The Future of Fundraising: Embracing Technology and Authenticity with Owen O'Doherty
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Do you find it challenging to connect with your donors on a deeper level and turn one-time gifts into lasting relationships? In this episode of The Small Nonprofit Podcast, we dive into the world of donor community building with Owen O'Doherty, the CEO of DonorSee. Owen shares his insights on how to leverage beneficiary-driven storytelling, technology, and authentic engagement to create a thriving community of donors who are passionate about your cause.
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Key Episode Highlights:
Authenticity is Key: Donors connect with real, unpolished stories that showcase both the successes and challenges of your work. Embrace vulnerability and share the human side of your organization.
Storytelling is Powerful: Use video and other visual mediums to tell compelling stories that highlight the impact of your work. Let service users share their own experiences to create a deeper connection with donors.
Community Cultivation Matters: Move beyond transactional giving and focus on building a community of donors who are invested in your mission. Foster engagement through regular updates, personalized communication, and opportunities for interaction.
Technology Can Help: Leverage platforms to streamline your fundraising efforts, connect with a wider audience, and build a thriving community of supporters.
Embrace AI (Wisely): Explore the potential of AI in automating tasks, curating content, and enhancing donor experiences. However, prioritize authenticity and avoid using AI to generate fake or misleading content.
Don’t forget to become a supporter of our show!
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/AOc-VDduIuE
Links and Resources:
Connect with Owen O'Doherty on Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/owenodoherty
Check out the website: https://www.donorsee.com/
Rise by DonorSee: https://www.actionrise.com/
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariario/
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/208666/supporters/new
Transcript:
00:00:00 Owen: One of the things that we really focus on, you know, big, larger nonprofits have all the big teams in the world to kind of get into being able to do that. So we make sure we have a technology piece that allows small nonprofits to do that. And I love your expression, by the way, passion meets action. But too often we're not telling enough of the passion and storytelling. And that's completely understandable. But there's definitely a better way that results in more repeats and long-term giving.
00:00:00 Maria: Hi friends. Ever wondered how you could turn your big ideas into results? I'm Maria Rio, your go-to guide for helping small nonprofits have real world impacts. Together, let's reimagine a better sector, tackle systemic issues, and yes, raise some serious cash. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit, the podcast where your passion meets action.
00:01:01 Maria: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Small Nonprofit Podcast. I am super excited to be back with a new episode talking about how to build a community within your donor base. So this is a topic that I don't have much experience with. And I just wanted to bring someone who is an expert on to talk to us about that. So I want to introduce you to Owen. Hi, Owen.
00:01:24 Owen: Hey, Maria, how are you? And hello to everybody who's listening.
00:01:27 Maria: I am great, finally enjoying the sun. I'm sure that you're appreciating it as well.
00:01:32 Owen: Oh, it seems like it's been a long winter. I think we're all looking forward to a little bit of more spring and summer at this point.
00:01:39 Maria: Me too. Owen, for all of our listeners, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into your current role, what it is that you do and also how you got involved in non-profit?
00:01:52 Owen: Yeah, so my name is Owen O'Doherty. As you can probably tell from my accent, I hail from a land far, far away. I'm from Ireland originally. And I'm the CEO of DonorSee, donorsee.com. And we have another product as well called Rise by DonorSee. And I'll get into that a little bit. And my own background is, it's kind of a long varied background. I'm very much in the tech for good space. So prior to joining DonorSee, I had founded and developed a community for caregivers, which we raised up a kind of a technology based community that had about people in 38 countries on the platform. And it had a professional side to the platform as well.
00:02:39 Owen: But I joined DonorSee about three years ago, really because I was just incredibly in with the mission. The founder was a guy who was pretty inspirational and had built up this incredible tool to help nonprofits and to build a community of donors around the world with a really grandiose mission to solve poverty and bring a community of people together to support nonprofits in that effort. And that was all about what DonorSee was about. So I came on with a very kind of long product background, my own really expertise is in product development, community building, community true product. And I came on to build that on DonorSee as well.
