110 – Trust Changes Donations with Josh Bloomfield

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Hey, everybody, listen up. You need to be rethinking how your organization deals with donations.

Today, Josh Bloomfield and I are going to be discussing the world of innovative donor engagement. Josh is a dedicated leader with more than 20 years in the field. He’s known for his creative tech solutions for donor engagement. I’m probably embarrassing him as I’m going through and talking about this. He founded Givecloud to help non-profits make a bigger impact using easy technology. In addition to being a skilled programmer and advisor, Josh is a father who brings passion and creativity to his professional and personal life.

Fun fact: Josh and I worked together a little bit over the last year or two, and he’s been on the podcast before and, yeah. Josh, thank you for joining us on the show again.

Josh Bloomfield: Dude, thank you for having me back, man. Means a lot.

David Pisarek: Yeah, my pleasure. So, let’s just jump right in.

Can you discuss the shift from traditional fundraising to building trust with donors? And how could that benefit donors?

Josh Bloomfield: Wow, great question. I struggle to answer the question only because there are so many different layers to it.

The shift happening in digital fundraising is really being driven by the shifts happening in culture. We’ve become more isolated as a society. As we all double down on our devices, our interactions with each other have become more transactional as a result, spending less facetime together, it’s looking more digital. We’re distracted. And among other changes in culture, it’s making it really difficult, not just for non-profits, but for brands, even in the for-profit space, to build loyalty, to build a connection between a customer or a donor and a cause or a brand.

So we’re trying to, instead of change culture around, you know, the isolation and, you know, our digital, not savviness, but digital dependence, which are two totally different concepts. We’re very dependent on technology. That doesn’t mean we’re great at using it.

Instead of trying to change our culture around that, we’re trying to change how fundraising works to adapt to the changes happening in culture. So what might it look like for a donation experience to resemble that, you know, a more transactional experience? But would there also be a way to redeem that experience so that even though it’s using the tactics of a transaction, we’re also able to build a heart connection along the way and, you know, revive kind of what our parents always told us growing up, which is it’s better to give than to receive.

How can we create a digital giving experience that, you know, the money being given is for the non-profit, but the experience of giving is actually a gift to the donor. They feel that true connection. They don’t feel like they’re giving a kind of token $10 donation just, you know, as charity. They feel like they’re making an investment in, you know, making the world a better place.

And, David, like you and I were talking before the podcast about even the goals in your own business, around how many humans are going to be helped by the work you guys do at Wow Digital, you know, that lofty goal that you shared, which is not about money; even though money’s a conduit in order to, you know, have that impact, you’re doing it in your own business, focusing on the impact, focusing on the outcomes.

How can we make the world a better place? And that meant a lot to me to hear that. It feels like something that could center your team, even just center your leadership around why we do what we do.

That’s kind of my long-winded answer to that. I think I answered it?

David Pisarek: You totally did, Josh.

Josh Bloomfield: Okay.

David Pisarek: A couple of things came to mind as you’re talking about digital dependence and how people are more isolated.

I think COVID really pushed that maybe a decade early. Technology is getting less expensive over time. Cell phone plans are getting less expensive over time. More people are getting rid of their dedicated home phones now than two years ago, than five years ago, than ten years ago. And people are walking around, you know, with their devices and being able just to have it at their whim. Those dopamine hits.

As I say that, my watch just dinged. I got a notification, right?

Josh Bloomfield: Little hit of dopamine. Oh, yeah.

David Pisarek: Yeah, right.

You know, I think there is a dependence, and for some people, it’s a business dependence. Like, when I leave my office, I grab my phone and take it with me. Like, if there’s something that comes up, I want my team or the client or the vendors that we work with, like Givecloud, to be able to get me, and I want to be able to respond. Part of that is that it’s an entertainment device, too. There’s a blurred line there between work and personal.

Some people, one of my best friends who’s got two phones, he’s got a work phone in his personal phone, and he’s, you know, turned off at the end of the day, there is a dependence that we have on technology, and I think that’s only going to increase over time. Certainly with, I don’t want to really dive in on AI in this episode, but you know, the prevalence of AI is making technology even more ingrained in our day-to-day life.

But lastly, to your point about emotional connection, the emotion is what’s going to drive people to take some kind of action. And to all of you who are listening to this or watching this on our YouTube, it’s that emotional connection, the connection that you really need to focus on.

What is the impact that you’re having? How is that going to benefit people? And then, from the donation side to your point, how do we get people to donate to the cause, not just give dollars?

Josh Bloomfield: We are far more emotional in our decision-making than any of us want to admit.

