Intro
Welcome to the Fit Fundraising podcast, where we bring you game changing fundraising topics direct from our meetings with major donors and nonprofits nationwide. We don’t interview consultants who haven’t met a donor in decades for fundraising stays on the front lines with nonprofit donors and leaders. This podcast is a glimpse into our work with nonprofits as we get on the field of them and successfully modeled fundraising.
Roy Jones
Welcome to the Fit Fundraising Podcast. I’m Roy Jones and I’ve got a special guest for you today. Again, thank you so much for joining us. Today we’re gonna be really drilling down on generational giving. What’s the difference between a boomer, a millennial, a Gen Z, and how do they give and how do they impact our database? I have, whom I believe is one of the top premier young…
development philanthropic experts in the country. I’m so excited. I want you to meet Kyle Gorman. He’s executive director of advancement at the Evansville Rescue Mission, where he leads the organization’s marketing, public relations, volunteer, and fundraising efforts. With nearly six years of experience in his role, Kyle has traveled the country to learn from top fundraising professionals, applying innovative strategy to drive community impact. He holds a master’s in business administration with an emphasis in marketing.
from the University of Southern Indiana. And outside of his professional work, he’s a dedicated husband, dog lover, and an avid IndyCar enthusiast. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us today.
Kyle Gorman
Thank for having me. What an interesting lead in of who I am and for those listening, it’s definitely a lie. don’t know about leading expert six years is definitely not a lot of time in the field.
Roy Jones
the thing I appreciate and of course we first met at a CityGate regional conference and I watched you I won’t I won’t tell on anybody but but somebody had a challenge was not able to come in and help you with the session and the PowerPoint you stood up on your feet and gave the most prolific presentation on marketing and fundraising and I’ve seen in 10 years well I said I gotta meet this guy
Kyle Gorman
It did not feel that way.
Roy Jones
It was awesome and again, I’m just so impressed with what you’re doing and you’re truly leading a generation here.
Kyle Gorman
Well thank you, I do appreciate that and I appreciate you being there and I think I called on you on the spot if I remember correctly.
Roy Jones
I thought you were right on the mark my friend. We’ll take just a minute, talk to us about the Evansville Rescue Mission. Talk to us about your ministry and your work there and just what your priorities are right now.
Kyle Gorman
Yeah, absolutely. So the Evans Rescue Mission is 108 years old this year. So we have been in our area for a long, long time. I know there’s other rescue missions and nonprofits out there that are older. But for our area, we are the oldest and largest homeless services nonprofit and one of the oldest nonprofits in our area. And so really focusing, we just wrapped up a capital campaign in March. We just opened a brand new center for women and children. It was a $9 million public goal.
Roy Jones
How big was the capital campaign?
Kyle Gorman
About two years. Yeah, we had some really generous donors helped us kick it off and we had a really good generous donor that was a grant that helped us wrap it. So it’s we’re here for. Yeah, so now our focus is really transitioning to the organization. So we’ve spent so much time, 24 months talking about women and children, women and children, women and children, that now we have to remind our donors again what else we do. Our flagship is the Men’s Residence Center, Homeless Men Services. And so now we have to talk about that again. Right. And so with the rest of what we’re doing, we have some social enterprises and some other stuff. And so we’re now just hitting that again on social media, talking to our donors, reminding them about who we are and what we do.
Roy Jones
Wow. Now, it’s really interesting. It’s kind of a branding challenge that you’ve had with focusing on the capital campaign for the women’s shelter and coming back on focus.
Kyle Gorman
It is. So branding is something that we’re going to talk about later as well in our session. so for the audience, know branding for me is huge. And so I don’t know if it’s a generational thing. I don’t know if it’s maybe just I’m weird and that’s the marketing thing that I love. But I think that brands have to be strong. People trust brands. And so I think nonprofits have been really, really slow to capture their brand.
Roy Jones
Wow, wow. Well, let’s get right into it. Of course, I’m one of those old guys from the boomer generation, and you’re one of the national leaders, if I said, and you’re very humble to disagree with me, but I’m telling you, you are a national leader in nonprofit development. Are you a millennial, a Gen X, or a Gen Z?
Kyle Gorman
I am Gen Z,
Roy Jones
Wow. Well, what trends are you seeing across the generations? What seems to be working with younger people, and how are you doing it still at the same time holding on to older boomers like me?
Kyle Gorman
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting question because your marketing and your direct mail and all of that stuff, your social media, it has to blend together, right?
Roy Jones
but it’s also about reaching the right person in that channel.
Kyle Gorman
Right, because I mean you’re gonna have some people, again, in your generation, they’re gonna see one channel, whether it be direct mail or something if they’re older, versus your younger generation might just see your social media profile. They might just see your one post even, depending. so having a team of people that can really try and tie everything together, and we’re not perfect by any means, and we mess up and we fail all the time, but I think what I tend to see the most is kind of the middle generations on the middle of the spectrum, we’re kind of seeing
They’re going to read our direct mail. They’re going to hear the updates. They want to know about what we’re doing. But then they’re going to still give online. And so we’re talking about even people that are in my parents’ age group. That’s what their trending is doing for us personally is they’re still giving online, but they still love seeing the direct mail aspect. So it’s really interesting.
Roy Jones
So direct mail, of course it used to be the converter. It was the vehicle that people put the check in, filled out the reply device and sent it back to you. What I hear you saying is it’s now the driver. It’s driving people to the internet to use that giving page to make a gift.
