"The fundraising shift that turned $30K into $130K...”

Ever been SO resistant to an idea, but when you gave it a chance, it changed everything?

On the advice of a colleague, Natalie and her fundraising team tried something new... and it QUADRUPLED their results. 🤑

Natalie shares the method that not only transformed her campaigns, but also the course of her career.

Connect with Natalie 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-freckleton/

Learn about what she's building at Velora 👉 https://www.joinvelora.com/

✍️ Got your own story to tell? Submit a diary entry to be featured on the podcast 👉 https://bit.ly/4tXt0d6

🩷 Connect with our community on LinkedIn 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/company/nonprofit-diaries/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hi everyone, welcome to the Nonprofit Diaries, where we share the stories that don't make the newsletter. I'm your host, Kimberly Bottom, and this podcast, it's all about stories that unite nonprofit professionals. Just let us relate to each other. It's not necessarily about learning best practices, but this week you are getting both, my friends. Our guest is a former fundraiser who spent a decade supporting several nonprofits before she turned her expertise to product development for nonprofit tech. So if there is one thing that I have found to be the most powerful driver in our industry, it is someone with a passion for making things better. And that's exactly what Natalie is doing. She experienced the gaps in nonprofit support systems firsthand. So now she helps build better tech, as she says, with a fundraiser's brain and a product leader's heart. I am lucky to call her a colleague as she works with me at Valora, the wonderful company that supports our nonprofit diaries podcast. Peep the tiny logo at the bottom of your screen. Everyone, please welcome Natalie Freckleton to our podcast. Natalie, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Excited. I'm so excited to chat with you. Um, we were talking internally about the podcast, you know, within our meeting, and Natalie Your Chat was like, hey, you know, I used to be a fundraiser, and I had this one time when I turned a $30,000 fundraising outcome to a $130,000 fundraising outcome just by applying a bit of a product management principle. And I went, okay, that's a story we need to showcase on the podcast, right? Probably just a good story, but also maybe a lesson to be learned here. So, Natalie, first and foremost, tell us a little bit about the nonprofit you were working out and what you were hoping to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yes. This is back when I lived in the UK. I'm in Canada now. Um, but I was working for a nonprofit called Prostate Cancer UK, quite a large, well-known nonprofit. Um, such an amazing organization to work for and really innovative in how they wanted to fundraise and help um men with living with prostate cancer. Um, and like every nonprofit, we had massive targets and you're yeah, halfway through the year scrambling to figure out, okay, are we going to make it? Are we not? Um, what can we do to do that? So I was managing our peer-to-peer fundraising, DIY fundraising in the walking atmosphere. So we had a lot of people that would do their own walks and walk from one end of the country to the other, or they would um join some of our mass participation events as well. We had a dedicated team who ran these big, large events across the country, but not everyone can make that. Um, so our goal was how can we get people walking and raising money for us outside of those events? And me and my boss at time, very creative. We're happy to try anything. We're just like, we just want to raise money. We did a lot of data analysis, see what our trends were. Um, but we were actually doing our own step challenge at the time, just an office step challenge, and everyone really liked it. Everyone got very um uh competitive about it, and we're like, why don't we just do a step challenge? Why don't we just do this virtual challenge? And this was before COVID. So virtual Oh, trailblazing. I love it. Yeah. So this must have been 2018, 2019, something like that. And we had a director of technology at the time, shout out to Gareth, who um was like, you can't just do new ideas without testing them first. Like you need to, we can't put all of our resources in this without, you know, fact-checking it's gonna be a good idea. And I remember being so frustrated at the time. I was like, I just want to raise money. I don't want to have to figure out if this is a good idea or not. It is a good idea, it's a great idea. But that's the thing. Everything is a great idea, but doesn't mean you should work on it. Um so he made us go through a product management process. So the first year we did it without Gareth, who came in a bit later and then was like, let's let's actually apply some product thinking on this, because there was an idea there. So the first idea was really rough and ready. We got a web page up, we used our PHP giving platform, we sent an email out to people that couldn't attend our in-person walks. Um, and we just created a Facebook page and was like, hey, join this step challenge, walk 10,000 steps every day. Uh we called it March of the Month. We just did it in September, no rhyme or reason. Um, we're just like, let's just see if it if we get any people that want to raise the event. It was low cost, it was virtual, so um, there really was not much effort on our side. And we got some really great fundraisers at the time, very engaged. They loved having something they could do on their own time. This community created on Facebook where they were sharing their stories and cheering each other on because 10,000 steps a day can be quite challenging.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

