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Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Unlocking Fundraising Success: Data, Strategy, and Storytelling for Nonprofits
Ever wondered why your nonprofit's website exists and how it can become a powerful fundraising tool? Join us as Meghan Speer chats with George Wiener, founder and Chief Whaler of Whole Whale, who unveils his groundbreaking approach to digital strategies for nonprofits. Learn why having clear goals and understanding the purpose behind your digital actions are crucial steps to converting attention into meaningful support. This episode promises to unlock the secrets of data-driven decision-making and guide you through the essential steps to turn potential donors into committed supporters.
Discover effective frameworks that can revolutionize your fundraising success. We explore the "aware, interested, engaged, and committed" funnel, examining how to maintain consistency in your strategies while adapting to changing circumstances. George breaks down the importance of meaningful engagement metrics and the strategic evaluation of your platform presence. Plus, we dive into the power of continuous storytelling to keep your donors engaged, drawing inspiration from the Fast and the Furious franchise to show how an ongoing narrative can transform your nonprofit’s impact. Don't miss these invaluable insights on maximizing your fundraising efforts through data and storytelling!
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
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Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, so excited to have you joining us today for a conversation with George Wiener, who's the founder and chief whaler at Whole Whale, and I got to tell you, george, that is the first chief whaler that we have had on the podcast, not a title I've heard before.
Speaker 3:Well, that's interesting. I'm surprised there haven't been more on the podcast, but happy to be the first, hopefully not the last.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so tell us a little bit about Whole Whale and yourself and how you got the title of Chief Whaler. Let's start there.
Speaker 3:Well, it all starts if you don't take yourself too seriously but also enjoy what you do. I founded the company in 2010 and I figured you know a company like Whole Whale, which is about using every single resource not wasting, but rather leveraging something like data and technology to increase the impact of nonprofits. Well, if I'm creating it, I might as well have some fun, and I said I would like to be the chief whaler and that just sort of stuck. So we all have professional titles but also consider ourselves whalers.
Speaker 3:And so we are a digital agency, we deal with analytics, advertising, SEO, and we have AI tools like our causewriterai to help nonprofits create safe, creative work.
Speaker 2:I love that, and someone introduced me one time. A client was introducing me to someone else on their team and introduced me as this is Megan, she's the chief spreader of happiness and I, man, if I could just like, I would love to actually use that as my title too. That would be so much more, so much more.
Speaker 3:Spreader of joy.
Speaker 2:Yes, chief spreader of happiness, who doesn't want that job?
Speaker 2:Builder of cities. Good Well, I'm excited we will get back to some of your AI tools because, as you know from my LinkedIn post last week, big fan, so definitely want to make sure folks are aware of those. But I want to dig in today. One of the things that I have seen in terms of things that you've got out on LinkedIn or some of the whole whale content that I've been able to check out.
Speaker 2:One of the things I really appreciate about your model is that it starts and finishes with data. Let's make wise decisions, but all of that starts with a plan right and has goals associated to it and we're going to work the plan to meet the goals, and I think that that's maybe sometimes a step that gets skipped for the tyranny of the urgent in nonprofit leadership. So I want to start there. If you were talking to somebody who is the chief development officer, the head of fundraising, head of marketing at a nonprofit let's assume they're walking in for their first day and you were going to help them figure out where to start what's your first question?
Speaker 3:I would say why do you have a website? I would start with something so oddly simple that it becomes complex, in the sense that you have to question why you're doing what you're doing. Why do you have a website? Or why are you sending out that monthly newsletter or communication? Because that teases at understanding what your North Star is. If you don't know where you're going, you won't get there, and I think that backs into the goal. So my questions tend to be very broad, but specifically minded with the why behind the actions that you're doing, and that's just a way of backing into a logic model of saying here are inputs, here are outputs and those are the outcomes. I want to do. I'm standing on this side of the shore. I'd like to get to the other side of the shore. How shall we get there? There's a lighthouse over there Brilliant. Let's go toward that. And so you can then do a number of activities, as long as you can come back to say did we make progress toward that target in a measurable way?
