If you're looking to maximize your fundraising efforts, DonorBox's online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals with ease. Discover the world of simplified, seamless fundraising at DonorBox.org. DonorBox, helping you help others. Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Podcast, I'm your host Megan Speer. So excited to have you joining us today for a conversation with George Wiener, who's the founder and chief wailer at Whole Whale, and I got to tell you, George, that is the first chief wailer that we have had on the podcast, not a title I've heard before. Well, that's interesting. I'm surprised they're having a bit more on the podcast, but happy to be the first. Hopefully not last. Obviously. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about Whole Whale and yourself and how you got the title of chief wailer. Let's start there. Well, it all starts if you don't take yourself too seriously, but also enjoy what you do. I founded the company in 2010, and I figured, you know, a company like Whole Whale, which is about using every single resource, not wasting, but rather leveraging something like data and technology to increase the impact of nonprofits. Well, if I'm creating it, I might as well have some fun. And I said, I would like to be the chief wailer. And that's sort of stuck. So we all have professional titles, but also consider ourselves whalers. And so we are a digital agency. We deal with analytics, advertising, SEO. And we have AI tools like our causewriter.ai to help nonprofits create safe, creative work. I love that. And someone introduced me one time. A client was introducing me to someone else on their team and introduced me as this is Megan, she's the chief spreader of happiness. And I mean, if I could just like, I would love to actually use that as my title to you. That would be so much more so much more, yeah, it's chief spreader of happiness. Who doesn't want that job builder of cities. Good. Well, I'm excited. We will get back to some of your AI tools, because as you know, from my LinkedIn post last week, big fan, so definitely want to make sure folks are aware of those. But I want to dig in today. One of the things that I have seen in terms of things that you've got out on LinkedIn or some of the whole whale content that I've been able to check out. One of the things I really appreciate about your model is that it starts and finishes with data. Let's make wise decisions. But all of that starts with a plan, right, and has goals associated to it. And we're going to work the plan to meet the goals. And I think that that's maybe sometimes a step that gets skipped for the tyranny of the urgent in nonprofit leadership. So I want to start there. If you were talking to somebody who is the chief development officer, the head of fundraising, head of marketing at a nonprofit, let's assume they're walking in for their first day. And you were going to help them figure out where to start. What's your first question? I would say, why do you have a website? I would start with something so oddly simple that it becomes complex in the sense that you have to question why you're doing what you're doing, why do you have a website or why are you sending out that monthly newsletter or communication. Because that teases at understanding what your north star is. If you don't know where you're going, you won't get there. And I think that backs into the goal. So my questions tend to be very broad, but specifically minded with the why behind the actions that you're doing. And that's just a way of backing into a logic model of saying here are inputs, here are outputs, and those are the outcomes I want to do. I'm standing on this side of the shore. I'd like to get to the other side of the shore. How shall we get there? There's a lighthouse over there, brilliant. Let's go toward that. And so you can then do a number of activities as long as you can come back to say, did we make progress toward that target in a measurable way? Let's go back to that question, because I can see where if you ask somebody, why do you even have a website? Right. This, I mean, the easy answer is like, of course I have a website, you have to. You just have to. You know, I don't even, I'm not sure that most people could coherently answer why. Does that trip up folks when you start to talk to them about it? It'll give them pause and force this thought of like, there's a reason behind the effort and money you invested into creating a website. And that reason is X and the X usually has to do with attention. And to simplify it, I can say every single website in some shape or form is designed to route attention into action. Okay. Okay. Well, how can we measure that attention? Well, we can measure it in traffic. We can measure it in time on page, time on different types of your pages. Oh, which ones are more valuable? Is the, hey, cute pictures of cats, content that you have really crushing it is that as valuable as let's say your program impact page, maybe, maybe not. I'm willing to bet that there's different things that you'd like to happen. And so as you move from the attention to action, there's steps in the middle. There's steps in the middle that you can look at. One of the most common ones are like, all right, newsletter, right? Am I getting the permission to talk to this person again? The value that is still, you know, email is dead, long live email. It is something of value because it contains so much data. It contains the ability and permission to talk to that person again and put them into that welcome series, that donor series. And so those are the leads that you need from the attention because it's rare that someone is going to meet you on the first date and get married. There are situations where that happens, but that's not the normal way, right? People go through dating apps. They have a few interactions and then, you know, marriage and three children. So why do you have a website? I'm trying to turn attention into action. Well, in that journey, I'm also