Name: Can Your CRM Do This? How Virtuous Helps Faith-Based Nonprofits Build Lasting Donor Relationships
Uploaded: 2025-03-25T19:35:11.308Z
Duration: 52 min 36 s
Description: Can Your CRM Do This? How Virtuous Helps Faith-Based Nonprofits Build Lasting Donor Relationships

Transcript for "Can Your CRM Do This? How Virtuous Helps Faith-Based Nonprofits Build Lasting Donor Relationships": Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the webinar today. Thanks for your patience as we worked on a couple technical things. We are often running now, and so we're so glad to be, spending some time together today. And, we are going to just wanna remind you as we jump in, that we do have our chat going. Some of you saw that already. As I said, we'll be starting momentarily. And so we'd love to hear your thoughts throughout, today's, webinar. You can, share, a favorite gift as well. So I'm gonna share my favorite GoToWebinar gift here just to say hello to everyone. As you jump in, we'd love to know where you're joining us from, the organization that you're with, and let us know those things. This was gonna be this is gonna be recorded as well. We're gonna send it out via email, and so don't worry about that. And if you click the docs tab, you're gonna notice the slide deck that you can download and take with you. So, again, so glad that you are here. Thanks for bearing with us. We are gonna introduce ourselves so you know who, is speaking with you today. My name is Scott Holthouse. I'm the manager of campaigns and programs here at Virtuous, and I get to help bring content like this to you, hopefully, to help and to serve you and your organization, and really glad to be here. I'm gonna go ahead and toss it to Kath to introduce herself. Hi, everyone. My name is Kath. I'm a solutions engineer here at Virtuous. So my role is really to help organizations, lead that technical conversation and really help to understand whether Virtuous is a good solution for the nonprofits that we work with. I'm calling in today from San Diego, California. So excited to be here. And then we have Jacqueline with us as well. Hello. My name is Jacqueline Jones. I am the chief philanthropic economist at Masterworks, and my job is really just to stay ahead of the marketing trends that are impacting, faith based nonprofits. Oh, wow. I am calling in from Portland, Oregon. Yeah. That's awesome. Jack, can we just kinda give us a little, idea? I I know many have probably heard of Masterworks, but for those who may not have, will you just dive in a little bit about, what you all do? Yeah. So Masterworks is a faith led agency that helps ministry focused nonprofits build their fundraising strategy. And we do that through a wide range of services, including just general strategy, data analytics, digital marketing, brands, and, direct mail. But we focus exclusively on Christ led ministries. Fantastic. Well, just to give you guys a little idea of where we're going today, walk through the agenda, we're gonna be talking through a few things. Now along the way, we would love to hear your questions. So you'll see the q and a tab, above the chat box there. Go ahead and submit your questions as you have them. We'll answer them either along the way or have some time at the end. We're gonna be looking at the fundraising slowdown and donor retention challenges. We're gonna dive into personalized donor tracks, communication challenges. We're gonna be looking at the shifting landscape of mid and major donors as well as the changing nature of volunteerism. And the goal is to, yes, look at the pain point and understand that, but then also jump into the ways that virtuous can help solve those and is really built, for those as well. So, that's where we're going now. We also are gonna have some polls along the way. I love a good poll myself, and so we're gonna open up the first one here. You're gonna notice the poll tab above the chat box with the red dot, a little pop up that said goes goes to the poll tab. So go ahead. We'd love to know just to give us some context of who's joining us today, what CRM you're currently using, the technology that you're using, that kinda helps us as well both in, following up, but then also understanding kinda who's jumping on today. So go ahead and fill that out. That poll is gonna be left up here for a minute or two. And so we'll give you a couple minutes, to answer that, but we would love to hear. Now we're gonna jump into our first section here and look at the fundraising slowdown and donor retention challenges. And we're so thankful again to have Jacqueline with us, who, is really an expert in so much of what we're diving into. So I'm gonna toss it over to Jacqueline to run with this. Yeah. Sounds great. So as you guys have probably seen in the Giving USA reports, the fundraising landscape has been on a bit of a decline since 2021. And this is caused by two main culprits, the increasing cost and low performance of new donor acquisition, but also a drop in retention. So the donors that have been on file with you for a while, those have been in decline across the industry. And that drop is mainly coming from lower value donors. So this is why we assume it has a lot to do with the economic conditions because mids and majors have been holding pretty steady, but those lower value ones, they've been on decline. And it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy because as they their performance declines in those segments, we start to send them less and less communication, specifically direct mail, which has been increasing in costs. I mean, postage costs are going to go up again this year, quite a bit. And so as we see that increase in costs, we try and protect nets by mailing less and less. So how do we fight this problem? How do we stop that, that cycle downwards? And we've been really trying to focus our shift on more cost effective channels. So, switching a lot of our donor communication away from those high cost touch points into multiple donor journeys that utilize digital technology. And so I know that's something, Virtuous is an expert at. So I'm gonna turn it to Kath to kind of give it an idea of visual of how we can do this. Awesome. Thanks, Jacqueline. Yeah. So I definitely wanna kinda touch on both of those points that Jacqueline just covered. So, really, there are things that are beyond our control right now with the economic situation. Right? But what we do wanna focus on is what is within our control. So from a donor retention standpoint, just a quick stat that I like to, always introduce to nonprofits is that we see about a 76% attrition rate after donors are making a first time gift to an organization. That's