Transcript

[00:00:00] Aubrey Bergauer: Hey everyone. Welcome to the penultimate episode this season of The Offstage Mic. This is one of the most important episodes of the season. I know I, I think a lot of episodes this season have been so packed with value and important, but this one, I say is one of the most important episodes because every arts organization everywhere says they want to be financially sustainable.

And one of the biggest mistakes I see arts organizations make and their quest for financial sustainability is focusing too much on major gifts. You're probably like, Aubrey, what do you mean? How can we be focusing too much on major gifts? Like we can't even balance the budget right now or pay the bills on time.

So how are we possibly focusing too much on the big gifts that are the key to fixing this financial mess? And I know I've been there. I totally get it. I mean, I used to think if I could just get a couple more major donors, right, or if we could [00:01:00] just bring in big chunks of money or revenue or donors, then we don't have to worry, right?

That's the other half of the thought. We don't have to worry, but that is code for if I have big chunks of money, I don't have to worry about smaller amounts of money or smaller amounts of revenue in the form of individual ticket sales and even lower level donations. Then I learned the hard way really that relying on big chunks of money, relying on these massive major gifts is actually a lot riskier.

How many times have you seen organizations have to drastically cut the budget because their one large donor pulled out, for example, or their biggest corporate sponsor pulled out, or their biggest foundation stopped funding them, for example? Or how many times have you seen organizations, this could even be your organization, and I've been here too as well, where you are actually beholden to what a few donors think or want, because you know.

If they go, we're in [00:02:00] trouble. So I am here to tell you that focusing on major gifts doesn't relieve you from focusing on smaller individual revenue streams. Major gifts come because you focused on the other revenue streams of tickets, subscriptions, and smaller, non-major donations. So we're not here to say goodbye to major donors.

We're here to help us actually get more of them in the end. This whole season we have talking about how to grow the base, right? If you've been listening, like hopefully this sounds right in line with everything else we've been talking about. We have talked about how to strategically segment your audience, talk to each group of people, no matter where they are in their patron journey with your organization.

So again, I am not here to say don't go for major donors. Don't hear me saying that I will happily accept a major gift any day of the week, right? I just don't want to be beholden to chasing those gifts because I haven't done the order of operations. Right, and built the pipeline to get those [00:03:00] major gift supporters.

When you do that, when you don't get the order of operations right, that is like watering only the leaves of a tree, but forgetting that it all actually is nourished from the roots. So it's not about how much will you lose if you stop chasing after big gifts to bill you out. It's about how many more new, large, substantial, generous, major gifts you will receive when you've built the whole pipeline infrastructure to get you there.

What we are talking about today is the best path towards that recurring, reliable, sustainable contributed revenue. Think about this. What if you could have reliable revenue every month? You could count on that. You could budget for almost like passive income. This is not a dream. What I'm describing here, what we are talking about is monthly giving.

Lemme just give you this stat. Recurring donors give 42% more annually [00:04:00] than one-time donors. That comes from classy.org. For those of you who follow classy. That's one of a million benefits you're gonna hear about today, including the billions of dollars, literally billions of dollars of revenue available to nonprofit organizations who do focus on sustainable giving.

Like they've literally calculated this projection. It's not hyperbole. It's actually a quite conservative estimate, and we're gonna explain it all as we get into it later. For now, the point is recurring revenue. Is revenue you can count on and plan for not one time gifts that you have to chase for renewal next year.

Not major donors. You over rely on like a piggy bank for your organization, but sustainable revenue that waters from the roots. The whole tree of your Arts organization. I talk about the subscription and membership economy. In my own book, I talk about retention a lot, as you know, pretty much always. But this conversation goes deeper on all of that, I would say, and I have an [00:05:00] excellent guest.

Who literally wrote the book on this topic. So now you have a choice. You can keep exhausting yourself, hoping for more major donors by watering the leaves of the tree or last part of this metaphor, you can nurture and water the roots and you can grow an even bigger tree that still has major donors. We love, you, love probably even more of them with the strategy we lay out today.

