Today on the Debt Free Mom podcast, we are
talking all about generosity and giving. And today I have Nathan Hill. And it's not just a coincidence
that his last name is Hill. I am actually married to Nathan's brother. So Nathan and I have known each other
for a long time, but now we get to talk in a more professional setting. So Nathan, can you tell us what you
do and why you would be part of a conversation about generosity and giving? Yeah, well, first of all, this
is a very strange experience..
. Same. talking to you in this
setting, but I like it. I'm excited for it. Yeah. So what I do, I work for a company
called NextAfter and I oversee what we call the NextAfter Institute. In short, what our company does, we help
nonprofits grow their digital fundraising. And so we're a full service,
like digital fundraising, marketing agency for nonprofits. What I do on the Institute side is
I really take everything that we are learning from research, trying to
go understand what are nonprofits doi
ng today to try to grow giving. Yeah, I'm conducting a lot of
that research and I'm taking those learnings and trying to feed them
back to the nonprofit marketplace. I'm also I'm trying to lead the charge
at our company around how do we run more testing and experimentation with
the goal of you know, our mission is to decode what works to grow giving. So we run a lot of A/B testing, look at a
lot of data and statistics and all sorts of things to try to decode what's going
to move the needle to ge
t more people to say "yes" and actually part with
your hard earned money and entrust it to someone else to go do something impactful. So I'm trying to more or less like
understand all the different learnings from those kind of two pieces of
research and then go turn that into training and courses and materials to
go equip as many nonprofits as we can with what actually works so that we
can see giving and generosity grow. Okay, cool. So most of the time you
are actually talking to the organizatio
ns, not to the donors. Is that right? Exactly. We sit in this weird balance of we're, I
mean, we're mostly talking to fundraisers are mostly talking to marketers at
nonprofit organizations and charities. But then also trying to do everything
that we can to put ourselves in the mindset and in the shoes of a donor,
so we can understand like, what are the obstacles that keep people from
actually giving, and not just using what people say in survey data and
that sort of thing, because people can beh
ave in a radically different way
than they think they're going to behave. So that's what we're bringing
data to that conversation. So, from my side of it, I see just
like you're looking at insights into why people do the things that they
do, why they behave the way they do, I also have a cool window into what
people do by getting to see their budgets and by getting to see the way
that people earn money and then the way that they choose to spend that money. So as I'm looking at people's budgets,
not a lot of people give regularly, but a lot of people want to give. So if they don't give, they'll
mention something like, Oh, well, I like to give to school occasionally
or at the end of the year, I'll do something for Christmas, but they're
not really doing it consistently. So if someone has an organization
or a cause that they love, that they maybe wish that they could give more
to, what are some of the benefits that you see for that organization
of having someone who regularly gives instea
d of haphazardly gives? Yeah, well, a kind of a weird thing
that comes up a lot when we are working with different organizations,
charities, fundraisers, etc. is that many nonprofits have a really hard
time articulating why it is more valuable to give on a recurring basis, like you
see, I mean, ads and offers and that sort of thing in emails, direct mail, all
that sort of stuff where people obviously want you to give on a monthly basis. And there's clear like economic value from
that for the org
anization because they can go project out what the revenue is going
to be, which helps them set budgets and that sort of stuff to understand where
they can invest and how much they can invest rather than being reliant purely
on just, I hope that they give again. Like, they gave once, we hope
they're going to give again. There's also lots of data. I mean, for, on the fundraising side
of things to go look at lifetime value of a donor and that sort of thing. If someone is a recurring giver. Rather
than just giving one
time every now and again. So there's donor retention rates. We're looking at all sorts of that kind
of data that donors don't care about but what we care about is we're trying to
figure out what's gonna move the needle. And when it comes down to it, most
nonprofits just don't communicate effectively as to why is it better,
why is it more impactful to give at that on a recurring basis? And quite honestly, it's really hard
to make that kind of an argument to someone who's givi
ng, you
know, I would say a smaller level, whether it's 20 bucks a month or 50
bucks or a hundred bucks a month. To make just like a purely
economic argument as to why it feels a little bit cold and stale. And that's where like trying to really
understand, like as the donor who's making that decision, trying to really
understand from the organization what is actually fundamentally going
to happen with this money when I give it to you on a monthly basis. Yes, I could write you a lump sum
check at
the end of the year to get whatever tax benefit I need
from it and that sort of thing. But there has to be a unique value of
me, whether it's supporting a specific person or a specific program or
something that needs ongoing funding. That's, what's really hard from the donor
side of it is you don't have all those answers and nonprofits by and large have
a really hard time communicating that stuff especially in a digital channel,
which is where we live most of the time. So I don't know if that g
ives you
like complete answer to the question, but it certainly shows the challenge. Yeah, I think what would be interesting
is I would imagine that from a donor perspective or being a donor myself,
if I have a organization that I'm passionate about, or even just a
cause that I'm passionate about, and I think, oh, well, the amount that I
can give probably doesn't do anything, probably doesn't do a whole lot. But if I were to know that, like
you said, what they can plan for in advance is differen
t if I'm regularly
giving than if I'm haphazardly giving. I think if, if maybe people listening
would recognize that the exact same amount of money might have a slightly, even if
it's one or two percent more, a slightly larger impact positively to the cause
that they love so much by being consistent and planned versus being haphazard. It's like, if you get a random bonus
that you weren't expecting, that's really exciting, and you do something with it,
but you do it one time, and it doesn't reall
y change how you plan your budget. But if you get a raise for $20 a month,
