I recently interviewed Nick Fitz, CEO of Momentum, because I was blown away by what they do when I saw a demo as few months back. Other than Calendly (which saves me over 100 hours per year), Momentum is the first tech service for major gift fundraisers and executive directors that I’ve been truly excited about.
If you’re inclined, feel free to skip the interview and head right over to the Momentum website. Request a demo and you’ll be as bowled over as I am.
Momentum: How it Helps Nonprofit Leaders
AE: How did you come up with the idea for Momentum?
NF: We originally started as researchers. I was a senior scientist at Duke’s Center for Advanced Hindsight and was focused on philanthropy and the psychology of giving.
Over the course of that work, we came to feel like lots of nonprofits were spending too much energy in the wrong places. In the US, approximately 80% of fundraising dollars come from around 1% of donors. It’s hugely skewed.
So, if you’re a nonprofit fundraiser, you should be super focused on stewarding and cultivating those high value donors, but instead many are focused on sending newsletters and social media (not to disparage those activities — they’re great and something worth doing! But it’s just that they won’t move the needle for your organization in the way that bigger gifts will).
AE: I completely agree with you. I’ve been searching for a way to “force” fundraisers to stay focused on the top, let’s say, 10% of the donors. You’ve found a way!
AI to Help You Raise More Money
AE: So, how does Momentum help nonprofit leaders raise more money?
NF: We help nonprofits manage and build high-value relationships. We use a mix of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and behavioral science to make sure that fundraisers know who the highest priority donor/prospect is, what to say to them, and when to say it.
Momentum takes the stress out of prioritizing outreach and helps fundraisers foster relationships with regular touch-points. Every morning, Momentum sends an email to the fundraiser’s inbox with a list of high-priority donors fundraisers need to reach out to that day and a pre-drafted email that the fundraiser can easily edit and send.
AE: I find that incredible. What I love is that you don’t inundate fundraisers with 100 tasks. Instead, you recommend the top few donors to reach out to each day. It’s manageable and not overwhelming.
NF: Yes. By telling fundraisers who to reach out to and when, it makes building relationships with the right donors a much easier and more fruitful process. Ultimately, these strengthened relationships lead to more dollars for their cause.
Momentum’s Integration is a Real Time-Saver
AE: Why is Momentum better/different than anything else available to fundraisers?
NF: Everything we build, we build specifically for fundraisers.
When we first started building this product, we interviewed over 450 frontline fundraisers around the country and just asked them about their problems. One of the issues that consistently came up is how poorly tools integrate with nonprofits’ current tech stack. Fundraisers spend hours upon hours each week inputting information from different tools into their CRM.
With Momentum, our goal is to make fundraisers’ jobs easier, and one way to do that is to ensure that everything fundraisers do within Momentum automatically syncs to their CRM.
Whether you contact a donor, send an email, or update a donor profile, fundraisers do not need to waste precious time copying and pasting information from Momentum to another platform.
Momentum Provides a Fantastic ROI
AE: Why should development directors drop everything they’re doing and sign up today?
NF: The ROI on our AI Inbox is huge. Our average customer makes $17 through our platform for every $1 they spend on it. For example, if an organization spends $10,000 with Momentum, the organization brings in $170,000 in donations.
AE: That is an incredible ROI. Even if they only make $50,000 or $100,000 in the first year, that would be amazing.
NF: One of the beautiful things about focusing on major gifts is you’re only ever a gift or two away from making your money back, but more than that, you can have huge returns.
We help fundraising teams work smarter — not harder — and know exactly who they need to be engaging, and when.
By helping teams work more efficiently, Momentum gives fundraisers more time back in their day. Plus, reducing their workload can help prevent burnout and turnover. Preventing turnover is a huge cost savings for organizations.
As I mentioned earlier, our goal is to make fundraisers’ jobs easier. They are solving some of the most challenging problems this world has to offer—hunger, homelessness, climate change, to name just a few—and they need all the tools at their disposal to help them drive impact.
We believe Momentum can help drive that impact by enabling fundraisers to take back their day and raise more dollars for their cause.
Momentum Gets My Full Endorsement
AE: Nick, thanks for speaking with me today. You know I’ve been impressed with what Momentum offers fundraisers from the moment I saw it. So impressed, in fact, that I even invested in what you’re trying to build. I’ve never done that before.
NF: Amy, we’re honored to have someone like you on our side and promoting our service. We can’t thank you enough.
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