Jonathan Haidt published the book in 2012. The exact title of the book is going to escape me. But the book’s topic is: what creates so much division in religion and politics for humanity? And he talks through how we and the TLDR is:

We make our decisions using the emotional centers of our brain before we’re even aware of the decisions we’ve made. And what we believe to be rational decision-making isn’t as rational as we believe. It’s less like a judge guiding us towards true wisdom and acting more like a lawyer defending a pre-decided emotional choice we’ve made in our minds. And so it’s a fantastic read, and it’s really humbling to realize how objective we are in our decision-making and in some of the choices we make.

But it’s the reason why I continue to, you know, kind of blow this trumpet of trust-raising instead of fundraising. I’m not suggesting you don’t fundraise. I’m saying that it starts with trust-raising. It starts with the emotion, it starts with the heart connection.

From that connection, you build the ask, and from the ask, you walk them through a digital experience that remains focused on the impact, emotion, and why.

And yeah, the digital dependence side of things, man, it’s become so ingrained in our society and less obvious ways than we realize. People probably hear me talking about isolation and think, oh yeah, of course, social media, we’re all just scrolling on our devices. But I haven’t called to order pizza in ages. I use my favourite food app, you know, to order food. And so it’s these insidious, it sounds negative when I say it that way, but these small moments happening in our culture, in our society that are setting a dependence, an expectation of a digital-first engagement with a brand or the cause or with the job I need to do. I even remember that at one point, I needed to fix my garage, and I went out of my way not to search for someone to fix my garage, but for an app, I could use to find someone to fix my garage. Sure enough, I found a local app, and it was like the Uber of home fix-it stuff and had someone fixing my garage within 24 hours.

And just, you know, I know we’re all not wired exactly the same, but this is what’s happening in our culture, especially with the insurgent generations.

David Pisarek: For anybody looking for the book, I think the book you were talking about, Josh, is called The Righteous Mind.

Josh Bloomfield: That’s exactly the book.

David Pisarek: There you go. So, we will have a link for that in our show notes. For anybody that’s looking for that, it’s not terribly expensive. If you get it, we’re talking about tech. If you get it on Amazon, it’s somewhere around $20, something like that.

So when we’re talking about how non-profits can create experiences that fulfill donors’ desires, create the mental need, I guess, right? To engage that emotion and their financial needs, what do you see as one of those key pieces that will help drive that?

Josh Bloomfield: Wow, I mean, I think it’s humbling to note that not everyone can be swayed.

People are wired with their own disposition, with their own preferences. And so before even trying to convince someone, it’s important that you’re talking to the right people. Because if you’re talking to the right people, you aren’t going to need to twist arms.

You know, I’m a dog lover. One of our advisors is a dog lover, man. You could put any animal welfare cause in front of him, and he’d bark at the opportunity. Now he’s got kids, he’s got grandkids, and it’s not that, you know, kids aren’t close to his heart. There is something specifically about animals for him. Whether it’s, you know, the dog he had growing up or the connection he had with animals with his father, who has since passed. There’s just a deeper level of connection where he knows that the difference he feels purposed to make on this planet is around animals, and the amount of money he gives towards these organizations is insane. But it’s just how he’s wired.

So, making sure you’re speaking to the right audience is critical. And then telling that right story, how are you finding them, and what story are you going to share.

But really, my passion is how to create a digital surface that somehow converts a story into a transaction. It’s a delicate balance of art and science, and I’d love to get into the specifics, but the most critical part, if I were to try and sum it up, is to try to find a way to commoditize your impact.

So, I’ll give you an example from the animal welfare space; perhaps it’s nights of safe sleeping for an orphaned puppy. That’s the commodity. And so, how many nights do you want your donors to support? Or maybe it’s a number of animals who get a certain kind of medical treatment. How many animals do you want to sponsor to be treated for whatever the medical treatment is? Focusing on the impact and trying to stay away from the how exactly? It’s about the people, it’s about the organism, it’s about that deeper outcome. It could be with trees, for example.

It’s tough. It’s not always a straight line. You know, working with organizations who build homes, for example, it might look like, you know, square feet of home ownership or square feet of home. We tried an experiment with some organizations where it’s like, you know, what if it was a box of nails? What if it was, you know, sheets of drywall? First off, that becomes almost too commoditized. Now, the organization’s committed to having to buy drywall, and what if they don’t need that drywall? So focusing on a more generalized type of impact like square feet of home ownership or square feet of home or, you know, hectares of, you know, new growth for trees or… Yeah, it involves a bit of a creative and strategic mind to kind of draw these connections.

I was a little bit rambly. Did that make sense, though?

David Pisarek: Yeah, absolutely makes sense.

We need to have something tangible in the real world that these digital dollars are going to connect with people.

But I want to take it back one step because I think that’s a great tactic. Tactic sounds really harsh in the non-profit world, but that’s what it is. What is the tactic you’re going to deploy, right? And what Josh is saying is take the thing, the animal, the cause, the thing that you do, that you support and figure out that connection there to make it feel more tangible.