So Yeah, especially like you said, before the pandemic, where you know, we weren't as remote as we are now and focused on like that kind of activity throughout the day.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah. And um, they were all cheering each other on like at nine o'clock at night, walking around that little room, just being like, get the last thousand in, you've got this, you've got this, and really encouraging each other to raise as much money as they could. Um, and it was great, it was really fun. And then the next year we're like, okay, well, how can we make this better? Like if we want to move this on to a bigger fundraising challenge. Um, and so we started thinking about who our personas were from this event. Who were the people we wanted to be taking part in this? They might be different than people who were doing other events or attengala's or, you know, who are we actually marketing towards here and how can we change our content to work for them? The main thing was thinking about what has engaged them to keep fundraising? What is it that makes them want to raise more? So we did lots of different A-B tests. We're like, do people who want a t-shirt raise more people than wanted a pedometer? Because we thought, well, surely they want a pedometer as a step challenge. They need to do 10,000 steps. But actually, we found a lot of people just wanted the t-shirt and they were really happy to go out and wear it in public, talk about it. That's how they were getting donations, and they raise more money than people on the pedometer. Or um, we're like some people were there for the community and some people are there for the challenge. So when we speak to them, how do we make sure that our content is going back to what they wanted? So um, we really went through um analysing it, proving our hypothesis or not. Um, and a bit differently to most people at the time, we started working in sprints. We created all the user stories of why what someone needs to do, why they would take part, what they would expect from this challenge. We put it into a trello board at the time and put all these user stories and jobs to be done into this trello board and assigned it on a two-week basis. At the end of the two weeks, we would analyze um we'd do a retro, see what worked for us, what didn't work for us, would we continue down that approach, or do we bring a different user story in? And so, yeah, it went from 30,000 pounds that we raised in the first year, 130,000 the next year. And as far as I know, they've been raising millions now from it since. Just by going back, analyzing it, and just applying that product management mindset of okay, we need to have a hypothesis, we need to prove it, break it down into chunks and make it better.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Such like and the thing that blows my mind too is that I think most nonprofits know that like the scientific approach to fundraising is something that we should be doing, but it seems like such a lift. Like you said, even when Gareth brought it up, you're like, I don't wanna. Right? Like, I my idea's fine. I don't need I don't need to test anything. Yeah. And then even with a very small team, you guys were still able to say, all right, you know what? If we focus our efforts and make sure that we know what we're looking at and just revisit it every couple weeks and adjust as necessary, it became this thing that you guys were able to accomplish and not only able to accomplish, but like, first of all, the the first go-round, right? 30,000 pounds. Nobody's complaining about that. Right? Great outcome. Most people would be like, cool, rinse and repeat, right? Like, let's just do that again. But you guys said, well, let's step it up a bit, and you guys quadrupled your outcome. So, like hearing that, uh a fundraiser who's like, let's say, in the middle of developing a campaign right now and is hearing the story and is going, that sounds great for her, but I'm too busy. What would what would you advise people to be like? The first step, the one thing that you can do to go in that direction, and it doesn't seem so overwhelming to kind of apply this scientific method to a fundraising campaign.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Speak to your donors. Um speak to them about donating, speak to them about why they want to be involved in the first place, but not just why. We all know they've got a core, they've probably linked the cause one way or another, but why do I want to fundraise for your specific charity at this specific event? Why are they doing that over something else? Um, and that will give you a lot of indication about, okay, what are the strengths of that particular fundraising initiative or event that you can continue to build on, but where is it breaking? And I'm not just talking about a survey. Everyone feels nobody wants to fill out a survey. Like, really speaking to your donors about what they loved about your event. You're gonna call them to say thank you anyway. So before you go to the next one in the UA to be like, what did you really like about it? What didn't you like about it? What would you love to be seeing at this event? We always say product, if um when we speak to people like if you could wave a magic wand and this be exactly what you wanted, what would that look like? Really sit down with fundraising events initiatives and think about it from the donor's point of view or the fundraising point of view of like, what do they want? Why do they want to fundraise?