[Music]
so TED talks
kind of a funny thing because three
little letters behind you you can have
the Tennessee to convey expertise on
average Joes with decent stage presence
who can wrap up rack up a couple million
video views on YouTube so I want to go
ahead and relieve you of a burden right
now by telling you that I am NOT an
expert there we go but it doesn’t take
an expert to try to spot a problem so
let me tell you about this problem I
found and what we’re trying to do to
solve it this is the u.s. household net
worth in billions since the end of World
War two it’s exploding its skyrocketing
almost 500% growth in terms of household
wealth this is the average size of a
u.s. single family home in square
footage today we live in homes that are
nearly 50% bigger than people did in
1970 this is the number of mobile phone
subscriptions per capita since 1980 some
people carried two phones double-fisting
we’re drowning in technology right but
this is charitable giving as a
percentage of the gross domestic product
of the United States in fact shareable
giving has been stuck at 2% of the GDP
for almost 40 years now so this is an
interesting thing because even though
we’re exploding in wealth we live in
huge homes we have all this technology
we’re not becoming more generous this is
a my lack of expertise what I don’t know
about this has led me to try to uncover
what can what can solve this problem and
it’s led me to believe that optimization
can save the world
so why do I care about charitable giving
I’ll tell you a little bit about my
story I graduated from ACU in 2005 with
a commes degree and no plan I moved to
Dallas and I went to work for Mark Cuban
people know him now for shark tank and
knew him then is the owner of the
Mavericks building digital marketing
team for his television network it was
great I got a lot of experience got to
work with some big budgets and I didn’t
I did the next logical thing that any
would do and I went to work for a family
business that sold coffee table books
these were just ordinary coffee table
books they were coffee table books for
alumni associations to help them raise
money and a lot of times these alumni
associations after we would make these
books would say hey can you help us
raise the money now and this is 10 years
ago 2008 which is about 50 years ago in
internet years but we started trying to
help these folks sell these coffee table
books online in exchange for donations
so they could raise money online and I
became fascinated with this concept of
fundraising for a couple of reasons
number one I’m kind of a contrarian by
Nature I like doing things that other
people don’t and most people don’t like
to ask for money so I saw an opportunity
to I have had this drilled in to my my
head since I was a kid that my stuff is
not my own it’s just been given to me to
steward and to help out people who need
and need things that that I have and so
I thought it would be a great thing to
explore this career as a fund raiser and
spend the rest of my career helping
people let go of their stuff right so I
went into full-time fundraising at kera
which is an NPR PBS affiliate in Dallas
and I quickly learned something very
fundamental about people and giving
nobody wants to give their money away we
don’t we’re in a culture that tells us
get more hold on tighter to it right no
one wakes up saying I gotta go clean out
my savings account and give it all the
way and I know this because this this
number right here is the average
response rate to an email appeal when
you’re asking for money so you’ll send
out an email peal to your list of all
these supporters and you will say will
you please support this cause in less
than half of one percent of people will
respond with a gift right this is
considered good this is like the
benchmark this is from last year – so
rousing success right I see this as a
ninety nine point nine six percent
failure rates so I said this is great
I’ve chosen this career as a fund raiser
no one wants to give their money away
and now I get to wake every morning and
come to work and fail right has to be
something better than this so I looked
around the nonprofit community I
couldn’t find anyone who is improving
conversion rates like this went to the
for-profit community and found this guy
Flint McLaughlin here’s the executive
director of a group that helped Forge
100 companies grow revenue through
testing and optimization I thought this
could be cool his company came up with
all of these experiments and heuristics
and ways to map the mind and what
happens when people are making decisions
because they thought if they can
understand what helps people make
decisions then they might be able to
engineer more yeses into the sales
funnels for these companies so I took
this concept of the funnel to him and he
said yes a funnel is a very good analogy
because you will send an email to a lot
of people few of those people will open
even fewer amount of those people will
click and a very small amount of those
people will give that is a useful
analogy it helps say that all of your
fundraising efforts should lead to a
logical conclusion at the bottom but he
said there’s a fatal flaw your funnel is
upside down
people aren’t falling into it they don’t
wake up in the morning wanting to give
they’re falling out of it not only do
they have a natural aversion to wanting
to give their money away they also are
distracted by everything else in the
world you’re not just competing with
other nonprofits you’re competing with
Netflix you’re competing with social
media you need people’s attention and
they’re falling out but there’s a
solution and a solution is optimization
because optimization that can reverse