you can actually change what you plan to do over time and so helping a potential
donor see that the exact same amount of money might have a slightly bigger impact
than being unexpected could maybe be like, Oh, well, I care about that cause
and I want to help it as much as I can. And if I can't give more money,
maybe I can just make that same money be more planned and consistent. Yeah, that's such a good connection
because
it is this, like, granted like budgets are very different when
you're looking at a large non profit versus your average person's personal
budget, but it's the same philosophy. It's the same principle that's at work. I think there's, there's potentially,
and I don't want to, I don't want to overemphasize like efficiency of a gift
meaning like a lot of times when like the the bare minimum way to sort of
evaluate the impact of a donation at a particular charity, most people default
to looking at t
hings like, well, what percentage of my donation is actually
going towards the programs versus you know, quote unquote "overhead." Which we could have a long
conversation about that, because I think that the logic in that
conversation is fundamentally flawed. And we can talk about that if you want to. But like, if you want to see more of your
donation go directly to the cause, like a recurring thing gift because it allows
for a non profit to plan that better like it's less work that has to go in
to
go from the fundraiser side of it to go reacquire a donation or to get you to give
for that second time or for the third time which means maybe they don't have to spend
quite as much on those kind of overhead marketing pieces that you know that donors
don't necessarily like to see even though they're essential to growth and impact. So it may make your gift actually
more efficient because you allow the organization to plan better. On that same note if you'll let me chat
about efficiency, as
we're like thinking about who to give to and how much you
would give to a different organization again that's kind of like the default
mentality is to go look at what percent goes to the programs because as a donor;
and I give, and you give, like, we want to see as much of our funds go to actually
helping a person or helping whatever the cause is as much as is possible. Dan Pallotta has a TED Talk
from probably 10 -15 years ago or so, and it's wonderful. You should look him up. But he has this w
hole, he
makes this whole argument. It's really well done. And actually there's a new movie that he
just released about a month ago called Uncharitable, that just explores this
kind of concept of the, the flaw in just looking at efficiency of giving. And he makes a really compelling argument
that we need to be looking at impact. And we've, as a culture, we have
made this idea of quote unquote "overhead" the most important thing. You know, if I'm going to give a hundred
bucks, would I rather have
my $100 go directly to a person or to the program,
or what if 80 of my dollars went directly to the thing, to the program,
but they could use the 20 to actually go turn that into an additional like
$500 over the next couple of years. And now you think about that at scale,
there's so much more impact that can be made if we measure results based on
impact and not on overhead and efficiency. Why do you think organizations then
are the ones that are putting out that so clearly because like if you g
o I
know I've looked at lots of them or you even get them in emails where it's like
Hey if you donate then, you know this percent I even know one organization
that kind of boasts about being the one that uses the most of your money so why
is that something that they themselves are pushing if it's not necessarily
helping their overall mission? I think it's perceived as being an
effective way to help someone understand that their gift is valued and going
to something that they care about. So I th
ink there's just, there's a
perception that's been created that it is important, but also, I mean, as a culture,
I think donors have been trained to think that that's the most important thing. And in that movie, that Uncharitable film,
there's a lot of different examples that they kind of go through of some pretty
major organizations that have been doing tremendous things, incredible things,
making enormous impact, and then have basically been, I would, I'll use the
word outed, even though I don
't really believe it, like outed is like, Oh, this
percent is actually going towards, you know, stuff for executives and marketing
and to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reality is that after that
kind of reporting and journalism came out, people stop giving and
then impact falls off a cliff. And so like a lot of that is just
driven by culture and media and all that sort of stuff and how
we perceive what's important. And so the whole Dan Pallotta argument is
like, we've got to change that
mentality. And that's the only way they're
actually going to actually see some of the world's most complicated problems
get solved is if we care about the impact of our money, as opposed to
just the efficiency of our money. Anyway, that's like a sidebar. But Yeah, no, I want to focus
on that a little bit. If you, knowing what you know and the work
that you've done, if you can make, wave a magic wand and have the idea of efficiency
go away, what would you replace it with? Like, what do you think
donors actually
need to know in order to be like, oh, that is an organization that is actually making
the impact that they're claiming to make. Yeah, that's a really, it's
a really good question. When we coaching a nonprofit,
coaching fundraisers, that sort of thing, we often talk about how do you
communicate your value proposition? Because I don't think like the
measurement is the same for everyone. Like from cause to cause, even
from organization to organization that's pursuing the same, you
know, general kind of impact. Like your measurement probably is going
to change in terms of what you care about. But we talk about how do you
communicate your value proposition. And you need to have a strong appeal,
which is really kind of the core reasons that someone should give. As we've talked a little bit about,
like you have to help someone understand what their gift is actually going to do. Cause oftentimes we've got, there's
organizations, whether large or small, they're normally trying
to tackle a really big problem. And if you could tackle the problem and
solve it with a $10,000 gift, you probably go find somebody to make a $ 10,000 gift. Bam, problem solved, move
on to the next thing. The reality is that the solutions
to the problems that we're trying to solve as charities are big. And the solutions can't be
solved with just a singular gift. But then the work is then put on to the
non profit, the fundraiser, if you will, to then communicate to a donor who's
gonna give 50 buc
ks, 100 bucks, maybe they're giving a thousand, like what does