Speaker 2:Let's go back to that question, because I can see where, if you ask somebody why do you even have a website, right? This I mean, the easy answer is like of course I have a website. You have to, you just have to. You know, I don't even I'm not sure that most people could coherently answer. Why does that trip up folks when you start to talk to them about it?
Speaker 3:It'll give them pause and force this thought of like there's a reason behind the effort and money you invested into creating a website, and that reason is X. And the X usually has to do with attention and, to simplify it, I can say every single website, in some shape or form, is designed to route attention into action. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 3:Well, how can we measure that attention? Well, we can measure it in traffic, we can measure it in time, on page time, on different types of your pages. Which ones are more valuable? Is the hey, cute pictures of cats content that you have really crushing it? Is that as valuable as, let's say, your program impact page? Maybe, maybe not.
Speaker 3:I'm willing to bet that there's different things that you'd like to happen. And so, as you move from the attention to action, there's steps in the middle. There's steps in the middle that you can look at. One of the most common ones are like all right, newsletter, right? Like, am I getting the permission to talk to this person again? The value that is still. You know, email is dead, long live email. It is something of value because it contains so much data. It contains the ability and permission to talk to that person again and put them into that welcome series, that donor series.
Speaker 3:And so those are the leads that you need from the attention, because it's rare that someone is going to meet you on the first date and get married. There are situations where that happens, but that's not the normal way, right? People go through dating apps, they have a few interactions and then you know marriage and three children. So why do you have a website? I'm trying to turn attention into action. Well, in that journey, I'm also trying to get emails before I get the type of action that I want ultimately, which is a donation, a commitment. Sometimes it's changing your mind or making you sort of like aware of key information, information that is your reason for being, let's say, you really want to end sepsis and the risk and awareness to parents of that, so that they can make sure that they always are washing and caring for properly the cuts of their children. You're like, well, yeah, that would be your action. That's why you have a website.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So all of that then leads to and there's been a lot of discussion in the industry about marketing funnels and donor funnels. And are we flipping the funnel upside down? Has the funnel become a vortex? Everybody wants to have all these high level discussions, rethinking their marketing strategy and building this funnel from scratch. What needs to be included in a funnel and how do we know if it's working?
Speaker 3:I would say also to the folks that are like all right, which of these things do I choose? Was it a funnel, is it a tornado, is it a cyclone? I don't care, I care that it's there, I care that people are aligned with it and I care that it has measurable outcomes upon which I can say this worked and this didn't work. I view all of these frameworks by the way, I am a framework junkie Like I will throw more frameworks at you than you can bear but I want to do it with this caveat it's like putting on a pair of sunglasses or a pair of reading glasses or a pair of your everyday glasses you put them on when you need them. There's certain problems that lend themselves to certain frameworks, and so you should try these things on, see if they fit, see if they solve most of your problem Nothing is perfect and then align your team with that, noting the imperfections, but move forward.
Speaker 3:Right, he was talking about this new aware to care cycle. We got to do this now. And then next week you have on another brilliant guest and there's like oh, here's my digital marketing funnel. You got to use this. Oh, what's that? Well, that's aware, interested, engaged and committed. Oh, we got to use that. Oh, the fastest way to get lost is by changing the boat constantly, constantly, by being that excitable squirrel that runs around after every new piece. It's fine to try on different pairs of glasses, so I'm going to share some frameworks that I really like. But again, try them on, but commit, when you do, to those core elements and realize that there's consistent things across all frameworks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like that because I think it is easy to get distracted by the new and shiny and get really excited about a new process or a new plan, but bookshelves are full of strategic plans that have gotten us nowhere.
Speaker 3:I see a number of lovely books behind you.