trying to get emails before I get the type of action that I want, ultimately, which is a donation, a commitment. Sometimes it's changing your mind or making your sort of like aware of key information that that is your reason for being. Let's say you really want to end sepsis and the risk and awareness to parents of, of that, so that they can make sure that they always are washing and caring for properly the cuts of their children. You're like, well, yeah, that would be your action. That's why you have a website. Interesting. So all of that then leads to, and there's been a lot of discussion in the industry about marketing funnels and donor funnels and are we flipping the funnel upside down? Has the funnel become a vortex? Everybody wants to have all these high level discussions. But if somebody is new to an organization or they're rethinking their marketing strategy and building this funnel from scratch, what needs to be included in a funnel? And how do we know if it's working? I would say also to the folks that are like, all right, which of these things do I choose? Was it a funnel? Is it a tornado? Is it a cyclone? I don't care. I care that it's there. I care that people are aligned with it. And I care that it has measurable outcomes upon which I can say this worked and this didn't work. I view all of these frameworks. By the way, I am a framework junkie. Like I will throw more frameworks at you than you can bear. But I want to do it with this caveat. It's like putting on a pair of sunglasses or a pair of reading glasses or a pair of fear everyday glasses. You put them on when you need them. There's certain problems that lend themselves to certain frameworks. And so you should try these things on, see if they fit, see if they solve most of your problem. Nothing is perfect. And then align your team with that, noting the imperfections, but move forward, right? If you were constantly switching your framework, you're going to be in a bad place. If you're constantly being like, Oh, here's this newest thing I heard on Megan Spirit. This guy, George, he was talking about this new aware to care cycle. We got to do this now. And then next week you have on another brilliant guest. And there's like, Oh, here's my digital marketing funnel. You got to use this. Oh, what's that? Well, that's aware, interested, engaged, and committed. Oh, we got to use that. Oh, why the fastest way to get lost is by changing the boat constantly, by being that excitable squirrel that runs around after every new piece. Um, it's fine to try on different pairs of glasses. So I'm going to share some frameworks that I really like, but again, try them on, but commit when you do to those core elements and realize that there's consistent things across all frameworks. Yeah. I really like that because I think it is easy to get distracted by the new and shiny and get really excited about a new process or a new plan. But bookshelves are full of strategic plans that have gotten us nowhere. I see a number of lovely books behind you. Yes, a number of books. It's only as good as the shelf space is taking up at that point. If you're not committed to actually doing it. So I think that's a really good call out. Yeah. So the consistency and alignment and the parts that I look for in the framework, there are a couple that I really like. But if you're looking at it, draw a pyramid in your mind or draw a funnel. I don't care. However, your team, like ascends or descends, but you're drawing this. And for me, I like the funnel because it trickles down from a high to a low in terms of volume and we're starting with aware. There are measurements of aware that you can have. You then get interested. So not just sort of click and go, but all this person's interested. They spent some time. I can have some threshold of metrics there. I can set those in Google Analytics, by the way. So aware, interested, then engaged. Have I actually engaged them? Meaning have I got the permission to talk to them again? Is it a real threshold there? Did I get their email or if you were very big on sort of social, different platforms? Do I have the hopeful chance of maybe showing up in their feeds again? And then finally committed. At the committed level, most folks think of that as a first time donation. And then you can say, all right, did I put them into the tornado funnel of like, did they come back to my returning givers? But in that aware, interested, engaged and committed, you can then say, here are the measures of success. Here's the measure of attention at the top for my awareness. These are the numbers I want to include in it. Here's what I don't want to include. This is what counts what doesn't count. You can have then conversations about does a one second view on TikTok matter to you. Was that was that meaningful? Did that help your brand or do we want to set the threshold at three or five seconds? We actually at whole whale have a measure called a learning engagement. And it must be at least 15 seconds or more across any platform. But I figured about 15 seconds, you've consumed enough information that we have brought you from zero to one on a concept or at least aware or seen this silly whale. Something to that effect that you may come back. Yeah, interesting. Is there, I assume there's research behind the 15 second mark? Is that actually marriage of it's a marriage of convenience. There were some some pieces that number arguably is far lower. I think a threshold when you're talking about what triggers as an ad on Facebook or what triggers as a view on LinkedIn, they all have this like quiet little sneaky metric, depending on how much they want to manipulate us into thinking that their platform is getting us attention. And so I set it at a point where it's like, you can't really just fake it with some of these engagements and to get it meaningful. You know, we've said it. I encourage everyone to find their own benchmark. Elevate your fundraising strategy effortlessly with DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your