Fundraising Voices From Ruffalo Noel Levitz

This Fundraising Voices podcast features RNL’s Josh Robertson who covers the importance of using personalization to communicate with your donors. Josh and Brian discuss: Why personalization is important for engaging the 21st century donor. How artificial intelligence (AI) and new, easy to use platforms can transform your communications. How to get started with turnkey solutions like RNL QuadWrangle and harness the power of this technology immediately. Find out more about RNL QuadWrangle here Our guest: Josh Robertson, Senior Vice President Joshua Robertson joined Ruffalo Noel Levitz in 1997 as a student fundraiser at The University of Georgia and has since risen to become the chief architect of our donor and student engagement solutions. Josh works daily with hundreds of institutions to transform their donor engagement with new and emerging technology and data-driven strategy. He has worked with more than 60 institutions in managing their multichannel, on-site phonathon programs, including Stanford, New Yor

This Fundraising Voices podcast features provocative fundraising expert Jason Lewiss, CFRE, author of The War for Fundraising Talent. Jason and host Brian Gawor discuss: Challenging the assumptions we have about what it takes to be a successful fundraiser. What’s happening in small and large shops to recruit and retain top fundraising talent. What you can do as a fundraiser to become better, and advance your career. What’s next for 21st fundraisers looking to engage new and diverse donor populations. Get the War for Fundraising Talent book here. And check out Jason at Responsive Fundraising. Our guest: Jason Lewis, CFRE, Founder of Responsive Fundraising   Jason Lewis is willing to question deeply engrained beliefs and assumptions about how effective fundraising really works.  Whether writing or speaking, Jason challenges the prevailing wisdom about effective fundraising practices, hiring decisions, and donor behavior. In the last two decades, Jason has raised millions of dollars for a variety of non-profi

We've just released our annual report on annual giving trends, from a survey fundraisers this year. I got on the line with Shad Hanselman, RNL's annual giving guru, to talk about the results, including what fundraisers say about: - Usage of channels, like direct mail, phone, email, crowdfunding, giving days and online giving. - Where fundraisers wish they were spending more time. - What fundraisers think is best for donor acquisition, retention, and upgrade of donors. - What's being done for young alumni engagement. - What's next for the future of annual giving. Download the full report here  

The basic job description of a fundraiser is to reah out to donors, listen to them, and provide opportunities. To see if there might be a chance that the donors want to make a difference for your organization, institution, school or charity. Well, increasingly, those conversations will happen with numerous members of the donor's family or even 's financial planners. Arlene Cogen used to be a financial planner, someone who was really focused on amassing money for her clients. Then, she left financial planning and became a fundraiser. She began to really talk to fundraisers about how to engage financial planners and found that fundraisers don't need to be afraid, and financial planners can engage with their clients about how to increase philanthropy and find joy in giving. I got on the line with Arlene to talk a little bit about her book and the way she suggests people should engage donors, their families and their financial planners in the 21st century. Read Arlene's book, Give to Live And find out how she hel

Philanthropy is more than money. It's more than values. It's all the other ideas and time of the things that they bring, and this is becoming more and more critical as we look at the younger generations. We spend a lot of our time in the fundraising world thinking about how we can better connect to donors, how we can make the ask better, how we can engage donors, how we can increase their passion for giving. But we're probably not spending enough time thinking about how we work, how we can work more effectively, and how we behave as leaders. Well, Larry Johnson knows this and he's written a book called The Eight Principles, and has a really great training program and opportunities for fundraisers to really think about how they're developing as leaders. He's actually somebody who knew Stephen Covey himself and I got on the line with them to talk about The Eight Principles and how we can be better leaders in the nonprofit world. Here's link to Larry's great book on Amazon. And here's the 8 Principles web site.

Keeping the data on our donors, our supporters and the people that we serve secure is absolutely crucial for the success of any organization. There's really nothing that strikes fear in the heart of fundraisers or leaders at nonprofits worse than the idea of a data breach. Paul Ruffalo, who has decades of experience working in this area knows this, and I got on the line to talk with him about what's changing in the world of data security, and what he thinks organizations should be doing best to protect their data, which is one of the key pieces of treasure that donors and other supporters leave us.