Speaker 2:Yes, a number of books. It's only as good as the shelf space is taking up at that point if you're not committed to actually doing it. So I think that's a really good call out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the consistency and alignment and the parts that I look for in the framework. There are a couple that I really like, but if you're looking at it, draw a pyramid in your mind or draw a funnel, I don't care. However, your team like ascends or descends, but you're drawing this, and for me, I like the funnel because it trickles down from a high to a low in terms of volume.
Speaker 1:And we're starting with aware.
Speaker 3:There are measurements of aware that you can have. You then get interested, so not just sort of click and go, but oh, this person's interested, they spent some time. I can have some threshold of metrics there. I can set those in Google Analytics, by the way. So aware, interested, then engaged, have I actually engaged them, meaning have I got the permission to talk to them again? Is there a real threshold there? Did I get their email? Or, if you were very big on sort of social different platforms, do I have the hopeful chance of maybe showing up in their feeds again and then finally committed At the committed level?
Speaker 3:Most folks think of that as a first-time donation and then you can say, all right, did I put them into the tornado funnel of like? Did they come back? Am I returning givers? But in that, aware, interested, engaged and committed, you can then say here are the measures of success, here's the measure of attention at the top for my awareness. These are the numbers I want to include in it.
Speaker 3:Here's what I don't want to include. This is what counts, what doesn't count. You can have then conversations about. This is what counts, what doesn't count you can have then conversations about. Does a one second view on TikTok matter to you. Was that meaningful? Did that help your brand? Or do we want to set the threshold at three or five seconds? We actually at Whole Whale have a measure called a learning engagement and it must be at least 15 seconds or more across any platform, but I figured about 15 seconds. You've consumed enough information that we have brought you from zero to one on a concept, or at least aware or seen this silly whale, something to that effect that you may come back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting, is there? I assume there's research behind the 15 second mark, or is that just that you guys?
Speaker 3:It's a marriage of convenience. There were some pieces. That number, arguably, is far lower, I think a threshold when you're talking about what triggers as an ad on Facebook or what triggers as a view on LinkedIn. They all have this like quiet little sneaky metric, depending on how much they want to manipulate us into thinking that their platform is getting us attention, and so I set it at a point where it's like you can't really just fake it with some of these engagements and to get it meaningful. You know, we've said it, I encourage everyone to find their own benchmark.
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Speaker 2:I want to piggyback off of something that you just said then, in terms of awareness, because it's easy to again, when we're chasing the new and shiny, it's easy to assume that you have to be everywhere to do that. Just in your description alone, we listed off TikTok and Facebook and LinkedIn. You could add X, you could add Instagram, you could add YouTube, you could add your website. There's so many options and there is a new platform. It feels like developing all the time. When it comes to awareness, do we need those metrics on all of the platform, or is this another like? Why are you even on TikTok? Let's evaluate and get off of trying to be everywhere to be all things to all people.
Speaker 3:I think it's pretty clear. You can't win if you fight a war on all fronts. If you're trying to do all of the things at a high level, you end up doing them all at a low level. Look at where your audience is, look at what they're responding to and then look at the strengths of your team. Some teams are just better suited for a certain type of approach. Now you can shift your team and change your team deliberately, saying like here's the opportunity at whole.
Speaker 3:Well, right now we are all in on video. I believe that text-based content has been commoditized by AI and we're just playing out this game and we are all in on video and it's called it's. It's a shift. It's tough, but I now produce far more video content than written content, and that is completely inverted from what I was doing five years ago, completely inverted for what our team is being expected to do and pushing them on. And that's because I think we're much more of a video first content consumption mode right now, and I'm thinking and trying to think for the next five years like will something I write just be regurgitated by AI versus something video? So you're also expected to think like that, and some of these platforms do lend themselves to create ones, repeat everywhere, and so you can think about how you are using the whole whale, using all parts of your system and process. What does that actually look like? Well, there's a lot of head communications people, head development people that could actually sit down with you like literally like this You're going to ask them 10 questions, your team's going to chop that up and then push that out over the next week. That was 45 minutes of their time.
