, it's it's that it's not about money. So the common assumption is that fundraising means money, means cash on your bank account, like no, means welfare for your staff and your organization. But in actuality, uh the long term growth and kind of a stability that can come from fundraising that always kind of needs to be based in relationships. And and even here uh in our World, like no, a lot of those relationships are with major funders, but to a certain extent, this comes with the regular donors, the people who you know are giving 10 euros a month. Like, no, it's about a relationship. Because if they believe that what you do makes sense, if they believe that what you do kind of reflects good on them because it helps them pursue their own worldview, then the retention comes. And then you can expect a regular donor to last more than five years. And you know, then we can start talking about gifts in will or backquest and all that. So fundraising, first and foremost, is a longer investment that benefits the whole organization because it kind of teaches you a lesson on building relationships, and that's always super good for campaigns as well.

Jesse

Yeah, I've always noticed that like the groups that do well at regular donor fundraising, I think are the ones who can also try and like engage an audience effectively. And it seems to me like what is underpinning that is that they more often simulate the mind of their like their audience in the way that they're communicating instead of oh, what do we want to say? It's more like what do I what does our supporter need to see here to be be motivated to take action.

Jiří

Yes, yes. Well, well, I hear and there's your fundraising background, and are you working many many in an organization that was good with donors?

Jesse

One thing you and I share in common is like this sort of obsession with supporter-centered communication and how we run campaigns or have run campaigns. I'd love to hear. I hear a bit of that in what you're describing.

Supporter-Centered Communication That Works

Jesse

I don't know if that's the term you would use, but like what like I wonder if you could just elaborate on what it looks like to run supporter-centered communication.

Jiří

Let's go a bit outside of our movement. And I kind of believe everyone has an uncle or an aunt who just talk about themselves and like they suck the energy out of the room with their own problems. And if we need to share space with them, it's mostly just waiting for you know for us to leave. And a lot in my inbox, and maybe I'm subjective here, but like you know, professionally, I get a lot of emails because I have subscribed on to so much um newsletters for research purposes. But most of the communication I get is about the organization and you know what they do, what they did, how awesome they are. I don't yeah, I can see that. Yeah, so the supporter-centric is also really good internally. But if you are a director or a decision maker and listening to this, like if your staff needs to be thinking about your supporters and kind of needs to put their mind outside of their little bubble and you know, imagine the impact of their words outside on the people just consuming the stuff, that helps everything out, that helps the campaigns, but also when you then get the good feedback from supporters that say, Thank you for you know reaching out and all that, like it helps with the confidence of the stuff. And in the movement, I hear it a lot. Like, we talk about who we hire and you know how to develop these people and you know how to get them confident. And working supporter-centric language with a supporter-centric language and getting the regular donors that helps the confidence for the internal staff as well. And I have an example for that. There is Vege Zajnica, which is a Serbian organization led by a wonderful team, uh, and um project manager Tamara, no, decided last year to do a year and regular donor fundraising campaign with us. The internal goal in Serbia, which is like a country with a lot of potential, let's say it like that. The internal goal was first regular donors. And in the end, after the dust settled, all the emails have been sent, the communication done, there was 58 regular donors. And it ain't much in the grand scheme of things, but all the people on the ground, like the people for in Vegas Eidnica, suddenly know that someone wants to support the work, and what they are saying and doing in their own country is meaningful to their neighbors, to the people you know sharing that country with them. And and there comes a lot of confidence from this, and that enables good campaigns.

Jesse

Yeah, I remember when I was working at Animals Australia, we had like a supporter communications team, and almost every day I would hear the story of someone who'd called us and just chatted to that team about the campaigns, and it was always like a very helpful reminder. Oh, yeah, there are real people out there who are watching, caring. And so many of the decisions that we made ended up just being like influenced by like, well, what do these people care about? What are they interested in and what will keep them showing up?

Jiří

Yes, yes, exactly. A follow-up on that, Jesse. Yeah. One of the like super cool things you can do when you allow yourself to be supporter-centric is, for example, before you start a campaign publicly, you know, with the website and all the videos of whatever, you can always send a couple of emails to your supporters just asking them to click around. Uh, of course, find it and you know, join this new campaign, whatever, but also click around, you know, send you some feedback and all that. And this helps you accomplish multiple goals at once, right? Because it makes the supporters feel good. Like you know, before this goes to public, it goes to me because I'm an insider. That's one thing. The other thing is that it makes everything kind of easier, complexity-wise for the launch itself. You don't need to launch everything at once, you you put it in stages. And the third thing, sometimes you really get uh really useful feedback on the new campaign. And sometimes the supporters will tell you, I don't get it. And that's uh one of the really important feedbacks you can get before launching something publicly.