your gift practically and actually do. And then go back that up with
credibility through reviews, through testimonials, through even just
through storytelling over time. Whether that's through email
communication, that's through what they're doing in their marketing
and video content out in the world. That's where like we have to show
people what is actually happening with funds, because we live in a
day and age where like institutio
nal trust has eroded so much that you
can't just say like, Oh yeah, just trust us because we are a nonprofit. There's a speaker at our conference
about a month ago, who was sharing some of those stats on just like the
trust that people have in brands. And at this point. It's, nobody trusts non profits,
they don't trust them any more than they trust a for profit. We trust individual people a heck
of a lot more than we trust any sort of institution or organization. So we've gotta, we've gotta show
our
receipts on the impact to actually help donors trust that their money
is going to something meaningful. And it's almost like anti trust. It's like the fact that you are
an organization repels trust. It's not just like that organization has
done something to take away my trust. It's like inherently because you're an
organization, I'm almost, at this point, people in general are primed to say,
oh, that's, that is cause for distrust. Simply the fact that they are an
organization or that they h
ave a CEO or that they have an office means
I'm not supposed to trust them. So, to piggyback off of that,
with the idea of trusting an individual over an organization, I
have several times run, like a, I wouldn't even call it a campaign. I've basically just said, I
will gather small donations on Venmo and PayPal towards this
organization or towards this cause. So, World Central Kitchen is
one I've done several times. St. Jude is one I've done. I did Save the Children right
when the Ukraine confl
ict started. And what has been confusing for me has
been how quickly people are willing to send me money who they have never met,
who I have no regulation whatsoever, no oversight, there would be no
repercussions whatsoever if I took all of that money and, and went on vacation. Like there would absolutely, there
would be nothing, no recourse that the donor could have against me, but people
who have not given before will gladly send me money on PayPal and Venmo. So, what, why? I guess, like, from
your, like, do you
have any perspective as you've talked to organizations who struggle with that, they
struggle with that institutional distrust, what might be the root cause of that,
number one, and then number two, how might organizations leverage what is happening
there in order to then regain that trust? I would just love your thoughts on
general in that phenomenon because as the person who's taken the
money, it's been confusing for me. Yeah, well, I mean, I, I do think it
starts with, with
that, you know, what we, we kind of already said, like,
just institutional trust is gone. We trust people more than we trust
institutions as a whole, unless you've really, really, really gone
out of your way to build a trustworthy brand, which there are some for sure. And the root of that,
I couldn't say exactly. There's a lot of thinking
around what the root of that is. A lot of it has to do with the way
that things are reported in media today and access to just more information. Yeah. So lots
has changed even over the
past just couple of generations in terms of all that level of trust. So, I mentioned our conference we've
connected, we hosted about a month ago. Carlos Whitaker is who, I'm
a Carlos Whitaker fanboy. fan. Big fan here. Part of the Insta Familia over here. I have to just pause and say that
the one time I was actually able to communicate with him on Instagram was
because he posted his exact height and weight and I responded that I
am the exact same height and weight. And
he thought it was so funny. I, I told, I just responded and
I was like, Hey, if you ever need a stand in, I am the exact
same height and weight as you. And he like loved it. And then I met him a year later and I
was like, Hey, I'm the one that's the exact same height and weight as you. And he remembered it like exactly. He was like, I was on a plane to
this thing when that happened. That was so funny. So just for anyone listening, if
you ever need a Carlos Whitaker body double, I'm your girl. O
h, that's fantastic. Moving on. Just shave your head and you'll be good. yeah, stick a hat on, smile
a lot more than I do now. That's hilarious. Well, so, he spoke at our conference and
was breaking down some of that because he does a very similar thing, as you know. And it's just, it's incredible the, the
movement, I think I'll call it a movement. I don't know if he, if he would, that's
been just built around almost him as a, as a personality, but also just kind of
what he represents, which is
just how do we start to treat people like people and
humans like humans and get rid of all the, just the vitriol that's often in
the world and just see people as people. And that's a really compelling
you know, philosophy and mindset. And so anyway, they, he rallies
people to give to lots of different causes and he was sharing both wins,
but also mistakes along the way. And was very transparent about a lot
of that stuff, but no, it was really interesting for him to express the same
thing that yo
u're expressing, which is like, why do people trust me just to
some more or less, I wouldn't call him a random person on Instagram, but more
or less, he's just another, he is just another person on Instagram and other
platforms that's asking you to send money to his Venmo account and asking
you to just trust him that he's going to go give that like one of the more
recent ones was giving money to after the school shooting that was in Nashville. That whole group raised money to go
basically send a
ll of the faculty, staff, teachers, and I think even
parents, like to pay for at least three like, counseling therapy sessions
for everyone, which is it's amazing to see that level of generosity. All that money just flowed
through his Venmo account. And I mean, it doesn't take a pro in
Photoshop to go just like fabricate all that stuff, pocket the cash and run. So why do we do that? And I think it comes back like we don't
trust organizations and we trust people. And that's honestly, that's a, it
's a
principle and it's a philosophy that, that we try to encourage nonprofits
to adopt in their communication, which is like, yeah, you have your brand
and it's really valuable, but people don't give to marketing machines. People give to people, people give to
people that they know and that they trust. And so, like, we have to go build that
level of trust on a human to human level, even if it's through email communication
that we all know is either automated or done in mass, it's not actually o
ne to
one, but we have to try to be human and genuine and personal in order to build