Speaker 3:Should we only be on TikTok? I don't know. Do you have a bunch of I don't know 50 second video that succinctly talks about what you're doing? Why not post in those multiple places? Each requires a different strategy, but what I care about is having a trial test period. I just gave you a whole bunch of fun squirrels to chase. You're going to like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do all those things. Yeah, that's fine, but you're going to come back to that funnel and be like wait a minute, which of these actually got us those meaningful metrics of awareness?
Speaker 3:Cool, which of those then led toward what I think is one of the most important health metrics of a development officer? What are the total number of new leads, new emails I got per month. What's my rate? Is that number going up Great? What are the inputs on that? Well, it seems like when we post a TikTok, it just lives there. There's nothing coming back. Well, how do I get to that next part? Because you can win on awareness, because all these platforms are tricking you into thinking they're valuable by giving you new little nuts. They're like hey, here's a walnut, oh cool, number one up. But unless it's an email, you don't own it. So I didn't answer your question, but hopefully I gave you an approach to how I think about it.
Speaker 2:No, I appreciate that. So help me define then what it looks like to move from aware to interested. How are we measuring that?
Speaker 3:aware that top of funnel to trickle down, you're not going to get people that are interested and generally you can just take 10% of whatever the number is. Oh, 100,000 people came to our site. Great, you got 10% of them ideally interested, which means they spent over X amount of time. That's going to be a natural distribution. There's going to be a power law, meaning 10% of the humans do 90% of the results. That presents itself in any bucket of stuff people, attention, things that we have at each of those levels. At the interested level, did I get them to spend 15 seconds with me? Did I get them to spend a meaningful amount of time on a meaningful amount of pages? Oh, not all pages on your site are equal, right, if I sent Mackenzie Scott to one page of your website, what would it be oh now there's a question Are you measuring that?
Speaker 3:Hmm, is that the same value as the I don't know staff page? Yeah, is that the same value as the homepage? These are just questions, right, but I'm interested about what makes you interested about the interested section of your funnel.
Speaker 2:That's a really great question because I feel like the website tends obviously you know we put a lot of effort in to maintaining these websites and building more and more pages, but more pages isn't necessarily meaning more interest if they're not impactful. That's a good point. I guess I would wonder out loud. I mean, I think the default position if you ask somebody what page would you send Mackenzie Scott to? It'd be like well, my donation page. Right, I want her to give, but there has to be something that leads her to that process. And I'm wondering how well we have done in succinctly describing what it is we do and why it matters on one page, instead of spreading that out.
Speaker 3:It's not to say that every page has to have utmost importance, right, Sure, Upmost like purpose of like, oh my gosh, we have to be converting. Every page can have equal weight of importance. Right, there's nurturing along this funnel. Right, there's nurturing information, things that you give out there. But it was a thought experiment, right To say, like, what is the purpose of this page? Why do you have a website? Okay, Well, some of those pages might be about the programmatic impact of what we do.
Speaker 3:Well, that's interesting. Are you linking to that disproportionately in that social content, driving people to that page that matters? Or just go to our homepage and figure it out? Right, you realize that, oh my gosh, because I said, this page is important as a leader, what did that do to the person creating that next piece of social content? I'm like, oh, it seems like they really care when that number goes up. Yeah, I do when you go to our programmatic impact page, because they're understanding the way we are shaping the world, our mission and vision. Like that is very valuable, and I think we assume that it's the homepage and it's not necessarily true. So, when you come back to why you're setting up this marketing funnel, it's because you're giving the commander's intent.
Speaker 3:The smartest thing that you should be doing to move this organization forward is bringing not just aggregate general awareness but targeted awareness to things that move you down the funnel. Things that move you down the funnel are things like the most important page on your website to Mackenzie Scott and then getting that email. How are we creating those content lockers, which is just a tactic for delivering value in exchange for an email into our welcome series? Great, Now we can look at the next phase. How do we move from interested to engaged? Well, got to get that email through not just a plain newsletter but different pop-ups through.