00:03:20 Owen: And we've been going from strength to strength ever since I took over as CEO about one and a half years ago, and we've got a team based in the US and we partner with nonprofits in about 56 countries at the moment of all sizes, predominantly what we would say are micro or small nonprofits, but of all sizes around the world.
00:03:40 Maria: Great. Thank you so much for sharing. And where did the idea for DonorSee come from?
00:03:46 Owen: Well, our founder, Gret, was a guy living in Malawi, just outside of Longway, teaching there, and he, very much immersed in the community. And he'd come across an incredibly sad story. There was a small girl called Emily, who I actually met in person, whose mom had passed away due to an illness that was very treatable by virtue of the fact of not being able to afford the equivalent of $20 to go to the hospital. And he was like, this is crazy. And this is happening around a time when there was a transition to video and Instagram and YouTube were really taking off. And he was kind of the charismatic guy on camera and things like that. And him and a couple of locals on the ground decided, okay, we've got to do something about this.
00:04:35 Owen: So they started using this new medium, internet-based media, whether it's images or YouTube to raise money to solve some of these issues. And it became such a hit. The real kind of magic juice in it, for want of a better word, was the fact that all of a sudden, instead of it being a transaction for donors, they were seeing exactly how money was being used. And not just for the ask, but also there was follow-ups as well saying, hey, this is what happened after you supported the cause. Stories of impact. And it really just created a huge momentum. And then all of a sudden, the community started kicking off. So that was really the core of the idea. And then it was, you know, wrapped in a technology piece as a community and a fundraising piece and a storytelling piece. And that's where DonorSee evolved from.
00:05:25 Maria: I'm a huge fan of the storytelling piece because so many nonprofits, like really, really, absolutely struggled to tell their story. And when you start involving video, oh, it's all.
00:05:37 Owen: I know.
00:05:37 Maria: Yes. It's almost like, hopeless. It's like, what do you do? Like, I have no idea. Like, does it need to be super polished? Does it need to be just me walking around? Like, how do I tell my story in a way that is engaging where people do want to watch? And how do I make sure that it is centering the dignity and autonomy of the service user? So something I really like about what you do is letting the service user tell their own story. However, they would like to share it and, you know, sharing the parts that they want to share. So it's less intrusive, it feels like. And it also does share that impact in a way that is going to be received by the donor through video, which is something that a lot of nonprofits don't capitalize on as much as they should.
00:06:22 Owen: 100%. And the way we approach that is A, we kind of enable it at scale within our platform, but in an easy sort of a way. But rather than it being something that should be a big lift, actually, authenticity is key. So it really doesn't have to be this polished kind of slick affair with high production values. Actually, it can be just something that's very, very grainy, authentic, just tells the story and tells the story in the good and the bad. I think there is a perception out there that we must always convey the good in the story. You know, hey, this is wonderful. This is the great work that you did.
00:06:59 Owen: But actually, we found that if you bring people along for the journey, that, whether it's good or bad, say you're raising money to build a well or to develop an institution. If something goes wrong, things don't turn up on time. Actually, those little snippets are really interesting and they actually tie somebody to your journey into the project in a much closer way, a way that kind of, allows and makes them come back and back. And we found in our platform that by virtue of doing that, the retention and the re-giving is about 3x the normal charitable giving, but also all of a sudden they become really just like storytellers for you. They're going out into the world and being evangelists for your cause. And that's really, really powerful as well.
00:07:43 Owen: So it's an incredibly powerful piece. The one thing I always say is, you know, givers, you know, people who are involved in nonprofits, they're natural givers, right? They're empathetic. They want to give to the world, but they always then by virtue of that, find it hard to ask. And it's a totally human emotion. It's always hard for any of us to ask. So what we found is, okay, you don't have to ask all the time, just tell some of those stories, you know, just develop a community. And we kind of created a technology piece that allows that community to be both within the platform under a non-profits branding.
00:08:18 Owen: But if you just, you know, do some community updates, do some follow-up, some updates on some of the work that you're doing, all of a sudden you're getting likes. It's almost like social media all for yourself, but you're getting likes and you're getting people coming in to support you over and over again.
