2019 ANA Chicago Nonprofit Conference

THE CULTURE CLUB – THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CULTURE AND OUR ABILITY TO THRIVE IN FUNDRAISING!

This panel will discuss organizational culture and its impact on our ability to raise money and positively support our teams to do great work. So many fundraisers face real challenges in making change and persevering in the face of difficult organizational cultures. Through a lively conversation, our experienced panel will provide insights on their personal experiences with culture and help people who have a desire to build and facilitate great cultures and navigate through the process. Our panel will provide real life examples of how culture can enable people to do their best work, raise the most money and grow as individuals despite challenges and obstacles. 

Our experienced fundraisers we also will look at how organizational cultures are enabling people to do more than survive – and actually thrive and provide participants with real advice on making a difference in their own organizations or in their own careers going forward.

Kimberley Blease

Executive Vice President, Client Relationships Blakely

TBD

THE JOURNEY TO LEADERSHIP

Angel Aloma

Executive Director Food for The Poor

EFFECTIVELY LEVERAGING CO-OPERATIVE DATABASES

Track: Classic Direct Response

Help non-profits leverage their usage of co-operative databases and see how different organizations use co-operative databases.  This session is designed to delve into the rationale to include co-op segments in their marketing mix, volumes from each source to include, and how to develop an overall synergistic strategy amongst the participants.

Mike Vcelik

Senior Director, Development Boys Town

WHAT HAPPENED IN DECEMBER 2018, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

Track: Digital

Overall giving dropped -2.3%, and online giving dropped -4.4%. Theories have been discussed and debated among nonprofit marketers. Many included estimations of the economy, tax law changes, impacts caused by #GivingTuesday, or changes in the giving landscape.

While these could all have been influential factors, these theories are the result of marketers surveying marketers. RKD and research partner McQueen, Mackin & Associates co-commissioned a study to understand the perspective of donors.

The study digs deep on threads like:

• Would donors self-report giving less in December 2018?
• What drove a change in giving?
• How are donors prioritizing the organizations they support?

This session will explore finding of the research project and highlight how nonprofits can prioritize connection, relevance and authenticity in marketing strategy to help solve for December woes.

Justin McCord

Vice President, Marketing RKD Group

IS YOUR PLANNED GIVING PIPELINE AIRTIGHT?

Track: Mid-Level Giving

For decades, planned gift marketing had been a challenge for most organizations because generating highly qualified leads was very expensive and time-consuming. Most strategies and tactics involved ineffective, inefficient ‘spray and pray’ methods that yielded poor returns on investment.  Learn how to leverage technology to generate the most highly qualified leads for planned gifts at the lowest cost.

Valerie Vierengel

Director, Donor Retention ASPCA

IMPOSSIBLE GROWTH NUMBERS: TRANSFORMATIONAL PROGRAM CHANGES

Track: Transformational

We’ll look at real life examples of when organizations where faced with growth challenges and had to make transformational program shifts. This panel discussion includes four industry and nonprofit leaders who will answer questions that they’ve heard from their own Board and CEOs that required shifts within their programs, so you can prepare how you’d answer something similar when you want to make a transformational shift. Like the television game show “Around the Horn” this moderated discussion will award panelists with points for good arguments for or against various industry topics.

Daniel Karp

Vice President, Direct Response USO

WHO IS THAT “ANONYMOUS DONOR,” ANYWAY?

Track: Classic Direct Response

We’ve seen it hundreds of times: the unnamed donor, or donors, who “mysteriously” provide a gift that will “match” the gifts of your individual donors. But while this fundraising strategy can represent a much-needed boost for your fundraising program, if executed poorly, it can come across confusing, disingenuous, or even untrustworthy to your donor base. Learn how you can maximize your matching gift offer in a way that instills trust and excitement with your donors, from fundraising experts who have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in execution. Not sure how to even approach the idea of securing a matching gift? Learn how numerous nonprofits have secured LEGITIMATE matches in a way that flattered the donor and see real-life examples of how to convey the impact of the matching gift campaign after it has been executed.

Ashley Gundlach

Partner and Vice President, Client Services Nexus Direct

SEND LESS, RAISE MORE: RETHINKING EMAIL SEGMENTATION

Track: Digital

A case study of a large non-profit's woes about the "burn and churn" of sending too much email and the surprising gains of adapting a paradigm-shifting communication strategy. What happens when you move beyond traditional donor status segmentation and begin listening to donor behavior and matching cadence to engagement?