Speaker 3:Hey, here is our annual report. If you'd like it, here's proprietary research that we've done on a topic you may care about it. Go get it and then we can get them through a welcome series, through our regular drumbeat of communication, to hopefully give. Are they giving in the first 90 days? Are you tracking the number of emails that are going from cold to donor? And then you can really do some fun things. At that point you can throw advertising at that to jump the line. But you realize, by setting that and then putting that consistently to your team, instead of chasing a new framework or whatever it is, you can actually align your communication strategies so that it meets your donation goals.
Speaker 2:I love that. I think one of the things that I see as maybe a little bit of a trend is that once we get people through the funnel, we get them committed. We've accomplished that goal, Check we lose the. Then what Right? I'm curious to hear your opinion on what that next step looks like. We've got them to a first step. They have been aware they've been made interested, they engaged with us. We got them to give a donation Fantastic, I feel like. Then the thought process on how to move people forward stops and we toss them into the general, like we're going to send you an email every week and see if you give us more money. But the actual kind of well thought out strategy tends to stop there when it comes to maybe pushing towards recurring. So, in your opinion, what would be a better what's?
Speaker 3:next. It's a tough point for our industry. Yeah, in general we're keeping one in five of our first-time donors. Yeah, and some of that is.
Speaker 3:I want to be clear I don't think it's possible for someone to keep five out of five first-time donors, right? Don't? Don't assume that you're getting a marginal return on the next hour of energy, next consulting, whatever it is to chase after this mythical if only we could keep five out of five. So I want to pause and be like there's a bit of immutable gravity to whatever your first time donor number is. You can move it, but I don't think it is worth the marginal investment after a certain point and you know, talk to your doctor, results may vary, but I just always like to put that cavity out out there, cause sometimes it's like, oh, if we could only keep every single donor, no matter what, sure I get it You're never going to get five out of five dentists to agree in toothpaste and you're not going to get five out of five donors to keep coming back. But the what next is a great question. I want to turn to the strategic brilliance of a little known movie franchise called the fast and the furious.
Speaker 3:Okay, now I thought we were going, but all right, you know I'm going to drive this all over the place. So they've made like over 12, 13 movies at this point, and each time they make a movie they make more money, because people that are invested in this silly little ecosystem where we throw Vin Diesel behind a souped-up car and have him drive around, either with the law against the, whatever it is right but they're making money every single time because they brought them into a story that we have followed these characters over a period of time and this is the silliest narrative conceivable. Right, there's like so little there. So I'm going to just say, if Fast and Furious can do this, they can build a narrative over time, bringing them along episode to episode, of being like you're a part of this, you're giving money to sit in the theater and watch this. I'm pretty sure the bar of storytelling can be eclipsed.
Speaker 2:Fantastic point.
Speaker 3:And so thinking about, like you just watched the first movie or guess what? You just watched the first movie or guess what. What's also brilliant about the Fast and Furious movies is that you're going to have to go back and watch the ones in the beginning because you're like how did they find racing? What's their backstory? Great, I think. Understanding that you don't exist in a one and done movie, but rather a cinematic universe, is what's driving all current theatrical strategy right now, and I think there's a reason for it, so I think you can have some fun with it. Hopefully you're like oh my gosh, that's right. We can talk about the story of our next program and the new challenges coming up and how it built on the last one fast, um, my, the fast and furious six, followed by fast spot prior to fast five. Then you had low spend. You had los banderos uh, fast and furious. They just named that in 2009. Fast and the furious go to chucky cheese. They got too fast, too furious you're right that's too fast, too furious.
Speaker 3:Fast x, part 2 we just sort of had to re restructure that one and there's actually another.
Speaker 2:This is totally off topic, but there is another one coming out. Just we're just recently came out. I just saw an announcement.
Speaker 3:I feel like I just saw an announcement. Oh no, that's fast.
