2020 Nonprofit Digital Tool Guide - Virtuous CRM

Summary

In this comprehensive digital tool guide, hosted by Firefly Partners and featuring insights from Virtuous CRM, the focus is on enhancing nonprofit fundraisers' capacity through technology. Taylor Shanklin and David from Virtuous explore how tools like CRM and marketing automation platforms, specifically tailored for the nonprofit sector, can create meaningful human connections amidst a digitally saturated world. The webinar emphasizes the importance of personalization, addressing the gap between mass digital experiences and individual interactions. Through examples and a detailed demo, they illustrate how Virtuous CRM combines social insights, wealth data, and automated workflows to foster deep connections with nonprofit donors, thus enhancing fundraising strategies and increasing donor retention.

Highlights

• Taylor Shanklin introduces Firefly Partners and highlights their focus on nonprofit technology. 🌟
• David from Virtuous explains the significance of combining CRM, marketing automation, and online giving tools. 🔄
• Discussion on the disconnect in digital experiences and how technology can bridge this gap. 🌐
• David shares insights on the nature of giving and how personalization can transform nonprofit fundraising. 💡
• The concept of responsive fundraising: using technology to treat all donors like major donors. 🎯
• Virtuous CRM's automation capabilities showcased to help nonprofits streamline donor engagement. ⚙️
• Examples of tailoring donor journeys with tools like social media scraping and wealth data integration. 🛠
• The crucial role of responsive fundraising in improving donor retention and cultivating deeper relationships. 🤝
• Live demo of Virtuous CRM highlighting its dynamic forms and automated communication features. 🎥
• Discussion on the onboarding process and benefits of using Virtuous CRM for non-profit organizations. 📋

Key Takeaways

• Taylor Shanklin explores nonprofit tech innovations with Virtuous CRM to enhance fundraising efforts. 🚀
• Virtuous CRM aims to bridge the gap between mass digital and personal nonprofit donor experiences. 🌉
• Personalization and human connection are key themes emphasized throughout the Virtuous CRM demo. 💞
• Automation in CRM tools is crucial for managing donor relationships efficiently and effectively. 🤖
• Tools like Virtuous CRM can significantly boost nonprofit donor retention and engagement. 📈

Overview

The webinar kicks off with Taylor Shanklin from Firefly Partners and David from Virtuous CRM discussing nonprofit-specific technology advancements. They emphasize the importance of using CRM and marketing automation tools to enhance fundraising efforts and create meaningful donor interactions. It's clear from their dialogue that this technology, built for nonprofits, is essential for staying connected in an increasingly digital world.

One major discussion point is the gap between digital mass communications and the personal experiences nonprofits aim to provide. With tools like Virtuous CRM, nonprofits can overcome these challenges by leveraging personal data, social insights, and automated workflows. This technology helps transform the landscape of fundraising, making it more personal and impactful.

The live demo by David reveals how Virtuous CRM integrates dynamic forms, responsive donor journeys, and multi-channel communication strategies. These features enable nonprofits to personalize interactions and, ultimately, increase donor retention and engagement. The session underscores the critical role technology plays in nonprofit success, helping organizations scale their impact without overextending resources.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Housekeeping The chapter titled 'Introduction and Housekeeping' is presented by Taylor Shanklin, the Vice President of Growth at Firefly Partners. It focuses on welcoming participants and introducing the purpose and goals of the session. Shanklin expresses excitement about a series they are kicking off, which is dedicated to exploring the latest technology platforms designed specifically for non-profits. The aim is to provide tools and insights to help non-profit organizations increase their impact and efficiency.
• 01:00 - 05:00: David's Introduction and Overview on Technology in Nonprofits The chapter serves as an introduction by David, focusing on the role and impact of technology in the nonprofit sector. David expresses his admiration for the platform Virtuous CRM, highlighting its innovative contributions to the industry. The chapter begins with some housekeeping items and introductions, setting the stage for a deeper discussion on the purpose and activities involved in the session. Additionally, Kyle, the director of sales, is mentioned as being available for chat support.
• 05:00 - 09:30: Challenges in Nonprofit Fundraising The chapter 'Challenges in Nonprofit Fundraising' discusses the interactive nature of a session where participants are encouraged to ask questions and engage. It mentions the recording and sharing of the session's slides and video for later reference. David provides an introduction to himself and Virtuous, giving an overview of its operations.
• 09:30 - 18:00: Responsive Fundraising and Donor Personalization In this chapter, David, the Chief Revenue Officer at Virtuous, introduces himself and provides an overview of his experience and the company's focus. Virtuous is described as a CRM and marketing automation platform tailored specifically for the non-profit sector, with features for online giving. David highlights his extensive background in the technology and CRM space, spanning over 13 years, and expresses his readiness to discuss CRM-related topics and address any questions.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Dashboard and Donor Profile in Virtuous CRM The chapter 'Dashboard and Donor Profile in Virtuous CRM' begins with a discussion on the importance of technology in achieving overall goals and outcomes in communication for an organization. It emphasizes a shared passion for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and nonprofit technology, highlighting the speaker's background and career start in this industry. The focus is on how such systems play a crucial role in growing an organization within the nonprofit sector.
• 21:00 - 30:00: Social Media and Wealth Data Integration The chapter 'Social Media and Wealth Data Integration' discusses the role of technology in enhancing connections for organizations. The team at Firefly believes in using platforms like Virtuous to connect different aspects of your organization because supporters today exist in a hyper-connected world, often spending significant time on their phones and computers.
• 30:00 - 44:00: Personalizing Donor Journeys In the chapter titled 'Personalizing Donor Journeys,' the focus is on the importance of creating a cohesive and connected digital experience for constituents. The narrative highlights the disparity often seen in digital communication, where platforms like Facebook and email offer differing experiences. This disjointed approach underscores the need for organizations to align their digital interactions to present a unified, personalized journey for donors, thus enhancing engagement in a highly connected world.