00:08:33 Maria: I like how in the stories, like you talk about integrating the good and the bad, because, you know, we've seen in the past, a lot of international organizations only focusing on the bad to kind of, like guilt the donor into giving. And that's it. Right. And then we also now are seeing a lot of charities really only focus on the good. Like we did it. We fed this many people. We house this many people without talking about the challenges that the organization or those people are facing. So I think it adds a more humanizing element to focus on both and also really lets someone understand what that is actually like. So it's not just like, oh, it was so easy. We did it just with your donation. There's a lot of challenges in the middle and opportunities and joys in the middle that we often don't talk about.
00:09:27 Owen: 100% and those challenges are, they’re the human pieces and you're absolutely right, there is, for lack of a better word, I don't know, can I say it on your podcast, but you know that kind of, it could be poverty P, you know what I'm talking about. That's put out there into the world where you're seeing just the dreadful carnage or the dreadful underbelly of a problem and that is impactful. It does move hearts so I can see why people use it all the time. Plus it's quite often a reflection of the truth. So we shouldn't discount that aspect of it.
00:10:01 Owen: But more often than not, humanitarian work involves the drudgery of just trying to get a project true. They day to day trying to manage something, just trying to get X and Y to Z. So, and they're the things that those little vignettes of life that can be capitalized on as well or could be showing what life is like in a particular part of the world, wherever that part of the world is, and putting those vignettes up. And all of a sudden, there's this huge capacity for people to connect with what you're doing in a more real way. And it makes a huge difference.
00:10:37 Owen: And one of the things that we really focus on, big, larger nonprofits have all the big teams in the world to get into being able to do that. So we make sure we have a technology piece that allows small nonprofits to do that. And I love your expression, by the way, passion meets action. But too often, we're not telling enough of the passion and storytelling. And that's completely understandable. But there's definitely a better way that results in more repeats and long-term giving.
00:11:05 Maria: Yeah, the storytelling, just this aspect of the storytelling is so interesting. Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really like that it also reduces the divide between a service user and a donor. Cause they do tell their story like right away, they get to share what they want to share. You don't have it kind of edited by the nonprofit as we've seen with other situations like MSF apologized for cutting out the parents of the picture so the child looks more fragile, right? And it's just the MSF doctor and the child, right? So I really like that by them telling their own story, it removes the manipulation and the biases that a nonprofit can actually place on that story or that community and just give some of the opportunity to like have their own dignity and autonomy in how their story is represented. But yes, reducing that divide, I think is so interesting.
00:12:02 Owen: Oh, it is for sure. Yeah. And it makes a difference. It makes a real difference. And on top of it as well, you know, even outside of the fact of we're living in a kind of more immediate world in terms of access to information and data, you know, and some people would say, oh, I wish it was the way it used to be, but unfortunately, the arc moves and we have to move with it. COVID in itself caused a huge change in activity and consumption from people as well. Even if you were looking at some of the data, in 2020 alone, there was a 96% increase in video consumption online/ And 90% of people you know want to see more content from brands that they can, that they engage with.
00:12:53 Owen: But not everybody can afford the resources to do that. So it's important to be able to find a way to do that in a way that makes sense and aligned with your mission. So the world has kind of, you know, it's gotten a little bit more grainy, a little bit more authentic, a little bit more consuming in terms of video, image, media and things like that and ultimately storytelling. And nonprofits, particularly not small nonprofits, but all nonprofits have a story to tell and can be told in a very compelling way.
00:13:22 Maria: I'd love to get your opinion on something because there was this organization that had, I don't know, I don't remember, it was a Canadian organization and they had started using AI to kind of bring their stories to life. So it didn't have a real person, but it was like a mom who was like sitting in a dark room with like a ray of light, like falling on her. And it was all a fake image, but it was meant to evoke an emotion. So I wonder what you think of that, of like, using generative AI to create videos, stories, pictures, images, anything like that. That's–
00:14:00 Owen: Yeah, so well, I'd come at that question first. It's such a pertinent and immediate question for everybody at the moment. What I would say is authenticity and realness wins, you know. So there is a, we're actually launching an AI learning language model integration ourselves in the next two or three weeks, but not on the video side of it, because, or not on the image side of it. Because if you're trying to create something that's not real, it's a, you know, it's a fabrication of what is a true story. And that's not something, A, that's a true reflection of the underlying need or ask, even though it might represent it in a very kind of obscure way.