And we're gonna show you how. And also have that ongoing support at every level, recurring every month, predictably, reliably, and sustainably. Oh, I am so glad you were here for this one. Guys. Let's do it. I'm Aubrey Auer and welcome to my podcast. I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue.

The arts are my vehicle to make the change I wanna see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gen. Under and racial equality, developing high performing teams and [00:06:00] leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work. I've been called the Steve Jobs of classical music and the Sheryl Sandberg of the Symphony.

I've held offstage roles, managing millions of dollars in revenue at major institutions. Been chief executive of an orchestra where we've doubled the size of the audience and nearly quadrupled the donor base and now. I'm here to help you achieve that same kind of success. In this podcast, we are sorting through data and research inside and outside the arts, applying those findings to our work in arts management and bringing in some extra voices along the way.

All to build the vibrant future we know is possible for our institutions and for ourselves as offstage administrators and leaders. You are listening to the offstage mic.

Hi everyone. Aubrey here. I wanna share a quick case study with you. About a year ago, Boston Chamber Music Center knew they needed to work on identifying [00:07:00] prospective donors and building relationships with the donors they already had. Plus they went through a leadership transition and knew they needed to fundraise more and fast.

They came to annual fund toolkit who did a comprehensive analysis of their donor base. Then developed a system for the organization to connect with those donors based on their needs and giving styles. They did all of this using a multi-channel combination of in-person asks, email, social media, and direct mail.

By the end of the fiscal year, their year to date, fundraising had doubled compared to the year prior, and that's just the numbers. They now also have a streamlined process for tracking and maintaining donor relationships going forward. How did they do all this? They did it with annual fund toolkit.

Annual fund toolkit is not. Just another consulting firm. What sets them apart is their laser focus on two critical challenges, improving donor retention and growing the major gifts pipeline. This can be your organization too, because this is what annual fund toolkit does every day. Their founder, Luis Diaz, is one of the [00:08:00] most brilliant minds and fundraising I've ever met.

The organizations that utilize annual fund toolkits, advice and assistance are coming out ahead. To read the full case study, head over to get dot annual fund toolkit.com/acmc. That's GET dot annual fund toolkit.com/acmc for Austin Chamber Music Center. Trust me, your donors and your mission will. Thank you.

My guest today is Dana Snyder. Dana Snyder is a dynamic speaker, author of the Monthly Giving Mastermind, host of the nonprofit podcast, missions to Movements and the visionary creator of the Monthly Giving Summit. Her mission is to create sustainable giving models by establishing robust monthly giving programs, making philanthropy accessible to all.

Dana's impressive career includes serving as a senior digital strategist at DKC in New York City, where [00:09:00] she worked with prestigious clients such as the Honest Company, sports Illustrated and Delta Airlines. She also brought her digital expertise to American Idol as a digital producer. Additionally, Dana has held the roles of director of marketing and development for Take Stock in Children of Sarasota County and client manager at Omnigon.

You're gonna hear us talk about this intersection of digital marketing chops that Dana has and how that matters for stronger fundraising. But meanwhile, Dana is also a sought after keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, and I am so glad you get to benefit from all of her expertise right now. Dana Snyder, welcome to the offstage, Mike.

Thanks for having me. This is exciting. The first thing I want you to talk about is you mentioned there is a $9 billion opportunity for recurring revenue in the United States. What is it? Why? Just start there. Tell me everything. Yes, so I am in this. New partnership. This task force, this monthly giving task force with [00:10:00] Giving Tuesday and our KD group.

And we've been having some pretty big dialogues at the beginning of this year, of 2025 around recurring giving and the opportunities that there are for nonprofits. And I was sharing with Giving Tuesday that. I'm bringing together 4,700 nonprofits on this one topic, and they're like, okay, this isn't released yet, but we're gonna allow you to share it.