not just in the faith space. That's just across nonprofits in totality. But what we also know is that when donors are actually engaged within that first thirty days of giving, we see about a 300% lift in average lifetime giving. So what we really wanna focus on here from an automation standpoint is how you can engage all of those supporters right off the bat and get them really interested in your organization so they're wanting to come back and give again in the future. So that's really where automation can kinda come into play and really help you to make sure that you're not missing out on opportunities with those supporters. I'm not gonna go through everything in this automation here because we will walk through some other examples throughout the webinar today. But really, again, just focus in on here that we have the ability to really, cast a wide net and make sure that we're touching all of those individuals. And to Jacqueline's point too, being able to communicate with them in multiple different channels. The next thing that I want to touch on is the ability to actually run all of your segmentation directly inside of Virtuous. So to Jacqueline's point, I think we all know that direct mail can be really expensive for organizations. So we're really seeing a trend for nonprofits to look for other ways to engage with their supporters. In that automation, you saw that you would have the ability through Virtuous to communicate with emails, text messages, and maybe some direct mail as well, but really making sure that you're hitting them in multiple different channels. And then the other aspect of this is just being able to actually run your segmentation directly inside of Virtuous. I know I have a lot of coworkers that work directly in fundraising, and they talk about running segmentation in the past and how that could take weeks at a time for one direct mail piece or one campaign. So the benefit here is that you can actually run all of your segmentation directly inside of here and then also track things like the cost per direct mail piece, so the cost per communication that you're sending so that you can come in and track that ROI and that effectiveness of your appeals as well. So really helping you to evaluate when does it actually make sense to send those direct mail pieces to your supporters versus maybe you have people that are typically communicating with you through texting and emailing. Okay. Maybe we don't send them a direct mail piece this time. Maybe we just send them an online campaign. So kind of utilizing that automation and also utilizing the ability to run segmentation in here to combat some of those, declines in retention that we're seeing. I'll turn it back over to Scott and Jacqueline. Yes. Thanks, Kath. We're gonna toss it back to Jacqueline here in just a second. Reminder, any questions that you have, go ahead and submit in the q and a tab. You actually have the, ability to upvote questions too. So as you see things, wonder things have questions, submit those and keep a tab on those as well because you can kinda upvote ones that that are really interesting, to you. But, yeah, I would love to toss it back to you, Jacqueline, just to kinda walk through, again, talking about, you know, the fundraising slowdown, donor retention challenges, but the reality that, there's a there's a power in faith when it comes to donor retention and just what you all might be seeing. Yeah. So recently, Masterworks did research on why we were seeing this drop in retention. And because we are faith focused, we dived into what was it about, Christians that both increased their value, but also prevented lapsing. And as we talk about donor journeys, you know, one interesting finding that we got of this research was that donors that prayed about their giving and prayed for their nonprofits actually had a much higher long term value. It was twice that, of those that did not engage in prayer around their giving. About asks, it can also be about relationships, and engagements. Because again, donors who pray about their organizations, who pray about their giving have twice the value and so the other kind of interesting thing about this that we can kind of draw as a conclusion, if you think about it, if someone's praying about you and your mission and your ministry, they're really less likely to lapse. There is a commitment in that action. They're constantly thinking about you. And so how can we build that bridge, build that relationship, and even make it two way so that you are both praying for your donors and they're praying for you? And so some of the practical strategies that we've been working with our ministries on is how do we implement donor prayer tracks in our engagement strategies? How do we build that bridge that goes both ways? And I know, Kath, you kind of came up with some interesting, ideas on this, but really that's, that's gonna be huge in how do we prevent lapsing? How do we build that relationship? Yeah. And, I'll just real real quick here. I know we're gonna toss it to Kath to kind of walk through a little bit of this. But one of the things I forgot to mention, as we were, kind of doing intros is that I spent about fifteen years working in local ministries. And and so certainly am am really familiar with, you know, what we might call the faith sector or, you know, whatever we wanna call it. And, man, I've I have seen that as well when when people are engaged, in that way and there's there's ways that people are praying for you and, you know, it's such a holistic, experience when it comes to supporting a ministry, that is financial certainly, but there's so much more, to that. And so, Jacqueline, I know I've I've seen that as well in practice and just yeah. I just so appreciate, you know, calling that out, because it's a it's a really important part as well. Kath, we'd love to toss it to you now to kinda walk through, you know, how we can help with this, in Virtuous. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think it's a really good point, that you both make that people that are involved with faith organizations obviously really care about your mission and they want to be more involved. And a great way to get them involved is to either pray for them or have them pray for you. But how do you kind of know whether they are praying for you? And I think that's a a big piece of where Virtruis can come into play is that it could be maybe running a survey with your supporters to better understand how they actually want to engage with your organization. You have that ability to create all of your custom surveys directly inside of here. Maybe you're asking about their general, like, how they do they feel engaged to date with your church or your ministry, your organization? Do they want to be prayed for? And then to Jacqueline's point too, do they want to pray for you and your community? Running those surveys, I think, is an initial way that you can kind of gauge interests from different supporters. And then we can use that information to really drive further engagement from there. So we're not just necessarily sending this to every member of our church, but really allowing people to tell us how they want to be engaged with. So let's say that somebody replies to you on that, are you interested in how they can pray for your organization? If they selected yes, that could trigger something like an automation inside of Virtuous to actually enroll them in a prayer guide or a prayer track automation. So what that could look like is maybe sending them an email with a link out where they can actually download a prayer guide, and maybe that guides them over a fourteen day period or a one month period of different prayers that they can say on a daily or weekly basis. And then what you can also use automation to do, we touched on this a little bit when we walked through that last automation, but just really make sure that you're meeting donors where they're at by communicating with them in different ways. So maybe after sending them that initial guide, you wanna send a check-in point by a text message. Maybe after that full period, if it was running over a twenty eight day period or a thirty day span, you wanna send them a thank you email at the end of that communication. Maybe it has another survey and asks them whether they're interested in having another program in the future or getting involved in other ways. So this is really, again, allowing you to, one, understand how they wanna be engaged with, use automation to drive those communications with your supporters, and then further loop that back by running additional surveys or getting feedback from your community. That's just one way that I thought it could be helpful to use all of that information that you understand about your supporters and then drive that that prayer engagement from there. Yeah. No. That that that's super helpful. And, you know, one one of the things obviously that we really believe in here at Virtuous is is personalization, and personalized knowing your donor. Right? Personalization is not just insert first name and email, but it's really understanding what is your donor care about, what what motivates them, what drew them to your organization, what are they passionate about, and that's such a great example. And so, Jacqueline, would love to kinda toss it over to you as we're talking about personalization. Just some of the talking through some of the pain point around personalized donor tracks, communication challenges. We'd love to, have you jump into that. Yeah. I mean, donor journeys are gonna help with the retention crisis because it's gonna build that relationship. It's gonna deepen it and make it feel more one to one, which is so important in today's, the day and age we live in where that's the expectation many consumers and donors have. But obviously they have challenges, because if you're an organization that is tracking maybe both org level giving and staff level giving, it becomes really complicated. And as you probably know, doing donor journeys well helps strengthen that relationship, but the more complicated they get, the harder that becomes. And doing them wrong can actually hurt donor retention because it makes it suddenly feel like you don't know them rather than just not saying anything at all. And so right now it's really more important than ever, to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person. And that really takes a commitment to clean data and and, you know, making sure the pathing is all very, clean, so that it does feel truly personal. The other thing we dug into in our recent research is why did people not retain. And there were three top reasons that were given, and I think they're really important for us to kind of understand. The first one was that someone else needed it more. And I think this is a message of urgency, but also of being, being in, being with your donor, having that relationship. So you're coming at them with your honest needs, successes. And so, again, having a constant communication with them helps build that that one to one journey. The other reason that was given, the number two reason that was given was that their financial circumstances had changed. And I think this speaks to the economy question that we kind of touched on earlier. They got hit with inflation or something else happened and they can no longer give. But there's still a level there where when their circumstances change, you want to have some reminder of who you are. So again, finding ways that engage with them that might not be ask based, but maybe it is those prayer guides or your successes, the stories that you're telling. And the number three reason that was given and And the number three reason that was given, and I know this is gonna sound strange given everything I just said, was too many solicitations. But when I hear this, I really feel that it meant too many irrelevant clear view on these donor journeys, on these donor communications, because each message needs to have a purpose and it needs to feel necessary to the donor. It needs to feel real and authentic, because irrelevant solicitations just kind of clutter and create noise. And so I think this is really why maintaining this personalized communication, these different donor journeys and that clean data becomes more and more important because, again, that risk of lapsing. Yeah. That's awesome. Kath, would you mind kinda jumping again back into the software and and help us understand how do we tackle this? How do we kinda have that donor view? How do we have clean data, but also that 360 degree view when it comes to knowing the donor? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think there's kind of, like, two, main conversations that we dove into there. So first, I wanna touch on, like, kind of what you're saying, that three sixty view and just better being able to understand who your supporters are and also, like, managing that supporter relationship across your entire team. And then the second piece will be like that that what Jacqueline said is really, like, the right ask at the right time and how do we make better suggestions to our supporters. So kinda gonna approach us in two different lenses. But that first piece is just really the way that Virtuous is built is that we are really focusing on the holistic view of your supporters. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with teams where it's like, okay. Development's using this tool over here. Volunteering is over here. None of our information is syncing back and forth. And I've heard stories even where people realize, like, oh, our major donor and and our top volunteer were actually the same person, but we just didn't have data integrated. So we never knew that until they actually came to, like, an in person event. And both of our contacts were trying to talk with that prospect. So all different kinds of stories that we've heard, but, really, that's what we're focusing in on here. It's how can you bring all of that information into one place. So I think the main thing to call out on a contact record here is just that you have an activity feed that's gonna show everything happening with that person. So we do have a full marketing engine built into Virtuous. So what you can see is that all of those emails, open rates, click rates, any kind of interaction that's going out is gonna be tracked in this activity feed. Also, online giving is built into Virtuous, so any gifts that are being made, if people are registering for events, if you host events, all of that data is coming into here, as well as, like, any personal notes that people are logging. If you had an in person interaction, you wanna log notes back, it's all gonna be tracked in this one feed here. So really goal is that anyone coming on to that record can get a full history of what is happening with Ray and Mandy Butler. Other thing to call out is that you can always pin important notes to the top here as well. So if maybe one of your staff members has that best relationship with Ray and Mandy and there's something that they wanna make sure anyone that interacts with them would know about, great. You can pin that information to the top of that record here. There's a lot of information on a contact record, so I'm not gonna dive into every piece for the purpose of today. But some other things as we think about, like, really, like, that holistic picture is that all of your volunteering would be, tracked into Virtuos. So you could actually come in here and see all of their volunteer hours that they're they have. Again, not every organization runs events, but if you are running events, you can track all of that RSVP information and attendance directly inside of here as well. And then, of course, from a development perspective, all of that giving information is also going to be on that record. So really, again, getting that full idea of who they are. The next piece, though, is also to Jacqueline's point, like, making sure that we have good segmentation and that you're not kind of sending, like, irrelevant solicitations. We're really making sure that we're starting to cater and personalize the ask of our supporters. So from a segmentation standpoint, I think it's also really important to call out that you have easy ability to add tags in your system and really customize the records in whatever capacity makes sense for your team. So easily saying who are your members, who are your volunteers, maybe who are those major donors that you have. And then if you are more of, like, a diocese where maybe you're working with, like, a lot of different churches and you wanna track different members, you also do have the relationship to or sorry. You have the ability to tie different relationships to different records. So, again, really just seeing that that full way of their involvement with your organization. So that's one side of the conversation. The second piece is really, okay. Now that we have all that great information, how do we use that to drive better engagement with our supporters? And we didn't really touch on the, like, responsive fundraising idea of Virtuos, but that is what our entire organization is built upon is this idea of responsive fundraising. So how can we get better at listening, connecting, suggesting, and learning from our supporters and doing that on a continuous cycle? So really getting away from the one size fits all approach, but starting to actually get specific in who we're targeting and how we're communicating with them. So there's a couple of different ways that we can help out with that. First is probably gonna be most important. These scores in the right hand corner, every contact in your system would be getting two different scores from Virtuous. So what we're essentially doing here is we're just running some algorithms in the background and looking at their patterns of giving. So for that financial score is actually gonna be looking at, like, okay, recency, frequency, amount of giving to identify when is the right time for you to go back to Ray and Mandy Butler and ask them for another gift. So it's gonna bubble up those insights for you. We do also integrate directly with donor search. So that suggested ask amount can also even be weighed in with, like, capacity information. So one, you're getting that score to highlight who should we reach out to and then also getting that suggested ask amount. The other piece of the puzzle though is that, again, we wanna come back to that idea of, like, a holistic way of engaging with your supporters. It's not always the right time to ask someone for a gift. Right? Maybe they've either just made a gift or they don't have the means to make a gift right now. There are still other ways that you can get them engaged, though. So what that social score is looking at is really, like, how well connected are they in your community. So maybe these are good people to tap for speaking engagements or, hey. Would you post on social media about our organization? So really good people that can kinda, like, help spread the mission of your nonprofit. One other thing I will call out is just that you're gonna be able to see all of that on a contact record, but we do also summarize all of that data into one section. So as your development team, kind of comes in here and is looking for maybe they have an extra ten, fifteen minutes in their day, who are people that I could reach out to to try to prospect them for a gift or ask them to get more engaged with our organization? You do also just have a consolidated feed here of all of those insights. All of that's gonna be bubbled up for you. So I know it's a lot of information, but on that contact record, you get that full picture of who your people are. And then this is some of the ways that Virtuous is really helping to bubble up those insights for how to take that that best next step with your supporters. That's great, Kath. And, yeah, while it is a lot of information, it's also it's what you need for a 360 