• 44:00 - 48:00: Automation and Marketing in Virtuous CRM This chapter discusses the importance of integrating technology in CRM solutions to enhance the donor experience. It addresses the disconnect donors often feel when they perceive their interactions as just transactions, such as when giving money through an online form. The chapter underscores the commitment of organizations like Firefly and Virtuous to utilizing technology to foster meaningful connections between organizations and their constituents, thus improving overall engagement and satisfaction.
• 48:00 - 57:00: Multi-Channel Engagement and Direct Mail Automation This chapter discusses the concept that supporters in fundraising should not be treated as mere transactions but as individuals who contribute not only financially but also through volunteering and other forms of involvement. The importance of recognizing supporters as unique and valuable participants in events and digital spaces is emphasized.
• 57:00 - 69:00: Suggesting Next Steps and Donation Forms The chapter discusses the importance of human connection in a digital world and how tools like Virtuous can help facilitate these connections. The focus is on using the platform to enhance human-to-human digital interactions. David is mentioned as a speaker who is discussing the potential uses of the Virtuous platform to achieve this goal.
• 69:00 - 81:00: Onboarding and Training for Virtuous CRM The chapter begins with an introduction by Taylor, who sets the stage for a presentation on the capabilities of Virtuous CRM in enhancing human connections. Taylor hands over the presentation to David, expressing enthusiasm about the shared values and vision between their organizations. David reciprocates the sentiment, highlighting the strong alignment in mission and perspective between Virtuous and Firefly. The chapter focuses on the collaborative spirit and shared goals that underpin the onboarding and training processes for Virtuous CRM users.
• 81:00 - 87:00: Organization Size and Suitability for Virtuous CRM The chapter discusses the personal nature of giving, using a personal story to illustrate this idea. It highlights an organization named the House of Refuge, which provides transitional housing services for low-income individuals and those experiencing homelessness. The speaker supports this organization because it is local to their community, and they can directly observe its positive impact. Friends of the speaker are also involved, reinforcing the personal connection and commitment.
• 87:00 - 93:00: Q&A and Wrap-up In the concluding chapter titled 'Q&A and Wrap-up', the conversation reflects on the personal nature of giving, as exemplified by personal experiences with the house of refuge. The dialogue transitions into discussing the impersonal nature of contemporary fundraising, presenting it as a problem that needs addressing. The platform 'Virtuous' is introduced as a solution aimed at creating more personal engagement in the world of fundraising, marking a shift away from conventional and impersonal donor acquisition strategies.

2020 Nonprofit Digital Tool Guide - Virtuous CRM Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 and uh welcome welcome everyone today thanks so much for signing up and for joining us this is yours truly taylor shanklin i'm the vice president of growth here at firefly partners and one of the things that we do here at firefly is we keep a constant pulse on what are all of the latest and greatest technology platforms for non-profits that are purpose-built for non-profits to help you do more good work and so i'm really excited to kick off our series
• 00:30 - 01:00 on this with our friends here at virtuous crm because i'm just a big fan of your platform and the tools and i think y'all are doing some really really interesting things and helping our industry innovate in some new ways and it's exciting so um just a couple of quick housekeeping items and i want to welcome david and kind of do our intros and then i'm going to go through a little bit about like why we're here and where we're doing this um kyle on our team he's our director of sales he's on the line on chat so if you
• 01:00 - 01:30 have questions please chat those in and drop us a note and kyle can pause me and say hey we've got a question we'll keep this interactive and also we will be we are recording this and we'll be sending out the slides and the recording afterwards so if you want to watch a replay or anything like that or share it with a friend please do so so without any further ado hello david would you give us a quick intro on you and virtuous at a kind of a high level hello yeah well hello everyone super
• 01:30 - 02:00 excited to be here my name is david i'm our chief revenue officer at virtuous i've been at virtuous for a little over four years now virtuous is kind of a we're a crm marketing automation and online giving tool we are built specifically for the non-profit world um i myself i've been in the technology space for over 13 years really just only working in the crm space got a lot of experience there happy to kind of talk through there and ultimately answer any burning crm questions and be
• 02:00 - 02:30 a resource for anyone on the call awesome cool so let's talk a little bit about why we're here and i think it really begins with like how does technology fit into your overall goals and outcomes of like communication and what you're trying to do to grow your organization right um i love that we share the passion for crm and nonprofit tech it's where i started my career here in this industry within nonprofit technology and really like working on the systems at hand
• 02:30 - 03:00 and i like to think and our team here at firefly likes to think about it's really like the technology that empowers those connections and so just to pee us off and why we're looking at tools like virtuous and how how virtuous that the platform can connect the dots for your organization is the fact that like your supporters live in this hyper-connected world i don't know about you guys but like i'm spending way more time on my phone and on my computer
• 03:00 - 03:30 in a now covered times world than i was in a pre-covert world and i was on the computer a lot then but we're all living in this connected world and your constituents are too um but the problem is like a lot of digital experience actually feel very disconnected right like you might see one thing on one platform you know on facebook and you might see a totally different experience in your email from an organization and you might get a totally different experience
• 03:30 - 04:00 even thinking through like what you get in the mail from an organization so we like to think about using technology and connecting all of the right dots with technology to change that so that your constituents don't have that disconnected experience like this like i'm just giving you money in your online donation form right and so i think a lot of what david's going to get into will speak to the fact that we fundamentally as firefly and as virtuous
• 04:00 - 04:30 i know i've talked to you all enough don't believe fundraising should be like this because we think your supporters are not transactions right they're people that show up to your events they're people who power your income uh your impact yes with their dollars and what they're volunteering and all of that right david absolutely yeah so the people who you touch in your digital spaces are unique and beautiful
• 04:30 - 05:00 humans right and human to human digital is really where we want to go right to power like connection especially in this world that can feel disconnected i think tools like virtuous can really help to power that connection so that's why we're here that's why we're looking at virtuous that way that's why david has shown up to talk about okay well how could you use this platform to do
• 05:00 - 05:30 just that that's right all right so david i'm gonna hand over presentation mode to you i'm gonna stop sharing so you can show us how virtuous can can power that human connection yeah and thank you taylor that was a great intro i'm super excited because we really just have the same thoughts values and vision here as firefly everything that taylor said i mean honestly it's like we're we're working for the same company here because