Jesse

So you've got your own like internal user experience team for testing?

Jiří

Yes, yes, yes. Well, because there are no rules, and you can do basically anything you want when you follow the principles that you set for yourself, and thus being supporter-centering and really counting on it's not you, it's the movement, you know, changes the perspective. And uh, when we already mentioned the Polish fur farming ban last year, one of the really great learnings they had, and it's on paper right now, written for everyone to see, but it was that they changed their mind and it stopped kind of to be anima poland versus the government, and suddenly it was the people who wish for the fur farming ban to happen versus politicians, and that's when it started to feel totally different.

Jesse

Hmm. Okay,

Integrated Campaign Funnels That Convert

Jesse

so we've talked a lot about campaigning and a lot about fundraising, and often I see groups build fundraising strategies that are totally disconnected from their campaigns. So I could imagine some people going, Well, are these can you have the same conversation about these two things? But my impression is that like your approach is not to run these two things separately, and I'd love you to just explain why you focus more on integrating fundraising into campaigns. Where do you see that go wrong?

Jiří

It's not in my own free time, but like I also do still consultancy work. And what seems to me like the most useful thing in a group is that when it's internally cohesive, meaning that there is no tension and there is not much of uh conflict. I don't mean constructive conflict, but like conflict coming from like bad decisions. And for this, like let's extrapolate into the future, right? Like, you know, if you have a group that gets 90% of its funding for one campaign, but then it flips around and does 10% of its work on that funding, and the other way around as well, like then suddenly there is tension because anytime someone needs to communicate something, they feel like they are lying. Anytime you kind of distribute internally the work and the workload, people are saying, like, ugh, shouldn't we? Like there is the tension between campaigners, advocacy folks, and fundraisers. So, yet again, the advice for anyone who's you know building a group, already having a group, a decision maker, would be to decrease this internal tension and not to get yourself in this particular situation. Uh, one of the positive sides of like actually integrating fundraising and campaigns and to just work at one thing at one time, uh, that's all the right two pages that are hot these days, like you know, uh a page that allows uh user to write an email to a target, because suddenly it makes sense to fundraise on something and that ask uh the donors to follow up, to to continue what they already believe in. And and and as I already mentioned, these people have the best conversion rate. So it kind of adds up the the synergy. So instead of thinking of two different projects, like you take all the people you have inside the group and you let them work on this one integrated thing, and that's how they can unlock their best potential without that tension.

Jesse

And so you're really thinking about what's the first step for a supporter, what's the second step in a journey as opposed to like this sort of scattered communication that doesn't really tell a longer story? Yes. Yeah.

Jiří

Yes. Last year, ASF in Germany with their EDECA campaign. Well, the first step was just sign the pledge. Then you've been asked to write to EDECA, the supermarket. For all the people who wrote to EDECA, the supermarket, there was reporting, so ASF knew who wrote to EDECA. Uh they asked them to send a handwritten letter to a target of some. I'm not sure. Maybe it was a CEO of ADECA. So so three or four hundred people wrote a handwritten letter and and send it. And uh ASF asked those people to upload that the picture of that letter on a website. So so it also created a social proof. Like, look, people are actually doing that, and and that's how you create a funnel that's that's also fulfilling other goals. You are keeping the supporters engaged, uh, there was fundraising alongside it, but also campaign-wise, suddenly you have a proof that customers care, and then me being a campaigner, I would be happy to have this.

Jesse

Gosh, it's a great example of how a belief that your supporters can be the tactic, like the the change agent can turn into tactics that then make that real as well. Yes. Yes, nice. Okay,

Training Leaders Through Peer Teaching

Jesse

well, this seems like a good time to jump from just general fundraising to how you train groups, how you train other trainers. And you talked earlier about how you have you value, or you think there's like benefits that come out of like a horizontal structure. So could you just tell me a bit more about your training, the trainer models? Who are the people who are involved in your academies? Like, how did they get to be involved with you?

