By The Numbers - A Petrus Development Show Episode on Fundraising Activity Trends

Andrew and Rhen return this week for a fun episode on fundraising trends.  Together, they share data and statistics about the most popular fundraising activities.  

Show Notes:

This time of the year is often the start of new years (new school years, new fiscal years, etc.), and it's always a good idea to create a plan for the new year that's based on data.  The best fundraisers don't make assumptions about what works.  Instead, they look to data to make informed decisions about fundraising activities.  Listen as Andrew and Rhen give statistics about average success rates for a variety of fundraising activities.  Use these statistics to set reasonable expectations for your success!

In this episode, Andrew and Rhen answer the following questions:

• What's a typical conversion rate for an appeal letter's results?  Is there a difference between direct mail and email appeals?  
  
  
• What kind of fundraising success should I expect from social media posts and requests?
  
  
• Can a phone-a-thon be successful?  What can organizations do to improve results?
  
  
• Why should fundraisers focus on monthly giving?  
  
  
• Are grants worth the time and effort?  What about banquets and galas?
  
  
• What is a good success rate for major gifts asks?  

As Rhen mentions at the end of the episode, Petrus is offering a free annual fund checklist for listeners.  Use this checklist (along with the data from this episode!) to choose activities that can help you build a more robust annual fund.  If you'd like to receive this resource, please click here for more information.    

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

05:56.01
aggierobison
Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Development Show. My name is Rhen Hoehn from Petrus Development. Joining me today is Andrew Robison, owner and president of Petrus. How's it going, Andrew?

06:06.25
AROB
Rhen, it's going great. We are officially done with summer, which basically just means the kids are going back to school, which it's fun to have them home for summer and it's fun to send them back to school in the fall.

06:22.28
aggierobison
Definitely. You guys are ahead of me, my kids don't go back until after Labor Day, but you also get out of school earlier.

06:26.11
AROB
Ah.

06:27.25
aggierobison
We stay in school a little bit later in the spring. So.

06:30.13
AROB
Yeah, we're done with school by like May 24th, 25th, somewhere around there. I remember when I was little, when I was younger, my birthday is June 3rd. And I remember like kindergarten, first grade, we celebrated my birthday on the last day of school, but we've never gone that late since any of my kids have been in school.

06:45.15
aggierobison
Oh.

06:49.59
aggierobison
Yeah, we always go to the second week of June. So it's just interesting, different parts of the country, that's what it is.

06:53.64
AROB
Yeah.

06:55.10
aggierobison
So peeling back the curtain a little bit, our production, but the last couple of episodes, we actually pre-recorded because we knew there would be lots of travel in the summer. So we haven't really recorded an episode since before the Raise 24 conference.

07:09.82
AROB
Mmhmm, yeah.

07:09.90
aggierobison
So a lot has happened since then. Uh, how was your conference experience in San Antonio?

07:14.77
AROB
Yeah, it was fantastic. San Antonio in June, we were there in June, right? End of June.

07:20.34
aggierobison
Yeah.

07:21.56
AROB
I want to say July. No, San Antonio in June was warm. Where you ventured out of the conference center, you experienced that Texas heat that everybody hears so much about, which was great.

07:33.09
aggierobison
Yes.

07:33.27
AROB
But inside the conference center, it was great. Inside the hotel was fantastic. The sessions were all great. I felt like this group meshed in a way that every group meshes well, this group just really seemed to come together. A lot of really great conversations, a lot of great connections made. And yeah, I had a blast.

07:57.07
aggierobison
A lot of fun. I've been to, I don't know, half a dozen conferences. I always feel like, "Oh, I know all this stuff," but no, I learn something new in basically every session every year. So it's really good.

08:06.04
AROB
Yeah.

08:07.75
aggierobison
The Raise conference is going to change formats a little bit next year. So we can talk about that maybe at the end of this episode here.

08:14.98
AROB
Yeah.

08:14.95
aggierobison
I will say one of my favorite moments from the conference was flying home, taking off from San Antonio at 110 degrees, and walking off the plane in the UP at 58 degrees. And I was so happy about that.

08:28.57
AROB
Yeah. I did not have that same benefit of leaving. I left San Antonio at 110 and probably got back to College Station at 109. So not much relief for me, but I'm glad that you got to experience that.

08:43.01
aggierobison
It was hot. It's never not hot in the UP, it's been in the 90s here in August. But I was toughened up by San Antonio, so I'm able to handle it.

08:48.01
AROB
Ah, yeah. There you go. But everything happens for a reason, right?

08:54.58
aggierobison
Yeah, but it was great to meet some of the podcast listeners out there. So shout out to Josh from Tulsa and Tom from Texas and some of the other folks that we got a chance to talk to and talk about the podcast and talk about fundraising in general and have a drink.

09:02.04
AROB
Yeah.

09:08.36
aggierobison
And it was a good time.

09:09.86
AROB
Yeah, it's been a weird summer here in Texas temperature-wise. It was super hot in June, relatively cool for Texas standards in July. I don't think we broke 100 degrees, if at all, and not very much.

09:22.04
aggierobison
Wow.