• 05:30 - 06:00 we very much believe that giving is personal right and this is a little personal story for me this is an organization that i give to um this is the house of refuge they provide transitional housing services for low-income and folks that are experiencing homelessness and the reason we give is one because this organization is literally in my backyard i see the effects that this organization has on my community and the area around me and we have friends who
• 06:00 - 06:30 actually receive services from house of refuge that was a huge transformational impact on their life and so out of that kind of just just that deep personal meaningful thing we're compelled to give my wife and i are compelled to give and so giving is personal right the nature of giving is incredibly personal but what we see today and really what virtuous is trying to solve is how do we how do we help this world of fundraising that in too many ways is largely impersonal so think about your acquisition and your donor kind of
• 06:30 - 07:00 um acquisition strategies so much of that is varied and based on donor timing right you can't force a donor to come to an event they come out of their own accord right they see a story that maybe resonates in the mail they come they give through a peer-to-peer campaign through their friends or like myself they had a very deep personal connection through a friend and decided to give what happens after that a lot of times is we kind of shove everyone into this one-size-fits-all retention and cultivation strategy that's disconnected from intent it's
• 07:00 - 07:30 really based on non-profit timing right when's our next email appeal when's our next direct mail appeal it's one to many and it's one way and we're starting to see this huge drop-off where 76 percent of donors just don't give a second gift and so the generosity is giving us a generosity institute is showing these numbers here that 50 of donors are turning over every year and there's been a 25 drop in mid and low tier donors in the last decade just gone
• 07:30 - 08:00 and and a research is showing that a lot of this is because it's inappropriate asks it's impersonal messages lack of acknowledgement poor and unhelpful communication so the problem is is only growing now um and and as right in the world so the really to be able to grow generosity in 2020 you're going to need personal connection with donors it is just the table stakes so not only is giving personal by nature but what's
• 08:00 - 08:30 the the other thing that's happened in the world is every other brand experience consumer experience has shifted from mass marketing to personal experiences think about just your daily life and the folks and brands that you interact with everything is tailored for you the contents and experiences are based on your interests right it's a lot of times driven by community and connection with friends and based on your tribe and so much of it is two-way and behavior driven right based on your behavior based on content and data
• 08:30 - 09:00 signals so that's the world that donors live in so you have two things happening just the nature of giving is impersonal and the world has shifted now donors expect it they're getting it in every area of their life so how do we tackle this from the nonprofit world uh well virtuous we we are championing this idea called responsive fundraising where we can use technology use um playbooks and strategy to treat all
• 09:00 - 09:30 donors like major donors a big way that we can do this and what virtuous specifically helps with is the technology piece so how do we do responsive fundraising well well it kind of comes down to these big tenants here first we need to listen and understand who our donors are right they're human beings so we need to ask questions we need to understand why they give we need to look for signals and seek to understand the more we know the better we can connect and build relationships so once we know them more
• 09:30 - 10:00 then we can start to connect we can build relationships we can send unique content we can automate a lot of this with virtuous the whole idea is make sure what we're telling them and talking about is relevant to them then once we've connected and built relationship we can start to suggest the right next step based on who they are and what matters to them and this is maybe a financial ask but maybe it's other things like hey connect helping us connect
• 10:00 - 10:30 to other donors volunteering lending us your social network all different ways that are really based on donor superpowers once we do that again we can repeat we test we figure out what works and we start over so it's a simple framework and when we when we look at virtuous in the product today we're going to be thinking about listening connecting and suggesting so think back to that first kind of slide that we showed with that funnel where everyone just gets shoved into like a single follow-up imagine now lisa who was
• 10:30 - 11:00 invited to an event imagine right after that event an hour later she gets an email with the two-question survey based on lisa's interests then a day later she gets a thank you call from a friend or maybe the director of development thanking her for coming to the event two days after that lisa gets a text message from your program team that talks about what they're doing based on her interests that text drives lisa to your website she visits and is reading all those
• 11:00 - 11:30 stories a day later she gets an email based on the stories and the content that she was reading on the website lisa decides to give right hooray 15 days later lisa gets a postcard in the mail closing the loop sharing the impact from the program team right this is based on donor timing and their intent it's hyper personal and the other cool thing it's multi-channel it's not just digital we're trying to help automate and create donor journeys
• 11:30 - 12:00 across so many different touch points so what if right we think about all the time we spend on acquisition and creating much more personal experiences for acquiring donors what if that retention and cultivation strategy could also look dynamic personal driven by intent and really curated around every single donor good news is when we see that average gift all that stuff goes up so how do we do that how does virtuous do that specifically we're three main areas
• 12:00 - 12:30 we're a crm so you're probably you know if you're in the nonprofit world today you're probably using something like this today it's storing your giving data your donor data well virtuous has that but we also have some cool things that help you listen and understand donors so social media scraping wealth data web listening email analytics and predictive data science that we build in there and then marketing automation how do we use the data to connect to create personalized donor journeys based on behavior that are automated and then how do we
• 12:30 - 13:00 create good beautiful online giving experiences that are unique driven by donor behavior and smart web forms so those are the three functional areas so when we see when we can do this well and we can apply responsive principles this is the average we're seeing across the board with customers right 12 increase in retention 10 increase in average gift 20 decrease in staff time again our whole goal is to 10x your roi on virtuous
• 13:00 - 13:30 i don't say it as well as our customers do i love this quote from daphne that she said really adding virtuous was like adding 10 staff members to our team our goal is to be able to multiply your efforts so you have more time to do all that fun stuff like donor calls and and visits and all that human relational impact stuff that you love as fundraisers get rid of those manual tasks and still know that all your donors are getting much more personal experiences here's a quick snapshot of our customers