that trust so that people trust us to make the impact we say that we can make. But I agree, it's a very weird phenomenon. Yeah, for sure. So what would your, what would you say to
people who, who are saying, hey, I would rather give to Carly's Venmo than to St. Jude Children's Hospital? Like what would your, you have
expertise in that, how would you respond to that lack of trust? Is it warranted or would you
say
, hey, these are actually like vetted organizations. You can trust what they say. What would you say to a hesitant
donor who's hesitant because of trust? The vast majority of
organizations you can trust. But I get why there's a lack of
trust because there again, there are so many stories where money has
not been used in the right way in so many different categories and areas. And so I, I do think though, I
mean, I get, I'm a product of my own generation, so like, I'm in agreement,
I don't trust
institutions and I would rather give you my money if,
because I trust that you are going to go give it to something meaningful,
even if it ends up still going to St. Jude, like, I think that's the, that's the
confusing part to me is if I, if I'm successful, then I'm giving
it to the exact organization that you're saying you don't trust. That, that's the confusing part for me,
is like, I, you trust me, but you don't trust World Central Kitchen, so you
want to give your money to me, so that I can
give it to World Central Kitchen. Maybe it's just that then the onus is
on me, if, you know, if World Central Kitchen ends up not being reliable,
then it's my fault, not theirs, because they're a degree removed from it. I, I don't know, but that,
that is a confusing part. Carly said this money was going
to do this thing and it didn't. Now they have two that they can point
the finger at the institution and at me. It could be that. It's probably a mix of a lot of things. It also, I wonder if it, i
t is just
simply a matter of understanding too. Like, I trust that Carly, who I also
trust with, you know, understanding my budget better and how to be
more effective with my money. I trust that she's put the work in to
understand where to best invest my money in order to make a positive impact. So, so maybe that's, that's
part of it is I haven't done the work to know what's going to be
helpful and impactful for people. But I want to give, but Carly has
helped me cross that bridge to understand
what's, what's going to
be most effective and impactful? It lowers the bar. It lowers the fear level because
it's just like, Oh, well, I've been, you know, I've watched her
in on Instagram for three years. So she feels known even though
she's not, you know, like. But it's just a, it's a feeling, rather
than it is evidence, I guess I would say. So, if someone is actually the opposite,
and they're like, no, I don't want to just give to a random person on Instagram,
and I want to give, but I'm hesi
tant because of that lack of institutional
trust, what are practical things that you would say, like, look for this on their
website, or I know you can't, you know, vet 100%, but here's how to have a metric
for more trustworthy rather than not. Yeah, well, as, as a bit of an insider
to know, especially with the amount of research we conduct to try to understand
like what are nonprofits doing on their donation pages and that sort of thing,
because especially like with year end giving coming up an
d all that sort of
stuff, you're probably going to get a billion emails in your mailbox, and it's
going to drive you to a website to give. And through our research, we have a
pretty clear understanding that the vast majority of nonprofits don't really
communicate anything meaningful on their donation page to help you understand
any more about why you should give. So just to throw some stats out there,
the, what the benchmark for a, a main donation page conversion rate, which is
how many people t
hat land on a donation page actually give a gift is like 19%. Which means that 81 percent of people
that show up with the intention of giving, maybe they're just there
to find out more, but oftentimes there's not more to find out. Or, or there's actual, like, problems
on the page, something with the form, something on the page that's triggering
anxiety that causes you to bail. So, there's work to be done there. Knowing that, like, there's probably not
going to be enough information on the page f
or you to decide, do I trust you? Do I want to make this impact? What is the impact? Like, I can give hope anywhere,
and you're telling me I can give hope when I give 100 bucks. What the heck does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. So, I mean, quick, quick places to look
is go to their about page, go find an impact report because they're required
to post an impact report annually and, you know, there's a lot of variance
in terms of what those look like. You can look at financials
and that so
rt of stuff. Again, I would focus more on what
are they communicating in terms of how many people they've been able
to impact, what are the testimonials and stories that they're sharing that
actually show you the, the receipts for the impact that they're making. So that, that, that would be, I guess,
a kind of a baseline encouragement is like, don't just, if you're look actively
looking to give and you're considering a specific charity, don't just stop at the
donation page, spend some time looki
ng around, see what they're actually sharing. And then as someone in the fundraising
space, I don't ever feel like we should put the work on a donor to
have to go find that sort of stuff. But now from that perspective, if
I'm trying to figure out where to get, don't be afraid to ask questions
because likely it's a really good cause. Likely it's a really good charity
and maybe they're just lacking the communication from a marketing
perspective skills to, to communicate effectively through their c
hannels to you. But I bet you if you picked up the
phone and you called someone, which I know is really hard to do in 2023,
but if you picked up the phone and you called someone or you actually talked
to someone at the organization, they can tell you all the things they can
tell you all about the financials. They can tell you about the program. They can tell you what they're planning
for 2024 and what's coming up and the ways that they're trying to see impact. And oftentimes they're just
struggl
ing because they have a vision. But they don't have the funding to
go get it and they need your help. So so they're motivated to take that call. Absolutely. Absolutely. And even if it's for a small donation
because again, you know from this side of the fence looking at like larger kind of
data samples and everything, like most of those fundraisers know that if you come
in as a $20 a month donor, at the end of the day, many fundraisers are looking,
ultimately, when they're looking at their whole
budget, yeah, they want to grow like
major donations and that sort of thing. But most people that give a major
donation, they start out by giving a small dollar donation, and then you start to
