What’s so great about mid-level? We’re so glad you asked!

More and more organizations are discovering that mid-level is the key to retaining donors and donor value. When you have a mid-level program that’s focused on building relationships with donors and discovering their passions and interests, it allows you to qualify and move more donors to major gifts.

And in addition to inspiring more donor engagement and connection, a mid-level program really makes a difference for your organization’s bottom line.

This podcast episode features Kara Ansotegui, one of our Client Experience Leaders, and Lisa Robertson, our Director of Client Services. Kara and Lisa together have decades of experience with non-profits, and they have a passion for the power of mid-level (and making it FUN).

We hope this conversation will inspire you to invest in mid-level, so your organization can make a greater impact toward its mission.

Show Highlights: In this episode, you’ll learn about…

• The role of mid-level in building a healthy donor pipeline where donors are engaged from acquisition all the way to planned giving
• How mid-level programs improve rates of donor and donor value attrition
• How a strong mid-level program allows you to qualify and move more donors up into major gifts
• Net revenue increases that our mid-level clients have seen after starting a mid-level program

Read the Full Transcript of This Podcast Episode:

Jeff Schreifels

If you’re not convinced that mid-level is the key to your fundraising success, this episode may change your mind about that. Today, Richard and I are handing it over to Lisa and Kara, our resident mid-level experts, to share the top five reasons why we’re so excited about mid-level programs. We hope you’ll be inspired to get a mid-level program going and see the impact it makes for your organization.

Recorded  

Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard and Jeff.

Lisa Robertson  

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Lisa Robertson. And my colleague Kara and I are taking over the podcast, while Richard and Jeff take the day off. We’re so excited to be with you all today. So Kara, let’s start by doing some quick introductions so people know who we are. 

Kara Ansotegui  

Thanks Lisa, that sounds great. My name is Kara Ansotegui. And I’m one of the Client Experience Leaders here at Veritus. I’ve been with Veritus a little over a year now I guess. It feels like a lot longer because I actually hired Veritus to help me build my mid-level program at a large national non-profit many years ago. And for those of you who didn’t listen to the last podcast, shame on you. I’m kidding. Fun fact, Lisa was actually my Client Experience Leader all those years ago. So it’s even more special to be here with you today, Lisa.

Lisa Robertson  

Aw, thanks. And I am Lisa Robertson, the Director of Client Services at Veritus, and also a Client Experience Leader like Kara. I’ve been here for nine years and have nearly 30 years of non-profit leadership experience. I have my remote office here in Fort Worth, Texas. And my fun fact, in case you didn’t listen last time, is that Karen and I are both from the West Coast and now living in the current part of the country where it’s 104 degrees on a good day. So no, that’s actually not true. We can’t stand the weather, but we’re happy to be here with you.

Kara Ansotegui  

Yeah, very happy to be here. I’m excited to have this conversation, because we’re really getting to share about a topic I know we both love, which is mid-level, we’re huge fans of mid-level programs. So we thought we would share our five reasons we love mid-level so much, and why we think you should too.

Lisa Robertson  

Right? So you know, we can get a little bit nerdy about this. So before we completely go off the rails, let’s talk a little bit about the importance of the solid donor pipeline, right, from an acquisition through planned giving. So most non-profits don’t adequately fund every level of the pipeline. And most notably, they don’t fund mid and major gifts. So in the mid-level, what we see in our analysis, is what we call clogs in that space. And so depending on how large the organization is, it could be at $500, or maybe the $5,000 level. But what’s happening is, donors are not moving up. They’re just kind of stuck there, like the name “clog” suggests. They don’t move up to major gifts. So what we love about mid-level is that it forces folks to kind of evaluate the entire pipeline, and it helps them understand where investments need to be made to create a more healthy pipeline.

Kara Ansotegui  

Yeah, completely Lisa. And I’m gonna jump into the fun stuff now if that’s okay. 

Lisa Robertson  

Yes. 

Kara Ansotegui  

Okay, let me start us off. So my number one reason that I love mid-level is you’re making a difference. I know that’s simple. But for the first time for a lot of organizations, donors are engaged, the organization is able to increase net revenue, which truly increases your their ability to fulfill the mission. It’s actually fun. It’s fun. I love starting a mid-level program and watching, just from the introduction cycle, checks rolling in. It’s like such an exciting part to me of that work.