Jiří

Well, train the trainer model, like I sometimes says that like I don't really have like original ideas. I kind of tend to just read about things and then like apply them. I'm not sure I've ever had an original idea either. So I read it somewhere and it felt real good to you know switch things around. So with the train the trainer, uh, the idea is that you change perspective for a person. A great example is, for example, Elia, uh Elia Tileva, originally from Bulgarian Nevidimi, nowadays employed by uh Lithuanian Kristinarvaj. And basically, she was tasked, uh young promising uh fundraiser, she was tasked to do a summer fundraising campaign. And that would be you know uh a big challenging task itself. But also, she was asked to document her progress alongside it, so to write her uh fundraising diary. And after some debriefing, this happened. The diary is awesome, and you know, I'm sure there will be a link around this podcast for people to read it. But like after debriefing with Elia, like she said, this helped me so much because it changed my perspective. Like I wasn't drowning in just my own thinking, I kind of needed to think how to formulate it, how to write it down, and I could reflect back. So not only a person got kind of more support by by already being prepared to train others, but also well, others can now be trained because they read the they can read the diary. Another manifestation of the train the trainer thing is that gig is structured in a way that people don't hold their job descriptions. So last year we started with the academies, I set it up, I set the structure, I make uh I made the framework for them. But my weakness is that I'm not that of a people person and the enthusiast of like motivating and inspiring. So we switched around, and my colleague Aquila now runs the academies based on the framework I built, but she adds her own spin on it. And then the year after that, we still haven't found woo, but you know, it's gonna be a third person, and this third person will add uh uh their own spin on a project that's already established, and that's how we believe, I believe we make it resilient.

Jesse

And one thing that does just to spell this out, like one thing that I find very interesting about your model is how many people you have providing training who actually don't work for gig, they work in other organizations and have like learned some of these skills and practiced these skills through the gig network.

Jiří

It's inevitable, I would say, because truth be told, like I'm starting to be scared of like consulting groups because I'm not writing emails anymore, I'm not clicking around in business managers anymore, right? Like so after a while, when in consultancy business, you kind of turn yourself into a professional consultant. So you can talk about things, but like it's hard for you to actually do them because the world is dynamic and things aren't changing. So you tend to say things more. Uh you tend to get to strategy more and more. So, in this regard, asking people who are still working on stuff to share what they work on with others and applying their experience to other people's context, like that seems to skip this kind of a hurdle, this kind of uh struggle, and and you know gives benefits to both sides. I mentioned Tamara in Vega Zaidnica, and she's been consulted by Dominica from ASF, and and this relationship like allows Tamara to apply things you already know are working to Dominica, but also it gets really good feedback for Dominica to work on some particular aspects in her own organization. So, in the end of the day, if things benefit both sides, like that's how you make them last longer.

Jesse

Yeah, and I I I know from personal experience that like when you try and teach someone else something, you often learn just as much as you're able to impart to other people because as ideas become clearly clearer for yourself. It's funny you're talking about like consultants losing connection to the work. I sometimes have the same fear about being a funder. It's like, how good is my judgment after years without running campaigns?

Jiří

Yes, but that only makes you transform the role, right? Like you can't be grasping or longing for the like times past, you just kind of need to make yourself useful somewhere else. And you know, in in the gig case, like anyone who gets like too senior, let's say, they should be mostly connecting others and using their wisdom or like an overview of a situation to make better connections, and that's fine.

Jesse

Yeah, yeah. I also think that like you learn different things in uh in a role where you're interacting with a lot of different groups. I know personally, like I find myself more like connecting dots between different things, like the way you're saying, introducing people or like finding parallels, like, oh yeah, this organization faced a similar challenge, maybe there's solutions that are similar over here. So

Internal Champions And Engagement Coordinators

Jesse

when you're thinking about like partnering with organizations, since Gig does a lot of consulting with different organizations, what are the types of things that make that you look for to feel confident that an organization will be successful in the engagement?

Jiří

Um, it's hard to predict the future, and it's always hard to be confident in it. So, me personally, I'm just trying to start, you know, let's see how things go and let's evaluate later. You know, let's do a trial, let's see how things are. So instead of like planning great things and you know building huge projects, let's just start on a small scale and you know, let's see where the winds blow, I guess. And it can lead to things that you kind of need to accept. So I I think I've had my share of like fails. Um I I think like my own personal consultations with, for example, uh Asset Vegetal, a French group, it didn't turn out well. I'm not sure they've been happy with the advice. The same goes with the Slovakian group Humani Pukrok. And I'm not sure that says a lot about them. It just says that you know sometimes things don't work out. On the other hand, the optimizing is also important. For example, in AETP Slovenian group, I started the consultation, but then I switched with with my colleague Gabrielle because she has uh Gabriela because she has a different skill set, and with uh Spanish Arde, we did it the other way around.

