A nonprofit spends a lot of time growing its database of people, whether that database is an excel spreadsheet or something fancy. In this episode, Nancy and Sarah talk about how to know who is in your community and how best to engage them. They talk about the assumptions we make about people when we give them binary options– give or don’t give– something that we can fix by expanding what we ask of people. They share ways to take what we learn about people in our database to strengthen our whole community, not just our organization.
Questions to reflect on before you listen:
What do you know about the people in your database?
Discussion questions:
- What resonated with you about this conversation? What would you like to take back to your organization?
- How do you get feedback from the people in your database?
- What do you think about Sarah’s idea of giving people more than two options to choose from in a solicitation? What options would you give members of your community?
- Sometimes we learn from “our” people that they would make great supporters of a different nonprofit in our community. How does that idea land with you? Do you refer people to other nonprofits?
Words of the Week: Hear
What does “hear” mean to you?