Welcome to This is HIS Story podcast: The Executive Director and Pastor Guide to Reaping and Sowing Online Givers.
Today's Episode we are discussing the answers to these questions:
Why you don’t have to spend tons to find new donors or keep the ones you have
How the executive teams I work with are winning back 5, 1, even 15+ hours a week for themselves.
Simple methods to align your staff and vendors to row to the same simple goal(s).
How to gain confidence that the ROI of your digital efforts are being used in good stewardship to your board and donors
How to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape, so your organization stands out and excites current donors.
And, how to do all this, while gaining maximum exposure for their organization and funding their God-sized mission.
We discuss a Free Webinar built to answer these questions.
Former Executive Vice President of a large international non-profit organization where he served over 11 years. Todd Turner has studied digital fundraising strategies in multiple countries, languages, and cultures around the globe. A public speaker and digital consultant passionate about sharing his findings and strategies with Christian Non-Profits.
Welcome to This is HIS Story podcast: The Executive Director and Pastor Guide to Reaping and Sowing Online Givers.
Today's Episode we are discussing the answers to these questions:
Why you don’t have to spend tons to find new donors or keep the ones you have
How the executive teams I work with are winning back 5, 1, even 15+ hours a week for themselves.
Simple methods to align your staff and vendors to row to the same simple goal(s).
How to gain confidence that the ROI of your digital efforts are being used in good stewardship to your board and donors
How to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape, so your organization stands out and excites current donors.
And, how to do all this, while gaining maximum exposure for their organization and funding their God-sized mission.
We discuss a Free Webinar built to answer these questions.
Former Executive Vice President of a large international non-profit organization where he served over 11 years. Todd Turner has studied digital fundraising strategies in multiple countries, languages, and cultures around the globe. A public speaker and digital consultant passionate about sharing his findings and strategies with Christian Non-Profits.
welcome to the this is his story podcast the executive director and pastor guide to sewing and reaping online givers pastors and leaders at christian organizations wear many hats and let's face it they all don't fit perfectly while focusing on mission staff vendors finances and goals there's the matter of digital strategies technology and trends move at breakneck speeds and managing your christian organization's online efforts can seem like a full-time job todd turner has been in your shoes he spent his life helping faith-based organizations build solid ethical online fundraising strategies that work listen in and subscribe to grow your knowledge increase your ability to lead your digital efforts and be encouraged as you navigate your organization in the digital world of ministry and fundraising i was an executive vice president of a christian non-profit you know what i was good at stiff army vendors you know a lot of us do it we have that personality or some of us would say we just didn't have the luxury of actually hiring um you know the people that might be able to help us uh in certain areas of ministry right you know executive directors wear so many hats and we probably all will admit that we need help in areas but it's sometimes complicated to get that help once again sometimes it's budget sometimes it's the culture of our ministry and the complications of sometimes it's just easier to do things ourselves than pay somebody else to do it or you know that feeling we all have of like oh we're unique we're so unique and you know they just won't get it and so we just sort of all have our reasons that we push people away well let me just tell you after two decades of doing a lot of the hard testing and learning things the hard way and the long way sometimes i spend a lot of time gleaning information from colleagues from peers collaborations even you know sometimes would poke with vendors for information and try to learn the little things that they throw away especially on the internet now there's so many people who quote-unquote giveaway information the way that a lot of people online try to show value by just saying oh look at what i know look what i know look what i know well you can grab a lot of that content you say oh i'm gonna try this i'm gonna try this i'm gonna try this well i did that for for years and years and years plus we were really cutting edge at least uh with insight for living we certainly were we were doing things other people weren't doing and so they were coming to us and and ask questions but i did a lot of learning things a long hard way where i might could have got away moving a little bit faster on some information and some tactics if i just would have been able to hire someone to help me do that after my long tenure of really having a minimal amount of vendors and consultants come my way i came away with some truths especially with digital strategy and digital strategy that focuses on collecting new names which is critical to any organization and a strategy that helps you raise funds online which is once again critical to any christian organization you know trying to grow and fund their god-sized mission right one of my takeaways there is no silver