Kimberly Bersin

Director, Integrated Fundraising and Digital International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

SHOW THEM THE WAY: HOW TO UPGRADE DONORS TO MID-LEVEL GIVING

Track: Mid-Level Giving

Your low-dollar donor pool is a great source from which to build your mid-level giving circles. But what are the best practices to welcoming, stewarding, and engaging your donors so that they upgrade their giving? In this session, hear from organizations that growing their mid-level programs year-over-year. They will share strategies you can deploy that will help you bring in the right kind of donors, how and when to ask them to increase their giving, and how to ensure they continue to give at higher levels.

Margot O’Leary

Avalon Consulting

THE EVOLUTION AND INNOVATION IMPERATIVE

Track: Transformational

This is a crucial conversation. A discussion on why one day soon some of us may no longer be in business (and not for the right reasons like accomplishing our mission). As a group we'll walk through recent examples in the commercial space where well-loved brands have failed and pull apart the reasons why and what they may have done differently to turn things around before it was too late. Brands that once brought happiness and joy to consumers like Toys R Us. Just because we're doing good in the world that is no excuse to navel-gaze and expect to somehow be protected from changing consumer/donor behaviors, rapidly moving technology, and legacy business models. What could Toys R Us and other companies have done differently to prevent this? What should we be doing differently, if anything? It's not all doom and gloom, let's also look at the bright spots.

Adrian White Slagle

Director, New Business and Account Management One & All

The Nonprofit Organization of the Year Award, presented annually at the Chicago Nonprofit Conference, recognizes outstanding accomplishments by a nonprofit organization using data-driven marketing to advance its mission. The recipient is determined based on the following criteria:

• Sustained achievement in fundraising through data-driven marketing and consistently successful financial performance
• Recognized leadership with a reputation for excellence within the nonprofit and data-driven marketing communities, as well as with the public at large
• High ethical standards and compliance with generally accepted standards for management and public disclosure

MID-LEVEL GIVING BY THE NUMBERS

Track: Classic Direct Response

Mid-level giving programs are growing across non-profits of every size and sector.  But do you know how yours stacks up?  What measures are you using to track your success?  Are you investing in the right resources? Using data from a variety of non-profit sectors, we’ll uncover donor and revenue trends for this growing population of valuable contributors.  We’ll also hear from industry leaders who are managing growing programs about their best practice recommendations and pitfalls to avoid.

Deb Ashmore

Senior Fundraising Analyst Blackbaud

WHY IT PAYS TO BE ALL IN ON SOCIAL

Track: Digital

Social media is a powerful forum for connecting people to your cause. From generating awareness of your brand, to driving acquisition, activating supporters and generating donations, having a cohesive social media strategy is a quintessential step to fundraising and marketing success in the digital age. But today, having a “social media strategy” isn’t just one thing. It’s not “direct response OR organic”, and it’s not just having a donate button available on your Facebook page. A true social strategy sees the value of social media for every aspect of your nonprofit.

In this session, we’re talking about what it means to be “all in” on social, as it relates to your organic storytelling strategy, to your paid amplification, to making sure all the tools are there for your constituents to support, donate, share and engage meaningfully with you.

Katie Hood

Senior Strategist, Social Media and Content ForwardPMX

TBD

Track: Mid-Level Giving

TURNING THE SHIP: A PROGRAM STABILIZATION 'HOW TO' GUIDE

Track: Transformational

Donors down?  Revenue soft?  Retention struggling?  You are not alone.  Many organizations have struggled in recent years to navigate troubling fundraising waters.  This informative session will provide attendees with a step by step 'how to' guide for program stabilization to reverse the course of downward trends.  You will learn how to identify root causes of declining performance, create a thoughtful strategy to address the challenges identified and how to evaluate success towards stabilization goals.

Erica O'Brien

Managing Partner, Co-Owner MINDset direct

TBD MOBILE FOCUSED TELEMARKETING SESSION

Track: Classic Direct Response

KEEPING YELLOWSTONE FOREVER: HOW TREND-SPOTTING SAVED EOY

Track: Digital

When Yellowstone Forever first built their audience in 2016, their donors were a core group of highly invested hand-raisers: park visitors and those deeply rooted in the mission of preserving the nation’s first national park. Needless to say, after over a year of acquiring new names to the list, the days of low-hanging fruit were over – and in early 2018, the team identified a need to rely closely on data, pivot its strategic approach, and ensure an increase in the total number of gifts could offset a lowered average gift amount, all ahead of the fast-approaching crucial moment of year-end.