Jesse

One thing that's like interesting to me about your model is the fact that usually you're looking for someone inside the organization to really champion the work. So, how much do you prioritize having an internal champion? Would you work with a group that doesn't have one? And like, why do you actually focus on that as a key criteria?

Jiří

If a cooperation starts to look successful uh and you know, promising, at least even if every indicator is good, it's still gonna be a long ride. It's hard to me imagine a situation when like no, you do a consultancy for three months and suddenly like no heaven on earth and everything's solved and like no progress is made. Also, that would be the dream, yeah. Yeah, but but also the more you consult the group, like no, the the the the better the relationship in a lot of cases, and kind of the better the capacity of the group. So only then you can get into only into those like productive stages of a cooperation. So it's about internal capacity as well. And and when you mentioned the what was that internal champion?

Jesse

Yeah, that's just the way I interpret.

Jiří

Yes, uh, for me, this manifests into uh a job description, and that's an engagement coordinator, and it's a person who ideally is a bit outside of the structure and who ideally doesn't have much decision making power, but they are. Basically, everywhere, like you know, in every side of an uh organization, and they heavily sit on the reporting and evaluation. So they see what the organization does, they can show it the numbers and they can go to decision makers and show evidence that something is working really well, or the other way around, something is not and needs to be changed. So these engagement coordinators are a thing that's that's something I'm heavily recommending to groups all of the times. And uh there's Ola in Otvarteklatke, there's Dominica in ASF, Petra in Obras, and these are real good examples or people who are enabling the engagement to prosper in their own groups.

Jesse

You you were talking earlier about tension and like trying to resolve the tension or not having like competing priorities in an organization. Is this like one of the ways that you're looking to solve that? Because you talked about these people being like across the organization.

Jiří

In a lot of cases, what happens is that you can have a director that says, yes, we want to diversify, we want our regular donors. But if that goal is only for the fundraising person to achieve, and other people in the organization have different goals, then suddenly you can create a lot of mess around. And and some fundraising practices may create some some um some tension on itself. Maybe you write too many emails, so then suddenly there is a regular who says, like, don't send me so many emails. And if your strategy inside the organization isn't well thought of and isn't well integrated, sometimes the the mindset of your colleagues prevails in spite of the aspirations of the director or the strategical plans. Maybe what was really interesting for for me to observe, there's uh Christian from Danish Vegetarian Society, and basically it's a vegetarian society, it's a plant-based organization, and a lot of the tactics that we have in the year-end and academies are kind of for animal welfare organizations. But Christian bravely started introducing the tactics from welfare into plant-based, and of course, there was some setback, but he didn't start it a huge project, but now we will do everything differently. Like it took one change at a time, and slowly and steadily, like that's how he became confident, that's how he be converted a bit more people in the vegetarian society to the side of engagement, and now they will happily do uh a third year in a row with your end of business campaign.

Jesse

Very cool. And yeah, I've talked to Christian, and it seems like things are going quite well over there. I wonder if this is like a good point to ask you then, because like the Christian story, I think, gives half the answer to this, and maybe you have something else to say on this. Like,

Start With A Mailing List

Jesse

if an organization was hearing you talk, thinking, okay, well, I do want to focus more on engagement, build a regular donor base, but also like build that a capacity to run campaigns and mobilize people, where would you recommend they start? Like, what's the first step? A mailing list.

Jiří

So build a mailing list. Yes. It doesn't really need an explanation. Like, you know, if you want to start, you need a way how to reach out to people, and a way how to reach out to people is to send emails to them. One of the things that you will then sooner or later learn is that when you have a mailing list, you need to send emails, and you also learn that like uh the more emails you send, the less people stay, which is only a natural process, which gets shortened by so sorry, I need to do this interruption and and explain this because it's just so funny to me. Uh, and I hope this stays in the podcast, but sometimes there is like this fear of sending too much communication, and and like no, when you send 30 emails in a month, of course, so much people will unsubscribe. But if you split it out time-wise, and if you send 30 emails in a year or two, basically the same amount of people will leave you. So you're just accelerating them leaving. Yes, yes, yes. Mailing this is not a static number, it's it's a flexible, dynamic thing. And when you start building it, you always need to have an intake of new reads. So that puts pressure on complexity of like communication, like on the campaigns. You really need to be doing stuff to make people excited to go in, but then when you have them in, it's just not leaving them to just sit and wait, uh, and you know, use them when you need them. Like you need to communicate.