bullet there is just no one thing that if you just did this if you just bought this software if you just tried our product x or you just hired this one guy and he's gonna be great it just doesn't work that way there is no silver bullet don't look for the silver bullet there may be a lot of bullets but there's certainly not one particular thing if you just knew what that was social media is not gonna save you facebook's not gonna save you the new donation platform is not gonna save you this new vendor who promises you the world's not gonna save you it's not gonna happen the rising tide raises all ship mentality is what's going to save you two is i found out you really don't have to spend tons to find new donors or keep the ones that you have with that said doesn't mean don't spend any money doing it but i'm saying i've discovered principles along the way that will get you there without costing a fortune also found that executives can sort of win back part of their day by managing their technical teams differently i mean you went back one two five ten hours a week just by managing your technical teams a little different than you used to when i use word technical teams sometimes that's webmaster sometimes it's vendors sometimes it's volunteers but i find that a lot of executive directors are very hands-on sometimes too much hands-on they should be focusing other places or they're so hands-off it's problematic they just trust their technical team and that's not good either i also found that you can really gain confidence that the return on investment of all your efforts are really being used in good stewardship right to your board and to your donors like one of the questions i get all the time is feel like we're spending all this money or paying too much for our technical solution i just can't justify it but you can you really can measure the roi i would even say that the return on investment is sometimes just shown at the bottom line moving up the raising tide raises all ship sometimes you can't justify social media alone but you certainly can when you look at wow social media plus a good email strategy plus a good direct mail campaign at the end of the day your donations are going up don't try to cut back i'm gonna use the example of coca-cola right like we all know what coca-cola is right we have no nobody does not know what coca-cola is but yet they spend billions on advertising well you know why because if they don't their sales go down if you take out something you just say ah we you don't have time for this email we know social media is just too big of a pain for us okay but when you take it out things dip you need to put into the various platforms because all of them mixed together is creating your result okay sorry i'm not trying to get in the weeds there another thing i've learned is there's proven ways to navigate ever changing digital landscape there are ways to make your organization stand out and excite current and future donors even when things are changing at breakneck speeds there's just methodologies that work that are really work independently of trends of facebook or oh there's this new thing called tick tock or whatever the new whatever new is they don't change the principles that increase online givers and new names you know it is possible to gain exposure for your organization and find your guide size mission using digital strategies for sure and they're simple methods to align your staff and your vendors to all row in the same direction it's possible it's totally possible here's the truth i was blessed my title was sort of long and it wrapped on my business card it was executive vice president of communications and chief internet officer what i had an advantage of even though i was an executive at a christian organization i wasn't the executive director like many of you listening are you wear so much more hats because of my title my job responsibility i was literally focused on digital strategies for 11 years for an international organization that had offices all around the world different cultures different languages i learned hands-on so much about giving and doing online ministry and telling our stories in so many different cultures and the top of the donor pyramid the middle of the donor pyramid the bottom of the donor pyramid i learned a lot and it's i've come discovered it was a very unique time that makes me unique the knowledge that i have applies to small medium and large organizations they're principles that work with everyone budgets are different but remember what i said you don't have to spend tons to find new donors or keep the ones that you have it's still true no matter the size of your organization i i think i had around 17 employees just in the u.s plus there's different teams in the local offices around the world right so i worked with a lot of different people but we literally sat around and we focused on communicating our mission and doing ministry around the globe and so that gives me a unique perspective as i consult other organizations and their digital strategies using the principles i just used above so one of the ways i sort of give that away is with a webinar i created and i did it during covid it was so interesting because you know i wasn't traveling i had the time to work on it and i just wanted to help people out so it was a way to sort of expose people who needed help with their digital strategies but aren't going to pick up the phone and call me or hire me they don't even know me so it's a good ice breaker if you will for people to get to know me know my philosophy of digital strategies and