09:23.71
AROB
And now it's getting hot again as we move into August. And I did, uh, I shaved my, well, my son needed a haircut and I'm the barber of the family, at least when it comes to him and one of my girls. And so I gave him a mohawk. We were in Colorado and I was going to shave his head and I thought, "Actually, it wasn't even my idea. Somebody else said, 'Well, give him a mohawk.'" So I did. And then he was a little bit self-conscious about his hair being so short. So I said, "All right, buddy, I will also cut my hair short."

09:57.63
AROB
So I've got a good summer haircut going here as well.

10:01.75
aggierobison
Ah.

10:02.11
AROB
So it's a little bit cooler and easier to manage.

10:02.75
aggierobison
Love it. That's right. Excellent. Well, summer's coming to an end fast. Like you said, kids are going back to school.

10:08.65
AROB
Yep.

10:09.70
aggierobison
We're coming into fall. Everybody's kind of planning out their fall fundraising activities. Something we wanted to do today is talk about some of the common fundraising activities and their typical responses. Right. When I'm working with people who are new to fundraising, they're saying, "Okay, we're going to send out a hundred appeal letters. Are 50 of them going to get sent back with checks?"

10:29.91
AROB
Right.

10:31.01
aggierobison
What's a reasonable number, right? So I thought it would be good to spend some time talking about average success rates or response rates to some different fundraising activities. So you have a good something to gauge your organization's responses from, are you doing well above average? Are you doing below average? Give you a sense of what's going well, what's not.

10:41.05
AROB
Yeah.

10:45.07
aggierobison
Are you doing for low average? Ah, give you a sense of what's going well, what's not.

10:50.00
AROB
Yeah, no, I think that sounds great. And there are, you realize as you kind of move into fundraising or you are working with volunteers, that there are a lot of assumptions about how well some things work versus how well other things work. And so it is nice to actually look at the data and see what the averages are, what trends are, what you should be expecting, because then, you know, when you know what the data says, then you can make more informed decisions versus we assume that this would work. So let's do that. So I like this.

11:24.98
aggierobison
Exactly. It's a, so lots of numbers today. Hopefully we can keep it kind of coherent and easy to follow. I don't necessarily have a bunch of stats pulled up here. They're not necessarily organized super logically, but we're going to start with some communications numbers and, and we'll go from there through some others through monthly giving, grants, major gifts, all those pieces, and we'll see how it goes.

11:45.80
AROB
If you ask my wife, completely illogical conversations are kind of my sweet spot. So I am totally fine with this. We can popcorn all over the place and let our much more intelligent and coherent listeners put it all together.

12:00.41
aggierobison
Excellent. Love it. So let's start out with kind of the backbone of many fundraising operations is the appeal letter, right?

12:08.71
AROB
Okay.

12:09.18
aggierobison
Um, yeah. Right. So like I said, if you send out a hundred appeal letters, are you going to get 50 of them back or what's a typical number that you might expect for a conversion rate on appeal letters? How many of them usually get sent back or ah result in a gift?

12:22.59
AROB
Yeah, so direct mail has, you know, kind of gone through some ups and downs. People love it, and then people hate it, and then people love it, and then people hate it, and there's always this, "Oh, direct mail is dying," and then, "No, direct mail is still there." So what does the data look like? So it's, you mail out an appeal letter, and what we're talking about is a difference between a direct mail newsletter, right? A newsletter is meant to inform. You want to put a passive envelope in there for people to respond to, but you're usually looking at on a newsletter less than 1%, maybe even less than a half percent.

12:58.07
AROB
According to some of the data, it shows that 0.2 to 0.5 is a good response rate to a newsletter, right?

13:07.14
aggierobison
0.2%, right?

13:08.87
AROB
0.2%.

13:09.05
aggierobison
So it's 0.5%. Yeah.

13:10.78
AROB
Got it, yeah, sorry. So a direct mail appeal is usually a letter form and that goes out with a direct ask, with an envelope and the expectation people will give, right? But you're never going to get a hundred percent of the people that are going to respond to that.

13:32.96
aggierobison
Nope.

13:33.59
AROB
Right. So a good direct mail response rate, call it conversion rate, is three and a half to 4%. So that means that if you're mailing out 1000 letters, you're going to get 30 to 40 gifts back in the mail. And that's pretty good, right? So that's average. And the size of those gifts is going to vary. A lot of it depends on how you ask in the letter, depends on the type of organization. It depends on the demographic makeup of the audience that is receiving it, but three and a half to four percent conversion rate is good on an appeal letter.

14:08.95
aggierobison
And roughly a third of those are going to come back through your website. Interestingly, right?

14:13.24
AROB
Yeah.

14:13.31
aggierobison
People are going to get the appeal letter. There's the return envelope in there, but they want to give with their credit card on the website and whatever it is. So about a third of those, it's not always easy to attribute those exactly to the right, you know, the right letter that went out, but about a third of the gifts that are caused by that appeal letter come in through your website, not through the mail necessarily.