Jesse

They're all just sitting there at their computer in their inbox, refreshing, waiting for UD to send that next email. Yeah, yes.

Jiří

Exactly. So so you start sending the content and you know, start your email marketing program. And like when you start doing that, like you need to kind of justify the cost of stuffing this person uh and the program. So you kind of need to integrate fundraising into that, and that's how the added complexity of reporting suddenly comes. And that's how you create this kind of a beast that that's that that is a funnel, you know, it starts at the beginning with the regeneration and then continues with the lead conversion, and then maybe with the reporting and mailing systems, all that you add the campaigns and advocacy, you add the write to. You just wanted to start with having some more regular donors, but suddenly you have a capacity of you you have built a capacity in your organization to tackle bigger problems and to do bigger and better campaigns. And also when there is this complexity in the group itself, it leads to confidence of the staff, of the people actually doing that. And that also allows you to tackle bigger challenges. So it's kind of all connected. And when we mentioned that fundraising is not only about money, I would say getting regular donors is not only about actually regular donors, but about at the end of the day pursuing better campaigns, more impactful ones.

Jesse

Yeah, you're just making me think back to all the times that we had these oh shit moments of like, oh, now we have to build a new thing or do something to keep this like momentum going. Um very relatable. Are you getting nostalgic or me? Nostalgia, PTSD, which one? Who knows? Probably missing. So, Yuri, um, what have you found most surprising as you've worked with other groups?

Jiří

That

Adoption Takes Time Plus Learning From Flops

Jiří

things take time. Um adopting an idea into practice, like you know, take a surprising amount of time and repetition and exposure. And like we have so much great ideas, and you know, nowadays with AI, like you get the guides how to do stuff, but then we just don't, because the problem is adoption rate and adoption rate that needs time. I have an awesome example which has a happy ending today, as of uh June, middle of June. So uh a day ago, uh Anima UK started an awesome new campaign with Pred. You know, the the website is called Break from Pret, which is uh a company with which didn't uh uphold their commitments. There is a mobilization element, people should take break from that company, so they should fill out a contact form. On that contact form, there is a name, an email, and a phone number. The name and an email they have these little asterisks making the fields obligatory, and the phone number has these little brackets that say optional. So this version, this default version of a contact form, this is not used in every anima branch. So even in a in a group that has multiple countries in, they are using different contact forms. And and the big thing is that they have their own data that when using the asterisks and you know, optional brackets, the the forms perform worse. But still, adoption time. Even if you know, if you have evidence, you know, putting it into practice that takes time and you know, multiple repetition and exposure. The good news, and I wouldn't be mentioning uh their good efforts, if they would end up as uh in something I would critique. Who am I to critique that? But already there was some internal pushback, and it seems that they will redo the form and they will get rid of the optionals, they will get more phone numbers, which will only help them build more campaigning capacity for the future.

Jesse

Very nice. And it just reminds me like how subtle some of the design choices are that can have an impact on these things. So, you know, the last few years at the care conference in Warsaw, you've helped organize the fundraising program. And you know, every year I've enjoyed watching the tops and flops session where people talk about their highlights and their biggest mistakes from the year before. I'm and I remember that you often like push people to prioritize flops if they feel comfortable to. So I'm very curious to hear why you well, what do you see as the value in sharing failures?

