Ep. 138 – NON-PROFIT MARKETING: How Does Non-Profit Marketing Work? GUEST: Dan Sonners [PRESIDENT: Direct Marketing Association of Washington]

Foreign.

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I'm Jay Schwedelson.

Let's do this, not that.

We are back for do this, not that. And I have a fantastic guest and we're going to talk about stuff today that I don't think you hear a lot on other podcasts. Who do we got?

We got Dan Sonners. Who is Dan? I'm going to let him tell his story in a minute.

But Dan is the president of an amazing organization, the dmaw, the Direct Marketing association of Washington. And they're one of the largest associations in the country that really is all about nonprofits and fundraising and marketing for nonprofits.

And we're going to talk about how it is that all of these donations are being made and fundraising is happening across nonprofits all around the country. He's also one of the leaders over at Conrad Direct, which is an amazing direct marketing agency fired up to have him here.

So, Dan, welcome to do this, not that.

Jay, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. I'm a big fan of your show. I guess that makes me a longtime listener. First time caller.

Exactly. Appreciate that. Thank you for checking out the show. So, Dan, give us the quick recap. How did Dan become Dan? What's the DMAW all about?

What is your deal?

Oh, thanks a lot. Like a lot of people in fundraising, I did not get into this business by design. 17 years ago I was looking for an entry level marketing job.

Found an add on Craigslist of all places, which used to be a great place to find work. Might be dating myself to some of your younger listeners, but it was a great place and lucked my way into the job, into the industry.

Got to learn about how direct mail gets to my mailbox, how nonprofit organizations acquire donors and raise revenue and really just developed a passion for using data and creativity to try to help organizations raise money more efficiently. And that that's a story with a lot of people in this industry.

They luck their way into it and they fall in love with it and it becomes a home for life. Today I'm vice president with Conrad Direct. We're an independent list brokerage firm that serves the nonprofit and commercial sector.

And as you mentioned, I'm president of a fantastic organization, the Direct Marketing association of Washington, which is Washington's in our name, but we're very national in scope. We have members all over the country. We're the largest regional association for direct marketing in the country these days.

We're laser focused on the nonprofit sector.

That includes nonprofit organizations, as well as all of the great companies and consultants that support nonprofit organizations and help them make the world a better place.

And our job through through programming and through content and through training is to bring all the players together to help enhance their skills and help them make valuable connections in our thriving community.

First of all, that's an incredible background, and I feel like every marketer on the planet should be jealous of industry you're in and what it is that you do for a living. I'll tell you why I say that, and I'm curious what you think.

Number one, I think you probably feel good about what you do because you're helping to raise money for a lot of very important organizations on the planet.

But number two, wearing my marketer hat, I feel like nonprofit marketing trying to get donations is like the last form of long form marketing that exists and storytelling and all of that. Is that true? Is that how. What is the driver behind generating donations? What is the marketing driver in the fundraising world?

I think absolutely, commercial marketers have a lot to learn from nonprofit marketers.

Because if you think about the value proposition of giving a donation to an organization, in most cases you're not getting something tangible in return. You may be getting a great feeling from doing good and helping amazing organization, but you're not delivering a product or a service.

So the ability to get people to voluntarily part with their money and to be generous and to be able to do that in the context of a marketing offer is just an amazing skill set.

So, absolutely, commercial marketers have a lot to learn from nonprofits about how they leverage things like story and data and even some of the mediums.

This might surprise some of your listeners that are not familiar with Nonprofit marketing, but 90% of nonprofit direct response revenue is still generated through direct mail. The average donor is in their early 70s, and that's been the case for decades.

So sometimes there's this fear about donors getting older, but there just happens to be something that happens to people as they get older in life and they become more settled and they start to think about their legacies and they become more generous. So that's actually a feature, not a bug, of our industry.

But what's so interesting, especially at this point in time, is that, yes, we still are very Much built as an industry on direct mail. But nonprofit organizations are playing everywhere these days because donors are everywhere, including older donors.

It was happening anyway, but the pandemic really accelerated it.

So it's a very exciting time where nonprofits are leaning on the workhorses, the tried and true mediums like direct mail, which is very successful for driving donations, I think, because of the real estate and the attention that direct mail commands.

It's really a medium where everybody, regardless of whether you're right out of college or you're a senior citizen at some point, goes to their mailbox. I sometimes only go two or three times a week because I don't get a whole lot of mail.

But people go and they have that mail moment where they look at what's in their mail pile and make a decision about what they want to open, what they want to read. And that's very unique to that medium and it allows you to storytell if you can get them inside the envelope.

But we're also leveraging, of course, we're leveraging email, social media, all the cutting edge digital mediums to raise money, but also to engage donor to deliver them a holistic.

And that's where the nonprofit sector we're trying every day, but we are playing catch up with the commercial sector and trying to deliver donors the type of experience that the donors have come to expect from their favorite companies.

It's a very exciting time where you're leaning on the tried and true, but you're also looking everywhere to engage and try to deliver a holistic experience.

So I get it, they're older, right? I totally make sense that you got a point in your life where you, okay, you do some good now that you've worked your whole life.