Speaker 2:X, part two, that's coming out in 2026 oh yeah, there you go, they're making another one um spoiler alert vin diesel's in it what a shocking trend. Yeah, interesting. No, that's a good point, though, because I think we tend to assume that once somebody has committed to us, once it's an automatic like oh yep, they'll do it again. Which data proves it won't? No, but there has to be something exciting that keeps them coming back. I have only seen maybe three of the fast and furious movies, which is probably more than most people actually.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry no, I love it 12, there's 12 12.
Speaker 2:okay, well, I've only seen three, but I know I can guarantee that every time something is going to blow up in spectacular fashion Very exciting. That's the reason to keep figuring out what happens, let alone watching Vin Diesel, but that's a whole separate conversation. I feel like our strategies put so much effort into engaging and keeping people interested up front and then there's no more motivation of storytelling after the fact. We don't have to tell stories anymore. We got you. Here's just another plea asking for more and more. I actually really like the Fast and Furious example, because something exciting keeps happening Instead of nope, we told you the story once. Keep coming back. I think that's a great analogy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm glad I could tie it in. I challenged myself to it. And to confuse you further with another framework though I have in a sort of aware to care cycle, so I have another framework that is a bit of a cycle where you acknowledge actually that the work I mentioned, the communication engine that you have, the communication, the storytelling engine that you have is not just working to bring in new people each time but actually rather also satisfy the existing people. Right, when you watch one of these movies, there's like inside jokes of being like, oh yeah, I remember that. And you're like, oh, here comes the NOS, Everybody knows it's coming, but somebody there for the new time doesn't even know what I'm talking about, that for some reason, injecting a whole bunch of nitrogen into your car is a smart thing to do to make it go faster, but it's something for the insider, something for the new person.
Speaker 3:Your communication engine at the top of the funnel isn't just finding new people, but you always have to do but reminding and reentertaining the folks that are part of the community, that know the language, that can actually even potentially participate in it. Right, how do you make them part of the story? And there's a lot of ways of doing that as a tactic. But yes, you're right, If you just live in the world of the funnel, what happens at the bottom of the funnel? The water runs out onto the floor and your kid makes a whole mess. It's a big disaster, but at least they were entertained for a little while. So, yes, there's another framework. Right, we put on a different pair of glasses when we're looking at somebody who is already a member of our community, already a first-time donor.
Speaker 2:I love that. Okay, if somebody wanted to learn more about some of these frameworks they wanted to learn more about Whole Whale and about the things that you guys offer specifically I would love for you to take maybe just a minute and talk about CauseWriter and some of the resources available there. How do we find all of the information and the wealth of wisdom that you guys have to share?
Speaker 3:Our Fast and Furious ecosystem of content. It is spread across the universe. It is at wholewhalecom, certainly our main website. I know the irony is palpable that I'm sending you to my homepage, but we also have causewriterai C-A-U-S-E-W-R-I-T-E-Rai I realize that when I say it it comes out wrong R-I-T-E-R dot AI. I realize that when I say it it comes out wrong.
Speaker 3:So, on what I'll say for causewriterai slash resources, we have a whole bunch of free AI tools that are sort of getting you to do things like create a donor persona, and it's going to have an AI that'll walk you through creating a persona and cohorts for your organization. We have a brand analysis GPT that's going to do a brand analysis of your nonprofit. It's just going to get you to realize the different use cases for AI as it overlays with the processes and work that a nonprofit does. And again, all of that stuff is free. Yes, there are members that pay for customized components and then on our site, wholewhalecom slash university, wholewhalecom slash university has all of our training materials, our thoughts about analytics on advertising and an unfortunate amount of video footage of this of my face talking about things, as well as other experts on our team.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, George, thank you so much. I appreciate you being on as the chief whaler today to share all of the pieces. That's been fantastic. Again, you can check out more at wholewhalecom. George, thanks for being here. We appreciate all the wisdom and insight today.
Speaker 3:Oh, thanks for the work you do and good luck at the conference coming up.
Speaker 2:Yes, Cause Camp so exciting. Can't wait to see so many of you there. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.