Jiří

Uh, it gets you closer to the speaker, it makes the speaker more human and you know, it makes them more authentic and to be on repeat here, but that increases the adoption rate. For me personally, hearing someone from the greatest expert on email marketing in the US, you know, working with mailing lists of like 10 million or more, that's all good advice. But how does it fit my own problems? But hearing from someone who has uh similar people on a mailing list who uses the same like tool, for example, MailChimp or Sendgun, whatever, you know, who encounters the GDPR problems, like regional ones, like these little practical things like make the adoption rate bigger, like the probability of someone taking the good practice and implementing that on the ground in their group that much bigger. And an example I want to mention here, and that's just quite funny, uh, at least from my perspective, is that like this is literally about supporter-centric communication. There's uh Teddy. Teddy works in an evidemi, uh Bulgarian organization, and you know, during her fundraising campaign, she really wanted to communicate that like we shouldn't have calves in the you know, lone calves, the little cows in the crate in winter time, right? Like you know, they that they would be freezing with cold, with air, like really shaking something that goes against anything. Like, like that's a good content for supporters to to you know tell them about. The problem was that this particular email I'm mentioning, and she shared as a flop on that care session, was sent on a day that was actually uh a record, uh recordly warmest day in uh in her country that winter. Remember that, yeah. And it didn't perform well, and that gave us a great insight of like, of course, it doesn't matter what you want to say if it doesn't fit the support experience. There is a huge communication lesson in this mishap of a thing, and also from the perspective of other speakers and the participants of that session, like Teddy, when she told this story, we all laughed so much, but but she became only you know that much approachable. And that suddenly made the the culture and the atmosphere of that session, I don't know, much more friendly and you know intimate, let's say, in this regard. And this is a way how to make the communities of practice prosper a bit more, like to decrease the distances in between people by helping them be more human alongside. And this works well with the supporter-centric communication as well.

Jesse

Aside from just being Eastern European, do you have any other recommendations for building like a culture where it feels safe to share mistakes?

Jiří

Um I'm not sure this this can be generalized even in.

Jesse

I know, I know, I'm joking.

Jiří

But sometimes you just need to do what you gotta do in a sense, like you really need to walk the pop, right? It shouldn't be only about declaring we want to share the flops, like you really actually need to share them.

Jesse

Yeah.

Jiří

My my my flop, and you know, I was thinking about like if I should admit it here uh on a podcast or not, but then yeah, we want the culture, so you know this needs to be done. I've I failed so far uh in pursuing consultation with Jurens Red, with the Swedish group and and with uh the Finnish group Oike Uta Limila. They cooperate with Gig a bit on Academies and Irem, but like I failed so far to reach out to them and to you know strengthen the relationship and start the consultation, and I take it as a flop. And when being transparent about it, when when talking about it, like it increases the probability that something will happen.

Jesse

Yeah, I totally can relate to that. I I think it's like hard, but as much as I can, I try to take like those moments as an as like something to get excited about because it gives you an opportunity to then do something different. We recently got some feedback from some other funders that like we should change some of what we do. And half of me is like, oh gosh, this sounds like such a pain in the ass. And then the other half of me is like, oh wow, this is really exciting, a new challenge, we can be better. And certainly like one of my flops has been like not moving quickly enough to bring on a bigger team to support ground making for us and hoping I could keep afloat without it. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay.

Metrics That Prove Audience Health

Jesse

So what do you think is missing in the movement right now? Did I say mailing lists? Seems like you could probably repeat that and it wouldn't be it wouldn't be a waste. Yeah, it's true. We do miss uh massive mailing lists that can be turned into um like both campaign impact and fundraising.

Jiří

Well, yet again, to stay consistent on what I'm saying, the year from the year end, we obviously have data. So last year there was 26 groups, and these 26 groups together around Europe plus some other countries outside of Europe, uh, it was 1.5 million people on their mailing list. 1.5 million. And we can easily do two times better. Like, you know, the saturation point in terms of how many of our citizens can we you know get on our mailing list, like is still further ahead. So this is turning a problem into an opportunity. Like we can mobilize much more if we focus on it, and if we focus on it, well, then beautiful things can come. Basically, better campaigns because we can directly reach out to more people. And one kind of a supporting argument for this is that for the year and support group, every year there are a lot of groups who are thinking about joining, but then we kind of end up with like, no, why would you? Because they don't have a mailing list, and you can't create 500 regular donors so you can employ one new person if you have 5,000 people on your file. So at that stage, at the beginning, you know, when you are a new small-size group, you just need to work on that mailing list, and it's kind of a it should be a survival test as well. You know, can you get enough attention that you know 20,000 people in your country will will follow what you have to say.

Jesse

There is a risk in this conversation that I have not found anything to disagree with you on. And I also agree with you on mailing lists. But like one thing that I'm curious to hear from you, you know, I often think that what I see from people, and we talked a little bit about this earlier, like I often see groups present the number of people on their mailing list as like a great metric. And one of the things I worry about with that is it's missing the sort of nuance that actually tells you, are these people engaged? Will they come back again? Can you actually get them to either give or take action? So I'm curious beyond just like the size of a mailing list, what are the sorts of things that you think an organization should be looking at to assess like the health of their audience?

