Host: Welcome back to another episode of “The Go Beyond Fundraising” podcast. Today, I’m chatting once again with Michelle Boggs from Classy by GoFundMe. Michelle, did I get the new brand right?

Michelle Boggs: Perfect. So great to be here again. Thanks for having me. 

Host: I’m so excited to sit down with you again because we’ve had some really great discussions over the last few years about some of the different reports that Classy by GoFundMe and GoFundMe proper have put out. Looking across all the different organizations that we work with and picking out those trends that are useful for folks who work in the nonprofit fundraising and marketing space. Any thoughts on that, Michelle, before we kind of jump into today’s topic?

Michelle Boggs: I’m so proud of the data, reports, knowledge, and education that Classy from GoFundMe puts out. I used it myself before I even worked here as a front-line fundraiser and always viewed them as a trusted resource. This specific report that we’ll talk about a bit today is exciting because it’s the first time we’ve done it in collaboration with GoFundMe. We’ve been able to weave in even more interesting data pieces from donors from all different walks of life, giving money, asking for help on the GoFundMe platform, and so I think you’re looking for a treat today.  

Host: With that context in place, today we’re talking about the new Social State of Giving Report, as well as some of the new giving features that are available in some of these social media platforms. To get us started, we know that Gen Z, who are folks in their 20s, are some of the heaviest users of social media. It seems appropriate to open with kind of a view of how Gen Z engages in social media, and specifically how they engage with philanthropy on social media. What specific trends are you seeing with this demographic, and how are you tailoring your platform to this group’s specific needs and preferences?
 

Michelle Boggs: Thanks so much. It’s a great kind of question to kick us off.  If you think about it, this is going to be the group of your donors, supporters, audience who are most comfortable with any and all technology, especially social media. These guys are digital-first natives. They grew up from very early ages understanding this technology. Think about all the funny videos about them teaching us how to do things or teaching their parents how to do things. That comfort level around technology and using social media when it comes to generosity and philanthropy is unprecedented. We’ve never seen anything like it.  

This Social State of Giving report looked at 1,000 individuals, and we wanted to understand how they discover, interact with and share causes online. And we really dug deep with Gen Z specifically. Like you said, those are folks in their early 20s. We looked at anybody over the age of 18 in that demographic, and one of the most shocking, profound things we found through our research and through this survey, is that they’re 10 times more likely to share that they’ve donated on social media than Boomers. It’s just something that they’re very comfortable with. It’s a part of their identity. They feel proud in sharing that they’ve given online versus if you talk to boomers, it’s more the sentiment of I give because it’s the right thing to do, or I give because I have a personal connection to that nonprofit, and I don’t necessarily feel the need to share that or shout it from the rooftop.  

It’s a total shift in behavior and how Gen Z versus boomers feel about sharing the nonprofits that they’re engaged in, and we know that the sharing will equate the dollars. Some of our internal GoFundMe research has shown us that every time an organizer shares one of their fundraisers, it can help drive an additional $100 towards their goal, on average. So hopefully, what will come through a lot in our discussion today is the power of sharing from this group, and really every age group. But this group, their so ripe for opportunity because sharing is so innate, and they’re so used to it. It’s just a part of their sort of fiber and DNA. 

A couple other trends on this group is they’re more likely to say that they give because a cause resonates with them personally, so they have a personal experience or affinity towards that cause. I think for myself, as a frontline fundraiser for 20 years and the fundraisers listening, you might not think all Gen Z behaviors are as important to me today, in this moment, because they don’t always equate to dollars. We must think about the future. These guys are on track to become the wealthiest generation reaching an estimated 12 trillion with a T by 2030 which is not far off, and overtaking Baby Boomer spending by 2029. If we aren’t thinking about Gen Z yet, hopefully this podcast, this episode, will inspire listeners to maybe start to build some urgency around thinking about this group.  

The big thing that they’re telling us in this research and through this survey is that their voice is powerful. They might not have the dollars today, but that voice can become really a powerful ally in amplifying your mission,  especially when you think about their relationships — their parents, their friends and family members who might be in other age groups, like Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers — that sharing can really translate to these other age groups. It could be super powerful. So those are some of the trends that we’re seeing from Gen Z specifically.

Host: Thank you for that context around the report, as well as getting right into some of the trends and insights around Gen Z. Something that is interesting to me about this report, and anytime you  talk about generational giving, in particular with a lot of generations, you kind of are seeing the general sort of spectrum that people fall into as they go from a younger person into an older person. We can all remember when we were younger in our 20s, and how much passion that we had around certain things, and how as we’ve gotten older, sometimes that passion kind of modulates as it’s informed by subsequent life experiences.  