And based upon their research and their studies, right now, only 3% of US charitable donations are given on a recurring basis. But if we move that from three to 5%, a 2% increase, that unlocks. $9 billion in annual funding for nonprofits. What I didn't share was if we go from three to 9%, 'cause that it's gonna take a lot of work, that's like 21 billion in annual recurring revenue, not just a one time.[00:11:00] 

Wow. Okay. So I knew there was a lot on the table for recurring revenue. That's why I champion recurring revenue in particularly monthly giving. So. Tell me about the donor side though. Why do donors give recurring versus one time? So the biggest, and I mean, I'm one of them, so I give to five organizations as a monthly donor right now, and the biggest difference is usually that they're just asked to give in that way, or they're given the option to give in that way, and they want to because they believe in the long-term vision of the organization.

Ending hunger, a water crisis arts development, like these things don't happen in a month. They don't happen in a day. They're not gonna happen in a year. They're not gonna happen in five years, and we know that it's going to take the long run. So investing in a recurring. Gift, even if it's in a smaller capacity, leads to [00:12:00] substantial change.

And from working with nonprofits, they're able to have predictable funds to be able to really put programs in place and plan for them in advance. So it's a big difference. Yeah, no, absolutely. From the organization side, it makes so much sense. But I'm glad to hear you speak from the donor side of, yeah, we're not solving insert fill in the blank, mission driven thing.

Our one time gift. Yeah, and I'd say like on even like a selfish side, a lot of us, a lot of people just want to do something good every day. Like, how can I intentionally feel good about making a difference, even if I can't, I call them micro philanthropists and I might not be able to donate a thousand dollars or X amount, but I can give $25 a month, five times to the organizations that I love, right?

Or whatever that incremental amount is. And so it's like this concept of living charitably, doing good every single day. Um, and so when the ask is met with the person, then that's when an action can happen. You do such a good [00:13:00] job in your book of just arming readers with all kinds of stats and successful examples of exactly what you're describing right now.

Just so many monthly giving programs and. The readers can use that to make the case at their own organization. Right. And so I'm wondering, just right now, can you share just some of those great stats, some of those reasons why are these monthly giving programs so impactful to the organization? Yes. Oh my gosh.

And I. All different sizes. So what I wanted to make sure that I didn't just share is the ones that we normally Google and find. So normally in most articles, it's the large organizations that were here, the Save the Children, the Charity Water, she's the first, and that is so unattainable and the 1% of 1% of nonprofits.

And so the book shares all sizes, um, of success, and that is applicable to. The mom and pop shops to the large ones. So I'll share a couple examples that are super timely just coming off of the backs of the monthly Giving Summit. Um, Eliza was [00:14:00] the ED from Mulatto. She's been a part of my monthly giving Mastermind.

So before we worked together in September of 2022, she had 12 monthly donors. So when she first created Monthly Giving for her organization, that was raising. Just under $20,000 a year. Then she joined the monthly giving program in 2023, and now they're at over 70 monthly donors as of December of 2024 at 64,000, almost 61,500 per year, and her growth is just catapulting.

So at a. Small organization level. That's a really big difference in the intermediate group. Maggie, from Blink Now, she has a monthly giving program called The Roots, and last year in 2024, they're monthly donors. I think they have, they're in that couple thousand range, 36% of their operating budget. Four unrestricted [00:15:00] funds is from their monthly giving program.

So the amount that they can plan because of this donor stream, and not only are they monthly donors, but they're also one-time givers that give Additionally, they are also the volunteers. They're also, also also, right. Um. And then on a large scale organization, RA is mentioned in the book and she, he is the COO of daily giving.

And why I love talking about this organization is they only ask for recurring gifts. And I think this is so against the grain of everything we know. And they have over 20,000 monthly donors. They just started in 2019 and theirs is a dollar a day concept. So the average gift is around 30, $31 and they send an email every single day and it's thriving.

Oh, I love, okay. Thank you for sharing different size organizations. What I wanna talk to you about is. Your experience really as a digital marketing consultant. So many [00:16:00] people think particularly in the arts, marketing is over here and development is over here, and I don't believe that at all. Then I see you writing a book on fundraising as a digital marketing consultant, and it just totally supports this point.

So will you talk about the relationship between the skills of digital marketing and recurring monthly giving? Huge. Okay, so I'm gonna take an internal and an external perspective to this. So internally, my business is eight years old and I did start as like an agency in digital marketing. And then in 2020, I.