In this session, the team at Anne Lewis Strategies and Yellowstone Forever will guide you through the innovations and digital experiences that helped bring Yellowstone to the backyards – and hearts – of their entire audience, securing a 50% increase year-over-year gifts, and a stronger end-of-year in 2018 than ever before.

Maureen McNally

Senior Vice President and Director, Accounts Anne Lewis Strategies

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF HIGH-TOUCH, MID-LEVEL GIVING

Track: Mid-Level Giving

How Planned Parenthood increased revenue retention and ROI within its mid-level program using data analytics, segmentation, and strategic cultivation: Every program has donors that give below their potential. The challenge is how to effectively identify, target, retain and upgrade these donors. Blending the use of direct marketing and strategic stewardship and engagement strategies, Planned Parenthood is working to create a mid-level fundraising program that raises more money while enhancing the donor experience and increasing loyalty.

Sara Nakano

Senior Account Director O'Brien Garrett

BRAND PURPOSE - HOW CHARITIES WORK WITH BRANDS TO RAISE FUNDS AND AWARENESS

Track: Transformational

Across the generations, people now give to charities in new ways and seek to purchase from reputable brands that partner with causes they believe in. As both organizations and brands look to ensure they partner and engage properly, it is important to learn about such alliances and how they share their missions to have an even larger impact. Come to hear case studies about brands and charities that have partnered successfully and discover how this approach raises awareness about your organization to raise more funds!

Senny Boone

SVP, Nonprofit Federation, Email Experience Council and Accountability ANA

UNITED WAY 135 YEARS YOUNG…AND COUNTING

How do you take a 135-year-old brand and make it relevant to today’s (and tomorrow’s) citizen-philanthropists?  During this session, United Way Worldwide Chief Marketing Office Lisa Bowman will take the audience through the organization’s three-year brand transformation journey.  From rebuilding trust and increasing awareness, to galvanizing engagement of donors, advocates and volunteers, and asserting the relevance of the 135-year-old organization, Lisa will discuss the challenges facing the United Way Worldwide when she joined in 2015 and the strategy she executed to research, develop and execute a new face of the organization.   The session will include data from United Way’s 2018 National Brand Tracker and Edelman’s 2019 Trust Barometer, outlining the results of the brand transformation and challenges faced by similar institutions.

Lisa Bowman (@LisaBowmanUWW)

Chief Marketing Officer United Way Worldwide

IS 2019 TOO LATE TO START A DIRECT MAIL PROGRAM?

Track: Classic Direct Response

A lot of newer organizations have their start-up and roots primarily in the digital space.  Is there room for mail in their marketing program?  How can you best use the mail channel?  And what should be the decision points that define parameters around your direct mail program.

Teresa Weaver

Vice President, Client Strategies O'Brien Garrett

GEN X- THE FORGOTTEN GENERATION

Track: Digital

Gen X- the forgotten generation.

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Trapped between Baby Boomers and Millennials, Gen Xer’s tend to be the forgotten middle child. However, in the next 30 years, we will experience the biggest transfer of wealth from one generation to another- over $30 Trillion dollars will be handed down to the generation that grew up on Sesame Street and saw the wall come down. Will you be ready? Don’t you forget about them.

In this session, we will dive deep into the spending habits, propensity to give and demographics of this generation that is about to become you next big donor.

Paige Kelbe

Account Director Epsilon

LOCK IT DOWN! GET SUSTAINERS COMMITTED FOR THE LONG HAUL

Track: Monthly Giving

Sustainers are critical to revenue growth for your organization, so you need to be committed to keeping them engaged. See how two very different organizations in terms of sustainer program size and maturity approach acquisition and retention. Learn how you can employ these strategies today along with best practices around them for success. You will leave with a toolbox of techniques to implement, along with a plan to make the case for support internally and likely have some laughs along the way.

This session will make sure you are ready to get committed to your sustainers and ensure that you are ready to get them engaged to you for the long term!

Michelle Ehrhardt

Deputy Director, Membership ACLU

MAXIMIZING SUPPORTER VALUE THROUGH ADVANCED ANALYTICS

Track: Program Analytics

Join Sierra Club and MarkeTeam to discover how Sierra Club utilizes data mining and long-term value (LTV) analyses to make strategic investment decisions that allow the organization to diversify its donor pool, grow its sustainer program, and better target its large activist file for conversion.  Applying advanced analytics pre and post testing allows Sierra Club to leverage the plethora of investment options at its disposal including Facebook Messenger, Peer-to-Peer, and various internet forums, not to mention the old standbys of email, direct mail and telemarketing.  Additionally, because of the many different options for supporters, Sierra Club must constantly monitor activity through these various channels.  Find out how this bastion of environmental justice establishes their framework for engaging with their growing database of supporters.