see the impact of your gift over time. And maybe you end up at a point a
few years down the road where you can give a more significant gift. Or maybe you can give one
now, but you're just not ready because you don't trust anybody. But the first step is to, you know,
dip your toes in, find out more informat
ion, give them a gift, see how
they communicate back to you, how do they show you the work that's being done? And then you can make a more
informed decision next year about do I want to increase? Do I want to give more? That's advice I give, too, for people
who are terrified of investing. It's like, invest $10 and just get over
the experience of, I've never done it before, and now you can say, I've done
it before, and it's like, oh, okay, the bad stuff I thought would happen
didn't happen, and n
ow I'm a little more confident, so next time I'll do $20. But it's like, if you want to invest
$500 a month and you're terrified, you've got to start at 5, 10, 15. So what would you say to somebody who
is like, I'm just going to wait until I can give $100 a month because right
now all I can do is 15 or 20 a month. Does a small recurring gift matter? Does it make an impact? Does a, does an organization
care about that? What do you, what would you say to someone
who's basically like my amount that
I can give is a quote unquote "too small." The power is in volume of people that
are, are choosing to give and yes, it seems there are lots of people who could
give really significant amounts of money. And it feels like a $20 donation or
a $50 whatever pales in comparison to that and it's easy to take a backseat
and just say, well, that's for someone else to do and it's not for me. But, there is, there is power in
recurring investment over time, there's power in choosing to give on a monthly
ba
sis like that, especially knowing that you're likely not the only one. Even just as we, you know, as we run
different sorts of fundraising campaigns and we're trying to get people to
give on a recurring basis, it's really helpful oftentimes to say, we're looking
for 100 people to give $30 a month. And yes, it sounds like a
30 bucks isn't that much? Well, 30 times 12 is a significant. You know, increase over just your one
time gift, and now multiply that by another hundred people that are going
t
o give at that level over a 12 month period, but likely for three to five
years, that's a really significant impact. And even just remove yourself from
that equation, now it's only 99, that's actually a pretty big loss. Because there's power in
consistency with that sort of stuff. And having that understanding that you're
not alone, you're not the only one giving the only way that things get done is
with movements of people coming together. So that's my encouragement is
that you can be part of t
hat. And you may find along the way that
they're doing some really cool work and you want to go bring other people
into it, show them the impact that's being made, and you're now you're
forming a community of people that care about a similar cause want to see
a similar impact made in the world. And selfishly, there's a lot of good
vibes that come from giving, and there's a lot of psychology to, to support that. So, you'll feel better about
yourself, that's for sure, while also doing something me
aningful. So I have a story about that for it. It was at least two years ago now,
so a lot of people might not have heard this, but when I did one of
these giving campaigns, I found out about a person in Peoria who was
escaping an abusive relationship. She had a son and she needed to
get out and live somewhere else, but didn't have the money to do it. She was also an immigrant and
so I knew who her landlord was. And her landlord was just trying
to cover her and, and get where she was, get where
she needed to be. And I put out a challenge to my audience. And I actually challenged
them to only give a dollar. And I was like, I know that like
you're gonna want to give a lot, but I actually only want you to give a dollar. And some, some people didn't
listen to that, but that's okay. But it was exactly what you just
said of a movement where it was a couple hundred people who gave one
dollar that they would never miss. Like, they won't even feel it. It won't even impact them. And we paid for
her rent for four months. And it was just like, and, and I just
remember, like, I just wanted to, like, show people, and I was like, You know,
people say every dollar matters when we're talking about, like, where you
spend it, or, you know, like, like, if you go shopping, if you can just, you know,
reduce your spending by 10 a week, it actually adds up, and nobody believes you. And so I wanted to take this test
case of okay, this is something that's really gonna tug at people's
heartstrings, and
they're gonna wanna do whatever they can to help this
person, and then I'm gonna actually, like, reverse psychology and be like,
I'm going to stop you from giving more. I only want you to give a dollar because I
want it to represent how everybody coming together can actually change something. And so for the person who's like, I can
only give a dollar, but I'm going to give it anyways, the people who said,
but I'm going to give it anyways times a couple hundred, and this woman and
her son had a
place to live for free for, you know, almost half a year. And so I think of that all the
time when people are convinced that the small amounts don't matter. It's like, I think that person
isn't necessarily missing what a small amount of, a small
amount of money can or can't do. Because you're right, a
dollar can't do a whole lot. But I think they are missing what
a lot of people together can do. And so I think it also just helps people
to remember that the weight of any of these big causes that
they want to give
to is not on their shoulders alone. And so we see these giant problems
in the world, you know, minute by minute basically at this point. And it's like, I can't solve that. And so I'm helpless to do anything for it. And it's, it's so empowering to
realize that the small amounts put together actually do add
up to something something huge. So, I'm, that's not a question, that's
just a story for people listening because I, I agree wholeheartedly with
what you're saying, that like,
If you actually do put those people together
and connect them actual change happens. Not just like, we patted her
on the back and handed her a Walmart gift card or something. It was like, that's actually life
changing for the rest of their life. I think there's probably also like a
psychological element to that too of, yes, you have the people that you told
only give me a dollar and give you maybe an end up giving hundreds of dollars,
but that's, that's also the power in any kind of like grassro
ots movement. Like most change, starts with small
tweaks, small changes, small groups of people coming together to try
to see something bigger happen. And when you get enough momentum around