There was a significant, you probably saw this in the industry too, a significant jump in the amount of nonprofit tech platforms, donation tools, and I am just tech curious and so I'm always looking into what's happening and so as. A digital marketer, I'm always assessing tech. Am I using the right technology?

Is this the best technology for my clients? Is this the best overall tech stack? [00:17:00] The CRM, the donation tool, the email provider, the social channels, what's that ecosystem? So internally, from a skillset, those things need to talk to each other for a monthly giving program, or it's gonna be chaos. And a major thing that I work with clients on are optimizing the donation tools they use and then getting them to talk to each other or switching because they don't.

And so often when we're in a new front end donation tool conversation or CRM, there's some sales obviously woven into that, but we have to ask the question. Do they natively connect? Am I gonna have to use a tool like Zapier to connect them? Does that even exist? Does it give us what we need or not? And if they're gonna be fragmented, that means your data's fragmented.

So from a digital marketing head, internally, I'd say that is core. Like I've actually been talking about that a lot because if you don't have that. Then that's really difficult on you as the fundraiser to retain [00:18:00] supporters because the comms are gonna be disconnected on the frontward facing side of marketing and acquisition retention, that's also extremely important because that comes in line with your website.

Are you running social ads? That's your emails. That's everything that might be more forward facing. So they both. Are equally as important. Um, just one is in your forward and one's your internal. I could not agree more. I love everything you're saying and also you talk about treating your monthly giving program as a product, meaning it has a launch like any other product.

In other words, it has a solid marketing strategy behind the launch. It has a dedicated budget, having a team to promote it. Can you just kind of take us a step farther on all of this? Yeah, so step one in my book is create the product and just how we have, so like I have an example, a Poppy, and there is a reason and a design [00:19:00] podcast listener for this can The colors, the name of this one is doc Pop.

Like there's a reason for the name of it. There's a reason for the price point. There's a reason of the marketing language that's on the back of the can and what they're sharing with us. All of this. Should be the amount of attention that we give to a monthly giving program or product. It should have a name.

It should have its own landing page. It should have its own language about why it's so important to give on a recurring basis. It calls in the community. It should have specific impact giving amounts on that form versus the ones that are gonna be your one time giving amount. So everything about it.

Should be treated as a product in the creation and the support. So what marketing dollars or attention are you going to give that program in order to succeed? And so one major reason why I think it's so important to have its own product and it not just be like a checkbox on a form, [00:20:00] is what if someone didn't mean to give monthly?

Are they going to be mad? And if you have a separate landing page that is literally called join the blank, all the way down the page, it's calling out monthly. The form is only monthly like you in your retention, the email they get is, thank you for joining. As a monthly donor, like you have done your due diligence.

And if that person on accident for whatever reason, somehow in that page clicked, give monthly, followed all the prompts, and. It doesn't wanna give monthly anymore. That's okay. And that's not fine. That's not on you. But that's kind of the genesis of the create the product and why for a launch. It allows you to also direct people to somewhere really specific.

Don't send them to your homepage and hope they find it. Or even send them to a donate page where there's a one time option and then they're like, what was I supposed to do here? And it's [00:21:00] just confusion. We don't have time for all that we need to make it simple and clear and concise.

Yes, people need to be led. There's all kinds of research, I'm sure you know about like how simple actually leads to more conversions. So now where I wanna go is, let me just zoom out a bit. Start at the beginning. Talk us through, just name the five steps as much as you wanna share, to grow and sustain subscriptions, memberships, monthly giving for good.

Yes. So number one is create the product. And I would even say that you should be the chief evangelist of recurring giving in your organization. Do you have to really wanna focus on it? Step two is make it easy. And so that's all about optimizing your donation forms, your website, but really the forms and making sure that process is as seamless as possible for the donor.

Step three is calling the believers. So like you just mentioned, this is all about the messaging that you're utilizing on that page and how you're calling in your biggest superfan. This [00:22:00] also called the believers, is around your partnerships. So who are you bringing into your space that can help you reach more believers?