14:32.72
AROB
Yeah, and I'm one of those that when I get a letter in the mail asking me for a gift, I literally never know where the checkbook is in our house. We have one checkbook, my wife keeps it, and it's either in her purse or in the desk or wherever. So if I'm gonna make a gift, there's 0% chance that I'm gonna go find a check and mail it, but I will go onto the website and make a gift that way. So it's important, you know, as you're putting your plans together, we've talked about this on the podcast before, but as you're putting your plans together, when you do a direct mail letter, it's really important that you go and you check your website first, make sure that it's working, it's processing gifts. People aren't going to get an error message, but then also you can take it a step further and kind of look at cohesion and alignment between those two messages, right? So if your direct mail letter goes out and the suggested giving amounts are $50, $100, $150, and $500, right? And that's what it says on the envelope. And then you go into the website and the suggested giving amounts are $5, $10, $25, and $50. Well, there's not alignment, right?

15:24.80
AROB
So you may have somebody that reads it and says, "Oh yeah, I'll go make a $250 gift or $500 gift" in that scenario, on online or you know, go do that online and then there's the highest amount is a $50 and I'm you know kind of talking to hyperbole right here, but the $50 is there. Well, they're just going to say, "Okay, well then I guess I'll just give $50." So alignment between your giving numbers, alignment between even the stories, the kind of message that are in both of those is really important and going to help your conversion rate even better.

16:12.73
aggierobison
Exactly. And as long as we're here, a little tangent, I'll always be testing those types of things. I remember we sent out one appeal letter when I was working at a campus ministry, where the lowest giving amount suggested in the appeal letter was $50. And we got something like 80, $50 checks that came in. And the next, the next appeal letter we sent out, we said, "Let's try changing that lowest amount to a hundred dollars." And we got the same number of gifts, but at a hundred dollar level instead of 50, right?

16:37.13
AROB
Wow.

16:37.33
aggierobison
So double the amount of gifts from those 80 people, basically, just by suggesting a higher amount as the lowest option on the, on the forms to test those things and see what happens, right?

16:46.18
AROB
Exactly.

16:47.21
aggierobison
And be tracking all of these numbers to the best of your ability. It's hard with direct mail because it takes so long, right? It's when you send out an appeal letter, you got a couple month window before you have kind of the full results of that appeal letter coming back. But always be tracking, well, you know, how many gifts do we get versus how many pieces we sent out? One stat that's important, I think, to keep is the cost per dollar raised.

17:09.92
AROB
All

17:09.91
aggierobison
So how much did it cost you to raise a dollar? Which for an appeal letter, there's a couple of different segments, and then you could even break it down into how much did it cost us to raise gifts, you know, a dollar from somebody who's never given to us before versus somebody who has given to us before.

17:24.44
AROB
Right.

17:26.65
aggierobison
And you're going to see some different numbers there. Somebody who's never given to you before, it usually costs you more than you make back for that first gift. So it's, but usually a buck 25 to a buck 50 per dollar raised. But if somebody who has given to you before giving, getting them to give a second gift with a direct mail appeal, it's usually something like 25 cents per dollar raised. So, you know, if it costs you $100 to mail them, you're gonna get $400 back on average from that group.

17:50.14
AROB
Correct. And that kind of leads into another point, right? We talked about that three and a half to 4% conversion rate on a direct mail appeal. Well, that conversion rate for your organization is going to change over time, right?

18:02.71
aggierobison
So, right.

18:03.10
AROB
An organization that has literally never sent a direct mail piece out, they, and you start, you get a list of a hundred names or 500 names and you mail that. Well, that's all acquisition, right? So your response rate, your conversion rate might be lower. Your cost is higher, like you just said, $1.25 to $1.50 to raise a dollar, which sounds counterintuitive. Why would you even keep doing that? But over time, you take that same organization, the first letter that they ever mail out, fast forward five years, 10 years later, consistently mailing, consistently growing that list from a hundred names to a thousand names to 10,000 names to 50,000 names. That conversion rate is going to change over time, and the dollar is going to go down because you're not acquiring donors all the time. You're renewing them.

18:49.65
AROB
So direct mail is definitely a long-term game, meaning the more you do it consistently and the more volume you do, the more dollars are going to be produced in the end.

19:04.24
aggierobison
Yeah, exactly. So looking at that number, like you said, 30 to 40 gifts per 1000 pieces sent, let's compare that to email appeals.

19:14.07
AROB
Okay.

19:14.68
aggierobison
And we have to kind of work through several layers here to get to the bottom of the numbers. So stick with us, hopefully we can explain this well. Do you want to kind of lay out what are some numbers we should expect from the email appeals we send out?

19:25.78
AROB
Yeah, sure. So, uh, email open rates. So somebody gets an email, they click it and they open it, are usually between 30 to 40%. Right. So again, going back to the direct mail, we're talking about averages over time. So first-time email subscribers versus people that have been on your list for a long time, those are going to change, right? But email open rate, 30 to 40%. Email click rate, meaning they get the email, there's a link in there for something, go watch this video or go make a gift, one to 2%. And then a donation page conversion rate. So once people get to your donation page, that doesn't mean that they've crossed the finish line, right? They get to the donation page, and you're looking at usually on average 17 to 20% of those people that open the email, they click the buttons, they get to the page, are going to make a gift.

20:15.01
AROB
So, kind of break this all down into a real-time example. You email 1,000 people, about 350 people are gonna open that email, right? So that's at 30 to 40%. About 15 people are going to click the donation rate. So that's one to 2% of those 350. We're now at 15 people are gonna click the link. And then of those 15 people, two to three are going to actually cross the finish line and make a gift on the website.