• 13:30 - 14:00 but i'm actually going to switch over and we're going to dive into virtuous actually before i do that really quick one thing that's so important i can't stress this enough it is more than just buying a new tool or a new crm right this is change change is bigger than just right just going to buy a tool right if i went to home depot today and i bought a hammer and a saw and i put it in my front yard it's not going to build the kids tree house that i want right nothing's going to happen i have to have a plan a
• 14:00 - 14:30 blueprint effort a team right that all has to come together so we spend a lot of time at virtuous making sure you have a team strategy partners idea support and coaching along the way all right let's switch over and let's get into virtuous all right should see a new screen here we're going to look at look inside virtuous all right so what we're taking a look at right now is the virtuous dashboard so this is
• 14:30 - 15:00 where you as a user would come to get your day started and the whole point of the dashboard is really that 30 000 foot view of the big important metrics that you care about day in and day out as a fundraiser a marketer executive director and based on things like user preferences security profile all of those different things the access to information that i have and how my dashboard looks will be different for every single
• 15:00 - 15:30 person so you know maybe i'm in a major donor development i want to see you know a quick snapshot of all the recent gifts that have come in so i can interchange what my dashboard looks like versus someone who maybe is in our marketing team right and i can see a quick snapshot here so a lot of flexibility to really serve up the information that matters to you well let's dive into a donor record because i want to start showing you these this idea of listening and responsive fundraising and what that
• 15:30 - 16:00 means so we're going to take a look at joshua and cheryl today they're going to be our example household i can click here anywhere i've got a hyperlink i've got a little window i can see quick information i'm going to type up here in our search bar and we're actually going to go to joshua and cheryl all right so we'll show you some things like the table stakes right everything that you expect the crm to have yes of course it should store all of the giving transactions of course it's going to store things like location
• 16:00 - 16:30 data address demographic info so you know all the basics but what about everything else right we talk about they're human beings and so we want and our goal is to give you the biggest and broadest picture of who they are try to pull in outside data and other data points to give you just a better understanding right this is a part of listening so one way that we do that is with this tool called social insight so if you have an email for any record in
• 16:30 - 17:00 virtuous what it's going to do is automatically every time a new record is created in virtuous it's going to scrape for and pull back social media data for that person so you'll see i just went in and clicked that email it actually pulled back things like social media handles pictures photos and other basic demographic information all just from a single email so now your entire database can be appended with social data across all of your constituents here but the basic kind of just easy ways
• 17:00 - 17:30 that you can start to use this one let's just say next month we have a an email appeal going out if we know everyone in our database that has a twitter handle let's just grab all of those folks let's replace the give button with a share button and just differentiate the ask simple super simple way but now we can create an ask that's a little bit more aligned with their superpowers right if we know that they're highly connected socially and that networking effect might take
• 17:30 - 18:00 place where instead of getting a single 50 gift from cheryl we might get 10 50 gifts from cheryl's network and then cheryl feels valued because she gets a differentiated ask so one really simple way with social data too i can have things like cheryl's twitter feed right in here in the virtuous ui so i can see what they're talking about have quick and easy access and of course things like pictures just really nice to have that available
• 18:00 - 18:30 one other way that we're looking at outside data i'm actually going to pop into a different record here is with wealth data so you may be looking at wealth data today but the nice part here with virtuous is we can pull in outside wealth data around your donors so let's say for example right this is mark and tiffany cuban right mark cuban fairly wealthy guy let's say mark decides to come online and give a hundred dollar gift you know mark was feeling generous he just gave a 100 gift online well if you didn't know who mark cuban would you'd see that hundred dollar gift
• 18:30 - 19:00 you'd send the receipt and you'd probably move on with life but what if you had some wealth data here and you automatically got an alert that said hey mark gave a hundred dollar gift but we actually see that he's got a real estate value of over 50 million dollars we should signal to our major donor team or our director of development to call this person and maybe create like a major donor plan for mark and build that relationship now we can identify who has some more capacity so wealth
• 19:00 - 19:30 data is great the nice part is again this is automatically scraping so virtuous with our automation tool we'll look at in just a bit can can create alerts so anytime that you know this comes in you're never missing folks like this again i'm gonna pop back into joshua and cheryl all right so one other really cool thing is location data if i click here on joshua and cheryl i can see where they live in relation to
• 19:30 - 20:00 other givers around them so if we see someone that maybe you know they have a high concentration of people on the same block in the same neighborhood you know instead of asking them for a gift we should be like oh gosh they live right next to roy and virginia here maybe they know each other maybe we could ask them to host like a wine and cheese event for us or do something as a neighborhood invite their friends right maybe they're a great candidate for you know launching a peer-to-peer campaign location data is a really cool thing
• 20:00 - 20:30 that we can look at you'll notice up at the top right you may have seen this already but virtuous has two scores on every single record in virtuous a financial score and a social score and all this is doing right now is it's looking at the data you already have it's looking at giving history it's looking at wealth data social data is looking at things like location data it's looking at social media history it's looking to see do they even have
• 20:30 - 21:00 social media accounts and every record is scored and what this is trying to give you is just an idea of you know if we were trying to find major donors in our database we could look to see you know who has a financial score above 90. if we're trying to find some social influencers we could use that score to help us aggregate those folks together now really this is just using some data science to give you an idea it's always a ballpark right investigation is needed further but the whole idea here is we're trying to
• 21:00 - 21:30 use the data you have and just bubble up those insights automatically for you all right i'm going to show you several other things here still thinking about listening right crm should store data but we're really trying to listen to understand so because virtuous is a full marketing system as well we and you'll see here this little activity feed i can see kind of all the outward facing activity that's happening with joshua and cheryl so gifts that they're giving you know maybe notes that we're adding but i can also
• 21:30 - 22:00 start to see here how are they interacting with our email content i can see that josh is opening and clicking through some of our email content i can see here that they actually were you know they received one of our direct mail pieces recently and if i click here on this pdf i can actually see the direct mail piece that they received in the mail so i can now kind of see how are they how are they interacting with their content one other cool thing is relationships