Kyle Gorman
Yeah, absolutely. And there’s not even on most of our appeals, there’s not necessarily something directing someone to the online giving. It’s just their preferred way of giving. Right. Why would I send a check for those that are still sending cash through the mail? Why would I do that if I could just go online and put my credit card in?
Roy Jones
Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Well, I’ve seen many nonprofits kind of move in two different extremes in these communication strategies. Either they say, wow, I’m netting money in my digital marketing right now, so I’m just going to shut down direct mail. Or they say, that digital stuff, it’s not long term. I’m sticking with direct mail. What’s your feeling about these two extremes?
Kyle Gorman
So think digital is king. think the world’s moving to digital. It’s going to take over at some point. Right. I believe that some point is probably decades in the future. At least it’s not. so direct mail is still the driver. It’s still the main focus. All the statistics, all the data still points to a lot of checks coming back in and not as much credit card and online. And so where we really try and focus is still sending out those direct mail, still sending out stories and updates.
Roy Jones
So it’s not next year.
Kyle Gorman
But we want to put more and more every year emphasis on our social media specific to our marketing and drivers to donate now
Roy Jones
it’s interesting i have a client that you they had called they have labeled in their database online gifts as the new donor acquisition and of course i said wait a minute have you ever done a match back study match back study what i’ve never heard of that
I said, well, have you taken your list of people that you sent an appeal to in direct mail and bumped it up against those donations? No, let’s do that. As a matter of you know the exact date, the exact time to the second that that donation came in online, correct? Yes. I said.
also bump that up against your in-home date. And it was no coincidence that, mean, literally the week that that mail was in home, they had this magical spike and they really believed, they had convinced themselves that people just woke up that morning and decided to go online and make a gift. Doesn’t happen that way, it?
Kyle Gorman
It doesn’t unfortunately, I’d love for it too
Roy Jones
Well of course, know, another shift that’s happening in the world today is frequency of appeals. Yeah. Again, direct mail tends to be monthly, although I read recently that some nonprofits are still doing 18 to 20 physical appeals a year. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. But talk to me about frequency in the email box, because I seem to see that just climbing. Yeah.
Kyle Gorman
It’s funny because we always get, we work with a direct mail marketing firm and so I get all the tester emails. It comes to me, it says test and then I can see what it’s about. And so it’s funny that you mentioned just frequency because I get them way more. I’m getting the more testing and then I’m getting my own personal email about, check this out and whatever. And so we are definitely seeing a huge increase across that and working with our direct mailer.
in the marketing team just about how often they’re sending them, what they’re sending. It’s a lot and it’s just increasing year over year.
Roy Jones
But frequency is a strategy, right? problem is every donor is giving to not just you. ⁓ They’re given to, I mean, I’ve seen some surveys at Association of Fundraising Professional that say seven charities to 11 charities. And so some of those are doing an email every business day. I’ve seen it. Some are doing at least an email every week. And then some are doing a couple of times a week.
Kyle Gorman
Yeah.
Roy Jones
What kind of frequency do you need to cut through all that clutter?
Kyle Gorman
So I think we’re at about three a month. So not every week, not every other week, just right there in the middle. And it’s interesting that you’re talking about how often and how many charities people are giving to. So when I was in college, we were talking about the millennials coming up. That’s kind of about where I was, the top of the Gen Z scale. And just now starting to see some of that data, in my undergrad, I was in kind of a nonprofit business class. And so we had some specific nonprofit classes that we’re talking about it.
And just talking about older generations, yeah, are seven to 11 charities that they’re gonna give smaller amounts to. The millennial data was starting to come in and it was starting to show they’re only choosing three to four nonprofits but giving larger amounts to. So I’m really interested now, I’m 28, I’m at the top of that Gen Z scale. I’m really interested to see our data start coming in. Is it gonna decrease again? Is it gonna increase? Is it gonna stay the same? And so I’m really interested in that but.
Roy Jones
interesting
Kyle Gorman
makes you think because now I’m fighting harder for each dollar because I might get more dollars from a younger person but it’s going to be harder to break into their three to four charities that they choose.
Roy Jones
Right, wow, very interesting.
This has just been an amazing conversation, I am just so pleased that you joined us today. It’s been a wonderful conversation. If our listeners wanted to reach you directly or find out more about your ministry, how would they do that?
Kyle Gorman
Yeah, so the ministry email or web address is EvansvilleRescueMission.org. You can learn all about who we are there. If you go to our About Us page in our leadership, my name and email is on there. Please feel free reach out. I don’t know what I can offer, but I’d be happy to lend an opinion at least and see where that goes from there.
Roy Jones
Well, thank you so much listeners. I’m so glad you joined us today. And just remember.
And I really want you to think on this. We have built our company by offering free fundraising counsel. You heard it right. Free, free, free. We have currently, last year we provided more than 300 hours of free fundraising counsel. We helped more than 40 different nonprofits around the country. Now of course, I don’t wanna fool you. I gotta look on the other side of this vest, but 15 of those people.
did hire us. And so again, we’re going to bring value to you, we’re going to step out and we truly believe in paying it forward, helping those, helping others so that we can make the world a better place and build this kingdom with Jesus Christ’s glory. Amen. Thanks for joining us today. Please, please, please go to fitfundraising.com and if I can help you just click that button and we’re here to provide help.
Intro
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