340. Habits of an Impactful Annual Giving Officer - Mike Duerksen

Mike Duerksen, Habits of Annual Giving, We Are For Good Podcast, Build Good

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Overview

Welcome back to our Friday Series The Habits of an Impactful Fundraiser. This week we're taking on the discussion about the base with Do-Gooder M ike Duerksen, founder of BuildGood who's breaking down Habits of an Impactful Annual Giving Officer. We're bringing tips, case studies and the Do's/Dont's for a modern fundraiser. Tune in✌️

Special Guest

Mike Duerksen, CEO + Founder, BuildGood

“Retention matters, but overall retention doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. Because different buckets of donors have have different retention rates.”

— Mike Duerksen, CEO + Founder, BuildGood

Episode Transcript

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Episode Highlights

Introducing Mike Duerksen (1:15)
What are the big picture questions we need to be asking (4:00)
Habits of an impactful Annual Giving Officer (8:55)
How to prioritize relationships in this role (20:50)
KPI’s and success indicators that matter and some that don’t matter (34:40)
Mental Health Minute (40:40)
How to connect with Mike (44:00)

Powerful quotes

“The greatest tool you have is storytelling.”-Mike

“The way the human brain can start to relate a lot better with a point of view, if it's told through a story, that hasn't changed in forever, so be a student of that game and learn it, well. It's going to serve you.” -Mile

“Even if you don't work in fundraising a few years from now, hopefully you do, it's a noble and beautiful profession. But even if you have other plans, [storytelling is] one skill that you can't ever be good enough at, it's going to serve you well, in every single job in life.” -Mike

“Start with your with your gut, your intuition, what the donors are telling you, that's gonna give you a hypothesis. Go with that, test it. The data is going to tell you whether you're right or not.” -Mike

“The data alone is a bit of a low resolution picture. The feedback from donors alone, the qualitative stuff is a bit of a low resolution picture. But, if you merge them you get a very high definition.” -Mike

“Don't: just tell a story of somebody once in an appeal or in an email. Do: tell it many different ways, and in many different channels, and to many different people.” -Mike

“Retention matters, but overall retention doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Because different buckets of donors have have different retention rates.” -Mike