Jiří

Well, uh, it's funny you should ask because uh these uh metrics have a just now list our integrant proposal I've sent you last year. About let's like let's talk to the audience here. Uh so the size of a mailing list, let's say that's that's a leads metric. And obviously that's that's you know uh an amount of people you can send stuff to, but then quite easily you can use a supporters metric, which is uh uh a number of people who did something in the period of time, most uh likely you know in a year. And that's much more dynamic because like you can't count on people who did something 13 months ago. So that's the leads, the supporters, then let's say it could be random donors, then it's the regular donors, and then that's the activists. And for the activists, you can also put kind of a time pressure on yourself. So if you do a great thing for activists and you mobilize so much people, but you mobilize them in 25, then in the summer of 26, suddenly you can't count on them. So that kind of forces you as an organization to always introduce things into your campaigns that will mobilize and engage supporters. And I don't really understand sometimes the idea of let's just do the campaign without the mobilization, because some things you cannot just start when the engine is called, and just like expecting people who are living their own lives to suddenly care about the new type of a supermarket that just suddenly needs to accept an ECC commitment.

Jesse

European chicken commitment for anyone who's not familiar with the acronym. Yeah.

Jiří

Yes, yes. So uh in June I should have a beef with this company, and then suddenly in uh in October, I should have a beef with this particular company. And like when you don't prep the supporters for that, of course you will have a harder time to get them engaged and you know get them to care about this. And if you have a hard time to get your own supporters care about this, how can you dare to you know get the outside world to care about this? So it kind of snowballs into a thing, and that is something that I would love for more kind of directors and decision makers to be thinking about. And anytime they hear from their staffers that uh, well, we just want to work on this quietly, and you know, then we will do without an integration with other parts of an organization. Like, I think that's a big flag that that someone makes great.

Jesse

Yeah, missed opportunity. I've certainly been involved in campaigns where I don't know, on month in or even on day one, I'm like, oh gosh, I wish we'd been building an audience for this five years ago. Yeah. And then others where we had the audience, and you're like, wow, this is Magic. One thing that when I first met you, I think I was on a different page from you. And I

Best Practices First Then AI Trust

Jesse

think probably I've come around to your way of thinking a little bit more. But I remember early on when I first spoke to you, I asked you about how much you're trying to push organizations to innovate on engagement versus like just set best practices, like work to best practices that exist in the industry. And I was certainly more in the camp of like, okay, let's innovate, innovate. And you said, no, no, no, let's work on the best practices that exist. I'd really love to hear your perspective on that now. And why do you like why you put a lot of emphasis on best practices if that's still the case?

Jiří

Voke, what I really want to point out here is that there is this bias. Is it survivorship bias? So basically, out of 10 new innovations, only one survives something. And the point I would make is that do we actually have enough resources that you know we can uh do 10 trials of something with being confident that like you know nine of it will fail, when at the same time we still have not saturated our kind of potential for just taking what's out there and work already. So that would be one approach to this question. But the other, I think when you have uh a cohesively working team, like you know, of people who believe each other, who trust each other, who are like skilled in their profession, like you know, when you have a really well-oiled organization, and when your specialists and then the roles are filled with like confident people, that's when the innovation will happen. It's kind of a prerequisite for it. Otherwise, you you are just rolling the dice and you know the percentages are a little low. So if you really want to increase those percentages of like no getting a good innovation, maybe you can increase them by having the team work smoother uh and have a bigger confidence in in trying out different approaches. And how to get to that bigger confidence? Well, you let them practice and you know apply and adopt smaller ideas that already you know are working somewhere else, and and and then maybe you can get into bigger, more ambitious things.

Jesse

Yeah. Okay, I wish I could disagree with you, but you've convinced me. I definitely see the point that like you need to build a foundation of expertise and know what works before you start trying to push beyond that.

Jiří

Yes, yes. And maybe to just finish that joke on AI, right? Like, no, one important bit here is that nowadays, and I'm not sure about you, and I would really love to hear your perspective, Jesse. But like nowadays, anytime I see like uh two pages of the document and I sniff out there was AI in it, I have so much trouble to actually read that. And for the team cohesion, you know, integration in between the teams, like if this is true, not only for me, but maybe you know for for some other people on the ground and within the groups, then the way how they communicate and how they cooperate suddenly gets a bit skewed.