operations, amplifies donations and delivers a user friendly experience for your supporters. Design captivating donation forms, except digital wallet payments, seamlessly monitor donations and automate receipt generation. Joining is a breeze with no setup or monthly fees from customizable donation forms and four times faster ultra swift checkout to seamless in-person giving with DonorBox live kiosk, DonorBox makes giving simple and fast for your donors. Visit donorbox.org and unlock your full fundraising potential today. I want to piggyback off of something that you just said then in terms of awareness, because it's easy to, again, when we're chasing the new and shiny. It's easy to assume that you have to be everywhere to do that. Just in your description alone, we've listed off TikTok and Facebook and LinkedIn. And you could add X, you could add Instagram, you could add YouTube, you could add your website. There's so many options and there is a new platform. It feels like developing all the time when it comes to awareness. Do we need those metrics on all of the platform or is this another, like, why are you even on TikTok? Let's evaluate and get off of trying to be everywhere to be all things to all people. I think it's pretty clear. You can't win if you fight a war on all fronts. If you're trying to do all of the things at a high level, you end up doing them all at a low level. Look at where your audiences look at what they're responding to. And then look at the strengths of your team. Some teams are just better suited for a certain type of approach. Now you can shift your team and change your team deliberately saying, like, here's the opportunity at Ho Well right now, we are all in on video. I believe that text-based content has been commoditized by AI and we're just playing out this game and we are all in on video. And it's caught, it's, it's a shift. It's tough. Yeah. But I now produce far more video content than written content. And that is completely inverted from what I was doing five years ago, completely inverted for what our team is being expected to do and pushing them on. And that's because I think we're much more of a video-first content consumption mode right now. And I'm thinking and trying to think for the next five years, like, will something at right just be regurgitated by AI versus something video? So you're also expected to think like that. And some of these platforms do lend themselves to create ones, repeat everywhere. And so you can think about how you are using Ho Well, using all parts of your system and process. What does that actually look like? Well, there's a lot of head communications people, head development people that could actually sit down with you, like literally like this, you're going to ask them 10 questions. Your team's going to chop that up and then push that out over the next week. That was 45 minutes of their time. Should we only be on TikTok? I don't know. Do you have a bunch of, I don't know, 50 second video that succinctly talks about what you're doing? Why not post in those multiple places? Each requires a different strategy. But what I care about is having a trial test period. I just gave you a whole bunch of fun squirrels to chase. You're going to be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do all those things. Yeah, that's fine. But you're going to come back to that funnel and be like, wait a minute. Which of these actually got us those meaningful metrics of awareness? Cool. Which of those then led toward what I think is one of the most important health metrics of a development officer? What are the total number of new leads, new emails I got per month? What's my rate? Is that number going up? Great. What are the inputs on that? Well, it seems like when we post a TikTok, it just lives there. There's nothing coming back. Well, how do I get to that next part? Because you can win on awareness because all these platforms are tricking you into thinking they're valuable by giving you new little nuts. So like, Hey, here's a walnut. Oh, cool. Number one up, but unless it's an email, you don't own it. So yeah, I didn't answer your question. But hopefully I gave you an approach that how I think about it. No, I appreciate that. Um, so help me define then what it looks like to move from aware to interested. How are we measuring that? The aware is the most superficial metric that you have, but also very important. Because if no part of your communication engine is driving that aware, that top of funnel to trickle down, you're not going to get people that are interested. In general, you can just take 10% of whatever the number is. Oh, 100,000 people came to our site. Great. You got 10% of them ideally interested, which means they spent over X amount of time. That's going to be a natural distribution. There's going to be a power law, meaning 10% of the humans do 90% of the results. That presents itself in any bucket of stuff, people, attention, things that we have at each of those levels at the interested level. Did I get them to spend 15 seconds with me? Did I get them to spend a meaningful amount of time on a meaningful amount of pages? Oh, not all pages on your site are equal, right? If I sent Mackenzie Scott to one page of your website, what would it be? Oh, now there's a question. Are you measuring that? Is that the same value as the, I don't know, staff page? Yeah. Is that the same value as the homepage? These are just questions, right? But I'm interested about what makes you interested about the interested section of your funnel. That's a really great question because I, I feel like the website tends, obviously, you know, we put a lot of effort in to maintaining these websites and building more and more pages, but more pages isn't necessarily meaning more interest. If they're not impactful, that's a good point. I guess I would wonder out loud. I mean, I think the default position, if you ask somebody what page would you send Mackenzie Scott to be like, well, my donation page, right? I wanted to