Dr. Marcus Collins, and he just talks about. Niche down in finding the culture of people that you're looking for. You don't need the masses. You actually wanna go smaller, and then you'll find your core people. Step four is make the ask. So this is literally the timing of how are we going to make the ask.

What I recommend are having 10 pole moments and then having evergreen comms. So the only way monthly giving is gonna grow is if you. Ask if you ask when you're speaking at events, if you ask, when you're on a podcast and you're talking about your mission, you ask in your emails, you ask during your campaigns, and then you have tentpole moments that are specific, bigger times.

Um, so we talk about PR in that section. We talk about social media, we talk about four like case study examples of other nonprofits are asking with social ads. And then step five, which is honestly the most [00:23:00] important part in like the crux of a solid monthly giving program, is share constant joy and gratitude.

Essentially what that means is someone felt so good when they clicked donate to be a monthly donor. How do you every single month bring back that joy and solid monthly giving programs? A lot of clients I work with have a 90% plus retention rate of those donors for years, and then those donors become your major donors.

I love that. Thank you for laying that out. So, okay, let me just start here. I keep thinking how to make the case for support for monthly giving for donors at an arts organization. This is where my mind keeps going. I, I totally believe in this strategy, but I keep thinking of other successful monthly giving programs and they are meeting deep, deep needs in this world.

Clean water hunger. Like you said, I'm a believer in this strategy, but even when I think about what's happening at the Kennedy [00:24:00] Center right now in arts and culture, like my heart is broken, but it's still not the same deep seated need as trying to end human trafficking or giving people clean water. Do you think, given this, I guess I'm just playing a little bit of devil's advocate, can this work for an arts organization?

A million percent. I mean, when we think about music and how it literally brings people out of the darkest times of their life, they bring out arts, the biggest emotions in us, and it is core to so many communities and supporting kids and adults, and whether it's theater, whether it's music, whether whatever it is like.

It is all about what uniquely identifies with someone and what they feel called to support and arts is life changing. My recommendation would be to never doubt the movement of that, [00:25:00] and so we all kind of have this. Questioning or doubt, but the belief in, and especially with arts, it was really impactful.

'cause you bring people most of the time to a physical seat. They are leaving their house, they are getting in a car, they are getting dressed. The whole thing is a really big deal of what you make possible. And then that gives them joy or, and sometimes, a lot of times, education on something new.

Thank you for that answer because hearing you say that now what's going through my mind is Aubrey, it's not about life or death actually. It's about an emotional response. That is what the arts, I think, inherently have in our corner because we provide experiences that. Evoke emotion.

Here's a fun fact. A returning audience member is worth seven times more than a first timer. Yes, I am talking about audience [00:26:00] retention, one of my favorite topics, but the problem I hear all the time from arts organizations is how to best track your own patron retention data across marketing and development.

That's why I wanna tell you about Artis. Artis has brilliantly solved this challenge. Their audience retention dashboard is the one stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. First time buyers, multi-buyers, subscribers, and donors. I've worked with a lot of tools in data management programs over the years.

The Artis Audience Retention Dashboard works with any CRM and it supports arts organizations of all sizes all over the globe. If you can upload a spreadsheet within minutes, you can access all your data, your key patron segments and top retention metrics. Beautifully laid out and easy to read. It's just that easy, no joke.

And their tool even makes real-time recommendations based on your patron data to boost conversion at each stage of the customer journey so you [00:27:00] can see what's working, refine your. Approach and keep doubling down on what drives the best results. The Artis team brought me into their process and we had clients test the product with their own real data.

So let me tell you, I have seen firsthand the immense time, money, and effort this dashboard can. Save arts organizations allowing you to finally harness your data in one place. Think easier. Collaboration between marketing and development efforts, easier for presenting at board meetings. Easier to see everything in one place without running multiple reports.

If you are ready to grow, retain and engage your audience with data-driven tools that are easy and fast to use. Visit aubrey auer.com/dashboard. Listeners of this podcast, save 20% and members. As of my run it like a business academy, save even more. That's www.aubreyauer.com/dashboard To learn more about artize today.