And I share all that, because when we’re younger is when we tend to be the most passionate about things. It’s important for fundraisers to recognize that and sit and see young people right now may not have a lot of monetary assets to get towards your organization, but what they do have is youth and passion. How can you harness that while they’re young and then steward them as they become more mature and get older and they’re giving, and their philanthropic priorities shift to transition them into more of that donor role that’s going to support you in that way because you were able to get them engaged when they were especially prone to some of those more passionate messages. 

Michelle Boggs: I couldn’t agree more. Well said.  

Host: Speaking of that, I may have just answered my own next question here. What are some specific tactics that nonprofits and individual fundraisers can leverage, specifically with Gen Z, to get them engaged in that sharing activity to reach their peers and wider audiences, to influence them towards philanthropy?

Michelle Boggs: You kind of said it, and that’s great because it tells me that we’re on the same page and moving in the right direction as to how we’re thinking about this. I think it’s as simple as looking at your donation process. Are you providing those younger generations? Are you providing them the opportunities to share? Do you have different calls to action that center around sharing, that galvanized that passion versus is it just a transaction with a thank you receipt?  

You know, a Boomer might appreciate that experience because I have the correct receipt that I need to give to my accountant, blah, blah, blah, I feel good about my gift. But Gen Z, from what they’re telling us, if we don’t provide those mechanisms to shout from the rooftops that I’ve given or shout from the rooftops that I care about this organization or I care about this influencer, or I care about this cause, we’re going to sort of lose engagement. They’re going to move on and find a brand or an organization that sees them and provides those opportunities. I think asking for that share is important, and if you don’t, you’re missing out on that opportunity for them to reach through your supporters, making wider audiences in different groups you might have never interacted with. People who are well positioned to act on that eventual monetary gift. 

For building that brand loyalty, it’s going to result in revenue down the line, if not sooner but that share piece is really important. Take a look at your actual giving experience and engagement with your organization. Do you provide opportunities for them to advocate and share that they like you? That they are involved with you? That they support you? Something simple. I guarantee a lot of orgs aren’t doing that yet or aren’t doing it in an impactful way.  

Host: What are some of the most interesting statistics from the report specifically around that impact of sharing?

Michelle Boggs: I’m going to kind of read a few of them just to make sure I get them right, because they’re powerful. We saw that your social media content not only expands your audiences but can really have an impact on donating. So, 41% — almost half of all Gen Z — said that social media content has motivated them to research or donate to a cause. Something they saw, almost half of them then felt the need to go donate or research a cause, and this trend extends across generations too, Leah. It’s not just the younger Gen Z. About 25% of Millennials and about 20% of Gen X are motivated by what they see on social media. So social media continues to be a trusted resource, a place where obviously, so many of us spend more and more hours of our day, and so the more that we can show up in a meaningful way and tell a powerful story.  

And then we were also able to see that Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X also really care about other causes being shared online, and they care about the people sharing those causes. There’s a lot more trust put into, oh, I follow this person, and they care about animal welfare, I’m much more likely to then give to that cause. It’s that influencer piece that I’ll talk a little bit later about how we’re thinking about these influencers and how they show up on social.

Host: Definitely. It very much seems on the nose of this principle that people get to people, and organizations are just kind of the conduit between people.

Michelle Boggs: That’s what’s been so amazing with Classy from GoFundMe is we really are at the forefront of thinking about the different tools that are going to enable people to give to people because at the root that’s what all this is telling us like you just said.  

Speaking of where people spend a lot of time,  we just launched a new integration with Meta that allows us to introduce Instagram as a totally new channel for giving. It make it easier for nonprofits and their supporters to share any kind of campaign, any kind of fundraiser, to Instagram with just one click versus how fundraising used to be on different social platforms was much more clunky. It didn’t look nice. With this integration, when someone shares to Instagram, the stories and posts themselves are going to show up in that beautifully polished way with dynamic progress metrics, clear calls to action, clear buttons to give, and then lastly, that checkout experience will drive the donors back to where the original fundraiser was created.  

Imagine, if you’re a nonprofit using this tool through Classy from GoFundMe, you’re then getting all that rich donor data back of, you know, these 47 new net new donors gave to this campaign that was shared on Instagram. Now you’re able to get all that rich donor data. You’re able to think those donors, steward those donors. We’re always kind of thinking about not only how social media will continue to be a powerful way to research philanthropy, to engage with philanthropy, but what tools can we provide to really make it as easy and seamless as possible?