give, but there has to be something that leads her to that process. And I'm wondering how well we have done in succinctly describing what it is we do and why it matters on one page instead of spreading that out. It's not to say that every page has to have upmost importance, right? Upmost like purpose of like, oh, my gosh, we have to be converting. Every page can have equal weight of importance, right? There's nurturing along this funnel, right? There's nurturing information, things that you give out there. But it was a thought experiment, right? To say, like, what is the purpose of this page? Why do you have a website? OK, well, some of those pages might be about the programmatic impact of what we do. Well, that's interesting. Are you linking to that disproportionately in that social content, driving people to that page that matters or just go to our home page and figure it out? But you realize that, oh, my gosh, because I said this page is important as a leader. What did that do to the person creating that next piece of social content? I'm like, oh, it seems like they really care when that number goes up. Yeah, I do. When you go to our programmatic impact page, because they're understanding the way we are shaping the world, our mission and vision, like that is very valuable. And I think we assume that it's the home page and it's not necessarily true. So when you come back to why you're setting up this marketing funnel, it's because you're giving the commander's intent. The smartest thing that you should be doing to move this organization forward is bringing not just aggregate general awareness, but targeted awareness to things that move you down the funnel, things that move you down the funnel are things like the most important page on your website, the Mackenzie Scott. And then getting that email, how are we creating those content lockers, which is just a tactic for delivering value in exchange for an email into our welcome series. Great. Now we can look at the next phase. How do we move from interested to engaged? Well, got to get that email through not just a plain newsletter, but different pop-ups through, hey, here is our annual report. If you'd like it, here's proprietary research that we've done on a topic you can be care about it, go get it, and then we can get them through a welcome series through our regular drum beat of communication to hopefully give. Are they giving in the first 90 days? Are you tracking the number of emails that are going from cold to donor? And then you can really do some fun things at that point. You can throw advertising at that to jump the line, but you realize by setting that and then putting that consistently to your team, instead of chasing a new framework or whatever it is, you can actually align your communication strategy so that it meets your donation goals. I love that. I think one of the things that I see as maybe a little bit of a trend is that once we get people through the funnel, we get them committed. We have accomplished that goal check. We lose the then what? Right? I'm curious to hear your opinion on what that next step looks like. We've got them to do a first step. They have been aware they've been made interested. They engaged with us. We got them to give a donation. Fantastic. I feel like then the thought process on how to move people forward stops, and we toss them into the general, like, we're going to send you an email every week and see if you give us more money. But the actual well thought out strategy tends to stop there when it comes to maybe pushing towards recurring. So in your opinion, what would be a better what's next? It's a tough point for our industry. In general, we're keeping one in five of our first-time donors. Some of that is I want to be clear. I don't think it's possible for someone to keep five out of five first-time donors, right? Don't assume that you're getting a marginal return on the next hour of energy, next consulting, whatever it is to chase after this mythical. If only we could keep five out of five. So I want to pause and be like, there's a bit of a mutable gravity to whatever your first-time donor number is. You can move it, but I don't think it is worth the marginal investment after a certain point. And talk to your doctor results may vary, but I just always like to put that caveat out there. Because sometimes it's like, oh, if we could only keep every single donor, no matter what, sure, I get it. You're never going to get five out of five dentists to agree and toothpaste, and you're not going to get five out of five donors to keep coming back. But the what next is a great question. I want to turn to the strategic brilliance of a little-known movie franchise called The Fast and the Furious. Okay. Not where we were going, but all right. I'm going to drive this all over the place. So they're made like over 12, 13 movies at this point. And each time they make a movie, they make more money. Because people that are invested in this silly little ecosystem, where we throw Vin Diesel behind a souped-up car and have him drive around, either with the law against the whatever it is, right? But they're making money every single time because they brought them into a story that we have followed these characters over a period of time. And this is the silliest narrative conceivable, right? There's like so little there. So I'm going to just say if Fast and Furious can do this, they can build a narrative over time, bringing them a long episode to episode, of being like, you're a part of this, you're giving money to sit in the theater to watch this. I'm pretty sure the bar of storytelling can be eclipsed. Fantastic point. And so thinking about like, you just watch the first movie. Or guess what? But it's also brilliant about the Fast and Furious movies, is that you're going to have to go back and watch the ones in the beginning, because you're like, how did they find racing? What's their backstory? Great. I think understanding that you don't exist in a one and done movie, but rather a cinematic