degree view and to be able to see all of that, but then also to be able to act on it. So so appreciate you walking through that. We're gonna keep going here. I'm gonna toss it back to Jacqueline as we dive into, the shifting landscape of mid and major donors. And what what does that look like? What is that landscape? How is it moving and and what we can do about it? Love it. Alright. So, one of the other things that we've been seeing, another trend that's been happening across the fundraising space is that while we see a decline in low tier donor retention, so they're just fewer and fewer of them engaging. There has been growth in that mid and major gift. So quite often what we're seeing across the industry is that as the lower value donors decline, the mid and major donors have been stepping up and often offsetting that loss. So that donor upgrading is countering act the volume decline. And this is really important because if we're not focused on that shift, we might not be taking advantage of it and we might actually be seeing our revenue decline along with the volume decline. And decline. And this really highlights the importance of mid and major donor rep representatives, mid and major donor reps. And that's really those who are focused on managing those donor relations. We've done testing, to see how deep can we go down, like, what is that CUM level where the rep stops paying for itself. And we even saw that those mid reps paid for themselves down to that $250 level because they were driving that increase in value and maintaining that retention rate. And so managing cas that retention rate. And so managing caseloads effectively in this time, staying on top of that, making sure you're asking for that right amount, as you said, becomes more and more important. And I know at Masterworks, we have our MRI Masterworks response index, which also kind of gives you those suggested asks. And it's so helpful in those moments to know what is it, and when is it the right time to engage with those high value donors? Yeah. Yeah. And that that's such an important question. Right? Like, how do you adjust gift requests based on donor capacity? Like, what what does that look like? And, you know, how how can these tools help with that? And that's one of the things too, Kath. I know that, that that we wanted to kinda walk through is a little bit of okay. So how can you use a tool to know the right ask at the right time for the right person. I know we talked just a little bit about that previously, but we'd love for you to dive into that a little bit more and how Virtruis can help with that. Yeah. Definitely. And I think this is where, there's a little bit of a difference too of, like, when we're looking for, like, major donors versus, like, the everyday donor. Like, having the right ask is really important for both, tiers of donors. But one thing I think that's really important to highlight for, like, the mid and major donors is, again, that integration with donor search. So I mentioned this briefly when we talked about the suggested gift ask, but I do just wanna call out that your team can actually run all of your, like, prospect research directly inside of Virtuous. So having that easy ability to have your donor rating, have a major gift likelihood score, and then have things like an estimated capacity range directly inside of your tool. So you're not having to, like, build out lists, export data, run a screening, and then reimport that back into Virtuous. You can actually just run those refreshes directly inside of here. And what you'll see is that you're even getting that breakdown by sector too. So better understanding, does this donor have an affinity to give to religious organizations? All of these different data points that are coming over from donor search are still gonna be reportable inside of Virtuous. So what I mean by that is that you could build out a query and say, okay. Show me everyone that has an estimated capacity range over $25,000. Maybe they live in a certain ZIP code, and to date, they have given below a thousand dollars. And that could be how you use the system and that data to assign out different portfolios to major gift officers. You could run some automations off of here to make introductions. So, again, using all of this information to better understand who you're going after and then using that estimated capacity range to really get specific in the kind of gift that you would like to ask for. So it's kind of the first piece. The second piece that Jacqueline kind of dove into is like the ability for gift officers to actually then like keep track of all of that information. And I have spoken with hundreds of gift officers at this point and have really, like, heard it all. I've heard, okay. I'm managing all the relationships in my head. I just know all my people. I remember what I'm supposed to be asking for. I've seen Excel spreadsheets with, like, color coding and 50 columns, and every gift officer has a different process. So we really have seen it all. So definitely now you're not alone if that is what you're doing right now, but that's exactly why our major gift fast pipeline was created is to really help streamline that process to for managing all of those, like, mid level and major donor gifts. So what you'll see here is, essentially, you have, like, a a moves management board. You are able to fully customize this for your organization. So by no means are we saying, like, you have to fit your your different criteria into these five stages. We want you to make this your own. So every organization can come in here and say, okay. Do we wanna have a 10 step process? Maybe we just have a three step process. We have discovery, close won, and close lost. It's totally up to you. But what you have is the ability to even set a probability to close number by stage. So what this is helping with is, one, from, like, the major gift side perspective, you have better tracking of where your opportunities lie, But it's also giving roll up reporting for a leadership perspective as well. So helping give better visibility into what do we expect to come in this year or this quarter. So really helping if, like, your board members or your executive team is asking for that information. You have easy calculations directly inside of here. I know everyone always loves a drag and drop, so I always like to show this too that, like, if you had a great conversation with Gloria and Justin Campbell, you you wanna move it over to cultivation, you're just dragging it over. And that forecasted to close number let's do a higher one so so we can see that difference. That forecasted to close number is automatically updating