I think what organizations need to do, and I think what a lot of them struggle to do, which is why I think there’s a lot of organizations, like newer organizations, that are struggling to get off the ground, is they haven’t done the Persona research, they haven’t created Personas to identify what do these people care about? Where are they hanging out, where are they spending their time, what is it that they’re doing? What are their psychographics so that you can then make that connection easier to happen. And I think a lot of organizations should really be thinking about psychographics when they’re working through these marketing ideas and trying to figure out how can we actually connect with people.

Josh Bloomfield: Yeah.

This is something, whether you’re for-profit or non-profit, it’s probably one of the biggest challenges. You know, a kind of growth science is trying to understand who your ideal customer is and your ICP (ideal customer profile.) It’s something we talk about at Givecloud often, and I wish I could offer advice, but it’s something I’m not great at either. We’ve hired a really great team who’s been able to help us navigate that.

But I know the process has looked a lot like asking the donors who are already donating just a handful of simple questions to help us understand what stage of life they are in: Geographically, where are they in the world? Just some basic information to give us as a company a sense of, okay, this is roughly who we’re speaking with.

And remind us again, like, why did you donate? Was it because you knew me personally, or was it because…? You start to dive into those becauses, those whys, and the secret sauce is really going to lie inside those whys, asking why? Just enough time to understand what are those true underlying motivations. If you can understand those true underlying motivations, you could probably empathize a lot more with your donors.

Because oftentimes, we all share some of those deep, deep underlying motivations and understand how those motivations manifest in our decision-making and why we support. In the example, I’ve been listing animal welfare organizations, and yeah.

David Pisarek: Oh, I think as part of that, I love the why thing.

I tend to do that quite often when we’re meeting with our clients or our prospects are coming to us. Like, you want a new website? Why do you want a new website? Well, because ours is hard to manage. Well, why is it hard to manage? Because blah, blah, we dive down three, four times until we actually get to that. We’re spending too much time. We’re not seeing the value. Okay, now we can actually have a conversation around how can we get you those things, right?

And if you have a clear understanding of your donors, like why are they donating to you? Then you have a better understanding of how you can emotionally connect with them to bring in more similar like donors and it’s not all about the big donors. Yeah, organizations need major donors. Absolutely. But if you get enough people donating $20 a month, that’s going to help you, too.

I think that’s something to consider: stop asking for one-time donations and start asking for monthly donations. So if you’re going to ask people for $50 or $100 a year, ask for $6 a month, $5 a month, and that’ll be more stable money because you’ve got this recurring thing, and anybody that’s willing to give you $5 a month, they’re likely not going to cancel for a long time.

Because $5 a month, for some people, is a lot of money; for people who are making donations, it is likely not a lot of money for them. So, I think that’s for organizations to consider as well.

Before we hit record on this episode, we were talking a little bit about actually taking some kind of action instead of sitting in board meetings talking about: Hey, should we do this? Should we not do this? What do you think about this? Etc. I challenge you to actually take a first step, a second step, and a third step towards this thing, whatever that thing happens to be. Maybe it’s implementing a CRM, or maybe it’s implementing a phenomenal donation platform like Givecloud in your organization and moving from one to another.

Just take some time, investigate it, play with it a little bit, block some time in your calendar, a half hour a week, just investigate something. The week after, play with it and set up a trial account. The week after that, create some fake data and put it into whatever the system is, test it and play with it. Because that’s the only way that you’re actually going to move your organization forward, like Josh said, by dipping your toes in and actually trying it.

Because you can sit for hours and hours with your colleagues, with your board, or even by yourself, just contemplating, should I do this, should I not do this? A pro and con list. Just try it, just go for it.

Josh Bloomfield: And the reality is that the technology available these days really takes a lot of the guesswork out of it.

So, you know, shameless self-promotion here, but get this hooked up with any of our competitors as well, right? So, you open up a Givecloud account, and we’re going to ship you a ready-to-promote landing page. You put in a couple of details and an image, and it’s ready to go. You don’t need to hire a graphic designer, and you don’t even need to think through the user experience and strategy. Give us some of the details.

All right, so you got a page. Now what if we’re talking low-hanging fruit? If we’re talking just dipping our toes in digital? If your board members are all in, get them to repost that link in their LinkedIn feed and talk about the impact you’re having. Talk about the impact that’s happening in the community and how others can support that.

Don’t forget that some of the most powerful assets in your organization aren’t necessarily those with money; it’s those with influence and awareness. You need to get your organization around more people of influence. Because if you’ve got influence and you’ve got attention, you have an almost limitless conduit for financial resources for your organization.

David Pisarek: Definitely part of that.

One of the things that I coach our clients on is around the boards and engagement with the board. People that are sitting on your board are connected to other people. People that have donated to you are connected to other people. How can you, and I’m going to use a bit of a harsh term here, leverage them in the organization’s favour?