that many people giving you a buck, well, somebody might say, wow, this
is actually really important to a lot of people, and I actually have the
means to give at a significant level to help multiply this, maybe by a
factor of two or three or four or more. Where they wouldn't have the confidence
to do it if,
if it, if you didn't have a thousand, 10, 000, however
many people giving you one dollar. So that, that's also the power of
that level of generosity is maybe not so much in the dollar itself, but
in the movement that it can create. Okay, so let's let's wrap
up the conversation, then focusing on that last topic. What are positive impacts
of giving to the donor? So if somebody is like,
I am strapped for cash. I'm trying to just make ends meet, my,
my money's a mess, I don't have a cause that I giv
e, I'm one of those people
that doesn't have that institutional trust, what could someone expect to
experience by becoming a giver, even if it is five, ten dollars a month? Part of this is just an opinion,
but I think starting down that path of giving, even if it's small, even
if it's really small, it develops a level of perspective of your money
and what you're doing with it. And then when you can see the
impact that even a small kind of pitch-in size gift can make, it
puts everything in perspe
ctive. I think it gives you a better viewpoint
on people around you and the world around you, even if you're in a hard situation. So I, I think there's personal
value just from that side of it. There's also, again, there's a lot of
psychology and research around, I said good vibes earlier, but it was just
like the, the truly like the positive mental impact, the view of yourself,
all of that, that you have when you choose to be generous and, and give. People feel happier when they give. And so it
can totally change just even
like the chemistry in your brain so that you have a better outlook on life and
better even just better mental health. I've got a buddy who works at a nonprofit
who was telling me about a campaign that they ran pretty recently that was trying
to lean into that level of psychology. And it's kind of interesting to see. They called it like the Good Vibes Club,
and that's how they were trying to pitch people to sign up to become a donor is
you're going to get good vibes
back in return and also this impact too, but
they just want to test that as a lever. It bombs. So like any fundraisers or
something probably don't lead with that is the reason to give. But it that that level of psychology
is trusted so much that even major charities are trying to lean. How do we actually use that as an
appeal to get someone to actually understand the impact of their giving
and actually choose to get over that line and, and part with their money? So, lots of psychologists say, it
's
a good thing on a bunch of levels when you give away your money. Of all the financial regrets I
have, giving is not one of them. Like, you know, for all the things that I
think back with my money where I'm like, dang, I would have done that different. I never would have bought that. I never would have done this. Giving has never been one of them. Yeah. In fact, I feel the opposite, some,
or the inverse of that sometimes. It's like, man, we bought this
thing, well, you know, what if we actuall
y gave that money away? Wouldn't that have been better than
this thing we thought we needed? And yeah, that's more on a personal
level than professional level. But I think it, it combines because it's
like what we, you know, isn't that what anybody is really doing with their job as
well as what we experience in our personal lives, we're then carrying into our job. And I think you and I both have jobs like
that, where we're like, we've experienced something personal, like giving. And then I see i
t as so valuable that
I'll give my life's work at this, you know, currently in the jobs that
we're doing to help other people do and experience the same because it's
something that we're so passionate about. I'm not obviously in the giving space, but
I do think as people order their finances in a way where they're not constantly
afraid of overdrafting and things like that, it actually opens the door to
having it feel even possible to give. Yeah. I mean, our vision as a company
is to unleash the
most generous generation in the history of the world. We have an entire business model that
is built on how do we get, how do we help more people choose to be generous? So it's, it's clearly an
impactful lever for people. There's certainly something there in
choosing to be generous, rather than to hold it to yourself, even if it's small. There's something there that's
really, really meaningful. Any last thoughts or anything
that if you're like, man, I sit in front of nonprofits all day. Now I'm
actually sitting in front
of the ears of a couple thousand donors instead of organizations. What would the non profits that you work
with want to say if they had the ears of a couple thousand potential donors? Like, what are the things that
they're like, Oh, if they only knew this about us, then they would give? Yeah, I think there's a lot of
assumptions that fundraisers make that donors know way more than they
actually do about the organization. And I think it's a, it's a cold
dose of reality s
ometimes to realize that like, Oh, they don't
know what I'm talking about. I'm using a bunch of language. I'm using a bunch of words that
like my donors don't understand. Or we think this thing is really
important, and in reality, nobody who gives to us thinks
that that thing is important. They like this thing over here. Yeah, you need to do this one,
but they want to give to this one. So I, I don't know, a word of
encouragement maybe to the donor out there is to, when you have
the opportunity t
o make your voice heard to those organizations. I mean, I guess when we talk
about lack of institutional trust, like how does that get better? How does that get fixed? If you have the opportunity to speak
into the work they're doing, give your thoughts, give your opinions. They send out surveys
and junk all the time. And they want to hear from you. If we don't, if we don't reply,
like, I know it feels like marketing and it is a piece of marketing. That's for sure. They're hoping you respond to t
hat. Maybe there's a donation
form on the other end. They're hoping at least do you giving
more later down the road because you've kind of been primed for it. But the reality is like, that's your
opportunity to give that kind of feedback, which may help you actually build that
trust back in, in these organizations to know that my money is going to
something really, really meaningful. There's also, I would encourage people
to, if you can't give or you can only give at a very small level and you w
ant to
give involved and make meaningful impact. Like there's always
volunteer opportunities with almost every organization. And, and what's interesting is a lot of
like, even if you don't feel like you have skills to offer in a particular