reverse this flow and get people going
up into your funnel towards the goal
that you want them to achieve which in
this case is a charitable donation
so optimization defined as the process
of improving the results of an action
this is a experiment that he showed at
his conference and this is you can see
on the left here the sales page for a
solution that is designed to fix blown
head gaskets in your car and as many
times as I’ve shown this slide I still
don’t know what a head gasket is and he
said you know what maybe other people
don’t too and so maybe we need to help
them understand that their problem is
exactly a blown head gasket and so they
created a treatment which they a be
tested you can see it there on the right
and at the beginning at the top they and
they introduced this huge box designed
to help confirm that these people’s
problem with their car is in fact a
blown head gasket using technology they
split the traffic and those coming into
this landing page on the web and they
found that it produced a 36 percent
increase in purchases right because they
were answering a question that the user
was asking themselves in their head do I
have a blown
Gasquet if you do yes this can solve it
so I thought this is really really cool
this concept of the optimization is not
new in the for-profit space anytime you
go on any sort of big website you are in
some sort of a B test Amazon might be
you might be looking at it to buy a car
on Amazon and you find that you know
half the people might be seeing cars
without color hat we might be seeing
cars with color because Amazon wants to
understand this color help you make a
decision or does it present an extra
variable that keeps you from making a
decision this guy whether you love or
hate him is a master of optimization he
understands how to get you to spend more
time on Facebook because when you spend
more time on Facebook his stock goes up
right this soothing sea of blue that
some of us see so many times per day
right there’s a little ping of red in
the corner a notification sometimes you
go back just a minute later and there’s
a notification almost as if they’re
trying to draw you back by metering out
the things that are happening right
he knows this actually affects your
brain dopamine levels change and people
want to go back and get that little hit
of dopamine with this little red
notification people keep coming back
right Google famously tested 41 shades
of blue to see which makes which color
makes people click the search button
more because every time you click the
search button Google makes money right
so they want to see which shade of blue
is gonna make you mash that button 10%
more times Jeff Bezos from Amazon says
that the number of experiments
optimization experiments that he is
running is directly correlated to the
success of his company right if I have
to say this is really cool stuff
behavioral science decision psychology
understanding what makes human people
tick but if this is all we got this is
all we can use this science for to make
people spend more time in social media
and buy more stuff than we have failed
totally failed Nick Kristof a writer for
the New York Times said that toothpaste
is peddled with far greater
sophistication than all the world’s
life-saving causes combined he’s right
it’s a tragedy and so I wanted to take
this optimization science and see if we
could use this stuff to help people give
more generously and solve our generosity
problem I had two friends luckily to my
best friends that we decided to go into
business together four years ago Tim and
Kevin and we started this company called
next after to do this sort of research
with nonprofits over the past four years
we’ve mapped more than one hundred
eighty nine million interactions looking
at 2.4 2.2 4 million conversions to log
just to log to our thousandth experiment
in our research library to try to answer
one question what makes people give we
feel like if we can start to peel back
the layers of this question then we
might be able to actually engineer more
generosity into society this is our very
first experiment we were working with
the George W Bush presidential center at
the time building the campus building
the building on the campus of Southern
Methodist University in Dallas and we
had an email fundraising appeal it had
been working very well and have been
beating all the benchmarks but we wanted
to see if this sort of concept of
optimization might work we didn’t want
to break it so we only changed one thing
you might not even be able to see what
it is from where you are but we changed
the last sentence that was it
we wanted to minimize our risk and that
sentence change produced 141 percent
increase in click-through rate and a 42
percent increase in revenue I’ll show
you it is the first set of treatment I
saw the control Citiz said this it said
please accept this invitation to stand
with President and mrs. Bush by making a
tax-deductible online contribution now
there’s a lot of good things about that
it gives you the opportunity to stand
with a former president that tells you
that gift is tax deductible which
matters to a lot of people and it’s very
clear about what you what it want you to
do give an online contribution now we
said hey if this is really an invitation
shouldn’t we be inviting people to
become part of something to belong to
something that’s what invitations do and
we feel like people have this human
intrinsic desire to become or belong
something so we created a treatment
version and we said please accept this
invitation to become a charter member of
the George W Bush presidential center
141 percent increase in click-through