• 22:00 - 22:30 you can create relationships with other records in the database so friends co-workers employers member organizations to start to see the spider web of who they know how they are related and the other cool part with that data too is one of our little widgets up here these little widgets are also interchangeable just like the dashboard but one of them will show you kind of that relational giving the relational network who does live close by what you know of their network what's the giving from their network so we can even understand like maybe they have some
• 22:30 - 23:00 influence over that network in that giving all right across the top here this is also still in relation to joshua's cheryl so if i clicked here through through notes and tasks events and volunteering this would all be data specific to joshua and cheryl so if i clicked on volunteering i'd be able to see that cheryl volunteered three times for 16 hours at one of the soup kitchen opportunities that we had again the nice part about this is we can
• 23:00 - 23:30 use all of this data to then make much more personal donor journeys so maybe when someone's volunteered over 10 hours with you we want uh but you know never given a gift before we want that to trigger like a volunteer welcome series that encourages them maybe to give for the first time so again all this data is usable i wanted to show you kind of one other idea here with listening which is pretty cool i'm going to click here on my record in
• 23:30 - 24:00 virtuous but what virtuous can do is we can actually put a tracking pixel on your website so i'm going to pop over to this kind of fake website here this is just a you know fake organization that's connected to this demo database that i have but wouldn't it be nice right because if you think about your website today you probably have things like you know stories on your website that talk about your projects your initiatives you probably talk a little bit more um
• 24:00 - 24:30 right about different cause areas and they might be different you might have three or four different areas that you work in well wouldn't it be nice if we could look at and track how donors were going to your website so if i click here on david and web history i'm going to see all of the pages that i've visited if i click here on this little icon i can even see where and what pages i was going to and with virtuous automation which we will now segue into
• 24:30 - 25:00 wouldn't it be cool if you know maybe if i'm sitting here on my page i'm spending a ton of time looking at you know the work that we're doing here in monument valley to clean up the area well what if the next email that i received or even the next direct mail piece that i received was specifically talking about monument valley only because you know i spent 20 minutes looking over just that page on your website
• 25:00 - 25:30 and so there's other really cool ways that we can use this data we'll we'll talk about that in a bit but web visits and web history is really great because you can start to understand what are they where are they spending their time all right one thing that is so powerful david just to like recap on what she's shown so far is again just like trying to together all of those connection points into one place yep so that you as an organization can be smarter
• 25:30 - 26:00 about your outreach and so i just wanted to to recap on that because i think you've shown a lot of different data points and thinking through how people have all these different experiences with an organization and this is like kind of putting it all in one place that's right yeah um you know i have a you know kind of a funny example but so today is actually my wife and i are celebrating our 15-year wedding anniversary and you know i like to think that i know my wife better than any person in the world right but if
• 26:00 - 26:30 today i gave her a kind of a blank happy anniversary card where i just signed my name and that was it you know she would probably not be super happy with me right because just because i know everything doesn't mean much unless i now use that information to connect build relationship in meaningful personal ways and so knowing is the first half right we got to know and understand the second part is well now we've got to use it to connect and engage and build
• 26:30 - 27:00 deeper relationships so how do you do that how does virtuous help well let's talk about automation really quickly before you jump into automation we do have a question from anita shervington asking that fake healthy kids website what was that made with what was that built on oh yeah this healthy kid so this was actually i think i'm pretty sure a squarespace template that we you know got together in two hours pretty sure squarespace maybe a wordpress page i'll have to check with our web developer if you put this together for us
• 27:00 - 27:30 great thank you let's see oh squarespace yep yeah i'm going to say based on the icon that looks like squarespace that's what the favorite con no good question um but super easy to connect virtuous with any any website it doesn't matter where it doesn't matter what you did it with just a little line of javascript code that goes on any of your websites all right so let's talk about connecting and i want to pop into automation to talk about this
• 27:30 - 28:00 so automation really think about it simply enough this is a workflow builder at its core um but of course you know marketing automation that term is not new they've had marketing automation tools that have been around for the last 10 15 years virtuous though is specifically taking that idea of automation into the nonprofit world and so if you're looking at other market automation tools outside of the nonprofit sphere generally right those are built for sales teams marketing teams
• 28:00 - 28:30 driving demands funnels everything's really kind of built around like shopping cart opportunity based but you know we're thinking about how do we use automation with relationship building donor journeys things that are much more meaningful and specific to the nonprofit world so i'm going to show an automation this is a pretty common example it's actually probably something that you know most of us are trying to do today but this is an automation that is all designed to honor and recognize
• 28:30 - 29:00 donors as they reach certain life-to-date giving milestones with us so this one is saying at one thousand dollars five thousand or ten thousand dollars in life-to-date giving we want these actions below here in each one of these steps to just trigger automatically so you build up you build your workflow you set up your steps and then this just sits and waits and runs in the background so at any point in time let's say i came to your website today i gave
• 29:00 - 29:30 my seventh gift it was a hundred and fifty dollars and that pushed me over a thousand dollars in my life uh today giving with you so that means this workflow's going to trigger what's going to happen is in this case maybe someone on your development team gets a task assigned to them to say hey call this person right now and say thanks so first thing we're doing we're elevating this to a human being to make the human connection you don't need to run a report you're not looking to see who met this criteria
• 29:30 - 30:00 you just get a push notification on your phone that says hey david met this criteria we need to call him right now and say thanks so that's going to happen automatically then you'll see an email goes out so virtuous is a full marketing system email marketing we replace tools like constant contact and mailchimp but we also do so much more because you can automate these journeys and automate when emails are going out but for example right this is a placeholder email maybe an email like this goes out to