20:51.56
AROB
So overall, you do all that number, all that calculations overall, your conversion rate of email sent to gifts received is going to be 0.1 to 0.2% on average.

20:52.31
aggierobison
Right.

21:06.78
AROB
Follow that?

21:07.07
aggierobison
Right. And so that's, yeah, I think that all those little pretty clearly there.

21:11.04
AROB
Yeah.

21:11.90
aggierobison
That's why when we talk about sending out a direct mail appeal, there's a cost to it. There's a kind of a long timeframe to put it all together. But when you're looking at, you know, 30 to 40 gifts per 1000 people versus one to two gifts per 1000 people, two to three gifts for 1000 people, that's why the cost of sending out a paper appeal letter in the mail is still worthwhile because those electronic appeals are just you have to push pretty hard to get the same results, right? You've never seen a single email appeal equal a single direct mail appeal.

21:37.72
AROB
Yep.

21:42.02
aggierobison
And it's usually when you do get results, it's because you've planned out several emails over a couple of weeks.

21:42.38
AROB
No.

21:48.99
aggierobison
You got a deadline, you got some urgency, like a matching gift. Then you can start seeing some good results, but on average, it just doesn't ever quite make up the same revenue as a direct mail appeal does.

22:01.07
AROB
Right. And let's go back like.

22:01.58
aggierobison
I know it's free, more or less.

22:03.80
AROB
Let's go up 30,000 feet, right? And why do we do, in a comprehensive strategic intentional development office, right, which is what we're all trying to get to, why do we do annual fund, direct mail, emails, and all? Well, it's not to grow your organization. Annual fund can be used to sustain your operations, the cash that comes in. But if you're looking, if you're an organization that wants to grow, what do you need to be able to grow? You need major gifts, right? And where do your major gift prospects, where do your major gift donors come from?

22:39.59
AROB
They come from the pipeline of donors that's created through your annual fund. Okay, so in the long-term growth of your organization, you're in a lot better position to discover, identify, cultivate, solicit individuals for major gifts from a pool of 30 to 40 people, a couple of times a year, then you are from two to three people a couple of times a year.

23:01.87
aggierobison
All right, yep.

23:05.98
AROB
So even though email is attractive, and right, we're not, um, I'm not an advocate for direct mail or email over either, I think there's a place for both, right? So I'm not trying to make that case, but I am trying to make the case that don't, email is attractive because it's quote free, but if you're generating two to three gifts, every email that you send out or whatever the numbers are versus 10 times that number in a direct mail appeal, When you look at your major gift program, you want 10 times because that gives you a larger pool of people that you can then build relationships with and ask for larger gifts, $5,000, $10,000, $100,000 gifts.

23:43.50
aggierobison
Exactly. So it's kind of worth the investment to go with the direct mail.

23:45.37
AROB
Yeah.

23:47.44
aggierobison
One other stat I'll just throw out there quickly. I don't have a whole lot, I guess, to add to this, but social media is roughly the same conversion rate, a 0.1% conversion rate. So if you have a thousand followers and you post on your Facebook page about an appeal, you might get one gift from that. Even then, like Facebook, you know the average, if you have a thousand followers and you post something, only on average, 4% of them are going to see your post.

24:02.55
AROB
Yep.

24:09.11
AROB
Huh?

24:10.52
aggierobison
Right. And so 40 people out of a thousand are going to see your post. And that's just how Facebook has it because they want you to pay to boost your post to see more.

24:15.29
AROB
Okay.

24:18.98
aggierobison
So for more people to see it. Right. And then once people see it, they might not see it for three or four days after you post it. Right. So there's a lot of factors there. And so it feels attractive to use the free or very cheap tools, but there you do lose something from doing that. So.

24:33.90
AROB
Correct.

24:35.22
aggierobison
So let's move on to a few other categories of things here. One being maybe something that's a little bit less used than it used to be, but phoneathons. Do you have any stats for us there?

24:46.03
AROB
So a phone-a-thon is where you have a group of volunteers and a group of names and phone numbers, and then those volunteers call those names, update them on the ministry of the organization, the work they're doing, and then ask for a gift, right? So that's, you know, there's a lot of layers to phone-a-thons, but that's a phone-a-thon. So conversion rate from a warm list, so these are people that have some relationship with the organization, is usually five to 6% on average. So that means that if you have a list of a thousand people and those volunteers call a thousand numbers, they're going to get around 50 to 60 gifts back from that phone-a-thon, right? Now there are ways to boost that number, so you can follow up a phone call with a text message.

25:33.65
AROB
So especially now in 2024 and as we move forward, when a phone number pops up on your phone that you don't recognize, you're not gonna answer it, right? Most people. Some people will, and that's great. But you want to, they wanna make sure they know who you are. So if they don't get a voicemail or a text message afterwards, then they don't know who you are in many cases, and they're not gonna then go seek you out. And so you can boost your phone-a-thon numbers by following up with a text message. You can also boost it by following up with an email or a direct mail. But directly, kind of sticking in the phone-a-thon lane, following up with a text message is a good way to boost that from five to 6% to higher.