rate and 42 percent increase in revenue
and we were hooked we started trying to
optimize all the things this is a
donation form of a nonprofit that we
were working with this is pretty
standard donation form looks a lot like
a ecommerce
form to food she would buy anything it’s
asking for your information your address
your credit card information and we
started unpacking this concept of
friction like maybe people don’t want to
do work right does that seem logical so
if something looks like more work fewer
people will do it so we said this is a
lot of fields and they’re all stacked on
top of each other right
can we eliminate some fields from this
and they said no way so we said maybe we
could just rearrange the fields to make
them seem smaller so we put first name
and last name on the same line we put
city state and zip on the same line we
we rearrange the credit card section so
you have the control in the treatment
right and one is very long stacked on
top of each other the other seems more
compact even though it contains the same
number of fields that produced a 39.4%
increase in conversion rate 39.4% more
people gave because the form seemed
smaller right it wasn’t this is the
Texas State Historical Association Texas
history people loved it and wanted to be
a part of this this is a more than 100
year old organization but if they came
to the donate page and had not yet made
up their mind to give on this page they
only have one sentence designed to
convince them to give it says you are
invited to join the thousands of others
who believed in creating a future for
your past so we thought hey maybe people
need a little bit more value proposition
than that maybe we need to sell this a
little more so we wrote some copy get
insider access to the most exclusive
Texas history club in the nation we were
a lot of copy in fact because we thought
there are a lot of reasons why someone
might want to become a part of the Texas
State Historical Association we set this
treatment up the executor executive
director almost quit he said we are not
an exclusive club we’re for everybody we
said okay let’s just see how it goes and
when he saw that he was a little bit
hooked because it was one hundred forty
five percent one hundred forty six
percent increase in conversion rate
because we weren’t selling hard enough
people were coming to this page and they
were not yet convinced to give but extra
copy help people get over the hump and
become a member and this is what
happened to the Texas State Historical
Association as membership ranks after we
started continuing to test and optimize
that value proposition I grew almost
tenfold in three years and this is an
adoption focused nonprofit in Dallas and
I show you this to show that we don’t
always have these big green arrows up we
learned more sometimes from our failures
we’ve learned to embrace the
because it teaches us so much about
people they were sending out an email
appeal at the end of the year time when
lots of nonprofits raise money in
December and they had transcribed a
message from their president and put it
on this landing page asking for a gift
and they said we could actually get the
president to say this message on video
and you know then we could put the video
on the page because don’t people want to
watch videos and doesn’t it produce a
more authentic and pathetic human
connection and wouldn’t that make more
people give right if we put the video on
the page and had him read this message
rather than letting people read that
would cause more people to give right
wrong crushed giving why why well we
discovered something and that’s that
video kind of makes you sit back right
reading forces you to engage video
something clicks off in your brain they
say that your mind is more active while
you’re sleeping than when you’re
watching TV right so by putting this
video on the page that we cause people
to forget what we were actually asking
them to do make a donation the text as
you read it leads you straight down to
the nation form so by the time you
finish it you’re right they’re ready to
give the video we’ve almost YouTube is
almost trained us to click away as soon
as it’s over this is a donation form
it’s a fully secure donation form
compliant in every sense of the word
with all aspects of internet security
right we read that the number-one people
don’t get a number one reason people
don’t give online is because they don’t
think it’s secure and that may be crazy
is we’re all sending money back and
forth on our phones and vim oh but
people don’t give online because they
don’t think it’s secure this form is
secure so we said how do we make this
form seem more secure how do we how we
tell people on the other end of this
form who don’t know all the backend that
this form is indeed secure being the
creative geniuses that we are we put a
gray box around it and a padlock that we
found on Google Image Search and we
thought hey maybe this will set this set
this apart let them know that this area
where you’re entering your credit card
information is actually secure we put
the two next to each other it proves a
nine point four percent increase in
giving these are all statistically valid
numbers and that we validate with a high
level of confidence to make sure that
these lifts are going to be permanent
right so you may say nine point nine
point four percent right
what does that mean what would that mean
let’s extrapolate that out a little bit
what would it mean if we took that same
box in that same padlock we put it on
every donation form in the world and it
got the same lift highly unlikely let’s
pretend let’s to spin reality for a
second if we did that and we looked at
all the money that was given in