Well, since we're talking [00:28:00] about what we have in our corner and what to do, right. Or what we have, right. Uh, my next question is, you became really a secret shopper of monthly giving programs. You say in your book, you, you joined one and you took notes. Right. So what are the things that. Best programs did right.

Did well. Like just tell us definitely what to do. If you have some pro tips I can share some like definite to do and some definite maybe like don't do. Definitely do have that like separate landing page. Definitely do have an immediate welcome series. 'cause it's fresh in people's minds. So the ones that were reaching out quickly and consistently.

Ones that had an SMS approach. Monthly donors are way more likely to share a phone number with you, an address with you, because they are saying, I'm committed to the long-term vision. So ask for those things. Ask for specific data points. So when I received a second dairy. Point of communication. I was really impressed and I'm on my [00:29:00] phone all the time.

Emails can often get lost. Definitely don't forget to communicate in multiple channels. But yeah, I, I secret shopped because I wanted to get a sense of how, mostly what's happening on the retention side. 'cause you can see a lot of the frontward facing stuff obviously, but on the backend, what is that experience?

How easy is it to cancel? How difficult is it? Um, what platforms were really seamless on the backend, all that kind of stuff. Okay, I wanna come back to major gifts. This was another part of your book where I was like pretty much jumping up and down as I was reading it, so, and that's the part where you say most organizations have a major gifts officer role.

Like if it's not somebody's title, like at a smaller organization, then it's definitely always major gifts, always part of somebody's job and. What if an organization, though you said, had a sustainer role or a sustainer team? A sustainer program manager. You know, a lot of organizations have donor relations specialist or you know, something like that.

So it's not a huge stretch in [00:30:00] my mind, but will you just talk about, you know, what these roles are in your mind? What do they do? How would somebody build this out, I guess is what I'm trying to ask? Yeah, they're getting more popular. If you start to search on LinkedIn, actually, there's more roles that you'll see if you type in SUSTAIN or even monthly giving specialist, and their sole focus is acquiring and sustaining this community.

And so they should be in every fundraising and marketing program meeting to be able to learn about like. What the needs are. This is your core group of people who are literally in it with you in an extension of the team. And if you want them to feel like that heartbeat, then they should be receiving different content.

Um. If you're acquiring them, a lot of times this person is researching what's the best way to do that. They're testing social media ads, maybe they're doing face-to-face, um, maybe they're doing direct mail pieces alongside everything else that's going on. [00:31:00] But when you're able to make it just one person, if you're just starting with one, and then hopefully it can become more than just one.

Um, but you're giving them time to focus specifically on. This very special group of people and the retention. What does a 12 month plus retention cycle look like for the supporters? Um, paying attention to the needs of these people, especially as it grows and you get thousands and thousands of supporters that they need a contact person to talk to if they need to manage their gift or they have a question.

So this person is the one that's designated to serving this growing community. It's so funny because I think we might be maybe even talked about this when I was on your podcast, but I talk all the time about, you know, how do we bring our marketing and development work together so that it's patron loyalty.

You're using the word sustainer. I mean, it's all like versions of the same concept of like, how do we move people along on this journey of engagement that never ends. [00:32:00] So how then do you move monthly donors to major donors? What do you recommend? So that's looking into your data and understanding.

Capacity of giving consistency, of giving. One thing I definitely recommend doing every single year is having an upgrade campaign. And so with your monthly donors, and you can determine when in the year is right for you, but it's, you're usually asking for that like three to 5% jump. But let's just say somebody goes from $50 a month to 500, you're like, whoa, um, what's going on there?

Maybe we should have a conversation with them. The another thing that can happen. Is as they're giving, they're giving other incremental one-time gifts and it's like, oh, okay, and maybe those are larger. At a couple thousand you're like, okay, we should definitely, this person's on our radar now because they're growing in the engagement, like you were saying, community with you.

So just paying attention to kind of the [00:33:00] clues, um, that are being given to you and just nurturing that relationship with that individual. It's also interesting. On the flip side, even if somebody might not be a monthly donor, but you're talking about your monthly giving community and the growth of it.