26:16.32
aggierobison
Great. And let's just keep moving on here. How about monthly giving? Do you have any stats on what's a good monthly giving program look like? This is a little bit different than the conversion rates of the previous topics there, but...

26:29.39
AROB
Yeah. So monthly giving is great because it does a couple of things. One, it gets people giving for a long time, seven years on average, and it increases their giving amount. So average monthly donors, every organization is a little bit different, right? You look at different sectors, but average across the nonprofit sector is $50 per month per individual donor.

26:49.87
aggierobison
And I think that's actually within religious organizations specifically.

26:53.46
AROB
Thank you.

26:54.23
aggierobison
I think across all nonprofits, it's actually lower, something like $25-ish dollars per month.

26:58.89
AROB
Yeah.

26:59.77
aggierobison
But religious givers tend to give, I believe this is research from Blackbaud, the database company, based on their users, they were saying the religious sector gets something like $51 or $52 a month as the average gift.

27:04.31
AROB
Great.

27:11.90
AROB
Great. So if you multiply that over 12 months, you're looking at $600 per year per donor, which again, you've got donors giving for a long time and they're giving at larger numbers. Most of your annual fund donors are not giving you $600 checks over the course of the year, but $50 average per gift, per month, per donor, $600, that's a lot higher average number of dollars for your organization.

27:39.96
aggierobison
Exactly. And one thing that says to me is like you said, seven years is the average duration of a monthly gift. Don't put a limit on their monthly gift if you don't have to.

27:48.78
AROB
Yeah.

27:48.98
aggierobison
Right. I've worked with organizations that said, "Oh, you know, we need to raise as much extra money this year. If we find 10 people to each give a hundred dollars a month, we could do that." So let's go ask them to each give a hundred dollars a month for 12 months. No, just go ask them to give a hundred dollars a month and they can let it go as long as they would like.

28:03.55
AROB
There you go. I think there's another, I don't know that you can fact check me on this one, but I want to say that people give to monthly gifts. If they are monthly donors, they'll give to like six or seven charities per year as well.

28:16.50
aggierobison
Yeah, I think seven is the number that I've read on average.

28:17.52
AROB
Is that right?

28:19.88
AROB
Yeah. And I'm sure that number is, you know, if not already going up, but it's going up because, you know, as a family, I think we have monthly subscriptions for, I don't know, 20 different services when you add them up - insurance, streaming services, discounts to stores and restaurants. You add them all up and it's 20 at least. So seven charities is nothing to us.

28:54.57
aggierobison
Coming from the campus ministry world, we might support seven focus missionaries just in that category, beyond all of the other organizations we support.

29:03.53
AROB
Yeah.

29:03.82
aggierobison
So it's a very approachable gift for a lot of people, so it's a good ask. How about if we switch over to grants now? If you're applying to grants, it feels like easy money, right? "Oh, we just send a letter to this foundation that's looking to give away money. They're gonna send us back tens of thousands of dollars." What do the stats say when it comes to applying for grants from foundations specifically?

29:26.86
AROB
Yeah, so grants from foundations, on average, you're gonna see a one in 11 request success rate. Okay, so you send out 11 grant proposals to 11 different organizations. On average, one of them are going to respond positively with a grant. Possibly the amount you ask for, possibly less, who knows. And per application, it's usually dozens of hours spent.

29:46.84
aggierobison
Yeah.

29:51.77
AROB
So I'm not necessarily saying don't go out and ask for grants. In fact, when I was at a university foundation, I was very successful with grants. We had relationships with a lot of foundations and we had millions of dollars per year that we didn't have when I started, just from putting grants as a focus. But I treated them like major gift donors. I knew them, I had relationships with them, and when it was time for the proposal, they were asking me, "What are you going to ask for this year? We're ready to fund it." That takes time and effort, but without that, you're looking at a less than 10% success rate for grants.

30:38.32
aggierobison
Yeah. And I think one of the keys there is that's foundation grants, right? I've seen like Catholic schools where they qualify for certain government grants where it's, if you just meet these specific criteria, you're going to get the grant.

30:45.91
AROB
Mm hmm.

30:49.73
aggierobison
That changes.

30:50.33
AROB
Yeah.

30:50.81
aggierobison
That's a totally different scenario there. But if you're applying from a big Catholic foundation or family foundation, if you don't have a relationship with them, your odds of getting that grant are pretty low. So it can be a lot of time just wasted there.

31:03.52
AROB
Yeah, but this is a helpful stat. So if you're a new development director and you go to a finance council meeting or you go to your board meeting, inevitably someone will say, "Hey, so-and-so foundation just made a big grant to the zoo or the symphony or the university. Go ask them for some money and that's how we're going to fund our organization." There may be a way for you to work towards that, or there may be a relationship that is already established that can do that. But knowing that, statistically, you have less than a 10% success chance of getting a grant if you apply without a relationship. Well then, okay, well then do some of that, but also then focus on these other things that are important - annual fund, major gifts, everything else.

31:52.18
aggierobison
Exactly. And research those organizations, those foundations, find out who's on their board, who's making the decisions and ask your finance council, your leadership council, "Hey, does anybody have a connection to these people that we can start a relationship?" That's how I've seen a lot of grants actually come through - they make the connection, get to know them, and find out, "Oh, if you apply in this certain way or for this amount, we can get you approved. No problem."