Drew Seman

Senior Director, Digital Fundraising Sierra Club

TESTING FOR IMPACT

Track: Classic Direct Response

Tired of testing month after month with little to show for it? Looking to increase your bottom line impact and save costs? In this session, you’ll hear from organizations who are bucking the trend on testing by favoring smart testing over testing for testing’s sake. They test deliberately and for impact to move the dial, not just the needle. We’ll share testing results, how to ensure you are testing for statistical validity, and how to incorporate this kind of testing into your program.

Kerri Kerr

Avalon Consulting

YOUR DIGITAL MEDIA BUDGET: BUILD IT AND GET IT APPROVED

Track: Digital

Learn from the digital experts about their process, strategies, attribution analysis and tactics used to develop and sell their digital media budgets to the keeper of the purse strings!  In addition, this session will present surprising findings from a national survey on Digital Media Spending in the nonprofit marketplace --- or more specifically, the media spending across search, email, social, and display advertising. You’ll be able to benchmark how you compare!

Roger Hiyama

Senior Vice President, Client Services Wiland

MAKING THE MOST OF THE BREAK-UP – HOW TO WIN BACK SUSTAINERS

Track: Monthly Giving

You’ve spent countless dollars and time acquiring new sustainers, but have you spent time digging into attrition and reviewing your efforts to win them back? We will look at examples of sustainer programs that have set-up warning mechanisms to get ahead of attrition and have processes in place to win them back.

Kate Hollandsworth

Senior Director, Strategic Services Integral

SIMPLE ATTRIBUTION TECHNIQUES FOR A COMPLEX FUNDRAISING WORLD

Track: Program Analytics

If you are a smart fundraiser today, you are acquiring and cultivating new donors in a number of different ways.  The expansion of channels for donor acquisition, cultivation and retention has opened up exciting possibilities for nonprofit organizations to reach out to diverse communities for support and advocacy.  But it has also created a new challenge—how can you measure the return on investment for any given channel when a donor may have had multiple touches before giving to your organization?  In this session, we will provide you with simple tools you can use to evaluate the return on investment of your acquisition efforts in a complex, multichannel world.  We will show you how you can measure the impact of each channel independently and in concert with your overall fundraising strategy—while avoiding complex and arbitrary attribution formulas.   And, most importantly, we will discuss how you can use simple attribution techniques to break away from channel specific investment strategies—creating a donor-focused acquisition strategy for your organization that takes full advantage of the new opportunities in our current fundraising environment.

Peter Schoewe

Mal Warwick Donordigital

Privacy legislation at the state and federal level threaten nonprofit organizations in new ways—from potentially limiting donor data sources to adding new compliance burdens for charities and organizations. Whether you are a company working for a charity, or an organization seeking new donors, you need to know the latest! Come to a “fireside chat” to learn the developments in data privacy challenges, ANA’s actions to develop sound privacy policy at the federal level and much more!

Senny Boone

SVP, Nonprofit Federation, Email Experience Council and Accountability ANA

BREAK DOWN ORG SILOS, PRIORITIZE YOUR SUPPORTERS' EXPERIENCE

Track: Classic Direct Response

Good fundraising programs are the result of good organizations. And good organizations are supporter-centric, prioritize supporter engagement and are collaborative across teams, enabling them to deliver inspiring, integrated, and individualized content to their community.

In this session, we’ll use experiences from JDRF and other nonprofits to discuss how to break down the organization's walls that get in the way of creating the best possible experience for your supporters. 

We’ll draw from the experience of marketers trying to bring change to decades old non-profits and working to collaborate with development, mission and IT teams in the process. This session will breakdown the five factors stopping organizations from achieving a digital breakthrough: investment, technology, governance, creative and delivery of service.

Stephen Muller

Managing Director Blue State Digital

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR GOOGLE ANALYTICS?

Track: Digital

Google Analytics is a treasure trove of data for direct marketers, but are you using it? Does your org have it set up correctly?

In this session we will dive deeper into the data and measurement tools that Google has to offer that can help us understand attribution, paths to conversion and the how the behavior of your audience can inform channel and messaging choices.  How can we ensure that our GA implementation is correct to track conversions, attribution, owned and earned strategies so that we can properly optimize against our objective of converting site traffic into donors.