Host: That’s incredible. I know it seems most social platforms, including Meta, have really been driving people towards the story format of that short, it disappears in 24 hours. It really is that kind of instant gratification, like trigger for you, because it’s like, oh, I better look at this, because it’s going to disappear. You don’t necessarily know how much longer is left on someone’s story. and so that’s always what people tend to click on first. I love that Classy by GoFundMe is building integrations to kind of take advantage of that tendency, that user tendency within the platform, to really drive more impact for philanthropy.

Michelle Boggs: It goes back to my earlier point about just native behaviors that are just going to be so much more common and ease younger demographic. It’s exciting to kind of meet them where they are. 

Host: When I was reading the report, something that stood out to me was this idea of impact creators. What is an impact creator, and how can fundraisers kind of harness their reach in their campaigns?

Michelle Boggs: We love the term. I almost gave it away earlier in your other question, I hope I foreshadowed. We can’t take full credit. When we were doing a lot of research for this social state of giving report, we interviewed a lot of different folks in this space. One of which is our friend and influencer marketer Arjun M Das, and he mentioned the term. We were like, that’s it. That is exactly what we’re trying to say. An impact creator is someone influencing their community, post content to inspire others, to help certain causes. They use their platform for good, often raising awareness or funds to really drive support where it’s needed. And they have great success reaching younger donors.  

Our research reveals the majority of Gen Z and Millennials currently follow an impact creator. One in four Gen Z we surveyed said they have been motivated to donate because of one of those social media creators they follow. And about half of Gen Z would trust that impact creator to donate on their behalf. I don’t even necessarily care as a Gen Z what ends up happening, I trust you impact creator because I follow your content, and you’ve built that trust with me, that wherever you see fit for my donation to go I’m comfortable with I mean, that’s shocking. Ask Boomers within your organizations about that, and it will blow their mind.  

When I first read about this, I was like, I don’t know that seems like a lot of people, and it was including Millennials, which is my age group. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, wow, I do. I follow two different impact leaders. I had just never bucketed them with that term. But one that sticks out, because I worked at the American Heart Association for a good chunk of my career, is this TikToker named JT Laybourne. He had been born with a cardiac defect and uses TikTok to raise awareness and funds for the American Heart Association. I think he’s raised almost $300,000, but he’s someone I follow. I just love his stuff, and I never connected the two.  

I think more folks, when they read this report, they’re going to say, oh my gosh, yes, there are content creators that I follow, and they’re using their platform for good. I think it’s going to continue to be popular. And again, like I want to be careful when I share this, it doesn’t mean you need some crazy influencer with millions of followers and how do I get to that person? What does paying them look like and all those complexities? I think the point of sharing the concept of impact creators is most of the organizations, if not all of them, will have impact creators within their networks. They just might not be thinking about them yet.  

Impact creators could be people coming to your events, people on your board, people that have volunteered with your organization in some capacity. We’ve just never connected those dots and realized, wow, they’ve got a pretty strong following for this type of person to bring it to life. We were with an organization, one of our Classy customers recently, and we were talking about this. We had a brainstorming session around who could we start to think about in this way? And this organization is focused on a couple important things. One is education, awareness and prevention of child sex trafficking. The other is centered around religious support, and then the third is centered around kids with special needs. Just through the brainstorming, it was like, well, which moms are in our circles and supporting our mission that are sort of impact creators that have followings, that have a lot of moms that you know are kind of are in a tribe, and how could we position them with the tools to start to talk about our organization. I think just thinking about the people in groups that you touched within your organization ask are their impact creators that you can start to think about in a strategic way and get them involved and get them excited? It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with impact creators as we move forward. But there’s a lot of power to harness and really leverage their reach.

Host: Oh, yes, this is definitely a topic of interest for me because I’m an avid Instagram user. but a couple of things that came to mind when you were describing that. I can also think of a few people that I would describe as impact creators where they create content that is around a specific cause. Most of the time, a lot of these folks maybe have 10,000 followers, or they have north of 1,000 followers. But it really is amazing to see how much impact somebody with even a modest following like that really can make, and even with local creators. I’m in the Dallas area. There’s a number of different local Instagram accounts that post touristy things like new restaurants opening or new social events.  

But anytime there’s any kind of local disaster, they will pivot to highlighting organizations you can give to support relief efforts and things like that. It’s interesting with a lot of a lot of creators on these social media platforms in the fluid way that they can interact with impact and with philanthropy. It’s important for organizations to be mindful and have a relationship or awareness of who those creators are within their space, and also to know and the moment’s notice, who’s on our list of people that we reach out to if we need some kind of disaster relief fundraising. Or who typically partners with these types of organizations when they’re doing some big local fitness event or things like that. It really is a very broad and kind of dynamic category.  