32:16.66
AROB
Yep.

32:18.09
aggierobison
Excellent. So let's talk about banquets and galas, big annual events.

32:21.77
AROB
Ooh, big events. Yeah.

32:23.31
aggierobison
Yep. What do the numbers look like around those?

32:26.20
AROB
So the cost to raise a dollar for fundraising events is right around 50 cents per dollar. So if your organization needs to raise $100,000, then you're probably going to be spending $50,000 just on that event, on average, right?

32:32.52
aggierobison
Yeah.

32:41.90
aggierobison
That's, and that's upfront for the most part, right?

32:43.77
AROB
Those are just direct costs.

32:44.34
aggierobison
So.

32:45.75
AROB
What are you paying the caterer? What are you paying the event coordinator or the vendors? What are you paying the hundreds of hours, and in most cases, of time spent coordinating volunteers, soliciting sponsorships, planning the dinner, everything else. So there is a cost. Events have a place in an organization's fundraising strategy, but be aware the cost to raise a dollar is around 50 cents.

33:19.61
aggierobison
Yeah. And so if you have an established event, there might be something worth keeping going. Right. I was just talking to somebody who had raised $4 million from a banquet recently, but they had 25 years of history and it got bigger and bigger.

33:30.16
AROB
Yeah.

33:32.17
aggierobison
Like, okay, obviously you're going to keep doing that. They have a staff of several people that works year round on this one banquet, and raised $4 million with a bunch of sponsors and all the major gifts and stuff that came in. But if you're just starting out a brand new fundraising office, that's a lot of time and effort and upfront cost to put into something like that. And so you want to weigh whether when's the right time to start something like that if you want to start something like that.

33:55.47
AROB
Yeah. So you would approach that as we want to, we know we're not going to raise a lot of money through this event, but we want to expand our database. We want to build relationships. You know, we want to leverage our event to help us with our annual fund and our major gift strategy after the event.

34:15.82
aggierobison
Exactly. It can just be a fun time. I've had some great times at galas, it depends on how it's set up.

34:19.22
AROB
Could be. Yeah.

34:26.25
aggierobison
Alright, let's shift gears a little bit. Those are some of the different annual fund activities and the conversion rates. There's how much money, let's talk a little bit about the major gifts process - going up, meeting donors face-to-face, asking them for big gifts, and some of the numbers you should expect. We talk a lot about major gifts in terms of lead metrics versus lag metrics.

34:45.69
AROB
Yeah. Hmm.

34:49.64
aggierobison
So you raised $100,000 in major gifts this year. Well, how'd you do that? You had to call a bunch of people and get some number of meetings from those people and ask some number of those people for big gifts to get those $100,000.

35:00.84
AROB
Alright.

35:00.92
aggierobison
So let's talk about kind of that funnel, if you will. Can you tell us what that funnel looks like in terms of calling people, getting meetings, making asks to raise dollars from major gifts?

35:11.39
AROB
Yeah, great. So these are numbers that are the sales process. For companies that are in sales, and then fundraising, the process of developing relationships with individuals through the major gifts process are similar. And so the numbers are pretty similar across from sales to fundraising. So on average, you're going to have to call 10 people to get three meetings.

35:50.00
AROB
Uh, let me start that over.

35:52.91
AROB
So on average, you're gonna be calling 10 people to get three meetings. And most of those 10 people you're gonna make multiple calls to, right? But that's 10 people, you get three meetings.

36:02.89
aggierobison
Right.

36:03.42
AROB
Out of those three meetings, you're looking at one gift or one individual who is going to move on to become a major donor. So it really is, we don't want to call it a numbers game, but we also want to be aware of the fact that every person that you call, especially when you're new or exploring your database beyond the people that always give, in order to get meetings, 10 calls to get three meetings, three meetings to get one gift. And that plays out across all different sectors. And it's important to be aware of that when you are setting your goals, monthly goals, annual goals, everything else.

36:47.11
aggierobison
Yeah, in my experience, I kept track of these numbers and maybe it's the millennial in me, or maybe it's just me personally, I averaged about two and a half meetings per 10 people that I contacted. And then everything else kind of played out, but roughly one major donor from those 10, but usually the other two or three people that I would meet would become donors at some level, just not a $10,000 a year donor. But yeah, if it is kind of that numbers game, if you've got to call people regularly every day, you gotta be making calls.

37:21.15
aggierobison
You can't just pull up a list of five people and those are your major gift calls for the month. You've got to call a bunch of people to get those handful of meetings.

37:29.30
AROB
Yeah, so if you work your way backwards, if you have a goal for your organization or a personal goal of doing 15 to 20 visits per month, well, you're basically looking at tripling that number of people that you're gonna be calling. Let's say you have 300 names on your list for August - you call those 300 people, out of those 300 people, you're gonna be getting somewhere around 80 people that pick up the phone. And out of those 80 people, you're looking at probably 20 visits, not even in the month of August, some are going to be further out. And then out of that, you're going to be getting, you know, probably 4 to 5 gifts.

38:25.32
aggierobison
Yeah.