Bigger picture, GA can be intimidating, so what are the key pieces a direct marketer data should you be monitoring and how to get at that data simply and efficiently.

Jeff Ostiguy

Vice President, Marketing THD

DIVERSIFY TO WIN: BALANCING ONE TIME & MONTHLY GIVING

Track: Monthly Giving

Balancing one time & monthly giving strategies can be challenging as it often requires vigilance in balancing immediate and future outcomes.  However, committing to investments in both programs will ultimately have the greatest long term payoff for the organization.  Attendees will benefit from examples showcasing how the case for investments, across a diverse channel mix, are made by organizations.  In addition, attendees will see specific creative used, audience targeted and outcomes generated.

Letal Zidkony

Senior Vice President, Fundraising Strategies MINDset direct

THIS IS HOW DIRECT MAIL & DIGITAL CAN REALLY PLAY TOGETHER!

Track: Program Analytics

It’s 2019. Are you still having the big, scary, philosophical debates about channel integration? If the answer is, “yes”, here’s some other questions for you. Did you ever stop to think about what makes these conversations so big and scary, and why? And are they resulting in any meaningful new plans, strategies, or results?

We have some advice: Stop thinking about channel integration and start thinking about the easy wins that can come from getting direct mail and digital working together. In this session, we’re going to be talking about the clear proof points your teams need to make investment changes, look at your file differently and get online and offline channels working together to achieve shared goals (No complex integration lingo here!). Before you get to your next steps towards innovating your program, have these conversations about the bread and butter integration pieces you might be missing!

Mark McLean

Director, Direct Mail Client Services ForwardPMX

DOES YOUR DM NEED A STICK OF DYNAMITE OR A KICK IN THE ASK?

Track: Classic Direct Response

Acquisition is underperforming. First year retention rates are at an all-time low. And with donor files are shrinking, it’s more important than ever to reactivate lapsed donors. Its more critical than ever to create direct mail packages that ramp up your acquisition program and reactivate your lapsed donors. The answer lies beyond making tweaks to your renewal program, testing new packages that don’t have a chance beating the control, and acquiring donors that don’t stick around. In this session, you will learn proven strategies that can make your direct mail program more effective by showing you how to design more impactful creative, more innovative offers, and analytics that can drive your fundraising program more efficiently.

Marisela Guillen

Acquisitions Campaigns Manager Oblate Missions

PEER-TO-PEER FUNDRAISERS: HOW TO MAXIMIZE THAT FREE MONEY

Track: Digital

You might love this new crowdsourcing trend for the money it brings in without you lifting a finger. But you might also be wondering if you’re leaving money on the table by not proactively participating in the strategic process, especially with Facebook fundraisers. In this session, you’ll learn from the experts at Anne Lewis Strategies and Sandy Hook Promise about how some of the most successful nonprofits are seizing this opportunity to maximize results: running ads, targeting emails, and providing your audience with the tools they need for a successful fundraiser online.

Aaron Teskey

Vice President Anne Lewis Strategies

RETAINING YOUR SUSTAINING DONORS

Track: Monthly Giving

Retention is where the value of sustaining donors is made or lost.  Traditional variables like age of donor, acquisition channel, or your campaign copy won’t fix sustainer retention.  The most important variables are about quality: quality of the donor experience and quality of the donor herself.  Organizations will show you how they are collecting this data and using it to manage their fundraisers, change the donor experience, and get massive improvement in retention.

Kevin Schulman

Founder DonorVoice

BEYOND BUZZWORDS: HOW DATA SCIENCE CAN ATTRACT NEW AUDIENCES

Track: Program Analytics

Nonprofit organizations need to be engaging new supporters every day, including new audiences who traditionally haven’t been included — whether that’s young people, certain geographic regions, or people of color. A lot goes into engaging new audiences — including an organization-wide commitment, an authentic voice that resonates with these new groups, and relationships in the community. Data science can also be a powerful tool to help organizations engage new audiences. In this session, NRDC will share how the organization is leveraging analytics to develop a data-driven outreach and engagement strategy, including how NRDC has used:

• Data to move beyond intuition to understand its existing supporter base and establish realistic growth goals
• Predictive modeling to identify who to reach out to
• Testing to understand which issues and messaging are most effective with which audiences
• Cross-department analytics to align teams on organization-wide goals

Scarlett Swerdlow

Director, Applied Data Science Civis Analytics