for us. So it's just taking that probability to close number, multiplying it by the gift asset you've created, and then rolling out that information for your team. And then the other things I would call out here is just ease of use. Like, again, I've seen a lot of things where it's like we're tracking our notes in an Excel doc, but that information is not getting back into the system. What you could do here is if Samuel and Rebecca page told me they're definitely interested in making a donation, but they're not gonna be able to do that until June. Okay. Let me create a task reminder for myself for June, or maybe the May to reach back out and communicate with that donor. And then if you ever needed to, like, actually look into their contact information, like, I wanna look back at their previous interactions or their previous gift history, it's easy for me to jump directly to that contact record. So keeping all of your information in one place. So, again, we have that one source of truth and just making it a lot more streamlined, kind of across your team here. So yeah. That's a lot about how you can kind of, make sure that you're going out and making the correct ask amount. And then also making sure once you've made that ask, you can track kind of what what your status is with that specific donor. Yeah. That's so helpful, Kath. Thanks for walking through that and and and highlighting that. And, hey, just a reminder, everyone, we're kinda rounding the bend here almost, to the end, and so please make sure to share any questions that you have in our q and a tab. We're gonna allow some time at the end. We'd love to answer anything that might be, on your mind and help you. So please make sure to submit those as, we keep going. So we'd love to toss it back to you, Jacqueline, just to talk through, volunteerism, what that looks like, the way it's changing, but also the way that it's it's impacting organizations. Yeah. So we've we've touched on, you know, the importance of donor retention and how to engage them, Q1s as prices rise. We've talked about major donors and when the right time is to engage them and how to, you know, fight against some of the things that cause, retention loss. But the other part outside of the donors is really volunteers because volunteers, you know, obviously they're offsetting costs, but it's a really great way for people to continue to engage with them maybe when finances are tight. And what we've seen recently is that volunteerism is returning. There has been an increase in the number of volunteer hours at organizations in '23 and '24, but they still haven't reached that pre pandemic level increase in informal volunteerism. So these are people self reporting that they might not be volunteering at their local ministry or their local church, but they're still volunteering. You know, maybe they're helping their neighbors or just doing other acts of kindness that to them is still a way of volunteering. And this suggests that people are still, engaging in acts of generosity, but it's really becoming more and more on their own terms and their own schedules. And that's important to note because as we look at the fastest growing group of volunteers, which is millennials, we understand that they expect all of their engagements to be easy, to have this high level Amazon level, ease of use. And so one of the ways to reengage them with volunteerism at maybe an organizational level rather than, you know, with their neighbors or informally, is to just make the entire process of engaging, far easier for them to actually do. And I think this is really important as we move forward. Just how do we create just less friction in our interactions both with our donors, but also with our supporters who might choose to support in nonmonetary ways? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I I think a lot of us might be able to relate to that, but you you get so used to, just the experience of purchasing something on Amazon, signing up for, some I mean, just purchasing something in general when it's down to one click and, great, you know, I I have this gift or this purchase on the way or whatever it might be. And so I know that ease of use is important as well as some other things. And so, Kath, would love to toss it back to you here, one final time as we kinda dive through a little bit of how we can help with that, and how we can make that nice and simple. Yeah. Of course. Give me one second. Yeah. No problem. We've done great so far with the screen sharing. It's one of those things on webinars everybody knows. It could go south real fast, but I think feel like we've been pretty successful so far. So Yeah. Not too many issues so far. Yeah. Yeah. It is I will say I'm a millennial. So, like, some of it what I wanted to talk about is that exactly kind of what Jacqueline was saying is, like, for me, like, ease of use is something that I have, like, grown up with. Right? I'm used to everything, like, that I want to get involved with being a really easy process. On a personal note, like, I live in San Diego and volunteer with my coworkers, like, once a month. And we've had experience with experiences where there's been organizations that were like, oh, that's an awesome nonprofit. We wanna help out. But getting in touch with their team or, like, getting involved with volunteering was so difficult that we ended up having to, like, eventually give up and go volunteer at a different nonprofit. So it is really important to make sure that it's easy for people that want to be involved with your organization to actually get involved. That's from a volunteer perspective. Also, we wanna make it easier for your team too. Like, we don't want you to have to be doing everything manually on on, like, pen and paper. Let's make it easier for your team to understand who your volunteers are and, again, like, use that information about their volunteer hours to drive engagement after the fact. So what I wanna walk through first, there's a lot of information that I could show from a volunteer perspective, but but really just wanted to kind of chat through, like, the volunteer experience and that ease of use. And then I do have one quick automation that I wanna show just from, like, a ease of use perspective on your your staff's time. So what I wanna call out first is that with our volunteer platform, you have the ability to create essentially, like, a branded hub. So what you would have here is all of your different opportunities that you're running, listed for people to be able to come in and sign up. Do always like to call out that this doesn't mean that you're replacing, like, your vetting process. If you have a