• 30:00 - 30:30 them at that time hey thank you so much for your support when i'm building this super easy to drag in new text new objects to change my styling my buttons everything and how it looks so a lot of flexibility there but the other nice part is i can merge in data from virtuous so i can say you know hey and drop in there first name thanks for your last gift of and we can drop in there last gift amount did you know that
• 30:30 - 31:00 you've given and we'll drop in there life to date giving them out so even though right i i can i can create mass emails with virtuous uh everything can be hyper personalized because i can still i can drop in things like these tokens that are unique to that person so full email builder and in this case right that email is going to be triggered automatically
• 31:00 - 31:30 then you'll see a series of other things that are happening right we can tag records automatically so so really virtuous can automatically segment your database for you so you know you'll notice that five thousand dollars maybe that means it's a major donor or a major donor prospect well virtuous is automatically going to apply that tag to that record so now you know where all your major donors are because you know virtuous is automatically adding and removing those so on and so forth but i wanted to point
• 31:30 - 32:00 out this because you'll see that there's a delay here and then we're sending out a letter so we talked about multi-channel a little earlier and we're talking about how important multi-channel is well we believe it's super important we're not just digital only we like all the touch points and so virtuous helps you automate things like direct mail so you can design letter templates and i'll show you in a minute postcard templates
• 32:00 - 32:30 in virtuous um and so this is a letter that that donor will receive in the mail right you can design it create merge fields and all of that but virtuous has a service on the back end the letter is printed it is shipped it's posted and delivered automatically you don't do anything right you just create the template and it's just constantly happening in the background so there's a cost per piece of mail that you send and just based on volume you only pay for what you use but now you can have direct
• 32:30 - 33:00 mail automated now this isn't necessarily intended to replace like large direct mail acquisition pieces where you're sending out you know 10 000 letters at once this is really designed for that relational aspect right where if you're managing or you're having to send three or four unique individualized content pieces that you know for every you know different donors every day you just couldn't do it or this is another great
• 33:00 - 33:30 example birthday postcards right maybe on our giving forms we just ask optionally for their birthday in every single um you know week before their birthday they get a postcard from you that just says happy birthday that's it relational building but now you don't have to worry about doing that running a report going to the post office because when you're doing things like that you generally just don't do it and so the nice part is virtuous helps you automate that completely the other cool
• 33:30 - 34:00 thing is we're rolling out text messaging this quarter so you will be able to have a full multi-channel kind of follow-up where you can have a letter sent an email sent a postcard sent and a text message go out all without having to do a thing so really simply one of the most effective automations you can do one of the first things that we encourage people to do is just a welcome
• 34:00 - 34:30 series every time you get a new gift just make sure that they are being thanked over and over again over the period of like 30 days two to three five emails that's up to you but this is just an example of a welcome series new gift comes in this is actually through one of our partners classy we're saying hey if a new gift comes in through a classy campaign specifically we want this thank you series to happen so studies have shown that if you just do a welcome series consistently the
• 34:30 - 35:00 donor retention can go up by 50 so if you're at you know 30 donor retention you can move to 45 just by having a welcome series so do the math right average gift if you move that up what would that look like uh it's huge benefits and that's our goal we want to crawl walk around with automation start with the things that you know will work get rid of manual tasks help build just basic donor relationships and then you can start to do even more
• 35:00 - 35:30 cool things like layering in the social data and web data and email opens and clicks and creating really really unique journeys based on all of that but ultimately just start start with something and the the effects can actually be really really big all right so automation is a big part of how we connect and build relationships um but we also talk about kind of the third tenet of responsive fundraising is this idea of suggesting well how do we know
• 35:30 - 36:00 what to suggest and what should that be and how do i differentiate that so in virtuous we hack we have some cool ideas that that will help you so if i go back to joshua and cheryl real quick you may have noticed this but what virtuous also does is we bubble up a suggested gift ask for every single record so this is just using some data science to look at their past giving history and it's bubbling up hey and if you're going to call joshua and cheryl
• 36:00 - 36:30 we think it's a 350 gift is a great place to start so we actually have some customers that will use this because this is a a exportable usable field and data point virtuous that will use that if they're doing a direct mail piece they might have like their gift array start with this number instead of having a standard gift array for everyone in their direct mail they just export this with every single donor and they use that in their printing right and so that's a really cool thing the other you know and another example
• 36:30 - 37:00 of this maybe instead we see josh and cheryl they give like random single sporadic gifts throughout the year well this might change to say hey let's ask them for recurring gift to identify possible recurring givers so that data point is always on every record if i go back to my dashboard as well one of the reports that we have here at the bottom is called our best calls to make today and really this is just bubbling up
• 37:00 - 37:30 ideas to say hey if you're going to sit down and you're in development you need to make some donor relationship calls we think that these people need some work and you can see here right tina stewart based on how she's been giving in her unique specific patterns we think she's about to laugh she's pre-lab so we should call her right now and see if she'll extend that 300 recurring gift and so again just bubbling up ideas that you can use well what about some automated ways how do we suggest things that are that
• 37:30 - 38:00 are tailored really to each individual so we've got a really back to that web tracking pixel so thinking back to your website right think about your nonprofit's website you probably have a donation form on the website this is just a sample donation form that actually comes out of virtuous and i'll show you another example uh a customer example here but this is just a basic giving form um you probably have a gift array with your giving forms in this
• 38:00 - 38:30 case this one's saying 35 50 75 100. now what if every single donor who went to your giving form saw a gift array that was unique and tailored to them based on their giving history and their their background what if it was that major donor right what if next time mark cuban comes back to your donation form are we going to show them 35 dollars like nope we don't want to so virtuous has a pretty cool way that if we are using our web tracking
• 38:30 - 39:00 we can create dynamic forms so that's the gift array that was just on that form right there right you probably have a standard one but i'm going to go in here to edit this check this box that says use customized gift array and you can actually create some logic here to say you know what let's take if we know who the donor is let's take their average gift amount and then let's apply this multiple and this factor here so they're getting a unique gift array so i'm just going to save this
