Online Behavioral Symposium update: You’ve hopefully already saved the date for the first DonorVoice Online Behavioral Symposium on September 30^th and October 1^st (if not, save your spot now).  This is the Symposium where academics and practitioners come together to share insights and promote collaborations in our 1^st online behavioral symposium. It will be hosted by DonorVoice’s Chief Behavioral Scientist Dr. Kiki Koutmeridou.

We’re thrilled to announce the speaker lineup with a mix of distinguished professors and pioneer practitioners who are changing the fundraising world.

Meet the academics…

1. Peter Ayton, professor of Psychology at City, University of London
2. Hengchen Dai, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations as well as a faculty member in the Behavioral Decision Making area at Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
3. Ayelet Gneezy, Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Marketing at UCSD.
4. David Reinstein, Academic economist and associate professor at the University of Exeter.
5. Enrico Rubaltelli, assistant professor of cognitive psychology at the Department of Developmental and Socialization Psychology at the University of Padova.

…and the practitioners

1. Erica Best, Associate Director, Direct Response, No Kid Hungry
2. Larissa Peters, Digital Fundraising Manager, Annual Giving, Catholic Relief Services
3. Derek Roberts, Senior Supporter Appeals Executive, Crisis, UK
4. Rami Sarakbi, National Stewardship Specialist, Canadian Red Cross

Final program & speakers will be emailed in the next couple of weeks to everyone who has registered.

The Symposium is web-based and spread over two days: 30^th September and 1^st October from 9-12 AM Eastern (2-5 PM UK). Wherever you are, you can join for free. Register here to save your spot.

Board Member Bingo: A couple weeks ago, I created Board Meeting Bingo, where you put the frustrating things your board members might say on a bingo card to add some enjoyment.  Turns out, I only thought I created it.  Amy Eisenstein created a Board Meeting Bingo game that is – unlike the Agitator version – actually productive.  It’s used as an icebreaker for board meetings, both to get them to know each other and to identify areas where the board may be lacking.  Says Amy:

“People should feel free to create their own boards … it’s important to include squares based on the topics you wish to discuss with your board.  Although the game itself is fun and the board members love getting up and moving around, the debriefing time after they play is key.  The facilitator must ask questions like – what did we learn about our board from this experience? (For example, there are no lawyers or accountants in the room… why might that be a problem for our organization?  And, no one here has ever asked for or given a major gift… what should we do about that?)”

Instructions and a sample bingo board from Amy are attached.  If you’d like to peruse her other great ideas, they are at AmyEisenstein.com.  Thanks, Amy, for the comment and for sharing!

Facebook lead generation webinar reminder.  We are doing a free webinar on using Facebook advertising testing and lead generation on Wednesday the 18th.  We’d love to see you there, where we’ll be sharing case studies and tests you can try.

Latest Fundraising Effectiveness Project data are out.  Here’s the good news:  Sorry, there is none.

And the bad: You would think one of the indicators would increase year-over-year out of sheer luck or variety, but everything – all retention rates, all donor rates, all gift levels – is down.  Not even rich people are saving us, as we were concerned would eventually happen.

There will be thinkpieces aplenty on the “why” this is happening: tariffs, consumer confidence, election fundraising, institutional trust, etc., etc.  Just as with year-end last year, we will pen these in the hopes that out of the secret passageway Stock Market Worries will jump and say “It was I who hurt philanthropical giving!  In the Conservatory with the Rope!”

In the end, it comes to one thing.  We are not yet improving fast enough to keep up with an increasingly challenging environment.  As a not-very-good runner, I know what happens when you can’t keep up:

The democratizing of legacy giving. As we’ve said, planned giving is one of the few areas of fundraising that is growing.  There’s new evidence from the UK that smaller charities may be getting more bequests that before.  While the article talks about this (with scant evidence) being due to scandals, I prefer to think it is because we are doing a better job of asking for these legacy gifts across organizations.  If you’d like to learn about optimizing your legacy giving offer, check out this webinar Dr. Kiki Koutmeridou and Dr. Claire Routley:

The largest nonprofits you’ve never heard of: We’ve talked about the potential harm of some forms of corporate philanthropy.  But did you know the ten of the largest 20 charities in the United States are run by pharmaceutical companies?  There’s an interesting story on it here, but this has increased from $370 million in 2001 to $7.4 billion in 2016.  If the charities’ money were all spent on co-payments, as most of it is designated, these charities could be involved in a quarter of U.S. pharmaceutical spending.

Crowdfunding with leverage: There are great parts and the not-so-great parts of crowdfunding sites like Kiva, GoFundMe, and DonorsChoose.  (And I explore this further with how you can set up your own direct donation proxy in my book.)  There’s one nonprofit that is taking crowdfunding, reversing it, and using what we once called one of the dumbest fundraising consultant terms: leverage.

Medical debt in the United States is significant and often crippling.  It’s also often repackaged and resold to organizations who specialize in collection for pennies or ha’pennies on the dollar.  As a result, you can buy, and forgive, people’s medical debt for similarly low cost (I call it reverse crowdfunding because instead of multiple people funding a person or initiative, you have one person who can help multiple people directly).  An interesting model and a more positive note on which to end these updates!

Nick