Lisa Robertson  

Right! And talking about the difference, like you and I have this conversation, we’re pretty passionate about this that like, mid-level is not “down” the pipeline. Like I hate when people say, “Oh, let’s move them down to mid-level.”  Because it’s such an important role. And that’s why I love our pipeline is horizontal, like we can move them over to mid-level. But it’s really important, right? And then the other thing that you and I have talked about a lot is part of what we love about it. What makes it fun, is you’re touching so much more donor donor data than any other place in the organization, except for maybe direct response. Like, I don’t know if I told you the story before, but we had a client, it was a smaller organization, but they started mid-level. And what happened was because of the practices they put in place with the way they talked about donors, the way they interacted with donors, the way they dealt with donors and their data, they actually saw their entire pipeline change and their retention levels increase by 124% for everybody, not just the folks in mid-level. So you know those what you just shared right Kara, like you reach out once, and you automatically start to see some really good response.

Kara Ansotegui  

Yeah, I love that story. I would say I saw something really similar when we built our mid-level program. We thank the people right before mid-level, so we can build our pipeline too, right? And we saw this massive increase in a very small cohort of donors, over 101 of them actually upgraded to the mid-level level that had never been there before. Just by calling them and thanking them, just by sending handwritten thank you notes. I just love that it’s an opportunity to really begin relationship building in the work that we do, and it actually that’s a transition to our next point, which is the second reason we love mid-level.

Lisa Robertson  

Right. So the second reason we love mid-level is it’s this great opportunity to connect with donors and learn their passions and interests. So if you’ve been with Veritus for a while, you know that we really find that about 30% of donors will connect over time. So a third don’t, and a third might say no thanks. But those that do connect, what happens is we learn so much about their communication preferences, and we gather details, and more importantly, we learn about their interests and their passions.

Kara Ansotegui  

Okay, can I interject a quick story here? 

Lisa Robertson  

Yeah!

Kara Ansotegui  

Okay. So I, when I was doing this work as well, I had this donor in our organization, and she shared so much about her passions and interests. And it really had been because of loss that she had in her family that related to our mission. And I’m not kidding you, when I tell you, I cried when I read the story she wrote back to me. And we found ways to engage her and sharing that story and the difference our work was making. And she ended up sending us a note. And she said, I’m not sure if you were trying to make me feel like part of your family. But that’s what I feel like today because of the work you’re doing. And I just felt like that was such a special opportunity and moment for us at the organization to really be fulfilling something inside of her that was important to her. 

Lisa Robertson  

Yeah, I love that. 

Kara Ansotegui  

Okay, so I’m going to jump to number three, which is more donors are retained. And so that really ties in with our KPIs. With the first one being “keep.” And so I want to just kind of talk about that a little bit. We see value attrition ranging 30 to 60% when we do analysis, right? I’ve seen worse. But that’s our average. In mid-level, one of the things we love is that we get to keep more donors. So annual attrition is normal, right? But retention increases significantly and we reduce the number of donors we lose each year. So I’m going to give a quick example. Although we see average revenue increases in the seven to 20% for mid-level, and some people can feel like that may sound small, it really isn’t. We worked with one organization who only grew by 1%. Sounds low, right? Well, they started with 65% value attrition, so by stopping the bleed and keeping donors, that 1%, do you have any idea what that could of actually increased revenue by?

Lisa Robertson  

No, you’re gonna tell me, it’s fantastic, I’m sure. 

Kara Ansotegui  

A million dollars.

Lisa Robertson  

Wow. Yeah. See, I mean, we keep those donors. It’s important, right? So you were nerding out now about numbers. And we do. So the fourth reason is, because there is this instant net revenue boost, like we instantly see an increased number of gifts at launch. And that goes back to a little bit what you were saying Kara, right? Even by just doing a handwritten thank you to donors even before mid-level, you see that. So even when we don’t connect, just from reaching out and personally talking to people and sharing their impact, we literally have seen donors increase from like $1,000 a year to a $15,000 gift or maybe a couple gifts that equal $15,000. But you just see this net increase initially just from that.

Lisa Robertson  

And then donors that we have had a limited impact we also see an increase. So you know, they’re like, I should say, not limited impact, limited contact information. So we saw a donor one time who literally had no phone or email so that’s one of the things right? Kara and I have actually kind of come to blows over to this because I like to have at least a phone or email; Kara has seen great success without either. So we compromise and we do it Kara’s way. But yeah, but even this, this donor had they only had a mail address. But this mid-level officer would write her great notes and this donor loved it so much. She even wrote back and said I bought special stationery just to write to you. And she increased, isn’t that sweet? She increased her giving from $1,000 to $50,000. No phone or email to this day. I know but connects with the fundraiser right through that. So I love it.