How do you provide service to your donors or alumni at 3:00 AM in the morning? Or get them answers to their questions about giving, reunions, projects or even planned giving in real time? An AI chatbot may your answer. On this episode, our "designated millennials" Peter Christian and Quinn McGourty-Holland teach Brian Gawor how to make a chatbot work, including followup campaigns through Facebook Messenger integration. If you want a demo of the chatbot, get in touch with us today at ContactUs@RuffaloNL.com

Engaging students in philanthropy is a key part of your fundraising development plan -- learning about the impact of donors, engaging students to give before they graduate, and asking students to help in the stewardship effort all can make a difference. Chris McBride from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Howard Heevner from UC Santa Cruz, faculty members at the CASE 2019 Engaging Students in Philanthropy Symposium talk about the power of student philanthropy programs. Find out more about the Symposium here: https://www.case.org/engaging-students-philanthropy-symposium    

Running your giving program strategically definitely means thinking out to start of the year, how you're going to approach donors, ask them for gifts and thank them, but it also means putting in place the infrastructure to deal with the unexpected. Missy Kennedy at UNC Wilmington is an expert at this. She's had a lot of success over the past few years engaging the entire campus community and dealing with unexpected needs and challenges that philanthropy could definitely have an impact on. I got Missy on the line to talk about her annual giving program and what she thinks is next for the agile, strategic annual giving program. Check out UNCW at https://giving.uncw.edu/

Katrina VanHuss at Turnkey is transforming peer to peer philanthropic engagement. In this conversation, we talk about the psychology of peer to peer donors, technology and strategy that can maximize peer engagement, and what we think is next for peer to peer fundraising. Check out TurnKey at: https://www.turnkeyp2p.com/

One of the consistent things that I hear from institutions that I work with is that they're really interested in doing a better job engaging younger donors. We call them millennials. We're lucky enough at RNL to have two millennials of our own. Peter Christian and Quinn McGourty-Holland, who are just rock stars. They spend their days talking with RNL partners about new solutions and how best to surprise and delight what could be the most generous generation in history. We're going to watch something fun today, and it's the designated millennials podcast, as part of Fundraising Voices, here at RNL. For the first episode, I got on the line with Quinn and Peter to talk a little bit about how they think we could do a good job engaging their own generation, a group of alumni that is often giving at about one half the rate of the overall alumni population. Key insights: - Make giving easy, fun and social - Use engaging technologies like crowdfunding, giving days and social media to change the game with young donor

Like many of you I'm lucky enough to have more than one alma mater. One of those is Illinois State University where I'm actually still currently a student finishing up my doctoral degree. I came to Illinois State University kind of in the middle of my career and the institution really blew me away. ISU has an incredibly deep commitment to the success of students. When you look at the key statistics on Illinois State University they blow away the competition in terms of retention, student success, student satisfaction. And one of the reasons for that, is that throughout their entire history they've just been totally focused on education. They were a Teachers College until in the 70s they transformed into the modern comprehensive university. Along with that came a shift in fundraising strategy, and the institution started raising more. Now, they're in the midst of a transformational campaign and like all campaigns there's more than one effort involved. Modern campaigns now also will often include a big push in

Over 30 years ago, Al Ruffalo wanted to help colleges and universities, and he gave it a try. What came of his efforts, and the efforts of the people who were part of those initial experiments, was the modern college and university phone outreach program, which has raised billions of dollars. It's also been a lifeline of real, honest to goodness conversations between students and alumni for the past three decades. This work is obviously changing, and the company that Al and company built has changed, now encompassing a whole suite of tech-enabled data driven programs that serve both fundraising and enrollment goals. But the mission to make a personal connection and to make every college and university part of the family hasn't changed as the company transformed into the modern Ruffalo Noel Levitz. I got my friend Al on the line to talk about his journey and what he thinks is next for higher education donor and student engagement.