universe is what's driving all current theatrical strategy right now. And I think there's a reason for it. So I think you can have some fun with it. Hopefully you're like, oh my gosh, that's right. We can talk about the story of our next program and the new challenges coming up and how it built on the last one. Fast, the Fast and Furious 6 followed by fast, prior to Fast 5, then you had low spend there, low fast and furious. They just named that in 2009. Fast and the furious go to Chuck E. Cheese. They got fast. Too fast, too furious. You're right. Fast is too fast, too furious. Fast X part two, we just sort of had to restructure that one. And there's actually another. This is totally off topic, but there is another one coming out. We're just recently came out. I just found an announcement. I feel like I just found an announcement. Oh, no, that's Fast X part two that's coming out in 2026. And yeah, there you go. They're making another one. Um, spoiler alert, Vin Diesel's in it. What a shocking trend. Yeah. Interesting. No, that's a good point though, because I think we tend to um, we tend to assume that once somebody has committed to us once, it's an automatic like, oh, yep, they'll do it again. Which data proves it won't. No. But there has to be something exciting that keeps them coming back. I have only seen maybe three of the Fast and Furious movies, which is probably more than those two go actually. I'm so sorry. No, they're 12, they're 12. They're 12? Okay, well, I've only seen three. But I know I can guarantee that every time that something is going to blow up, in spectacular fashion, very exciting. That's the reason to keep figuring out what happens. Let alone watching Vin Diesel, but that's a whole separate conversation. I feel like our strategies put so much effort into engaging and keeping people interested upfront. And then there's no more motivation of storytelling after the fact. We don't have to tell stories anymore. We got you. Here's just another plea asking for more and more. I actually really like the Fast and Furious example, because something exciting keeps happening. Instead of, nope, we told you the story once. Keep coming back. I think that's a great analogy. Yeah, I'm glad I could tie it in. I challenged myself to it. And to confuse you further with another framework, though, I have any sort of a where to care cycle. So I have another framework that is a bit of a cycle where you acknowledge actually that the work I'd mentioned, the communication engine that you have, the communication, the storytelling engine that you have, is not just working to bring in new people each time, but actually, rather, also satisfy the existing people. When you watch one of these movies, there's inside jokes of being like, "Oh, yeah, I remember that." And you're like, "Oh, there comes the noss. Everybody knows it's coming." But somebody there for the new time doesn't even know what I'm talking about. That for some reason, injecting a whole bunch of nitrogen into your car is a smart thing to do to make it go faster. But it's something for the insider, something for the new person. Your communication engine at the top of the funnel isn't just finding new people, but you always have to do. But reminding and re-intertaining the folks that are part of the community, that know the language, that can actually even potentially participate in it, right? How do you make them part of the story? And there's a lot of ways of doing that as a tactic. But yes, you're right. If you just live in the world of the funnel, what happens at the bottom of the funnel? The water runs out onto the floor. And your kid makes a whole mess. It's a big disaster, but at least they were entertained for a little while. So yes, there's another framework we put on a different pair of glasses when we're looking at somebody who is already a member of our community, already a first-time donor. I love that. Okay. If somebody wanted to learn more about some of these frameworks, they wanted to learn more about Whole Whale and about the things that you guys offer. Specifically, I would love for you to take maybe just a minute and talk about Coswriter and some of the resources available there. How do we find all of the information and the wealth of wisdom that you guys have to share? Our Fast and Furious ecosystem of content. It is spread across the universe. It is at Whole Whale.com, certainly our main website. I know the irony is palpable that I'm sending you to my home page. But we also have coswriter.ai CA-U-S-E-W-R-I-T-E-R.ai. I realize that when I say it, it comes out wrong. So on what I'll say for coswriter.ai/resources, we have a whole bunch of free AI tools that are sort of getting you to do things like create a donor persona. And it's going to have an AI that will walk you through creating a persona and cohorts for your organization. We have a brand analysis GPT that's going to do a brand analysis of your nonprofit. It's just going to get you to realize the different use cases for AI as it overlays with the processes and work that a nonprofit does. And again, all of that stuff is free. Yes, there are members that pay for customized components. And then on our site, wholewhale.com/university. Wholewhale.com/university has all of our training materials, our thoughts about analytics, on advertising, and an unfortunate amount of video footage of this, of my face, talking about things, as well as other experts on our team. Excellent. Well, George, thank you so much. I appreciate you being on As The Chief Wheeler today to share all of the pieces. That's been fantastic. Again, you can check out more at wholewhale.com. George, thanks for being here. We appreciate all the wisdom and insight today. Oh, thanks for the work you do. And good luck at the conference coming up. Yes, cause camp is so exciting. Can't wait to see so many of you there. This has been another episode of the nonprofit have podcast. I'm your host Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time. [Music] (gentle music)