• 39:00 - 39:30 okay i'm going to go back to my website i'm going to refresh the page now virtuous knows it's me it knows it's david at the forum and my average giving was about hundred dollars and so now my gift array just for me starts at six hundred dollars because it's using my average gift plus that kind of multiple we created so you can do this using average gift you can use that virtuous suggested amount
• 39:30 - 40:00 you also cancel if a major donor shows up to your giving form you probably don't want them to see a gift array at all a lot of times it's just we just want them to see like a blank open field like let your imagination run wild right so you can have it switched out for just an open text field so this is one really cool way we help with that suggest part of responsive is by tailoring even the online experience and they're giving um just for a quick reference i wanted
• 40:00 - 40:30 to pop into another form so you've got a lot of customization the nice part about our forms they do embed directly into your website and so they'll inherit a lot of the design elements that are already embedded in your website so this is a customer example you can see how their form looks and is styled a little bit differently and if i scroll down a little bit further even on this website you'll notice this email list sign up this is also a form that's coming from virtuous so it's
• 40:30 - 41:00 really easy to create and embed forms i'll show you quickly here in virtuous where you do that at our forum builder and so it's giving forms or any type of form right maybe it's a survey maybe it's a volunteer sign up maybe it's just an email request but you can come in create unlimited types of forms drop them all over your website you can accept international payments they can be dynamic hiding fields so many cool things that you can do here we've also got native integrations with
• 41:00 - 41:30 double the donation and so you can have employer matches just built right into your forms huge increase one thing i did want to point out before i forget specifically with this dynamic gift array when we launch this and send it out to customers we saw that the folks who started to use this within 30 days saw an 18 increase in their average gifts online so
• 41:30 - 42:00 right now after this call right go look at your online average giving amount add 18 percent that took two clicks in virtuous to add 18 to online average donations i mean the the power that's is huge um here kind of back to virtuous this is the form builder so what i'm taking a look at right now is actually this exact form that's on our website here and so all my different data elements i can click and drag these in maybe i want
• 42:00 - 42:30 to ask for their middle name right so i'm going to drag that in and drop it in here maybe we want to ask for um you know some custom fields and so custom fields can be dragged in here right maybe we ask for i think i've got t-shirt size already on there so we're asking for t-shirt size i can drag this up and down right i can click on any of these field elements and make them mandatory not mandatory change the value so once you you can make changes on the fly publish these really easily refresh the
• 42:30 - 43:00 page and you notice my t-shirt signs just went in there my middle name is now in there so super easy to add edit change those forms on the fly all right so we talked about kind of listen connect suggest big tenants of responsive um obviously that's you know the personalization element is really what makes virtuous very very different and i did want to highlight and specifically call out um
• 43:00 - 43:30 automation is designed to enhance that human connection our goal is not an end or it's both and you are we want to free up fundraisers to do more of that wonderful human connection like phone calls like visits like handwritten notes knowing that you're still getting you know when you have 10 000 donors in your database you just can't be best friends with 10 000 people there's just not enough time in the day no matter how much you try no matter how hard you want to so how then you know automation helps
• 43:30 - 44:00 pick up the slack to say well those other 9 000 people that you're never going to be able to talk to are still getting much more personalized experiences and your time is more uh carefully planned because virtuous is helping alert you when when attention is needed you can focus your time using some of our data analytics on the right places where that human touch matters so we we hope that this really enhances and increases the ability to do more good human
• 44:00 - 44:30 work last thing i'll just briefly touch on obviously having data is important connecting all of that we need to be able to get insights into our data as well so there's a couple things there one right dashboard for reporting virtuous has a lot of built-in kind of pre-set reports that you can run really easy to find look for information a really really robust query tool where you can slice and dice and find all types of information in virtuous
• 44:30 - 45:00 you know data folks database administrators love this because it's really easy to slice and dice all your data we also have a full custom report writer working with some of our larger clients they want full custom reports they want to be able to query directly to the data so we've got a lot of kind of unique things for cloud solutions like direct database access where you can point directly to the data tables we allow you to use outside report writers if you're using like a clicktech or tableau or microsoft power bi
• 45:00 - 45:30 getting access manipulating the data exporting the data is important so query tool is really great we're also an open system we care about being able to connect with and engage with interact with all types of other best of breed tools and so virtuos is a full open api to connect with engage with we have a full integration with zapier so if you if you're not quite ready to use an api but you want easy kind of point and click connections to other tools
• 45:30 - 46:00 you know you want to connect virtuous with your slack account great you want an email in your gmail every time a new gift comes in great build it in zapier um no charge there ever for our integrations and we have a full list of native integrations with partners that we're built with so we like to uniquely solve this donor personalization fundraising marketing conundrum but then be open with every other tool that is doing other great work like option management event management
• 46:00 - 46:30 volunteer management online fundraising peer-to-peer to really create an ecosystem where you solve the job at hand the needs you have and virtuous isn't trying to always boil the ocean and do it all ourselves we really want to connect with best of breed okay so that's what i'm going to pause i want to open for questions or any other dialogue that's the big fly over virtuous hopefully kind of see what we're all about and taylor i'll i'll turn it back to you yeah sure that was great um thank you
• 46:30 - 47:00 david and i i appreciate that overview it's every time i see virtuous i learn something new that i'm like i didn't remember from last time so um it's always interesting to see products as they evolve too over time so um i thought that was a great overview of everything you guys do please chat in your questions now and if you've got questions specific to product functionality or anything like that please let us know
• 47:00 - 47:30 while david's here i've got a question for you so what can an organization typically expect in terms of like on-ramp time and onboarding and like you're thinking about making a switch to virtuous what does that really look like in terms of a time frame and all of that yeah absolutely and i'm actually i'll share my screen again because we've got this success plan that i'll share with you um some of it depends on just the complexity of your current database usually we see between 30 and 90 days to