What would you do if you were lucky enough to come into a bit of money? Buy an expensive car? A big house? Or would you do something more people are considering -- start a family foundation and try to make a difference in the world? Well, that's what Suzanne Skees and the Skees Family Foundation have done. But they're doing it differently. With over 40 family members involved (some younger than 8 years old) and unrestricted grants to charities across the globe, they have something different and special. Suzanne's just released My Job #2, a book that spotlights the stories of people whose lives are changing all over the world, and I got her on the line to talk about the Foundation, how the family works together, and the power of storytelling. You can get your copy of My Job (both editions) at: myjobstories.org. And find out more about the Skees Family Foundation, including their blog at: skees.org

Recurring giving is a big topic these days, particularly among our higher education partners. Everyone's watching the massive increase in subscription services, and particularly how young alumni or donors use them. Also, we're just really excited about the idea of people buying into consistent, regular giving. But most of us haven't really figured out how to give for monthly gifts real well, how to thank recurring donors, or even in some cases how to receive the gifts correctly. It's a tremendous opportunity to build a base of committed, regular donors who have bought into your cause. So when NextAfter, the great fundraising research outfit, published their recent recurrent giving study where they actually made gifts to a couple hundred charities and saw how recurrent giving was marketed, we gobbled it up. The same day it came out, I called Brady Josephson and got him on the line to talk about how to optimize the donor experience, to tell us what they heard in the study, and how he thinks in his words we can

Having a good relationship between your marketing department, and your advancement division is absolutely crucial. Michael Stoner, co-founder, and president of mStoner Incorporated knows this, and he's completed some research recently showing how this relationship can really propel the results of an advancement division’s ability to engage donors. I got on the line with Michael to talk a little bit about his history in higher education marketing and what he sees next for the integration of communications to donors. Check out this article on Michael's research here at Inside Higher Education Find out more about mStoner at: https://www.mstoner.com/  

For a long time now, annual giving programs have utilized matching gift programs from corporate sponsors as a great way to increase their fundraising totals. You can, generally speaking, increase your results by about 10% just by engaging corporate partners who have matching gift programs available to your alumni and other supporters. I got on the phone with Teddy Callow at HEPData, one of the premier providers of matching gift data and resources to talk about how you can best engage donors in corporations so that you're the one who gets chosen for this important philanthropic opportunity. Find out more great info from HEPData at: HEPData.com And Contact Us at RNL for HEP-integrated services like those that support you phonathon and student philanthropy centers through CAMPUSCALL integration.

Alumni participation: It's a key statistic that we all know is very important. It helps drive rankings and it's also evidence to suggest that we're really getting through to donors. Participation something that we all think about, but we're not really great in talking about. That's because it's been declining over the last 30 years at American higher education. Overall, generally speaking, alumni are just less likely to give to their alma maters. Dan Frezza at William & Mary is looking at things a little differently. He's accepted a challenge to grow alumni participation over the next few years and break this trend. I got on the line with Dan to talk about alumni participation, what the strategy at William & Mary involves and how he's going to change things and how they plan to engage more alumni to give every year.

Working with major donors to ignite their passion to give is the #1 to transform your organization. Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels know this, and talk in this episode about what's changing with major giving, and how to provide gift officers the tools to connect with the best major and planned giving donors. Check out Veritus Group at veritusgroup.com

Crowdfunding is a great way to capture new donors. This socially-connected and optimized online giving platform is now in use by over half of higher education institutions for fundraising in one form or another. We’ve released our 2018 Crowdfunding Index, which reviews over 5,000 charitable crowdfunding campaigns on the RNL ScaleFunder platform, with combined giving of $73 Million. I got on the line with RNL crowdfunding expert Mary Grace Baldo to review the data, and talk about key trends and what’s next for this great way to engage donors. Download the full Index here Crowdfunding now has wide adoption, and we’re seeing some great things as institutions further include crowdfunding into their overall giving strategy. The technology has come a long way, and can integrate directly into your current gift processing and stewardship plans. And when you look at the stats for first-year crowdfunding programs, the ROI can be really great. You’re going to want a partner who understands how to implement the technolo