area, oftentimes the work that you do on an everyday basis, there's
probably ways for you to plug that in. There's a wide variety of ways
you can jump in and volunteer with most any organizations and
all you really have to do is ask. So that's kind of a, to go
right along with the year end fundraising, giving theme. Yes, being generous with your
money is meaningful, but also just choosing a generous lifestyle of
giving back with your time that might even be more meaningful for
both the organization and for you. And your time and your skills
actually do have a monetary value when they're given to the organization. So it's like hey if my bank account can't
afford giving you $50, but my weekend can afford giving you an hour, that hour
has actual value t
o the organization. That's an awesome way to end on it. Okay. I know I'm not an audience of non
profit organizations, but if I happen to have a listener who is like, Oh,
actually I work for a non profit and I could use help in this area. Where can people find you? What are you doing? And how can they get help increasing
that generosity of their donors? Yeah, well first you can just email me. nathan@nextafter.com is my email. So shoot me a note love to hear from you
Secondly, you can find out mor
e about NextAfter what we do at nextafter.com. But maybe more most importantly the
funnest thing that I get to do at the moment is we we have a show called
Decoding Generosity that actually it's probably relevant to more than just the
fundraiser on the the listeners today. Because we just have a lot of fun
trying to look at like what actually moves the needle on getting people
to choose to be more generous. And not just from like a
fundraising standpoint. But like we do a bunch of weird
stuff li
ke we're building legos. We're doing a bunch of skits
to just illustrate what helps people choose to be generous. So if you go to decodinggenerosity.com
there's lots of fun stuff there. So go check that out. I think it's pretty fun. All right, on this segment of
not worth your money, I'm going to go first and the one that I
thought of is pre packaged snacks. Wow, we go through a lot
of those in our household. So I'll explain what I thought of. I, we do have some pre packaged snacks. I would say
we have about a 50 50
mix though of like bulk bags of goldfish and pretzels and things
like that and then granola bars and those individually wrapped things. But I do try to really minimize them. The thing that I particularly thought
of when I came up with this one is the little like hummus and pretzel container. Have you seen those before? Where it's like the pretzels on the
bottom and the hummus on the top. The markup on something like that is
absolutely insane compared to, like, if you bought
a bag of pretzels and a
container of hummus and split it into packs into the same size, you know, one
ounce of pretzels and one ounce of hummus or something, I think you could get over
double the number of snacks that you get by buying them prepackaged individually. Yeah. So I bought a lot, like, bulk orders of
snacks when I worked for a summer camp. We provided a daily snack every
day for all of our campers. So we had about 400 campers a
week, one snack every afternoon for every single one of
them. It was a lot of snacks. And so I would go to Costco or Sam's Club
and get one of those giant rolling pallets and just load up boxes and then fill
the back of my Prius with as many boxes. Thousands. Thousands of snacks. And a couple of things that I learned
from that is basically everything that's labeled as a snack is a
version of a cookie or a cracker. Mm-Hmm. . Like there, when I think of a snack,
that is part of it, but there's also like baby carrots or string
cheese, or like you said,
hummus. And you know, like those are the things
fall into the snack category for me, but when it comes to actually buying
snacks for, especially for kids, almost everything you're going to find this
label of snack is a cookie of some kind. And then the other thing too, is I
would always look at the per unit price and I had kind of a benchmark
if it was over usually my benchmark at the time was if it was over 33
cents per unit, I wasn't buying it. It was too expensive. There's a lot that's in tha
t range and
below at least there was at the time. I know this now, several
years later, things are crazy. But basically at that point, anything
that was over 33 cents was some kind of premium snack, like mixed nuts
or some kind of like gourmet protein bar, protein bar, something like that. And so when it came to those individually
packed snacks, I know that when you're shopping, whether you're shopping for
400 kids or you're shopping for four, or you're shopping for one, you know
the calculus th
at you're running on individual snacks, you're not getting
a whole lot Yeah in, in quality. You're not getting a whole
lot in caloric value. So for example, the one I thought
of when I came up with this was the costco small bags of Pirates Booty. They also sell a large
bag of Pirates Booty. And I think it's like close
to twenty dollars for the like 40 pack of the small one. So that's about 50 cents. If I remember what I, the
numbers I just said, I think it's about 50 cents a little bag. But ther
e is almost nothing in them. I think it's like 40 cal. I mean, it's like super low. So what I was finding was I was buying
them for our kids and our older boys who are very active and six and a half and
eight were actually taking two because it was so small and it wasn't like I don't
even blame them because 40 calories is just not, that's not filling them up. And so I was letting, Neither,
neither is 80 calories. Right. And so, but I was letting them take two. And so then I was like, we are
blow
ing through these like crazy. And then if you buy the larger bag,
not only is the unit price just way, way lower for the exact same product. We're not even talking about different
brands, we're just talking about in the big bag versus in the little bag. You just get so much more. One thing that we learned, or was kind
of put upon us as, as parents packing snacks for school was one of the teachers
that a few of our kids have had was very, very adamant about packing a
snack that was centered aroun
d protein. So low sugar. Low sugar. I guess that's true. Low sugar. So cookies were bad. Like we, we'd probably get a note home
or something if it was like, Okay, we're going to get a lot of, we're going
to get a lot of write ins about this. She would not say cookies are bad. She would ask them to bring something
that would fill them up better. Okay, thank you for clarifying. That's true. But I bring it up because it
actually has been helpful. I think at the time it was like,
it seemed very arbi
trary to us. It's like, we're, we're,
we got to give them food. We just got to, whatever we're sending is. It's fine. But now a few years into sending snacks
to school with our kids, we've set the precedent or trained them to say, you can
take a carb based thing, so pretzels or chips or something that's less filling,
