Host: Welcome, everyone. Today, we’re adding to our series, “Mastering Omni-channel Fundraising,” by going through an exercise and discussion where we will audit all the different touchpoints and moments that a constituent — that’s a donor or a supporter of your organization — may have with you and look for ways to optimize that experience through an exercise called journey mapping. My friend and colleague Matthew Mielcarek is joining me today to walk through this valuable tactic.
Matthew Mielcarek: Hello.
Host: Matthew, it’s always great to have you on the show. And I have heard tales of some of these journey-mapping workshops, but it’s probably been a minute since I’ve ever sat through one. I’m personally excited to walk through this.
Matthew Mielcarek: Absolutely. I’m excited to share.
Host: Matthew, could you explain what a touchpoint audit and journey mapping experience are and why they’re essential for understanding the donor experience from the nonprofit’s perspective?
Matthew Mielcarek: Omni-channel strategies are the foundation of every organization we work with. Even if an organization is dominantly direct mail, digital engagement often plays a role. Multiple channels drive that overall response, whether it’s email marketing or less direct impact through social media or website content.
In addition to engaging constituents in multiple channels, we also know that multiple teams have an impact on the relationships that we have with our constituents. It might be development, public policy, sending advocacy appeals, or marketing, which might be responsible for broader brand messaging or your programs and services.
And so, living in the reality of an omni-channel universe, living in the reality that within our organization we don’t control every message that reaches our constituents, a touchpoint audit can be a meaningful tool for looking at the impact that all your marketing and communications have with your constituents. The stories that you have referred to are the outcome of our approach and our methodology, which is a workshop and getting stakeholders assembled around a table, either real or in the virtual world, and to quite simply talk about the relationship that each of us is having with our constituents and the impact our communications have on that experience.
Let’s sit down and talk about how we’re targeting folks, what they’re receiving, and the impact each of us has on relationship development.
Host: I sometimes like to imagine or visualize this as almost secret shopping your nonprofit. A donor or constituent has one experience with you, regardless of who within the organization or department is interacting with them and sending them messages in various channels. And so, it’s taking a step back and looking at what a given type of donor might feel when they experience your organization, knowing that they can’t distinguish between what the marketing department is working on versus the development program or even accounting.
Matthew Mielcarek: I love the term “secret shopper.” The challenge, and how I often invite our participants to think about it, is that we’re going to wear the donor hat. This is based on research, which is an important aspect of planning. It’s deciding the audience for whom we’re going to describe the journey but then relying on as much data and insights as we have available to represent that donor.
When I say, “the hat,” I’m talking about how to describe our donor from a demographic and psychographic perspective. How old is she? Does she have a name? How long has she supported us? Why did she start supporting us?
We need to start with a foundation and the constituent’s story by wearing her hat to build empathy with her and describe her experience with us. So, that’s a super important component of this. We’ve gone so far in some of our workshops as to include and invite a donor who can represent that person to the discussion to talk about their experience and directly convey that empathy from a firsthand perspective. It can be really cool, and that’s where that donor perspective comes into play.
Host: Let’s identify and expand upon this idea of the donor vortex. This is a term that Claire Axelrod originally coined, and it’s been adopted into our lexicon here as our catch-all analogy or visual for a donor’s experience with an organization. So, within this experience of a vortex, it looks like a little hurricane with different touchpoints. Using data and this workshop, how do you identify and audit the various touchpoints a given donor may have with your organization?
Matthew Mielcarek: I love it — the donor vortex is near and dear to my heart. The big idea around the vortex is that the donor pyramid is dead — or never really existed. In the same way, when we talk about journey building in relationship development, it’s also a fallacy too often to think that relationships develop linearly. And so, that’s really where the donor vortex comes into play. It’s a framework for omni-channel engagement.
The reality is that people go through phases of the intensity of their engagement with a nonprofit organization. Think about vacation planning. I love Italy, and I’m going to learn everything I can and sign up for everything as I’m working to plan a trip to go there. Eventually, my trip comes and goes. I still love Italy, but I’m not reading as many articles or clicking as many Instas to see and plan my trip because it’s already occurred. But I’m still reading a little bit because it’s exciting. In that case, my intensity around vacation planning and going to Italy has changed a little, so how I engage has changed a little. Although, it might pick up again in two years if I want to revisit it.
The purpose of sharing and thinking about the vortex is to recognize that relationships are dynamic and cyclical in nature. So, communications vehicles need to be available to those who are standing up, leaning forward, or wanting to engage.
As we develop this donor journey, we want to ensure that people have opportunities to engage.
Host: Because donors and supporters exist in different stages of intensity in their relationship with you, let’s go through an audit example of a new donor and then a new lead.
Matthew Mielcarek: Yeah. Let’s start with a new lead. Quite simply, it’s a new name that an organization has captured or identified. So, what we would want to do within that exercise is first define our audience. We have this new lead, and then we want to describe what engagement looks like around that individual. And so, we kick off the new lead by asking ourselves, “How was it captured? What was the source of that lead overall?”
We’d ask ourselves, “What are the motivations of the individual who registered? How was the name captured? What were they seeking? What were they interested in? How might we fulfill that?”