38:30.35
AROB
You know, you're looking at probably 4 to 5 gifts out of those immediate meetings.

38:38.14
aggierobison
Right. And when you look at it that way, it feels imposing, right? Like all that effort just to get those handful of gifts. But as you know, when you look back five years from now, when you've been doing that regularly, those all add up.

38:49.69
AROB
Yeah.

38:51.32
aggierobison
And there are a lot of people that won't answer your call that will start giving or make a gift as a response to your call as well.

38:52.20
AROB
Yeah.

38:56.56
aggierobison
They think, "I don't want to go meet with that person face to face, that's scary," or "I don't like people," or whatever it is. But they'll send in a check, or they'll make gifts in other ways. And so you will see the overall giving go up just as a result of contacting those people. All the successful fundraisers I've known have had a habit of what they call a "power hour" - every day, I've got one hour on my schedule and I'm making calls to ask people for meetings.

39:20.79
AROB
Hmm. Yeah.

39:26.80
aggierobison
No matter what, that is not touchable. I can't move it for anything. I'm making those calls. I have found you can't overthink it. Some make their calls from 7 to 8 AM, which feels totally early, but they are very successful that way.

39:37.71
AROB
Yep.

39:40.64
aggierobison
Other people call during the lunch hour. As long as they make the calls, that's what's important. And it ends up with them in the meetings. I've even been at the Raise conference where one of our friends, Ryan Haley, was like, "I gotta go make some calls, this is my power hour." They're like, "You're at a conference, man. Aren't you going to take a day off?" No, every day I'm making my power hour. That's how they're successful - they always have a list of people to be calling.

40:12.56
aggierobison
They always have a list of people at their meeting every month and they're finding their major donors that way.

40:18.60
AROB
Yeah, that's great. And to go back to your other point, not everybody's going to answer the phone or want to meet with you, but that doesn't mean you're not having an effect on them. I remember when I was at the Newman center at Ohio State, there was a parishioner who I wanted to meet with and I kept calling but couldn't get them on the phone. And then I happened to be at mass one day and this individual walked up and said, "Your guy, Andrew, he won't stop calling me. I don't really want to meet with him, but I just want to let you know that I appreciate his effort and I know it's about fundraising. You can count on me." So it's obviously having an effect and cultivating that relationship just by reaching out.

41:15.56
aggierobison
I had almost the same thing. I had somebody I called 5-7 times, no response. And one day I was sitting in a meeting room at the parish and there's a knock at the door. It was this guy, he's like, "Hey, you've been calling me. I'm passing through town, got 20 minutes. You want to talk?" He actually became one of the chairs of our capital campaign a few years later.

41:46.26
aggierobison
So that was worth all that effort and feeling rejected for a couple months to finally get that relationship in place.

41:51.46
AROB
Yeah.

41:55.35
aggierobison
He was a great part of the team and a super fun guy.

41:57.01
AROB
There you go. Absolutely.

42:01.04
aggierobison
Excellent. So kind of capping this part off, let's talk about when you, when you ask people from major gifts, what does the success rate look like? Should you expect most people to say yes, most people to say no? What are the averages telling us?

42:15.26
AROB
Yeah, so you know there are ways that you can make your success rate higher by asking for low amounts, by only asking people you know that you're super close with. And there are ways for you to make your success rate lower by being bolder or asking for larger gifts or asking for people earlier in the process versus later. So on average, you're looking at probably three to four successes per four asks.

43:02.88
AROB
That means that on average, if you're going out and regularly making four solicitations a week, then you can count on about 25% of those resulting in a success. Now that doesn't mean that the other three are failures. It could be that the other three are, "Well, I can't give that amount, but I'll consider increasing my gift" or "Call me next time" or whatever. So it's still moving the relationship forward. But on average, it's about a 25% success rate.

43:24.71
aggierobison
And a lot of times when they say no, you're planting a seed. Right? It can take a long time.

43:28.17
AROB
Oh yeah, 100%.

43:31.11
aggierobison
There was a gentleman that we asked for a million dollar gift once, and he said, "No chance, no way, not doing it." And five years later, he came back and did it. So those types of things, there is that saying in fundraising that "no is just a slow yes."

43:38.70
AROB
There you go.

43:44.80
aggierobison
And when you first start out, you're like, "Okay, that's just a way to make you feel better about all these no's." But as you're in it longer, you see more and more times than not that it's the truth. You planted a seed, it took a year or two or five years to grow. And then they said, "Oh, you know, I've been thinking about that. I want to make that gift." And so all you can do is ask.

44:03.23
AROB
I remember back when we were at St. Mary's at Texas A&M and we were doing the class gift program. It was our first year with a committee, and a lot of them were pretty intimidated about going out and asking their friends and other people for gifts. So they would only ask the people that they were really sure were going to say yes, because they didn't want to be told no. And then you had Jake, who just went out and asked anybody and everybody, and he had like hundreds of names of people he had asked, and only a handful had said yes. And when we were in a meeting, we're like, "Jake, what's going on? You okay?" And he's like, "Man, I'll ask anybody. I'm in the Corps of Cadets, which is 2,000 people. If I've seen anybody even walk close to St. Mary's, I'm going to go and I'm going to find them and I'm going to ask them to be part of this class gift."