And direct mail is really. A lot of seniors are very focused on that channel. But you mentioned things like social media and all. Do you. How do you use digital marketing?

Is it where you're trying to get in front of them and then you hit them with the direct mail piece to close the deal? Are you able to actually generate donations via digital media or is that just not happening?

It. It definitely varies by organization, varies by cause.

There are some causes that have become really proficient at raising money on social and through things like livestream, gaming, generally younger donors, and for some very specific causes, email is still great for raising money directly because even though our email boxes are getting fuller every day, email still commands that quality attention. Very similar to direct mail. So you can definitely raise money through email.

Increasingly, things are moving more towards engaging donors on Mediums like social media, like video ads.

We could even talk about things like direct response television, connective television, providing them a positive experience on those mediums and then trying to hit them with channels or mediums that are more effective for closing the donations.

So the sector is definitely moving in more of a funnel direction where they're trying to leverage digital mediums that are good for delivering high quality engagement, while also then trying to use the channels that are best for closing the deal and making the donations, say when it works best. A cohesive approach that requires a lot of collaboration between not just the channels, but the people who are in charge of overseeing the channels.

And that's one of the bigger challenges right now that we face as an industry is trying to facilitate that collaboration.

And that's one of the things that I think makes what we do at DMAW so valuable, is that we bring fundraisers of different types together to collaborate and learn from each other.

So you mentioned connected tv, and I'm curious about something as it relates to tv.

I get it that there's late at night, some of the old school news channels, if you're on cable, whatever, you could see some infomercials about whatever, donate to this cause and it'll be really, you know, pull at your heartstrings type stuff. But now that so much stuff is going on streaming, my question is, are there seniors there? Is the audience there on streaming?

And are you now targeting because you could target so much better on streaming than you could on cable? Is that a big new sector for nonprofits?

It's growing. It definitely has the attention of a lot of fundraisers. Is connected television a huge sector for nonprofits yet?

Probably I would put it into the emerging category, but it's definitely something that has our attention for some of the reasons that you mentioned, that there's just a unique quality to connected television or streaming, where you're opting into the experience. We've all can relate to having the TV on in the background and you may not necessarily being leaned into whatever is on the screen.

And the same is for commercials. It's very different when it's on demand, when you're actively choosing to watch something.

And your quality of attention is just very different between that and the targeted capabilities that come along with connected television. That is very exciting for fundraisers.

I personally, as a direct mail fundraiser, I think the idea of being able to pair up something like connected television ads with direct mail is really intriguing because of that high quality attention that connected TV ads command and being able to put two attention intensive mediums together like that seems really compelling. I'd see, you know, your run of the mill nonprofit may not be doing CTV yet. Even direct response television.

You're probably talking about Maybe the top 5% of nonprofits that are able to spend the type of money that's needed to create a brand. But that's what's so exciting about CTV is that you don't have to spend millions of dollars to create a band, a brand.

You can have a relatively limited budget and deliver ads to a very targeted audience and pair it up with other channels, which eventually makes me think that it's something that you're going to see more small to mid sized nonprofits start to leverage.

Oh, I couldn't agree more.

I think connected tv, if you fast forward the next two years, it's going to become an essential part of a lot of small business marketers toolkits because things like Google with their ad programs are gonna be able to go on and just buy instantly. It's not that complicated anymore. So one other question I have, you related to fundraising.

So we are in a presidential election year and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. But I'm curious because I don't know, is it harder put aside, I'm not talking about any political donations.

Is it harder for nonprofits to raise money during a present election year cycle because money's going elsewhere and people have only so much money they can donate? Or is it easier because so many more people are in like donation mode and participating in donating? Like which way does it go?

Yeah, it's a, it's a very commonly asked question. And there's a lot of print and a lot of plenty of electronic media that's dedicated to this topic.

And it certainly is complicated because if you look on paper, people who are political donors actually tend to be better charitable donors. Some of that has to do with with age and wealth demographics. But generally the best donors are multi donors.

And the most predictive thing that somebody's going to donate to another cause is that they're donating to something else. People who are political donors also tend to be very good charitable donors.

And most people are able to walk in, chew gum at the same time in that they're able to pay attention to their political passions, which obviously is going to become very extreme over the next couple of months. But they don't stop caring about helping to helping to feed the hungry or provide shelter for the homeless or animals.

They don't stop caring about these Things where I think it becomes more challenging for nonprofit organizations is cutting through with attention.

And that's where it becomes very important to really hone in on the stories of the people that you're helping and making sure that you're mailing offers and that you're putting out content that is compelling, that can cut through. When somebody has fractured attention.

And organizations which really focus in on the offers that they're delivering to donors and making sure that they are commanding that type of attention, they generally will make it through election season. Fine. But if a nonprofit is struggling because of an election, it probably is not the election itself.

It's probably symptomatic of another issue, that maybe your offer just is not compelling enough.

And maybe it breaks through when that donor's attention is not fractured and not in lots of different places, but when they're busy, which is most people these days doesn't even need to be an election. You just think about the. The way that a busy working mom or dad processes their direct mail.