nonprofits last year three hundred and
ninety billion dollars were given to
nonprofits a nine point four percent
lift on that would mean an extra thirty
six billion dollars given to charity
do you think this kid might not have to
walk seven miles to get clean water
could we figure out a solution with 36
billion extra dollars to make sure he
gets clean water delivered right to his
village you think these kids might get
the meal they’ve been waiting for for
weeks I think we could find room for
that 36 billion dollars
I think this sweet little girl might get
the life-saving surgery she’s been
waiting on but doesn’t have the
resources to pay for I think we could
find the room for that in fact I think
if we applied these principles of
optimization to giving we could actually
unleash the most generous generation in
human history so this has become our
cause unleashing generosity doing it
through the principles of optimization
right using these decision science and
behavioral psychology to unlock
generosity convince people let go of
their stuff it’s become our cause
so in closing don’t ask you a couple
questions first what’s your cause don’t
confuse this with your job what’s your
cause what are you here to do what’s a
problem that you want to see undone I’ve
been lucky enough to have my job aligned
with my cause and we’re just beginning
this process but what is your cause what
is it that you really want to make
happen to what conventional wisdom will
you have to reject to get there I was
told that this was good this was success
you know I’d learned to look at it like
this and it changed everything for me
and last what funnel are you going to
have to flip you know I used to think
that people were coming to me ready to
give their fall
into my funnel there’s only turtle I
learned that my funnel was upside down
and they were falling out and I was able
to do the things and explore this
concept of optimization to understand
how I can get people moving back upward
into my funnel towards becoming generous
and making donations now you can help me
in this mission I’ve learned a couple
things in the past four years number one
we’re only barely scratching the surface
of this thousand tests in we know just a
hair more than we did four years ago we
all this is a long long journey and we
met we may not be the ones to complete
it but I’ve also learned that we can’t
do this alone so I want to ask one thing
of you today you can join me in this
mission and you don’t have to come work
for us you don’t have to go work for a
non-profit you can be a baker or a
teacher or the world’s best toothpaste
salesman but some point in your life you
will be given the opportunity to give or
to hold back and all I would ask you to
do is to err on the side of generosity
because it’ll never let you down Thanks
[Applause] [Music]
so TED talks
kind of a funny thing because three
little letters behind you you can have
the Tennessee to convey expertise on
average Joes with decent stage presence
who can wrap up rack up a couple million
video views on YouTube so I want to go
ahead and relieve you of a burden right
now by telling you that I am NOT an
expert there we go but it doesn’t take
an expert to try to spot a problem so
let me tell you about this problem I
found and what we’re trying to do to
solve it this is the u.s. household net
worth in billions since the end of World
War two it’s exploding its skyrocketing
almost 500% growth in terms of household
wealth this is the average size of a
u.s. single family home in square
footage today we live in homes that are
nearly 50% bigger than people did in
1970 this is the number of mobile phone
subscriptions per capita since 1980 some
people carried two phones double-fisting
we’re drowning in technology right but
this is charitable giving as a
percentage of the gross domestic product
of the United States in fact shareable
giving has been stuck at 2% of the GDP
for almost 40 years now so this is an
interesting thing because even though
we’re exploding in wealth we live in
huge homes we have all this technology
we’re not becoming more generous this is
a my lack of expertise what I don’t know
about this has led me to try to uncover
what can what can solve this problem and
it’s led me to believe that optimization
can save the world
so why do I care about charitable giving
I’ll tell you a little bit about my
story I graduated from ACU in 2005 with
a commes degree and no plan I moved to
Dallas and I went to work for Mark Cuban
people know him now for shark tank and
knew him then is the owner of the
Mavericks building digital marketing
team for his television network it was
great I got a lot of experience got to
work with some big budgets and I didn’t
I did the next logical thing that any
would do and I went to work for a family
business that sold coffee table books
these were just ordinary coffee table
books they were coffee table books for
alumni associations to help them raise
money and a lot of times these alumni
associations after we would make these
books would say hey can you help us
raise the money now and this is 10 years
ago 2008 which is about 50 years ago in
internet years but we started trying to
help these folks sell these coffee table
books online in exchange for donations
so they could raise money online and I
became fascinated with this concept of
fundraising for a couple of reasons
number one I’m kind of a contrarian by
Nature I like doing things that other
people don’t and most people don’t like
to ask for money so I saw an opportunity
to I have had this drilled in to my my
head since I was a kid that my stuff is
not my own it’s just been given to me to
steward and to help out people who need