Kara Ansotegui  

 Yeah, I will say, to your point, I had a donor and we didn’t have anything on. So I sent him a PS asking him to call me. And we all know that people are really hesitant to do that. And he did, he picked up the phone and called me and said you want to know why I give? Well, here’s all the reasons and he was a $250,000 cumulative lifetime donor. He gave $10,000 annually, and no one was reaching him just because we didn’t have a phone number. And I ended up going to an event with him, engaging him, and he ended up increasing his giving to the organization. I also found out he was giving that same amount to five other organizations. Hello, wealth indicator. Wow. So it’s it’s kind of incredible. What just that outreach can do with that little extra effort, Lisa.

Lisa Robertson  

Yeah, well, then, right. Because even better when we do connect, because then we learn their interests and passions, we report back on impact. And then we see them give even more.

Kara Ansotegui  

Yeah, I completely, I love that. Yeah.

Lisa Robertson  

Yeah, I think you had a donor like that right?

Kara Ansotegui  

Well, the donor I just talked about was one of them. The other one was, I was actually with a client and I, he had a donor who called one day received his information and said, hey, you know, I want to make a significant gift. And my meeting with our client was right after that. And I told him, you know, listen, significant to some people is different than significant to others. So we don’t know what that means. But let’s treat him like he’s a major gift donor, and we want to find his passions and interests, all of those things. So we did. And it took some time, he actually dropped materials off on his door because he lived close to him. And the donor called and said, “Hey, I’m gonna make $100,000 gift.” 

Lisa Robertson  

In mid-level.

Kara Ansotegui  

In mid-level, yeah.

Lisa Robertson  

Yeah, no, you know, I have a similar story where a new mid-level officer was, you know, starting his introduction process. And when he called to follow up on the letter, the donor said, you know, I told someone two years ago, I wanted to make a six-figure gift, and no one followed up with me. Well, yeah, immediately, we got kind of a project together. But what I love about this is that mid-level officer did research and figured out like that they like to name buildings, they like to be from the ground up, right? They didn’t want to, he just learned all these great things about them. And this donor, through that relationship, has now committed to a $300,000, multi-year project. We would have missed that. Right. So that’s, again, another reason I just love that we’re able to build these relationships and have this net revenue bump.

Kara Ansotegui  

Yeah, those are great stories. Okay, so last but not least: we build the major gifts pipeline. And that hasn’t existed before, in a lot of organization. And without a mid-level program, we know that donors are going to move into major gifts at around a 0.02%. Yes, you heard that correctly. 0.02%. With mid-level program, that’s three to three and a half percent of the mid-level file. It sounds wrong. But it really isn’t, especially when you consider that those donors now come over qualified. When multiple personnel are working to connect with donors, the ability to move them across that pipeline to major gifts, it just continues to increase. And there’s this huge benefit. And like I just mentioned, we’re not just qualifying them because they made a gift. We’re relationally qualifying them, right? We are learning passions and interests. And so when we turn them over, major gift officers no longer have that part of the work to do and they’re really able to work on that transformational gift. 

Lisa Robertson  

Love it. 

Kara Ansotegui  

Yeah. And you know, I said over I don’t know if you noticed that, but it speaks to the pipeline working again, not up, not down. But across, right. Yeah. It’s just such an incredibly valuable relationship building area.

Lisa Robertson  

Love it. Okay, we had five reasons today, Kara. You and I, you know, we love this stuff. We could go on forever. But this has been a lot of fun. So thank you for joining me. Thank you for everyone who’s listening to the podcast. I hope this has inspired you to see mid-level differently and maybe consider starting your own mid-level program. You can learn our entire system and structure for creating and developing your mid-level program and our certification course in mid-level fundraising. So check that out and check out the upcoming session dates to find the right one for you. Thank you so much and take care.

Recorded  

Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at veritusgroup.net. Please join us again next time.

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Veritus Group is passionate about partnering with you and your organization throughout your fundraising journey. We believe that the key to transformative fundraising is a disciplined system and structure, trusted accountability, persistence, and a bit of fun. We specialize in mid-level fundraising, major gifts, and planned giving, helping our clients to develop compelling donor offers and to focus on strategic leadership and organizational development. You can learn more about how we can partner with you at www.veritusgroup.net.

Additional Resources:

• [Podcast] Keep, Lift, Move: The Three Objectives of a Successful Mid-Level Program
• [Blog] How to Overcome the Fear and Get Started on Your Mid-Level Program
• [Course] Certification Course in Mid-Level Fundraising