it's free and it's still out there i'll tell you how to get to it here in just a minute but what's so great about it is i've already got feedback from the people who listened i asked for feedback by the way just so i know it was helpful it went their appetite to walk into the deep end with me and they've contacted me to say hey we want to know more we love this and other people have just called me and said hey i've taken what i've learned just from your webinar alone and we've made some pretty big changes over here in our organization and i love to hear that you know this podcast and building out this webinar you know it's the art of public speaking right i'm speaking to a microphone but i know there's listeners on the other end and i gotta tell you a little story one of my i'd call him a mentor i don't know if he knows he's a mentor to me because it's not official but i certainly uh try to learn as much information as i could for him the gentleman named paul salhammer some of you and the christian circles would know who he is he's a great public speaker he used to travel with a lot of organizations and sort of be an mc if you will he's a master on stage he's you know big tall guy and he has a great voice good looking man very smart very well read you can put him in any situation at any dinner party and he'll know plenty about a lot he's just a smart smart guy i love hanging around the guy well so one day i just asked him about it you know i just saw his stage presence i said paul give me give me some secrets like why are you so good at what you do besides experience and longevity and he said all right todd he goes i'm gonna tell you something for sure i don't care if you're introducing your mother on stage have notes in your hand he goes every single time i get on stage look at me and i have this little brown book in my left hand or i put it up on the podium but it's my notes that i am sure that if i lock up on stage have a moment my brain freezes up whatever i know i can look down it just gives me a safety net and trust me over the years i've had to look and i've had to sort of cheat from my notes and it just it gives me peace knowing that those notes are there so i've learned through the years by the way with that i i take notes everywhere even when i do a podcast like this i just have notes in front of me i don't know okay that's what i wanted to say let me not forget that well it was sort of funny he and i were in a trip uh on a cruise and i was running a bookstore on the cruise for you know biblical resources for the trip and i needed to get on stage that evening and just tell some details and so i told paul at lunch i believe that hey tonight i need you know five minutes up on stage i need to and then blah blah blah blah told him what i needed to do and he said okay i'll write you in well paul gets on stage that night and instead of introducing me he had his little book and i saw him open the book right when he was thinking okay what's what's happening next and he sort of read it all he said todd's coming on stage to tell you that at 7 p.m tonight the bookstore is going to be open and be sure to bring your whatever and there's 20 off of this and all right todd come on up and i'm walking up on stage thinking paul i got nothing else to say you literally said everything i was going to say so i had to sit there and just fluff and make something up and did something else and whatever and i remember walking off like all right that book deal doesn't always work it just doesn't yeah they're supposed to be a trigger to remind you what to say you weren't supposed to read it verbatim so well anyway i did have my notes that day too and i always do but and it just gives me confidence knowing that what i need is in my hand or in my pocket or up on the the podium at any given time so i learned a good lesson with that so how about this segway go put some information in your pocket and listen to this free webinar if it if the topics we've talked about today sounds like something your organization needs which every organization needs new names and donors to fund your guide size mission everyone needs it everyone can do a better job than what they're doing i promise you i do this for a living i've never walked into a scenario but somebody didn't have a lot of room to grow in certain areas and they are going to be hungry for it but these topics sound like something you want to listen to the webinar is free it's called five simple shifts to gain dedicated donors with your digital strategies and you can find it on my website at creativedigitalguide.com thank you for listening to today's episode of this is his story podcast overwhelmed at all the technical terms trends options cost invoice signings for your organization's digital strategies join other leaders of christian organizations as we join hands in our closed facebook group go to creativedigitalguy.com facebook to register and apply for access i'm only allowing executives of christian organizations in no vendors no high pressure sales no gimmicks into this closed facebook group sign up today and be encouraged and informed as you lead your christian organization looking for a free resource to help your organization move the needle on new names and donors watch the five simple shifts to gain dedicated donors with your digital strategies webinar go to creativedigitalguy.com to register for this on-demand resource built exclusively for executive directors creativedigitalguy.com for more information of gaining donors and telling stories that convert to new names and donations find your god size mission[Music]