Indeed, as we design the experience for this constituent, we also look at that individual’s potential. For instance, were they acquired digitally, and will follow-up engagement be digital alone? Or did the engagement mechanism have an offline component? For example, are you registering online and providing your postal information to receive some offline resource, such as a white paper or literature, about the organization? Then, what we would do from there is design what that experience might look like. So, multiple touchpoints, and the tools and technology we have in place would also be really important.
Do you have robust tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, where you can design and build multiple touchpoints that might be triggered by behavior? If you do, that allows you to identify a much more granular experience. And then, what’s the goal you might attain around that new lead? I’m sure, at some point, it’s some level of conversion.
The new donor strategy is a little more specific. Often, new donor strategies exist because new donor retention is usually half that of overall file donor retention, which is wild. So, our new donors are very fragile. In most nonprofit organizations, depending on how those new donors were acquired, they’re retained at 20% to 25%. For most organizations that we work with, in that first year, we’ve identified that there’s a critical need for stewardship — to say thank you, to educate that donor about the organization, and to communicate in a meaningful way to boost that retention rate from 25% maybe to 35% or 40%.
We follow and use the tools that I shared in the new name or new lead example. But for new donors, we’re typically willing to invest and engage more, so this may turn into a multichannel strategy.
I mentioned the acquisition channel as well related to new leads. For new donors, that’s super important. But the first gift campaign that they gave to is also super meaningful in terms of telling us what drove them to give in the first place. And so, through our stewardship tools, we can use messaging and content to reference that program area that they supported and then fulfill that with additional messaging and materials that showcase our impact in one way or another.
The goal of all of this around the new donor example is conversion and subsequent engagement. That’s one path around donor journeys, but they can be super customized. Beyond new leads and new donors, other journeys that we often unpack and explore might be those for mid-level donors. So, how do we create and elevate an experience that aligns with their giving experience? That’s a huge and important one. We often do it around other primary sources of new names for an organization.
Another one we often do is post-event cultivation strategies. So, for instance, if you participate in a really big peer-to-peer event for the organization, we’d ask what journey we want these folks to have with our organization after the event concludes. That’s a really important component and part of this process.
I mentioned the weak retention that new donors often have; what we’re doing through the donor journey mapping workshop and through this methodology and process is looking at those moments of truth or looking for moments of truth where we have disappointed a constituent. For new donors, back to that number again of retaining only 20% or 25%, we seek to deconstruct the experience that a new donor would have with your organization and ask ourselves, what was that moment of truth where we did not stand up, where we did not fulfill with what that new donor wanted? And can we pinpoint that point of attrition where they stepped back and said, “This organization may not be for me” or “It’s become less interesting to me”?
When we do that, when we identify those moments of truth that result in disappointment, we have an opportunity to step up, optimize, create new strategies, and impact that relationship. That’s really what the journey mapping workshop is all about.
Host: I love all those examples you shared. Something occurred to me as you were speaking. I’m going to use the term “annual fund donors” here, though I know that you could have someone give a very large first gift out of nowhere.
But it strikes me that for most new donors who may be giving at that annual fund level, there are just so many complexities that are at play with how a person comes onto your file and makes the first gift that can, on the organization’s end, feel a little daunting. As someone moves into a deeper relationship with you, you gain more information to know precisely how to have an optimal relationship with them. And yet these folks giving $20, $30, $40 need all this care and attention put into that initial experience because those retention numbers are so low.
It’s almost like a catch-22, and I can see it being a big challenge for many organizations.
Matthew Mielcarek: A couple of things I’d share about that. You’re right. New names come through a multitude of sources. So, we definitely home in on key acquisition channels as our priority.
Where are names coming from? Was it a single batch, or do we expect additional names to continue to flow in dynamically? If they’re going to continue to flow in, then we would want to build some automation and a journey that’s trigger-based on behavior instead of a broad sweeping communication that we might target to everyone. So, trigger-based communications can be really interesting and helpful.
The other part that I mentioned or that comes to mind regarding what you’re sharing about strengthening a relationship is a conclusion that we often reach through this process. I would say we reach this conclusion every journey mapping workshop that we do: We need to strengthen the relationships that we have with our constituents. That’s what drives loyalty.
A way to do that is to learn through every constituent interaction. For instance, if someone’s a new donor, a key tactic that often comes out of this exercise is asking what we can learn about that new supporter. So, I mentioned the inception campaign — what did they give to that was meaningful or interesting to them? If, for instance, they’re supporting a health-related charity, we might ask them a very brief survey. And I won’t even say survey. I’ll just say, let’s ask them a couple of questions about what drove them to give today. We might ask, what is their relationship to this disease?
Maybe the individual volunteers that the disease affects someone in their family or themselves. That’s really telling. We might ask about key program areas that we have programs in which they may have an interest. We might ask them about their favorite. In doing those things — and this is really the outcome of what a journey mapping workshop allows us to do — we land on recommendations like a profiling survey.