It may just be that your offer just is not cutting through in the way that it needs to during an exceptionally busy time. Some nonprofits probably get hurt, but I think that it's.

It's symptomatic of something else that might need to be tweaked with their creative, not the election itself.

Yeah.

And I think that in some weird way, it introduces new people to the world of donating that maybe never donated before and doesn't mean that they're going to start donating every day.

But all of a sudden, somebody's giving money to something they can't touch or feel because they believe in a certain cause and that, like, to your point, they then can donate to other things. So it expands the pool of potential donors long term, which I think that's a win for the industry.

All right, so let's get into the last segment of this podcast, which is totally ridiculous. It's called, since you didn't ask, and it's about nothing to do with work or whatever.

And the truth is I didn't invite Dan on this podcast because of him being the head of this great nonprofit association or his smarts about marketing. I invited him on because he has horrible taste in television. And that's really all I care about. And so that's my hidden agenda.

So, Dan, I need to know, give me your roster of horribleness and I'll tell you how horrible it is of stuff that you are willing to watch on tv.

I have to admit, I didn't always fully appreciate the value of reality tv. As I've gotten older, I realized it really does have a role and it does highlight the value of stories.

And it, for better or worse, it is a window into our society.

I will admit that I do occasionally watch Vanderpump Rules, and I think that's an example of, again, for better or worse, these are characters, these are stories that, that, that hook us in. Just the fact that these people were on TV and worked at this restaurant itself is not very compelling, but they're able to create these storylines.

And I probably should have appreciated this more because I've watched professional wrestling since, you know, I was in my teens.

And when you look at reality TV through that prism, you realize it's pretty much the same formula as professional wrestling with good guys and bad guys is. And sometimes they reverse places and.

Are you still watching wrestling?

Oh, I still do. I got back into it. Wrestling is cool again, in case you haven't heard.

Are you like, okay, I'll watch Wrestlemania or are you? I'm watching Raw every week.

Maybe not every week, but I've been keeping up with it more these days. And again, has to do with the stories. They've gotten really good at long term storytelling.

And it just, it goes to show that if you can put a story on something and to bring this kind of full circle, same thing with fundraising or marketing, that it's usually the story that ropes people in and drives action, not the product itself. And that's definitely true for wrestling, definitely true for reality tv.

You crack me up because you're talking about, like, Vanderpump Rules as if it's. It's all about storytelling. Whatever. Come on. The only reason I watch reality tv, there's one I've come up with.

The basic reason of why I watch it, it's very simple, is I watch it and I say to myself, at least that's not me. At least I'm doing this. And not that that is 100% the reason I watch it is to make myself feel better about my life. But you're like, this is amazing.

This is storytelling. There has to be moments in there that you're like, wow, that person's out of their minds.

There's definitely a bit of that car crash factor. That's why Jerry Springer was so popular for years, right?

Jerry Springer said that about his own show that people watch so they feel better about themselves. There probably is some truth in that as well. And probably my favorite reality, I'm a little bit biased because of where I'm from, but Jersey Shore.

Also great reality tv, never boring. And lots of great characters and people could say what they want. That was a compelling bunch. And people were tuned into them.

Really great things.

They're still tuned in. The show went away and it came back and they're all back. They're older, they have families and millions of people still tune in. So there you go.

Paul D. And Snooki. And really some really amazing people have really given back to society in such a big way.

It's part of our culture, for better or worse, part of the fabric of our country.

Absolutely. All right, this has been amazing. So Dan, hit us up. Where can we find you? Where do we find dmaw? Conrad, what should we do? You have a podcast.

Tell everybody everything. We're gonna put this all in the show notes as well.

Awesome. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Jay. I really appreciate it.

If you'd like to get to know more about DMAW, you can go to dmaw.org if you're interested in connecting with me. Probably best place to do that's on LinkedIn. I'm Dan Sonners. Jay will drop a link in the show notes. Feel free to connect me there.

Love to connect with talented fundraisers and marketers and hear what you're up to these days and I'll make sure you have my information. Oh, and you mentioned podcast. Yes, I do have a podcast, the Dynamic Nonprofits podcast, which Jay did appear on.

And we are dedicated to advocating for an unsiloed approach to fundraising. So we were talking about before we talk about direct mail, digital, all kinds of different channels.

And the idea is to bring fundraisers of different types together and promote more well rounded education for the mediums. If you like, if you like that type of stuff, check us out. We'd love to have you.

Yeah. And you. And let me throw something out there for everybody listening.

You may be out there as a marketer, maybe you're in between career opportunities or maybe you're starting out your career, or maybe you just are like, you know what? This wasn't what I had imagined for my life in terms of being this career.

Being involved with a nonprofit and helping a nonprofit do their marketing is beyond fulfilling. And if you want to learn more about that career path, I really encourage you to connect with Dan. He's a super nice guy.

He will really steer you in the right direction and it's really something to think about if you're trying to figure out what's the right move for you. So, Dan, thank you for being here. Appreciate you and thank everybody for listening. And Dan, we'll see you soon.

Thanks a lot Jay. Appreciate you as well. So this was great. I enjoyed being here.

Awesome. Thanks. You did it.

You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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