Michelle Boggs: I love that. I love your thoughts on thinking proactively of like if we had to create a list, and we can start to build relationships and cultivate now. But to your point about the disaster relief, it hit home with a statistic of if someone in Dallas that I followed said, hey, donate here. We’re going to be helping some organizations through Hurricane Harvey, I probably wouldn’t care necessarily what exact organizations the money went to. I would have that trust, which is what the statistics are telling us, just giving to that impact creator and trusting them to do with it, where they see the strongest impact. Yu just proved a point on me when you were talking about that is like a real example.  

Host: A great example I saw recently was with the Hurricane Helene destruction in western North Carolina. I  got married in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s one of my favorite places. And when all the devastation was happening there, there’s one account that I follow that was Visit Asheville, or Asheville tourism, and their page pivoted immediately to here’s an address of a church where you can send Amazon donations to for people who need water and socks and tents and things like that.  

Then whenever things started to recover, they were like, hey, these restaurants are open. If you’re coming here to see the fall leaves, Asheville still needs your tourism. Here’s how you can be a mindful consumer of travel, and here’s the things that you can do. It’s amazing the nimbleness by which these accounts can be activated for different causes, especially when it comes to things like disaster relief. To your point, I think it is good as an organization to be proactive and kind of think outside the box when it comes to creators in that way.

Michelle Boggs: Yes, I could not agree more. 

Host: Pivoting back to the report itself. It emphasizes the importance of personal connection and cause resonance. How can fundraisers effectively convey their stories and the impact of their cause to potential donors?  

Michelle Boggs: It can be overwhelming and paralyzing. I’ve set up several GoFundMe’s and wonder what am I going to say? And how do I share my story in my way and make it meaningful and make it impactful? We know that critical storytelling is a huge component of any sort of successful fundraising. What GoFundMe has been doing, which is super cool, is we’re using AI and insights from millions of users to help organizations better tell their story and share their fundraiser. Tools such as enhanced storytelling, suggested titles and new sharing options are built in to help fundraisers succeed while making sure the story remains authentic and about them and the message that they want to convey.  

We’ve also made updates for supporters looking to share on GoFundMe. Now, when you click “share” on any fundraiser. We talked about the power of sharing and how it can result in $100 supporters will see suggested social media captions generated with the help of AI. I mean, how many times have you wanted to post something on social — I don’t know if it’s just me — but I’m like, what can I say? I don’t want to sound dumb. Or that every single caption I write sounds the same. We’re just trying to make it as intuitive and easy as possible, but again, keeping that authenticity. We want to make things optimized when it comes to getting your story out, getting your campaigns out, being able to share.  

I think you said this earlier, Leah, you stole my thunder. You said it beautifully, but I think the power is like people giving to people. It’s important that it’s the donor story, the impact creator story, the supporter story. So as strong as your story is from your nonprofit, the more that you can help them translate it to make it their own is going to be important. Because, like you said, people give to people. The more that I can speak my language to my people, that they understand, that they feel inspired by, and the more that we can make that easy, the better results we’ll see with sharing and fundraising.  

Host: Are there any other specific tools or features that Classy by GoFundMe? Or GoFundMe is rolling out or has rolled out recently to help fundraisers build stronger connections with their supporters in other channels?
 

Michelle Boggs: Yes. We talked about the Meta integration. We just launched and introduced GoFundMe profiles. Think of any other profile you have on social now, there are GoFundMe profiles. If people want a cool visual, please feel free to check out my LinkedIn page. I have my GoFundMe profile there, so you can see visually what I’m talking about. But it allows me, or anybody, to curate a list of charitable organizations I follow and love, causes I care about, and it provides a dashboard of my impact. So how much money I’ve helped raise how many other organizations I’ve donated to, like my reach. It really is that social feedback loop that we all love, and that’s the reason social is so popular. It’s that feeling of, wow, look at the impact I’ve had, and now I want to share it with others.  

The GoFundMe profiles are really cool. Within our first week of launching them, we’ve had thousands of profiles published. We even had them from a couple well-known influencers, Little Miss Flint and the Good News Movement. Flavor Flav himself created a GoFundMe profile. And then we also have something called Impact links. That’s a unique link for an individual donor who gives on the platform. When a donor shares a link from a campaign they support, it tracks who gave and how much based on that individual link. That goes back to seeing what I talked about, those metrics and that dashboard of, wow, this one campaign resulted in this downstream effect of all these people got engaged, all these people donated. When I saw my own, I was really surprised and proud to see what my impact link looked like. But that’s something that kind of continues to drive that positivity around that.  