A recommendation and outcome of this is to conduct a profiling survey, learn key things about your constituents, and append that information to your CRM. Then, in the future, when we reach out to these new supporters, we will actually know how to have a more meaningful conversation with this individual. That’s a good example of the types of outcomes and strategies that emerge from these workshops when we conduct them with the organizations we serve.
Host: One key benefit of these workshops is the ability to bring leaders from different parts of the organization together in the same room. Something that we frequently see in the industry is that some organizations are very siloed, meaning that there’s a lot of separation between different departments, and they may not be sharing data with one another or collaborating on communication calendars.
There could be a lot of disjointed things between different parts of the organization. Getting all of those folks into one room can prove really valuable for uncovering databases that aren’t syncing and tools that aren’t linked up. I’m really curious to hear other examples of aha moments you’ve heard in those rooms. Folks have walked away with some really clear action steps for some immediate wins they can get.
Matthew Mielcarek: You’re completely right. It’s about getting them to the table. This isn’t a development-only exercise, although development often sponsors it. But as we started this discussion, it’s with the core truth that development alone is not fully responsible for the relationships we have with our constituents.
Take an animal welfare organization. Marketing (through brand work) and your programs and services teams might be talking to the same donor universe about adoptable dogs and cats. At the same time, the public policy team might be talking about state and national laws in a way to change them. All those individuals have a way of helping those relationships develop. The communications that they share have an impact.
Coming together at the table to share what we’re each saying is often a huge step. And I would say it’s one of the greatest benefits and feedback we get from this exercise. It’s quite simply, “Oh, I didn’t know you were doing that over there.” Or maybe talking about some of the business rules that we thought were in place as we handed off relationships from one group to another is often huge.
I would also say that for larger organizations that have national versus local federated models where you might have chapters or affiliates, it’s also really important for them to be able to work together to say, “What’s the role of the national organization versus those affiliates as well? And when will we be talking?”
One of the strongest benefits we hear is being able to have this conversation together through the workshop. We often get feedback that we never do this or that this is something we’ve never done before, which is shocking and great, but it does take a little executive leadership to ensure that all the right folks are at the table.
I haven’t even talked about IT. Sometimes, having IT at the table is wonderful because then we can talk about data flows, access to data, and how folks are using data, and that often impacts those relationships as well. Being able to do that with these various teams allows us to establish a shared vision and then develop some recommendations that could be implemented across the entire organization.
Host: I love the ability that you described to bring all the relevant stakeholders into an organization to collaborate on making the donor experience better because I always like to think about commercial examples of a customer journey map. The simplest word I can use to describe the companies with whom I have the best relationships is seamless. There may be a clothing company that I buy a lot of pieces from, and then I don’t buy from them for another six months or a year. But I still like getting those coupons and those new product emails, even if I may delete most of them.
But then, let’s say I have a vacation coming up, and I’d like to get a few new pieces. It’s nice to know that while the relationship with that company has been dormant, I can log in, see some coupons or a history of my past purchases, and pick that relationship right back up where I left it.
I bring that up because those experiences have trained our donors to expect that kind of seamlessness from the organizations they give to. I think it makes them a lot more sensitive to any friction in a relationship with a nonprofit organization that may not even have existed 10 years ago.
Matthew Mielcarek: I think it comes down to three key needs, whether you’re shopping with a brand or engaging with a nonprofit organization. And it comes back to that concept I mentioned earlier, those moments of truth.
A moment of truth is when you’re at a place in a relationship with a brand. It could be a nonprofit. It could be a retail company or otherwise, and you have a need or an expectation. And the moment of truth is how well that brand responds.
I mentioned those new donors. Their moment of truth after they make a gift is often disappointment, but it can also be delight. Our goal as marketers and fundraisers is to recognize when those moments of truth could occur and then be able to lean in, stand up, and delight our constituents.
We know that if we delight them, we have customers for life. A first gift leads to a moment of truth: “Am I ever going to give again?” The way to step up there is to recognize the gift quickly and meaningfully. A phone call perhaps takes it over the top. Maybe it’s a nice conversation, but I think it’s really important to nail those things.
The funny thing is that it’s easy to see what you’re seeking. What a donor is seeking at those moments of truth is to be recognized, appreciated, and valued. If we can do that by recognizing who a supporter is — “Oh, you’ve given to me for 10 years!” — that shows them that they’re valued and then creates that connection we’re looking for at that moment of truth.
Again, it could go either way. If we don’t recognize that 10-year donor, then perhaps we’ve lost someone who might be giving again.
Host: Matthew, thank you so much for walking through all that for us. This has been a really fun conversation, and I hope that folks are able to draw a lot of value from it and have had some aha moments of their own about ways that they can make the experience they have with their donors more frictionless and seamless, ultimately leading to more retention and better donor loyalty.
Matthew Mielcarek: Thank you, Leah. Thanks, everyone.
Host: We have some additional resources to share with viewers and listeners today. One of them is a journey mapping workbook that you can download, print out, and share with your team.
We will also share a recorded sample workshop that you will walk us through, Matthew. If anybody listening today would like to get those, you can head over to the Team Allegiance website. We’ll also include a direct link to where those will be stored in the show notes for today’s show.