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Right. What actually creates that sense of belonging within the human being, right? It's not just about participation, it's the way, it's the helper's high, right? Like what does it make me feel inside, and how can I create that on a larger scale for everybody else? And probably the reason, correct me if I'm wrong, that you moved into product development is that you can create that sense of belonging and those experiences through tech in an automated way that still feels very personal. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Absolutely. And I think, you know, fundraising tech for a long time in the nonprofit sector has taken its time to catch up to the commercial sector. And, you know, um, it's not always been the best. And I really just I loved product management. I loved peeling things back, really figuring out why something moves for somebody. It blew my mind when we were at ProsyCans UK, we started bucketing our donors, which is now I know is donor personas, um, and segmentation of what what it what type of content resonates with them? Are they people who are community-minded? So they're there because they want other people around them. They want to speak to other people who experience that um feelings that they have or the emotions that they have, and that's what they want to hear about. But then there's people that are like, I just want to know the numbers, I just want to see the research, I just want to, you know, have a bit of a distance, but I like the reports, I like the maths, I like the science. Um, and you've got people that just like the stories in general, or event participation. And when you start thinking about it in this lens of like, okay, well, how can I make this special for you? How can you make someone feel recognized to your product, to your community for showing up one way or another?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Right, exactly. So thinking through that lens, and then the whole reason that you and I are here and Valora exists is because you typically do have a small team of two trying to figure this out and having the automations and you know, the robots take over what they can because they are here, so that you can do the human work, right? The actual human work of exactly what you just said, which is analyzing the human connection. Robot can't do that. It can schedule outreach, it can give you insights from the data that you've collected, but then you have to take that opportunity to squint at the data and see through what it is to the actual humans on the other side. So I love that you're now bringing that to more nonprofits by you know developing tech that can do that.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Well, that's the thing. And like obviously AI can be scary for so many people right now, or agents and everything, but it will never know the context. It doesn't know the context that you have on the phone with your donor or why they've decided to give. AI is there as a tool, but it still needs your knowledge about your donors and the relationships that you make, um, and just the general context you know about your sector, about your domain, um, to put that into best practice. So, you know, we're building the tools to help it sound more personalized and take back some of that time. But yeah, read in between the lines, read in the context, applying it to your campaign so that it isn't a rinse and repeat because people get bored. They see the same images, they see the same content all the time. Mm-hmm. And then be dedicated to your cause and come back year after year, but eventually they're gonna get fatigued from that same campaign that we rinse and repeat year in, year out because we know it works and we're too afraid to change it. But sometimes doing a little bit of changing or a little bit of A-B testing can make you go from 30 to 130 rather than just sticking with what you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

I'm gonna put Natalie's LinkedIn information in the description for this podcast. A lot of people might not know, even like, hey, what's the first experiment I should run? So it's just so helpful sometimes talking through with somebody who's done it. So you are too kind for offering your insights in that way. And for all of you nonprofit professionals out there listening, I hope this was helpful to you. I hope it was relatable to you. I also hope that you remember to hydrate and practice self-care. This is your weekly reminder to do that. And if it helps, there is also a link in the description of this podcast to come on the podcast. If you have a story that you want to share, a diary entry you'd like to submit, I would love to chat with you. Just fill out that form and we'll talk soon. Uh, we'll see you guys all on the next episode. Thanks so much for joining and have a wonderful rest of your week.