One other thing that was cool, we just had someone do a live stream at one of Taylor Swift’s concerts, the end of the Eras Tour. There’s popularity around a streaming widget. GoFundMe has a streaming widget now that makes it easy to live stream and fundraise at any event, at a community event, at a concert, across all platforms, Facebook live, Instagram live, YouTube, Twitch. But this Swiftie live streamed during the concert and was able to raise like $35,000 to help a few domestic violence organizations.  

It has lots of tools. I probably didn’t do them justice flowing through them quickly, but I would really encourage listeners to check them out. Go to my LinkedIn. You can see my impact link. You can see my profile. Go to the GoFundMe website. You can check it all out, but lots of cool stuff that we’re seeing. 

Host: It’s super cool and in line with what we’re seeing so many folks that are in their 20s, that Gen Z generation and millennials as well. They’re wanting to build community around everything they do, especially with social media and being able to accomplish something like raising a lot of money by just sharing people what you’re doing and where you are. It’s so, so powerful.  

Looking down the road a little bit, we’re recording this at the end of 2024 going into 2025 is probably when this episode will release. As technology continues to evolve, and I’m kind of specifically thinking about AI here because that just seems to be evolving at an exponential pace. How do you envision the future of social giving? What emerging trends or innovations are you excited about that maybe you can tease or that just kind of you see evolving, sort of just naturally based on where we are today?

Michelle Boggs: When you start to look at some of those adoption numbers, obviously they were the greatest with Gen Z, and then you had Millennials and Gen X, and then not as much with Boomers. As we continue to see Gen Z become to have even stronger buying power, look at statistics like how racially diverse our world will be in a few short years, all those things are going to play into the fact that people just want to connect with people. The more that we can empower them, allow them to share, allow them to rally, allow them to take the lead. I would point to it as the more that we can empower them to support us in the ways that make the most sense to them. 

I think that’s where the future of going and a huge part of that is AI. I look at my kids, who are high school age, they use AI all the time. It’s very natural to them, and used in a lot of ways that they shouldn’t be using it like to study or screenshot a math problem that they don’t understand. But that’s our reality. That’s the world that we’re living in. And the more that I think we can just be open and embrace those things.  

Gen Z is the hot topic right now, so I’d love to see organizations, especially maybe some of the Boomer executive team members within the organization, or board members who have been a little slower to come around to some of these concepts, a report like the Social State of Fiving a brand like GoFundMe that just brings so much innate trust and recognition. Use the report to have a conversation with your leaders. Talk about, like what you said, the impact creators. Is there a list we can start to think about? When we go into 2025, how can we pivot a few of our strategies to leverage these opportunities? Maybe we don’t even have sharing on any of our call to actions, that’s such a simple thing. I just think a lot of this stuff is just going to continue to grow in popularity, and we’re just excited to be a part of it. And hopefully your listeners are excited after hearing some of these statistics, especially if you like data to back this stuff.  

Host: Definitely. I’ll add one thought that I had that I wish I would have thought of earlier. I’ve noticed so often in the digital world of giving that a lot of times somebody may give a gift online, and then they are directed to a thank you page, and then there’s no next step. And what’s interesting is about the social sharing features, that’s a bit of a tongue twister there it does invite and prompt the giver to take that next step and then become an advocate for the organization. My challenge to any nonprofit fundraisers or marketers listening is look across your marketing and fundraising efforts, especially digitally, and see where those dead ends are like. See where you’re not asking that person to take the next step to engage with you because there’s always a next step. And what I love about the tools that you’ve built into Classy by GoFundMe and GoFundMe is it has that next step in mind to invite people to take. That’s how we’ve been trained, especially as kind of digital natives, to expect.  

Michelle Boggs: I love that. 

Host: Michelle, I know I promise you no surprise questions, but I think you’ll be able to answer this one, which is if folks want to get in touch with you, where can they find you?

Michelle Boggs: I’m super active on LinkedIn. I post all the time. I follow impact creators. I really try to stay abreast of different trends and things happening. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. Check out classy.org there’s tons of different resources, all the different reports you alluded to in the beginning of our interview but find me on LinkedIn. We’d love to connect.

Host: Thank you so much for the time today. Michelle, I really enjoyed our conversation.

Michelle Bogg: Thanks Leah. I love being a guest as always. Thanks for having me.

Host: Thanks for joining us on another episode of go beyond fundraising. We hope these conversations have equipped you with the tools and inspiration to take your fundraising, marketing and advocacy effort to the next level. If you are ready to transform your nonprofit growth and impact, visit TeamAllegiance.com to get in touch with the experienced team at Allegiance Group + Pursuant. We’re here to help you make a lasting difference. Until next time, keep up the phenomenal work you do every day. Together, we can create a brighter future.