00:14:41 Owen: But equally people are not going to connect to that, you know, in a way that you want and it doesn't reflect well, I think, on anyone's brand or mission to be putting out inauthentic images or inauthentic stuff. I can see the appeal of it. It's quick. We can all go on to ChatGPT and get it to generate an image that looks semi-real, but has a sheen around the edges that doesn't really convey. So grainy, low production values, wins every day over that stuff. But what I would say is there's a huge place for AI generally.
00:15:17 Owen: Like the kind of three places that we're really focusing on at the moment is, it's about freeing up more time for people who work in much smaller nonprofits. So for example, we're big on the donor experience. You know, we can, we have this can go to 10 X donor experience, 10 star donor experience. But, and part of that is, you know, people from nonprofits, thanking donors to the platform, are putting in descriptions around projects that they're putting in. And that sometimes can take a little bit of time. And what AI, certainly in this current state of evolution, is really good, is really helping with some of that stuff where it takes the blank page away from the person who's working at that nonprofit.
00:15:59 Owen: They can click a button, say if it's a thanking a donor for giving a $50 donation, we have this really cool integration where you can just click a button. It'll create this thanking message with that donor's name and you can then edit it from there if you wish to, but it's actually really good in terms of actually generating that thank you message. It's really heartfelt and empathetic. Or when you're creating a new campaign and project and you're trying to come up with a description, we have a prompt-based thing that allows you to just answer three simple questions with two or three words and it'll create a sample description for you and it's actually quite amazing. But you can still edit it from there and add in your kind of authentic or more personal pieces.
00:16:39 Owen: The other thing we're focusing on, and that's from the, just to share workload perspective from a small nonprofit, that's a really good use case for it. But the other thing that's really good is curation. For example, donors from our community, and we have a large group of donors who give to our nonprofit partners. If they come in and they have certain types of projects that they like to give to or based on personal experience, they can actually be curated using the AI to get to your non-profit projects that meet those kind of goals in a much smoother, slicker way.
00:17:17 Owen: There are really three good use cases for it at the moment, but that world is changing so dramatically. I think even in two, three years' time, it's going to be remarkably different from where we're at at the moment. That's probably going to be a long answer to your short question, but I wouldn't agree with using simulation for video or for images, I just don't think it's authentic. That's not where we're at.
00:17:42 Maria: So for your platform, when someone comes on, are you saying there's kind of like an algorithm that can move them to your nonprofit?
00:17:49 Owen: Yeah, well, so we have, just to give, I guess, a bit of a background. We have a platform called DonorSee and it's on donorsee.com, and there's basically, that's really for the donors. There's a huge community of donors that can discover projects that our partners have posted, or campaigns that they've posted. And we have peer-to-peer giving, crowdfunding, all that sort of stuff in there as well. But we have a staff picks page that's personalized to each individual donor that comes on, and then they can see projects by going down through a feed that they might want to give to.
00:18:25 Owen: But from the nonprofit side, then we have this really cool product that, connecting to that, it's called Rise by DonorSee. You can find that under actionrise.com. And that allows you then to use what is effectively a branded version of the platform with a portal into that display to the donor community. But it has, donor lockdown, so your donors can't find their way off into other partners. And that's kind of the way it works. So yeah, there is curation within the platform, but we're actually launching a much more updated version based on, kind of, AI as well just to make that process even, that matching process even better.
00:19:03 Maria: Oh I have some other questions around the video now. Do you find, like the video length matters because we're in an attention economy, we have TikTok, we have you know, Instagram reels, shorts all these things. Do you find, like if it's a shorter video that is uploaded by the participant, it's helpful or a longer video? And then just in that vein, does this perspective of, like is it someone recording a selfie video or is it someone being recorded and does that impact donations?