I personally believe if somebody is sitting on the board of an organization, they should be donating to the cause. There should be 100% participation in donations to the organization’s support, even if it’s $30 a year. However, board members should donate back to the cause. Every board member should be sharing the really cool things your organization is doing, the impact you’re having, the video you shot, the amount of money you raised from your Giving Tuesday promotions, and all that stuff. Your board should also promote on their network to get the message out there.

Maybe you need some volunteers to do that on their behalf, but it should be pushed out through them because everybody’s connected to other people. Nobody lives in a little silo unless you’re Maxwell Smart in The Cone of Silence or something like that, right? But people are connected to other people. Their spouses, their children, their friends, their family, the people they went to school with, whatever that community is around those people that is going to help spread the word.

Josh Bloomfield: Yeah, I mean, it’s just how the world turns.

I mean, even when I look back on my own entrepreneurial story. Listen, I was not polished. If you catch some of my other podcast episodes, you hear me chat more through how awkward I was as a young programmer. My story as a founder truly is: “If Josh can be the CEO of a company, anyone can.” A part of the reason for this was meeting people and networking, and it was not pretty. I don’t want you in your head having this picture of me whining and dining with people.

This was me stuttering through phone conversations with a bank about how much I needed a loan to start the company, which turned into denial, but: “I really believe in what you’re doing; I want to introduce you to someone in the community.” That’s how this whole thing started. And then hanging out at Starbucks with investor number one, who falls in love with the story, falls in love with the founder and says, “I want to introduce you to someone else” who was on the board of a publicly traded major e-commerce company, you know, and the story continues where these introductions continue, and the conduit gets wider and wider, and the network gets wider and wider because of the storytelling, because of the connection, because of the network. So all of that.

David Pisarek: Absolutely.

Josh, we could probably make like 47 more episodes and still have, like, a ton of stuff to talk about. It’s always awesome chatting with you. We’ve had other conversations between our last podcast about a year ago and now, and it’s always amazing to chat with you. You’re so engaged and so enthusiastic. I think is probably like one of the best words and amazing thoughts. Fantastic insights on using technology, building trust, and engaging donors and platforms.

I want to encourage everybody listening to please go to Givecloud‘s website and check out their platform, it’s an amazing system. The pricing, like, come on, you know, $0 a month. It starts when anybody can get in on that. The barrier is not the cost here. The barrier is your likely time. Set up some time in your calendar and just 10 minutes.

Just look at it and see how that stacks up to what you’re currently doing and the platforms you’re currently using because I will guarantee you will not get the service you get from Givecloud with whoever your provider is. And we are partners, Wow Digital, with seven different donation platforms.

I can tell you this one is way up there.

Josh Bloomfield: Thanks for having me on, man. And thank you for that plug. I don’t know if I could have done it as well. Appreciate it.

David Pisarek: I like to put our guests on edge a little bit right at the end. So, I want to ask you, if you were to issue anybody listening to this a challenge to do within the next two days of listening to this episode, what would that challenge be?

Josh Bloomfield: Oh, gosh.

Circle that one person in your LinkedIn network that you wish you were connected with and reach out to them. Connect with them. Start networking, start connecting. Start widening that conduit for resources in your organization. Connect with someone in your network, that one person you feel like you need to have that connection with that you’d covet a connection with and reach out.

David Pisarek: Love it.

In some other episodes, we talk about growing your network outside of your colleagues. Because maybe you’re an organization of a thousand people. Maybe you’re a solo person. If you want some advice, you are not alone. Like Josh said, other people have been where you are. Other people will be where you are.

Just ask some questions about stuff like a mentoring or coaching type of relationship where you could just be colleagues and talk through some of the stuff that’s on your mind. It is hugely impactful. I know I’ve benefited from it. I know Josh has benefited from it. There are so many people out there who are actually willing to help and connect. So don’t try to sell them something. Try to actually connect with them.

All right, Josh, if anybody wants to reach out to you, how can they do that? What do they need to do?

Josh Bloomfield: Yo, I’ll shamelessly promote my email address right here. Get a pen. It’s really complicated, [email protected] – I’m ready for the spam. That’s the easiest way to catch me. You can catch me on LinkedIn, Josh Bloomfield. Catch me on Instagram. It’s my personal account, but I blend personal in business, and you can see I’m the same guy online and offline. Yeah, those are my three digital footprints right now.

David Pisarek: Somebody from your team, we were talking last week about you’ve got a fundraising health score quiz, so we’re going to include that in our show notes page for people. So you’ll be able to go and check that out to see how your non-profit is doing online with your fundraising. Go and check that out as well.

Josh, thanks again so much for joining. It’s been a pleasure having you on the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. Everybody listening, if you’re interested in any of the links like I mentioned or Josh’s contact, just visit our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com – click on this episode for all the details. And until next time, keep on being successful.