less filling, when you also need to pair that with something that is more filling. So, some staples in our house are,
you know, pretzels and some pepperoni or pretzels and peanut bu
tter, peanut butter, crackers and cheese cubes. Yeah, so having both of those
things allows our kids to enjoy what they're eating. You know, they still get the, the carb
thing, the cracker or whatever, the chip that they like, that they really want. And they also pair it with something
that's going to fill them up. I think it's the best of both
worlds because it does keep them more full throughout the day. Yeah. So we do, we do definitely have some
individual snacks, but I do not rely on that as
our primary way to offer
snacks either at home or at school. So as a practical matter at school,
if you also send snacks to school or daycare and so you're like well
sending a snack equals a pre packaged store bought item, we bought these
little containers, at walmart. They're like three dollars They have
really nice snap on lids and they're divided in half into two sections,
but they're a small snack size option. They're not like a large lunchbox. And that's what we send the boys with
with lik
e what like he said pretzels on one side and Pepperoni on the other
crackers on one side and cheese cubes on the other And they're a really quick
way to grab two things that it takes Negligibly more time than grabbing a
granola bar, you know, like it's the amount of time to grab two things and
put them into a little container is seconds more than grabbing a prepackaged
item and you're saving a ton of money. I mean, when they put the pretzels and
peanut butter into that container for their snack,
I would, if I had to wager
a guess, I would say it costs 30 cents. The amount of food that they are
putting in there is very low. My not worth your money for this week is
more of a threshold than a specific item. So at what point does it
become not worth your money? How many video streaming services does it
cross the line to be not worth your money? To have simultaneously? To have simultaneously, because we do have a few
simultaneously right now. Yes. I am a huge advocate of signing up,
using i
t to watch the show that you wanna watch that they have, and then canceling
it while you sign up for another one. So we are always rotating
the ones that we have. Sometimes they cancel or, you know,
it ends and then we're like, oh shoot, we wanted to watch that. We'll sign up for one more month. I, I would not have more than, I
would say four would be the most I would have because I just don't
think it's possible to be watching that many things at the same time. Like to be invested, you know? So
we've done like Hulu, and we finished
watching Only Murders in the Building and The Bear, and then now I'm not renewing
it because we don't have anything else on there that we want to watch right now. Like, if they come out with another season
of The Bear, then we would sign back up. We've had HBO Max to watch through
Friends and a few other things, but we don't have that one right now. We currently have, let me think, we
currently have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney Plus, and I think we have a
free
trial of Apple TV right now from buying like a new phone for you or something. Yeah. I think so. Peacock. We have had, we don't have it
right now, but that is one that we sign up for and watch things and
then cancel while we don't use it. Yes. When you said four, that seemed
high to me, but then as you listed them out, I was like, we definitely have at least four. I think we have at least four right now. Yeah. And if it was just you and I, that number
might be lower, but we also, like, ther
e's just staples that our kids also enjoy
watching or that it's easy to put on, I also 100 percent play the sign
up under a new email address to get a free trial game. Proudly play that game. If you don't have more than a
dozen personal email addresses, you are doing it wrong. If you start a business, you
each get a new email for it. I'm sure my, my VA, if she's listening,
I'm sure she sees like free trial emails come through my work inbox that
she manages, or I'm just like, sorry, Megan, but I
wanted a free trial. Were you, for threshold, were you
thinking in dollars or in quantity? I was thinking it's easier to
think through number of services. Because they all do cost a different
amount, but they all cost relatively, they're in the same ballpark. Now I will say, Sometimes when I'm
building custom budgets I'm very surprised at the number of simultaneous
high level streaming services, like Hulu Live, which is like $70 a month
instead of $7 a month, or like Some households have like ca
ble and seven
streaming services or YouTube TV, which is kind of like cable at this point,
YouTube TV, plus a bunch of other ones. I, I rarely see a problem in the number
of dollars being spent because they, like you said, they do tend to be low priced. Like I think if we signed up for the
low level of Hulu and the low level of Peacock and stuff at the same time, we'd
maybe be paying like $40 a month which is a fraction of the cost of cable. But I think it is a good idea to look
at what you're p
aying and realize that when you cancel something, you're
not permanently unable to watch that. So if you're not currently
watching that service, cancel it. And then when you think of like, Oh, a new
season of this show, I like came out, sign up for it, watch it and cancel it again. And there's no, you're not
penalized for doing that. Yeah. And if you're worried about missing
out on the newest season of whatever show, then, if it happens to come online
and you don't hear about it and you don't mi
ss it, you know, it's fine. Maybe you don't need it. Yeah. Forget about the FOMO
and just save the money. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I think it's just like
physically impossible to actually need that many services at the same time
because you're just like not watching that many shows simultaneously. Like, within one month, if you're paying
monthly, if you pay for seven streaming services in one month, did you, like,
legitimately watch an extended amount of TV on all seven of them in that one month
? That'd be impressive. If you've done that, please
let us know, because I would like to know how you did it. Those are specific life choices. All right, well I think that's not
worth your money for this week. Join us next time on the
Debt Free Mom Podcast. And let us know if those things
are worth or not worth your money. Thanks for listening to
the Debt Free Mom Podcast. If you want to join me as a guest
on the show, go to dfmpodcast.com. The Debt Free Mom Podcast is hosted
by me, Carly Hill,
and is produced, edited, and mixed by Kyle Hill. Music for this episode
was written by Kyle Hill. Hit subscribe wherever you're
listening to join in with every new episode as we grow our confidence and
contentment in our personal finances.
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