00:19:32 Owen: So just to answer the first question, generally the shorter. If it's an ask for a particular campaign, so we have project pages where you can post a video or images, you can post a video. And generally that ask probably comes in around the minute or less mark, but it's very rustically done and it comes in all forms. It can be somebody asking for a particular kind of project, it could be a world project, we've raised money for schools, all that type of thing. And then there's a description under it as well. And funnily enough, what we found is you'll get some people who are just visual-based people who really want to watch the video.
00:20:08 Owen: And that's the other aspect actually where AI comes in, because we can start using AI going forward now to transcribe the video and things like that. But you'll get some people who still like to read the description. So you can have a short description underneath as well. But the really sweet thing about that then is they see the activity on the page. They can see any follow-ups or comments. They can see when somebody's giving a donation, et cetera. So there's a momentum that builds, a community momentum that builds around that. So generally for the Ask video is kind of under a minute.
00:20:42 Owen: But for a follow-up video, super short, you know, hey, how's it going? Just want to give you a quick update. It can be… take any form. It can be just, you know, 30 seconds or less is quite effective. And I've totally forgotten your second question. Apologies, Maria. What was it?
00:20:59 Maria: Oh, the storyteller perspective. Like if it's a selfie or being recorded.
00:21:03 Owen: Oh, it can be both. Yeah, sometimes and it quite often gets into both. And we have, kind of a lot of selfies. We have, but some people don't like being on camera and that's perfectly okay as well. So sometimes it's just, say it could be a visual of a school that's being built. We have a great project at the moment, actually. Well, we've tons of great projects. I shouldn't play favorites, but so we have an engineer who works for Starlink, SpaceX that do the internet and they're off in the rural parts of the world installing Starlink in a school for girls. And it's kind of cool because all of a sudden there's a computer lab that's able to be installed there.
00:21:46 Owen: So there's a really, really kind of impactful and compelling story there. So you know, little vignettes and videos of like computers going in or whatever. And it's just, it can be super small like that. And very kind of effective because then anytime you post one of those, anyone who's given to the project sees it because they get a notification or anybody who's in your community, it appears in your community feed as well. So they can see it when they go on there. And all of a sudden there's this kind of momentum around your mission that's happening and people want to get involved and they want to share that.
00:22:17 Maria: So I am so connected to a bunch of businesses that serve the nonprofit space, as a business that serves the nonprofit space as well. And I've had a few conversations with a few vendors that provide software or any kind of databases or anything like that, when it comes to the integration and considerations around AI. But I wonder if you could kind of talk about that, like the considerations that the vendor side are having to consider when it comes to implementing these new really huge changes that could have a big benefit but might have other things to consider.
00:22:56 Owen: So do you mean with respect to actually integrating AI on, say, an existing CRM or something like that? Yeah, well, I guess it needs to be considered true in terms of what is the use case that you're actually using it for. That's the first thing. And a lot of these AI providers provide what's called an API integration, which allows you to integrate some of that capacity into your platform. But what you need to be careful on then is, okay, well, what's the data privacy around that? Are you sharing data off platform, et cetera? And if that is the case, you want to be careful about that, I would say.
00:23:37 Owen: That was one of the things that was kind of one of the warning aspects of using, say, ChatGPT. We were getting a lot of people asking questions that were sharing personal data with those, our data from a company or from an organization early on, and you're feeding a model that exists out in the internet, so you have to be careful about that. However, a lot of these tools are built in such ways that you can integrate them safely, where it only really is operating on data internally, and that data that's shown up is only particular to an organization or to a donor.
00:24:14 Owen: So that's really useful, and they can be done in a very helpful way from a user experience perspective or from a work low and reducing the work hours perspective without kind of causing those dangers. But you know, like anything else, it's always good to be aware of just the ins and outs of that. It's always good to be aware of what data you're working with, what is the data privacy implications for that and making sure that you're covering all of those aspects as well when you're integrating a piece.
00:24:46 Maria: And for the nonprofit side, how would they know that they're ready to adopt something like DonorSee? Maybe not necessarily DonorSee, but something that just engages their community in a different way.
00:24:59 Owen: Well, listen, I think you can always try it without any real downside to it. So one of the things that we pride ourselves on is a lot of... I think I might have mentioned this earlier on, but a lot of the large nonprofits have quite row massively bells and whistles like software pieces with CRMs that do everything and they have a lot of data analytics capacity. They have wealth management tools all strewn in there and all of that type of stuff. You feel like you'd nearly need a PhD in computer science and a team of five people just to operate it.