02:20.15
AROB
So you know, it's kind of like the two different approaches. You can make your success rate with major gifts really good by only asking the people that you know are going to say yes. You can make it really bad by going out and asking anybody and everybody. Most people are going to find success kind of right in the middle. You want to feel good about the relationships that you had, the asks that you had, but you don't want to play it so safe that you're asking for too little, or you're waiting for those relationships to get to the perfect ideal spot to be able to do it. You want to introduce some elements of Jake's approach where you're asking for bigger than you would think from people, and you're asking people that you have a relationship with but they're not your best friends.

03:14.23
aggierobison
Exactly. I've heard it said before that a fundraiser with a 100% success rate on making asks is actually a failure, because you're not asking for enough. You're not asking everybody that you should be.

03:20.31
AROB
Yeah.

03:21.29
aggierobison
You're not asking for enough. You need to get out there and prepare to fail a little bit. That's part of the process.

03:24.94
AROB
Right.

03:25.02
aggierobison
I get out there and prepare to fail a little bit. That's part of the process.

03:28.38
AROB
There you go.

03:30.41
aggierobison
Excellent. Well, that kind of covers, you know, a broad swath of different fundraising numbers that we want to talk about today. Anything else you'd like to conclude with?

03:37.95
AROB
Um, I, not on this, I think that, you know, knowing the data is helpful. It helps you, you know, as you're having conversations, especially if you're new to this, everybody is going to tell you what they think you should be doing when it comes to fundraising, you know, and there's a lot of good advice out there. But there's also, you know, we started this by saying, a lot of fundraising is kind of built on assumptions, right? And so, you know, knowing data, knowing what is possible now, knowing what's possible down the road as you build out your development program is helpful both from communicating that and then just planning out your own. Right, you know, you can do a direct mail piece, get three people that respond with gifts and think, oh my God, I am terrible, I wrote the worst letter, I should quit and get out of this business.

04:29.85
AROB
Forever and go, you know, whatever, do something else. And that's not the case. You know, the best fundraiser in the world who's been doing this 50 years, who has a PhD in how to write appeal letters, could send a letter out to 100 people and get three responses. So it really is about giving yourself grace, understanding that your success will build over time, and really looking at, you know, we talked about annual fund statistics a lot, using your annual fund as a way to develop a pipeline for major gifts will ultimately serve your organization best in the end.

05:09.41
aggierobison
Exactly. The thing that stands out to me is that, you know, a lot of the success rates of those activities are a single digit percent. So you need to always be looking for ways to grow your database, right? Like how many people are you communicating with?

05:21.01
AROB
Yeah.

05:20.97
aggierobison
Because you need to have lots of them to see the results grow. And over time, if you work on that consistently, you will. So.

05:26.56
AROB
Yeah, for sure.

05:28.47
aggierobison
Great. So as we wrap up, I wanted to mention, we just finished the Catholic Fundraiing Conference, RAISE 24, in San Antonio. Next year, we're going to try something different - instead of one big, week-long conference, we're going to be doing several regional workshops around the country. They're all going to be one to one-and-a-half day workshops, which will hopefully bring it closer to you, the fundraiser, and make it easier for you to attend than flying across the country. And it'll be a lot lower cost per person to attend the workshops. We're working to finalize all the details, but we can announce that right now, in the spring, we are going to be in New Orleans. Very exciting.

06:10.67
aggierobison
In June, we will be at the University of Notre Dame, and that'll be kind of connected to CCMA's conference.

06:20.64
AROB
Called.

06:23.52
aggierobison
What is CCMA? Catholic Campus Ministry Association.

06:25.08
AROB
Yeah.

06:25.29
aggierobison
Okay, I was thinking of the USCCB or the Catholic Conference.

06:32.14
aggierobison
And in June, we'll actually be at the University of Notre Dame. And that's going to be tied in with CCMA, the Catholic Campus Ministry Association's conference called CALD. That'll be right after that conference, for a day or a day and a half. So that'll be exciting. And then, in the fall, we're going to be in Denver, Colorado. So a few different spots around the country, easy places to fly into if you want to fly or hopefully close enough to drive to, as opposed to traveling across the country. And those will be very low cost to attend. We're looking forward to seeing many of you at those conferences. If you'd like to get on the waitlist, when the details are released for each one, you can go to PetrusDevelopment.com/raise.

07:15.48
aggierobison
And you'll see all three of those events there, with a chance to get on the waitlist, and we'll let you know first when the details are finalized for each of them.

07:23.21
AROB
Yeah, and those are going to be fun. They're still going to have a lot of the elements of our typical RAISE conference - good content, good instruction, good workshops, and then also a lot of community. We will have a happy hour with everyone. We'll have a chance to gather in a more social setting as well. So they'll be, like you were saying, Rhen, a little bit shorter, lower cost, easier to get to, but we still want to deliver value. We want to deliver content. We want to help you get better at this whole fundraising thing.

07:56.49
aggierobison
I'm looking forward to it.

07:58.29
AROB
Can't wait.

08:00.47
aggierobison
Great. Well, thank you for everybody for joining us today. Get out there and do some more fundraising, get ready for the fall as you kick off and get ready for the end of the year.