• 47:30 - 48:00 move folks on to virtuous um and i mentioned like before i even started my demo the big part of like buying a new tool new tool is not just like hey cool i bought my new crm now everything is fixed right we know that the change management the training the data migration that whole portion is super critical um so normally right you're gonna expect 30 to 90 days but we've got a super comprehensive migration training and onboarding strategy that
• 48:00 - 48:30 we've got well documented and this is just an example of our enterprise onboarding where every single thing is documented uh we talked to about the importance of having like ownership sponsors people who make these decisions because again you're gonna get some change management difficulties when you know you're moving someone's cheese it's not always as fun for everyone but it is it is a full service that we provide everyone gets a project manager and a customer success coach to help
• 48:30 - 49:00 make that as painless as possible but the big part of it too is training and support so we have live training with a real person a real person who's gonna sit with you in addition to things like video and online uh but we also spend a lot of time helping coach you through organizational change how do we help create things like vision and skills and resources and a plan to make sure that everyone is ready and on board and sees the value so we really spend a lot of time here because ultimately that's what drives the
• 49:00 - 49:30 successes there's all of these different elements and we really want to make sure that they are they're done well and our team does spend a lot of time side by side shoulder to shoulder and so ongoing as well not only after that we do a lot of things like um monthly webinars and training and so if actually today i just got a little alert in our support an hour ago from one of our trainers that says hey we've got our monthly webinar that we do
• 49:30 - 50:00 we do proactive webinars to kind of help you think not only about just you know how to use the tool but strategies as well and so that's always happening in addition to our team being available for supports knowledge base and all of that is all built into virtuous that's a good question awesome cool great so a good tackling question that's common from michael on that is about an organization size so what's a typical size of an organization that's
• 50:00 - 50:30 really able to utilize all of the tools that you've shown today yeah no that's a that's a great question i would say there is a there's kind of a sweet spot for virtuous um where our value starts to get bigger so usually when you're around like a million and a half to two million in revenue and i'd say once your kind of addressable donor universe gets to around like 5 000 contacts that could include donors and email that's where you really start to run into that sort of scalability issue where
• 50:30 - 51:00 through brute force and a lot of hard work you got to a thousand donors you kind of built that list but what starts to happen at that point is well my time is stretched then so i'm going to focus most of my attention on our top ten percent of donors and then everyone else kind of falls into that newsletter bucket where they get they get the newsletter they get our quarterly appeal and so usually around that point is how do i scale from two to ten ten to thirty and so our sweet spot is kind of that two million to a hundred million in total revenue
• 51:00 - 51:30 um it's really where we just are a great fit because we're helping you without adding again you have to hire a ton of staff we want virtuous to be able to help extend what you're doing and so again there are plus there are exceptions to both of that but i'd say that's a great range where we serve folks that are really see a lot of power out of virtuous awesome cool great question thanks michael for chiming in with that if you have other questions uh please go ahead and turn those in so david
• 51:30 - 52:00 send me that i'll make sure i get that pdf from you that has the overview of you know implementation and training and all of that and just shoot that out to everybody along with the recording of the webinar so you've got all of that information that you need um i'm gonna just pull up my screen as well as we see if any other questions come in um and thank you guys for for joining us today so i want to give a
• 52:00 - 52:30 plug if people are uh maybe starting to let's see we're at 154 oh we did a good job on timing um so feel free to reach out if you've got questions about tools for your organization that's where firefly and our team comes in is we really help a lot of organizations work through as david mentioned that change management that like how do we get the right tools based on our goals and our intended outcomes and how do we select those tools then
• 52:30 - 53:00 how do we get onto those tools and then the big thing that everyone wants to know is how do we get the most roi out of those tools so after we buy something we're doing the right things on those tools and we are making sure that when we go back to our executive director that we're able to say yeah we're getting the value out of our tools and here's how much more engagement we're driving and here's how much more money that we're raising and all of that stuff so that's what rt likes to do feel free to shoot me an email on taylor fireflypartners.com
• 53:00 - 53:30 if you've got any questions about that and how we can help you with your tools we put out our guide every year and virtuous was one of the tools in our guide and that's prompted us to do this follow-on series to our 2020 nonprofit digital marketing tool guide so go to fireflypartners.com check out that guide if you haven't already i'm guessing people here on the line today probably saw the guide and then we're like yeah i want to go check out virtua so thanks for thanks for engaging with us in that way
• 53:30 - 54:00 if you want to go see what's next up in our you know technology spotlight series we're doing a lot of these over the next few weeks and if you go to bit.le gps 2020 uh we've got the hook up with you'll go here you can see everything that we're going to be featuring i'm adding more every day it seems like through july and august we're going to be doing a lot of these spotlights on tools that our team at firefly knows thinks are
• 54:00 - 54:30 good things are really powerful in you know creating that human connection i think a lot of the things that you showed today david it's funny that you said it feels like we're working at the same company it really powers that human human connection and puts everything together in a place so that you don't have that digital disconnect in that digital divide so without any further ado i'm just going to pop up my slide here again if you want to grab my email address and be
• 54:30 - 55:00 in touch with us um david i know we'll probably just direct people to go to virtua crm if they're interested in talking to you guys you guys have a chat do you want to share an email or anything like that what's the best way to get in touch yeah virtuouscrm.com super easy tons of resources on the website again we do have a chat built in you can start a conversation right there if you want to get a hold of me directly it's david c at virtuouscrm.com i'm i'm happy to help and here for anyone that's got
• 55:00 - 55:30 questions so thank you taylor for having us on this is a lot of fun yeah that's fine that was good to talk to you um if you do have any other chat questions put those in let us know and i'll i'll send out your contact info too so when we send out the follow-up email we'll make sure everyone has that pdf link to your website contact info all of that good stuff perfect all right and kyle has anything else come in i don't see anything so i just want to thank everyone for
• 55:30 - 56:00 joining us today thanks for taking a look at virtus with us and shoot us an email if you want to talk about your tools and your digital marketing goals all right we'll see you next time folks thanks a lot bye