and need things that that I have and so
I thought it would be a great thing to
explore this career as a fund raiser and
spend the rest of my career helping
people let go of their stuff right so I
went into full-time fundraising at kera
which is an NPR PBS affiliate in Dallas
and I quickly learned something very
fundamental about people and giving
nobody wants to give their money away we
don’t we’re in a culture that tells us
get more hold on tighter to it right no
one wakes up saying I gotta go clean out
my savings account and give it all the
way and I know this because this this
number right here is the average
response rate to an email appeal when
you’re asking for money so you’ll send
out an email peal to your list of all
these supporters and you will say will
you please support this cause in less
than half of one percent of people will
respond with a gift right this is
considered good this is like the
benchmark this is from last year – so
rousing success right I see this as a
ninety nine point nine six percent
failure rates so I said this is great
I’ve chosen this career as a fund raiser
no one wants to give their money away
and now I get to wake every morning and
come to work and fail right has to be
something better than this so I looked
around the nonprofit community I
couldn’t find anyone who is improving
conversion rates like this went to the
for-profit community and found this guy
Flint McLaughlin here’s the executive
director of a group that helped Forge
100 companies grow revenue through
testing and optimization I thought this
could be cool his company came up with
all of these experiments and heuristics
and ways to map the mind and what
happens when people are making decisions
because they thought if they can
understand what helps people make
decisions then they might be able to
engineer more yeses into the sales
funnels for these companies so I took
this concept of the funnel to him and he
said yes a funnel is a very good analogy
because you will send an email to a lot
of people few of those people will open
even fewer amount of those people will
click and a very small amount of those
people will give that is a useful
analogy it helps say that all of your
fundraising efforts should lead to a
logical conclusion at the bottom but he
said there’s a fatal flaw your funnel is
upside down
people aren’t falling into it they don’t
wake up in the morning wanting to give
they’re falling out of it not only do
they have a natural aversion to wanting
to give their money away they also are
distracted by everything else in the
world you’re not just competing with
other nonprofits you’re competing with
Netflix you’re competing with social
media you need people’s attention and
they’re falling out but there’s a
solution and a solution is optimization
because optimization that can reverse
reverse this flow and get people going
up into your funnel towards the goal
that you want them to achieve which in
this case is a charitable donation
so optimization defined as the process
of improving the results of an action
this is a experiment that he showed at
his conference and this is you can see
on the left here the sales page for a
solution that is designed to fix blown
head gaskets in your car and as many
times as I’ve shown this slide I still
don’t know what a head gasket is and he
said you know what maybe other people
don’t too and so maybe we need to help
them understand that their problem is
exactly a blown head gasket and so they
created a treatment which they a be
tested you can see it there on the right
and at the beginning at the top they and
they introduced this huge box designed
to help confirm that these people’s
problem with their car is in fact a
blown head gasket using technology they
split the traffic and those coming into
this landing page on the web and they
found that it produced a 36 percent
increase in purchases right because they
were answering a question that the user
was asking themselves in their head do I
have a blown
Gasquet if you do yes this can solve it
so I thought this is really really cool
this concept of the optimization is not
new in the for-profit space anytime you
go on any sort of big website you are in
some sort of a B test Amazon might be
you might be looking at it to buy a car
on Amazon and you find that you know
half the people might be seeing cars
without color hat we might be seeing
cars with color because Amazon wants to
understand this color help you make a
decision or does it present an extra
variable that keeps you from making a
decision this guy whether you love or
hate him is a master of optimization he
understands how to get you to spend more
time on Facebook because when you spend
more time on Facebook his stock goes up
right this soothing sea of blue that
some of us see so many times per day
right there’s a little ping of red in
the corner a notification sometimes you
go back just a minute later and there’s
a notification almost as if they’re
trying to draw you back by metering out
the things that are happening right
he knows this actually affects your
brain dopamine levels change and people
want to go back and get that little hit
of dopamine with this little red
notification people keep coming back
right Google famously tested 41 shades
of blue to see which makes which color
makes people click the search button
more because every time you click the
search button Google makes money right
so they want to see which shade of blue
is gonna make you mash that button 10%
more times Jeff Bezos from Amazon says
that the number of experiments
optimization experiments that he is
running is directly correlated to the
success of his company right if I have