Jesse

Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to someone who works at one of the labs who was like, yeah, whenever I see a leader like put a memo out that is like has the patterns of AI in it, I'm just like, why don't why didn't you just give me the prompt? That would have been enough. But you know, coming back to where we started the conversation, I think like one of my worries with generative AI and like individualized messaging is the possibility that whether or not content is individualized for a decision maker, like the messages that our supporters are sending, they're just gonna devalue all of those messages because they assume that they're like generated by AI, whether or that's the case or not. Yes. Okay, well, we should probably get towards the end here. And so

Hopeful News And Media Recommendations

Jesse

I've got a couple of closing questions that I wanted to ask you. So, what's one bit of news that you're grateful for or excited about recently?

Jiří

I'm not sure how much I can talk about this. But recently I found out that Kirsty Henderson from Anima President started talking to more and more uh leaders of groups in other countries in Europe, and she's kind of started gathering intel about what we can do to actually help out with you know banning the cages. And it seems that like you know, she's doing some steps regarding like a horizontal approach, not to be having like a top-down heavy kind of uh campaign, but to maybe let's see what's out there, let's see what other people are doing, and let's set up the framework in a way that if someone does something that actually works on the members of parliament, on the decision makers in Brussels, let's replicate it then. And that's that's something that makes me really hopeful because I would love for Europe to bend ages media.

Jesse

It would be a really great day to celebrate for sure. Okay, so then can you share two to three media recommendations with the listeners? They could be books, blogs, podcasts, whatever you have in mind.

Jiří

Let's do the finishing touch on the hope thing. Uh, that is Thomas Coolbs, uh, which is uh like I knew him from Amnesty International. He started his own business and now he is all about hope. And hope and communicating hope and making things seem good and promising for the future that works super well with regular donations. For you to trigger a single donation, like you know, sometimes you just need a big emotion and you know a picture, but to kind of you know help someone realize they really want to support a movement, you know, with their uh regular donor donation, you kind of need to change the the communication in terms of more hope, more values, more life choices, and so on. So, this is a good resource, and I hope there will be a link around this podcast for Thomas's substack. Then there's uh Paul DeGregorio, he's a mobilization expert now with his own agency, and he does a lot of the civic society. Like, you know, he he is like you know always talking about what's happening on the ground in the UK with the NGOs and you know that like they do a lot of stuff. So I would have uh encourage everyone invested in mobilization to follow his mailing list, and you know, um to make it easy for myself, uh, book-wise. There is this book which is trivial in a sense because the name of the book says what the book is about. Uh so it's the power of moments, and it's a classic airport book, right? Like you read the first 20 pages, they said everything they wanted to say, and then like you know, the publisher asked them to write 160 more or something. But the basic premise is super simple. Like, you know, we all remember the moments from our life: the divorces, the the the first days and the job, uh, the great victories of our campaigns, all that. And what they are saying is that like we can create these moments artificially for the people we care about. That's the manipulation, like you can just like you know, make sure to create memorable moments for the people in your life in order to make them not only happier, but to also kind of change things you all want to change those so that affects a lot of directors instead of just planning the campaigns over and over again every year. You can make it more fun, more creative, more worthwhile, and that's how you increase the property of us. So a power of what it's a great book.

Jesse

I go through like so many points in life where I like notice things that make me think of that book, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's like using surprise or like the unexpected, or yeah, like creating an aha moment to create something memorable. Yeah, it's a really good book. Okay,

How To Get Involved With Gig

Jesse

and so how can people get more involved in gigs work and your work?

Jiří

Yes, uh, there are three call to actions. If you have a group and you would like to have more regular donors, that is the year and regular donor fundraising campaign support group. Uh, the link should be around somewhere. You are welcome to join, and it's a place for your fundraisers to share what they want to do and to get feedback on it. So that's one thing. If uh you are invested in um learning from others, especially that's the academies. Again, the link should be around. It's a these are workshops supported by the navigation fund, uh, available to everyone. And if you want to just talk consultancy-wise, you know, about things uh with a consultant, like you know, here I am, there is my email address. You know, let's keep it in touch.

Jesse

Cool. Well, thanks for the chat today, Yuri. It's been fun.