Something that Scott Harrison just said recently at We Are For Goods Impact Up event was the masses fuel the majors. It's important for major donors to see that you have a growing strong community of monthly supporters because they want to see that and they know that if that's happening, that's, we keep saying the word sustainable, but it is, there's a reason why.

In the for-profit world, there's a subscription economy and it's booming, and we all have a bazillion subscriptions and there should be a large reason why we also love it, and especially in the climate that we're in. To have predictable funding that we have agency over is huge. If you can rely on an 80 to 90 plus percent retention rate of [00:34:00] supporters, why would you not want to grow that base?

So. The major gifts, both sides. They see a flourishing base. They're gonna want to give. They're in the flourishing base. They'll want to give more. So everybody, you need to get Dana's book, the Monthly Giving Mastermind. It is packed with statistics, data, case studies. You heard just a fraction of what's in the book in this podcast right here.

So for anybody who wants to set your organization on a path to financial sustainability, Dana walks you through what to do, step by step, step-by-step, and she makes it so consumable, so understandable. It's very easy to read, and it just has so many great examples of who's doing it right. You can. Take ideas and inspiration from.

So tell everybody where do they learn more, how do they pick up their copy? And then now everybody, you heard it here first, it's now available as an audio book. So te tell everybody where do they get, whichever version they want. The audio book is currently right now available on Spotify. And so if you have Spotify premium, it's automatically available to you.

[00:35:00] I think it's. If you don't, it's $8 and 49 cents right now. It will be available on Audible and all of the things, I'm just waiting for the release to happen, but of the powers that be in distribution. But same thing for the book. Um, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, it's paperback online, available wherever you. Get your books, Dana Snyder.

You have brought a wealth of information and ideas. You have backed it up with just such great expertise, experience, data. Thank you so much for being here and just for generously sharing so much. I'm really grateful. Of course. I mean it's all, it's 2%. It's what we started the conversation with and we collectively, if we can make a 2% difference, just think about what $9 billion annually could do for our sector.

What would it be like if you didn't have to worry about making your revenue goals or what if you could go to the next board meeting? Being able to report good news? What if you were able to balance your budget at the end of the fiscal year, and what if you didn't [00:36:00] have to program only blockbusters just to sell it up?

Tickets? Off stagers. I have been there losing sleep over the budget trying to figure out how we will ever make it through. So what if you had the ability to stop feeling exhausted and depleted, chasing impossible revenue goals? Stop what's not working, and instead incorporate a fuse strategies that are proven to increase ticket sales.

Expand the donor base. And grow the revenue you need to fund your mission and your art. It's not too good to be true. That is why I am teaching a free masterclass where I share my top four strategies to grow your audience and donor base. These are things you can do immediately to start seeing results.

Things that don't require a huge team, mega resources or a giant budget. These are the four steps to help you start spinning up revenue immediately. Steps that led the orchestra. I ran to balance the budget by the end of my first year there, double the audience over the next four years after that and nearly quadruple the donor base.

I have [00:37:00] now seen these exact steps work with over 200 individuals and organizations. I've taught across budget sizes, geographies, artistic disciplines, and millions of dollars in revenue later, and I will show you how to do it too. Reserve your spot for my free audience Growth Masterclass coming up very soon.

I promise it'll be packed with value, and I've got even more freebies to give you when you attend. Think about the relief and freedom that lies ahead for you when you start increasing sales and donations right away with the steps. I'm gonna show you. Reserve your free seat for this audience growth masterclass right now by going to www.aubreyburau.com/masterclass.

Can't wait to see you there.

That's all for today, folks. Thanks so much for listening. If you like what you heard here, hit [00:38:00] that button to follow and subscribe to this podcast. And if you've learned something or gotten value from this, please take two seconds to leave a quick one tap rating or review and return to all of you one more time.

Thanks again. See you next time on the Offstage Mic. The Offstage Mic is produced by me, Aubrey Bergauer and Erin Allen. The show is edited by Novo Music, an audio production company of all women, audio engineers and musicians. Our theme music is by Alex Grohl. Additional podcast support this season comes from Kelle Stedman.

Other members of the changing the narrative team and social media brand management, like classical content, this is a production of changing the narrative.