to say this is really cool stuff
behavioral science decision psychology
understanding what makes human people
tick but if this is all we got this is
all we can use this science for to make
people spend more time in social media
and buy more stuff than we have failed
totally failed Nick Kristof a writer for
the New York Times said that toothpaste
is peddled with far greater
sophistication than all the world’s
life-saving causes combined he’s right
it’s a tragedy and so I wanted to take
this optimization science and see if we
could use this stuff to help people give
more generously and solve our generosity
problem I had two friends luckily to my
best friends that we decided to go into
business together four years ago Tim and
Kevin and we started this company called
next after to do this sort of research
with nonprofits over the past four years
we’ve mapped more than one hundred
eighty nine million interactions looking
at 2.4 2.2 4 million conversions to log
just to log to our thousandth experiment
in our research library to try to answer
one question what makes people give we
feel like if we can start to peel back
the layers of this question then we
might be able to actually engineer more
generosity into society this is our very
first experiment we were working with
the George W Bush presidential center at
the time building the campus building
the building on the campus of Southern
Methodist University in Dallas and we
had an email fundraising appeal it had
been working very well and have been
beating all the benchmarks but we wanted
to see if this sort of concept of
optimization might work we didn’t want
to break it so we only changed one thing
you might not even be able to see what
it is from where you are but we changed
the last sentence that was it
we wanted to minimize our risk and that
sentence change produced 141 percent
increase in click-through rate and a 42
percent increase in revenue I’ll show
you it is the first set of treatment I
saw the control Citiz said this it said
please accept this invitation to stand
with President and mrs. Bush by making a
tax-deductible online contribution now
there’s a lot of good things about that
it gives you the opportunity to stand
with a former president that tells you
that gift is tax deductible which
matters to a lot of people and it’s very
clear about what you what it want you to
do give an online contribution now we
said hey if this is really an invitation
shouldn’t we be inviting people to
become part of something to belong to
something that’s what invitations do and
we feel like people have this human
intrinsic desire to become or belong
something so we created a treatment
version and we said please accept this
invitation to become a charter member of
the George W Bush presidential center
141 percent increase in click-through
rate and 42 percent increase in revenue
and we were hooked we started trying to
optimize all the things this is a
donation form of a nonprofit that we
were working with this is pretty
standard donation form looks a lot like
a ecommerce
form to food she would buy anything it’s
asking for your information your address
your credit card information and we
started unpacking this concept of
friction like maybe people don’t want to
do work right does that seem logical so
if something looks like more work fewer
people will do it so we said this is a
lot of fields and they’re all stacked on
top of each other right
can we eliminate some fields from this
and they said no way so we said maybe we
could just rearrange the fields to make
them seem smaller so we put first name
and last name on the same line we put
city state and zip on the same line we
we rearrange the credit card section so
you have the control in the treatment
right and one is very long stacked on
top of each other the other seems more
compact even though it contains the same
number of fields that produced a 39.4%
increase in conversion rate 39.4% more
people gave because the form seemed
smaller right it wasn’t this is the
Texas State Historical Association Texas
history people loved it and wanted to be
a part of this this is a more than 100
year old organization but if they came
to the donate page and had not yet made
up their mind to give on this page they
only have one sentence designed to
convince them to give it says you are
invited to join the thousands of others
who believed in creating a future for
your past so we thought hey maybe people
need a little bit more value proposition
than that maybe we need to sell this a
little more so we wrote some copy get
insider access to the most exclusive
Texas history club in the nation we were
a lot of copy in fact because we thought
there are a lot of reasons why someone
might want to become a part of the Texas
State Historical Association we set this
treatment up the executor executive
director almost quit he said we are not
an exclusive club we’re for everybody we
said okay let’s just see how it goes and
when he saw that he was a little bit
hooked because it was one hundred forty
five percent one hundred forty six
percent increase in conversion rate
because we weren’t selling hard enough
people were coming to this page and they
were not yet convinced to give but extra
copy help people get over the hump and
become a member and this is what
happened to the Texas State Historical
Association as membership ranks after we
started continuing to test and optimize
that value proposition I grew almost
tenfold in three years and this is an
adoption focused nonprofit in Dallas and
I show you this to show that we don’t
always have these big green arrows up we
learned more sometimes from our failures
we’ve learned to embrace the