process for screening, like, a phone screen for volunteers or having them go through some sort of interview background check, maybe, okay, you're doing food and they need to go through, like, a food safety course. You can run all of that directly through here. So you do have the ability to create, like, different abilities for people to register for opportunities depending on what certifications or processes they've gone through. So always wanna call that out. You do still have, like, those safeguards in place. But what this would allow people to do is, like, once they they sign up for your organization and they're approved, they can then easily jump into any of your opportunities and actually sign up for different shifts. So let's say I wanna click into that food pantry opportunity. It has all of the key information that I would need to know as a volunteer. So where do I actually have to drive to? If I have questions, who should I reach out to? If there were certain certifications that I needed to hold in order to register for this opportunity, it could also be listed under that requirement section. And then we wanna make sure that it's engaging. So you can also add in, like, fun pictures and images here of past volunteers, Really help people to understand what is it would they be doing at that opportunity if they choose to volunteer. So a lot of key information up top. At the bottom then, it's gonna allow your support to act to actually come in and register for those different shifts. So I think what's really great about this is it's also allowing you to not have to go back and forth and say, okay. Let me work with the volunteer coordinator. I'm gonna tell them my schedule, and let's try to send multiple emails back and forth to find when I can actually volunteer. I know my own schedule. This would give me the ability to say, okay. I work during the week, but on the weekends or maybe on Friday afternoon, I could ask to, spend some time volunteering. I can easily then come in here. These look like they're full. But if I had a Thursday one, I could just register directly through this link. So, again, making it really easy for your volunteers to come in and dedicate their their time and their energy to your organization. What's also really nice from the volunteer perspective is that they also get, like, a resume page. So another way that it can really help them feel more engaged with your organization because they're getting a quick roundup of all of the dates that they've served, the total number of hours that they volunteered, and you can even add in, like, an economic impact tier. So your team has the ability to change it by opportunity, or we're just gonna use that national average of a volunteer hour. So it's, again, allowing them to understand maybe they don't necessarily have the means to donate financially to your organization, but I've had a really large impact on your nonprofit through my volunteering. So helping them to feel more connected to your mission and want to come back again and give their time. That's just on the volunteer side of the house. There's a lot of ways that this will help streamline your efforts for your team too, but I just wanna round this out with the ability to use all of that data to kind of run an automation. So maybe volunteers historically haven't been, like, a audience that you're engaging with on, like, a consistent basis. You could actually just set up an automation that says, okay. When somebody hits the threshold of volunteering, twenty hours or fifty hours. Maybe it's slower for your team. This could be five hours and ten hours. You have full customization here. But it then would allow you to send some automated communications to them or maybe alert the right person. Like, if someone's dedicating fifty hours, they really care about your organization. That that might be a reason that one of your teammates wants to call and give them a personal thank you. So just wanted to kind of round that out here too with the ability to kind of further engage with those volunteers and maybe convert them to donors or or other aspects, in the future. That's awesome, Kath. Thanks so much for walking through that. I think, yeah, oftentimes those who are giving of their time, that's a significant sacrifice as well. And so they're likely to be engaged and sometimes can, be, you know, move from volunteer to donor. And and so, listen, we have, another poll that we are gonna open up, and this one, is for those of you who are not, current users of Virtuous. I know we have a few on here, which we're so glad for that and thankful for you. But those who are not, if it would make sense for you to, see a demo of Virtuous and get an idea diving even further. Katz did such an awesome job walking through, today what the platform can do, but there's so much more. And, obviously, we're limited by time. And and often too, you wanna see what does this look like for for us, our context, some of our specific needs. We would love to be able to connect with you. I know our team would love to be able to jump on a call and be able to dive into some of those things. And so we have that poll open. Would love for you, to answer that, as we kinda keep going. And so, go ahead and respond there. And, again, we'd we'd love to, connect with you and and show you something that's really specific to what you might need. Now, Jacqueline, Kath, I did not prepare you for this, but I just was thinking one of the things that I know in talking about pain points, talking about difficulties, talking about the struggles that are really true. I'd also love to just maybe encourage, some some people on today who feel those pain points and probably are working through those. And so do you both just maybe mind sharing if there's one thing that you would encourage, the folks on today with what that would be? I think the what we're seeing in the industry is a slow down, but I think we're also finding that donors, they're still generosity. It's still a part of, American culture. It's still a part of our, of our, our legacy. And what we see is a lot of shifting, but I don't think it's a decline in the desire to participate. I think it's really just trying to find the new ways to do that, the new ways to engage with people, and be it through better storytelling, be it through more touch points that are less, expensive. I really truly think right now a lot of what we're feeling is this shift. And once we, you know, gain all of these learnings, gain all of these insights, and really take advantage of the technology, I think we're gonna see, you know, the generosity return to its normal, its normal levels. Yeah. I yeah. I would echo echo a lot of that, not as, like, a a cop out, but Jacqueline, I think she's obviously knows a lot about the industry, so it would echo a lot of that. I think the other things I I would call out is just, like, make it easy for for people to get involved with your organization. We touched on that from volunteering, but also from, like, a giving perspective. Having mobile wallets on your giving pages, having the ability for people to check out with, like, Google Pay and Apple Pay. I can't tell you how many times I abandoned cart on, like, shopping things if they don't have a a way for me to check out easily. We just have short attention spans now. So how can you, like, get people to convert as quickly as possible, I think, is really crucial. But, yeah, to Jacqueline's point, I think it's we're just we're seeing a shift, and we have to kinda get creative in the ways that we're engaging with our supporters so we can kinda break through that noise. So that would be my call out. Yeah. Yeah. And and I I I think I would just encourage, people to know that even even though the work is hard, you're making an amazing impact. And I think oftentimes too when you're in the weeds of, okay, how do we grow fundraising? How do we get the resources we need? Volunteer like, there there's so many needs, but, really, it's ultimately to accomplish an incredible mission. And so, one of the things I love about what I get to do is working with so many organizations, bringing, order to the chaos and, beauty into brokenness. And so just thank you, and keep going. So listen. I'd love to toss it back to Jacqueline now. Will you just share I know you shared a little bit about Masterworks, but can you give people just a next step here for what they might want to connect with you, you know, and a little bit more on the newsletter? Yeah. So, as I mentioned, Masterworks is focused on direct response strategies. We are exclusively with faith based nonprofits. And one of the things that we really want to do is make sure that all of our learnings, all of our knowledge is available to everyone, independent if they work with us or not. And so if, any of the stuff I've said interested you, you can go to our, insights lab, you can go to masterworks,um,.agency and sign up for our newsletter. We send out, blogs that talk about what's going on in the industry, experiments, they're available online. And we also post regularly on LinkedIn. So all of the data points that I've talked about, we put out there as well. You can follow me, you can follow Masterworks, But we really wanna make sure that we're equipping all ministries with our understandings and our finance findings in these different spaces. If you're interested in any of that research that I talked about, that'll be coming out in a few weeks as well and also posted on that newsletter. So, yeah, feel free to reach out. I people literally send me questions. I've never met them before. They just send me random questions on LinkedIn, and I love it. And then, Scott and Kath, thank you for inviting me. Obviously, I'm a little bit biased. I'm here. I love you guys. I love what you shared with that volunteering and, Kath, what you said about mobile friendly and ease. It's so important right now, and it was just it was great hanging out with you guys. Yeah. Likewise. And, listen, we have one more poll that we're opening up. I know it's sad. Last poll of the webinar, but we would love, to open this up and just, you know, for you to answer if you'd like to connect with the Masterworks team. Obviously, we're a bit biased as well and would highly recommend, that you do. And, Jacqueline, one of the things that I love about not only you, but your team and Masterworks in general is just the heart to serve, the heart to serve the kingdom and, the way that that comes through in what you do, and how you do it in the excellence that you all have. And so we're super thankful for you all. We're gonna leave this poll up here a little bit. Would invite everybody to answer this, and also wanna let you know, today, actually, registration opened for our responsive nonprofit summit. It's coming up June, and so, we would love to invite you to register. Now you're asking yourself, okay. What what is this? If you haven't heard of it, again, this is a virtual event, a free two day event really built for nonprofit leaders, fundraisers who want to really grow in a lot of what we've talked about, better understand their donors, build stronger donor relationships, ultimately grow generosity, and move their mission forward. So amazing lineup of speakers, tons of value. You also get early access to our twenty twenty five benchmark report, which we will be releasing at, the responsive nonprofit summit. Walk away with strategies, some practical things you can actually do, to move the ball down the field. So go ahead and register for that. I actually have a link that I will share in the chat here. Again, free, and so we'd love to see you there. There's actually a couple add on workshops you can do as well that have a cost, but, the the bulk of this, we want to just kinda give away as a resource. So go ahead and join us there. Jacqueline, Kath, thank you so much for being here, for, participating, for adding so much value. I really do appreciate it. We are gonna close just by launching a survey for those of you here to let us know how we did. We love to know feedback. Did you get value from this? What was helpful? What wasn't? What could we improve to do better next time? Because, again, we really wanna do these things, you know, webinars, events, all of that to really help you all, and to really see ultimately global generosity grow. That's really the mission of Virtuous and what we love to, see happen. And so let us know how we did. That survey, should be there. I will leave that up here, just for just a little bit. But thank you so much again for being here, Jacqueline. Thanks for joining us, Kath. Thank you. You, and we appreciate, your time and everyone being here today. Again, the recording will be sent out. Slide decks, or the slide deck will be sent out as well if you haven't grabbed that from the docs tab. And so keep an eye out for that. That should be out later today. And we'll also include a link in there to, register for the responsive nonprofit summit. And, Vicky, appreciate the shout out. The summit is awesome. She attended many times. So, we're we're thankful to hear that, and we're looking forward to having you again this year. So that is all. I will stop talking now. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here, and we will see you next time. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.