00:25:41 Owen: So what we pride ourselves on is actually simplicity. So we have a very easy to use platform. It's easy to get the data that you need. And from a nonprofit's perspective, it's easy to post campaigns and engage with donors. So there's really no downside to that. And there's no harm to trying it. We have a team as well in place that kind of, so it just doesn't come with a tool, but with a team in place that will coach you as well on how best to use video or how best to start using mobile phones or how best to just engage with a donor.
00:26:15 Owen: And it's quite simple. It can be tried on a relatively small scale before having to implement it on any sort of a large scale. But what we find is just people love it. And it starts helping them with their... 2022 and 2023 particularly was a tough time for nonprofits. As I'm sure you know, a lot of individual falling off in individual donations, even though… And there's been a large increase in donations through DAFs and foundations over the last few years, but 64% of giving is still from individuals.
00:26:47 Owen: So there's a lot to do there to help reduce churn and retain those donors and activate and cultivate them a lot more. So that's the key aspects. People spend a lot of money on new donor acquisition, as we'd say. That's a marketing term. But are trying to find new donors. But quite often, we're leaving too many of them out the back door. We have people who would really be, would love to be part of our community ambition going forward if they just knew more about it. And that's where we need to get rid of the transactional giving perspective and think more about community cultivation.
00:27:27 Maria: Owen, I love all of this. Are there any final thoughts that you want to leave our audience with? So whether that's storytelling, stewardship, AI, platforms, anything that you'd like to share.
00:27:39 Owen: Just final thoughts really, and I think I mentioned it. It was a tough year in 2023, but we're seeing a lot higher donor activity this year. And also, when it comes to utilizing these tools, there are tools like DonorSee that enable you to do that at scale without having to have a massive lift, particularly for a small nonprofit perspective. I wouldn't fear AI, I wouldn't rely too much on it in the sense that I wouldn't use simulation and things like that. But using, we're kind of integrating it in a way that makes sense for nonprofits.
00:28:13 Owen: Using it in a kind of a targeted way can really make your life easier. It really can and it can also help you understand some of the behaviors of your donor base and the behaviors of donors within the platform as well. So I think it's a positive future. Of course, that comes with it, more competition, more smarter targeting and competition, I guess, for what is a relatively static number of empathetic, you know, heart givers out there in the world.
00:28:44 Owen: But having said that, you know, those who can just stop being shy about telling your impact stories and do it in a smarter way where it's not always ask, ask, ask, but actually tell somebody, impact of what you're doing. You're going to have a good 2024 and you're going to have an even better 2025.
00:29:04 Maria: I love that. That's an Owen promise. Okay, so how can people continue the conversation with you?
00:29:12 Owen: Well, listen, we like to keep it personal. So if anybody wants to reach out and learn a little bit more about what we do, they can catch me at my email address, which is owen@donorsee.com. That's O-W-E-N@DonorSee. That's D-O-N-O-R-S-E-E dot com. And we'd love to have a conversation with you and be happy as well. Maria, just as to say thank you for bringing us on today, we'd be happy to give them an offer as well, where we give them a couple of months free to check out the platform and see if it works for them.
00:29:46 Maria: Great, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with me and our audience today. This has been a really interesting conversation and I think it leaves us with a lot to think about, about the role of storytelling and nonprofits and the platforms that we use and how we partner and work with them. So thank you again Owen for being a guest today.
00:30:08 Owen: Thanks so much Maria and everybody have a great day.
00:30:11 Maria: And as always, if you wanna see our lovely faces, you could check out the full recording on YouTube where you can see all of our hand motions, all that fun stuff. And if you wanna learn more about what DonorSee or Owen does, I'll have that linked in the description down below. And that's it for today, until next time, bye for now.
00:30:36 Maria: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit. If you want to continue the conversation, feel free to connect with our guests directly or find me on LinkedIn. Let's keep moving money to mission and prioritizing our well-being. Bye for now.