because it teaches us so much about
people they were sending out an email
appeal at the end of the year time when
lots of nonprofits raise money in
December and they had transcribed a
message from their president and put it
on this landing page asking for a gift
and they said we could actually get the
president to say this message on video
and you know then we could put the video
on the page because don’t people want to
watch videos and doesn’t it produce a
more authentic and pathetic human
connection and wouldn’t that make more
people give right if we put the video on
the page and had him read this message
rather than letting people read that
would cause more people to give right
wrong crushed giving why why well we
discovered something and that’s that
video kind of makes you sit back right
reading forces you to engage video
something clicks off in your brain they
say that your mind is more active while
you’re sleeping than when you’re
watching TV right so by putting this
video on the page that we cause people
to forget what we were actually asking
them to do make a donation the text as
you read it leads you straight down to
the nation form so by the time you
finish it you’re right they’re ready to
give the video we’ve almost YouTube is
almost trained us to click away as soon
as it’s over this is a donation form
it’s a fully secure donation form
compliant in every sense of the word
with all aspects of internet security
right we read that the number-one people
don’t get a number one reason people
don’t give online is because they don’t
think it’s secure and that may be crazy
is we’re all sending money back and
forth on our phones and vim oh but
people don’t give online because they
don’t think it’s secure this form is
secure so we said how do we make this
form seem more secure how do we how we
tell people on the other end of this
form who don’t know all the backend that
this form is indeed secure being the
creative geniuses that we are we put a
gray box around it and a padlock that we
found on Google Image Search and we
thought hey maybe this will set this set
this apart let them know that this area
where you’re entering your credit card
information is actually secure we put
the two next to each other it proves a
nine point four percent increase in
giving these are all statistically valid
numbers and that we validate with a high
level of confidence to make sure that
these lifts are going to be permanent
right so you may say nine point nine
point four percent right
what does that mean what would that mean
let’s extrapolate that out a little bit
what would it mean if we took that same
box in that same padlock we put it on
every donation form in the world and it
got the same lift highly unlikely let’s
pretend let’s to spin reality for a
second if we did that and we looked at
all the money that was given in
nonprofits last year three hundred and
ninety billion dollars were given to
nonprofits a nine point four percent
lift on that would mean an extra thirty
six billion dollars given to charity
do you think this kid might not have to
walk seven miles to get clean water
could we figure out a solution with 36
billion extra dollars to make sure he
gets clean water delivered right to his
village you think these kids might get
the meal they’ve been waiting for for
weeks I think we could find room for
that 36 billion dollars
I think this sweet little girl might get
the life-saving surgery she’s been
waiting on but doesn’t have the
resources to pay for I think we could
find the room for that in fact I think
if we applied these principles of
optimization to giving we could actually
unleash the most generous generation in
human history so this has become our
cause unleashing generosity doing it
through the principles of optimization
right using these decision science and
behavioral psychology to unlock
generosity convince people let go of
their stuff it’s become our cause
so in closing don’t ask you a couple
questions first what’s your cause don’t
confuse this with your job what’s your
cause what are you here to do what’s a
problem that you want to see undone I’ve
been lucky enough to have my job aligned
with my cause and we’re just beginning
this process but what is your cause what
is it that you really want to make
happen to what conventional wisdom will
you have to reject to get there I was
told that this was good this was success
you know I’d learned to look at it like
this and it changed everything for me
and last what funnel are you going to
have to flip you know I used to think
that people were coming to me ready to
give their fall
into my funnel there’s only turtle I
learned that my funnel was upside down
and they were falling out and I was able
to do the things and explore this
concept of optimization to understand
how I can get people moving back upward
into my funnel towards becoming generous
and making donations now you can help me
in this mission I’ve learned a couple
things in the past four years number one
we’re only barely scratching the surface
of this thousand tests in we know just a
hair more than we did four years ago we
all this is a long long journey and we
met we may not be the ones to complete
it but I’ve also learned that we can’t
do this alone so I want to ask one thing
of you today you can join me in this
mission and you don’t have to come work
for us you don’t have to go work for a
non-profit you can be a baker or a
teacher or the world’s best toothpaste
salesman but some point in your life you
will be given the opportunity to give or
to hold back and all I would ask you to
do is to err on the side of generosity
because it’ll never let you down Thanks
[Applause] [Music]
Please follow and like us: