Choose to Improve

On one of my recent, daily walks, I tuned into Pat Flynn’s Smart, Passive Income Podcast.  (I keep a running list of podcasts I like on my Resources page). The episode featured Jesse Cole, owner of the Savannah Bananas, a summer league baseball team for top college players from around the country that is headquartered in Savannah, Georgia.

All 4,000 seats at Savannah’s historic Grayson Stadium have been sold out for the Bananas’ home games since the team first started playing there in 2016.  This is in spite of the fact that the stadium is old (built in 1926) and lacking many of the amenities of newer ballparks and the fact that previous minor league teams struggled to make a go of it in Savannah.  So, what is so magical about the Bananas and what can they teach us about fundraising? Stick with me as I lay it all out.

1. How the savannah bananas focus on fans

What sets the Savannah Bananas apart is that they are not “player-focused” or, even, "baseball-focused," but, rather “fan-focused.” From the time a fan buys a ticket to a game to the time that same fan is walking out of the park to his car after attending that game, it is all about that fan.  Every milepost of the fan journey is mapped out and filled with touchpoints designed to leave fans saying, “I never imagined a baseball game could be like this.”

The experience begins when a fan buys a ticket.  Instead of a regular payment confirmation, the Bananas send a video. Jesse Cole describes its content this way:

You just made the best decision of your day. Right now, as your ticket order came in, a high-priority siren went off in our stadium, and our Bananiacs put on their banana costumes and ran to the ticket laboratory to select your tickets. Then, a Banana Nana slowly walked in, and hand-picked your tickets, and placed them on a silk pillow. We raised the silk pillow up into the air, and we all sang “Circle of Life” by Lion King. Then, we walked your tickets all the way to our vault where they are now in maximum security, ready for you to go bananas.” (SPI 401: Jesse Cole – The Yellow Tux Guy)

Next, someone on the staff calls the purchaser to say “thank you.”  Jesse Cole makes ten such calls a day himself.  He reports that people are typically surprised and usually say something like, “I can’t believe you actually called me,” or “Did my credit card not work?”

The next step includes sending each ticket purchaser a music playlist to listen to on the way to the game to set the tone for the evening. When fans arrive at the ballpark, they are greeted by parking penguins, people dressed up in penguin costumes, who park their car. The penguins also hand each fan a “freezie pop” and say, “Stay cool tonight.”

Leaving the penguins, fans are then greeted outside the gates by a handful of players, dressed in full uniform, who hand out programs and sign autographs.  Proceeding into the stadium, fans are met by DJ Peels on Wheels, a mobile DJ on a Segway. A little further inside, there is the Bananas’ thirty-piece pep band playing “Rocky” or “Final Countdown.”  At the ticket gate, the ticket-takers are in full banana costumes ready to rip fans’ banana-shaped tickets that are scratch-and-sniff, smelling like (you guessed it) bananas.

As fans pass out of the ticket line, there is a “professional high-fiver,” a six-year old kid whose team jersey displays the name “high” and the number “5.” His sole job is to high-five every fan in the stadium.  And all of this happens before fans ever reach their seats.

Before, and at various times during, the game, the Bananas’ players do choreographed dances.  They also deliver roses to little girls in the crowd and go on dates with fans during the game, serenaded by a sexy saxophone player.

Prior to the start of each game, there is a Banana Baby ritual, wherein a fan’s baby is dressed up in a banana costume and held up by the players in the air over home plate.  There are grandma beauty pageants during the games and a senior citizen dance team called the Banana Nanas, which dances to Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars. There is also a male cheerleading squad called the Mananas and a break-dancing, first-base coach.

After the game, there is a free s’mores station for fans and the pep band plays as they leave the stadium. All of the players and team staff (including Jesse Cole in a yellow tuxedo) are also on deck to thank the fans as they leave the ballpark.

2. The results of a focus on fans

Baseball can be slow, long and boring. The Bananas’ games are anything but, with every half-inning punctuated by one of the many activities designed to keep the focus on fans that are described above. In the words of team owner Jesse Cole, his strategy is doing the exact opposite of whatever is normal:

I believe normal gets normal results, and if you do things like everyone else, you’re going to get results like everyone else, so we said, “What would be the exact opposite? Our players play baseball. What if our players did choreographed dances every game.?” (SPI 401: Jesse Cole – The Yellow Tux Guy).

The Bananas’ track record, both as a business and as a sports team, has been far from normal. They’ve sold out every game and have a waitlist for tickets in the thousands.  Because they bring in millions annually from ticket and merchandise sales, they have no need for sponsors or for paid marketing.

What they’ve learned about performance is that the fun atmosphere and culture, one where the audience really connects with the players, makes the team play better. Last year, the Bananas won the Coastal Plain League Championship. They’ve also become an integral and treasured part of the Savannah community, as this snapshot from their website suggests:

3. What a focus on fans means for fundraising

In the wake of the Banana’s success, owner Cole has written a book, Find Your Yellow Tux, launched a website with that same title to help other business owners with strategies that increase their focus on fans, and started a podcast called “Business Done Differently,” featuring interviews with successful entrepreneurs who are standing out in business and in life by thinking differently.  All of this got me thinking about how what I will call the Yellow Tux Model translates to fundraising. How can we in the nonprofit sector map the journey of donors from the time they join our email list as prospects, at the bottom of the fundraising pyramid, to the time they make a planned gift, at the top, and find ways to make it special and, where possible, fun?

While the extent to which the Yellow Tux Model can be replicated in the nonprofit sector is surely dependent on human and monetary resources, I believe a nonprofit of any size can map its donor journey and, with the aid of technology and automation, create “extraordinary moments” for donors that leave them saying, “Wow - I never thought my connection with a nonprofit could be like this.”

What is required is to take a little time to think about all of the possible touchpoints with donors and prospects and then to brainstorm creative and simple ways of making the most important of those occasions special and, where possible, fun.  What might be done, for example, when someone joins our email list? Do we already send a special welcome email? Could we follow that up a month later with a short video clip? On the one-year anniversary of someone joining your list, could we send an anniversary card that is somehow special?

What might be done with donors? In addition to recognizing the gift with a traditional thank you, might there be a series of communications (short emails and/or videos) developed and sent monthly that both show impact and make the donor feel special? According to nonprofit marketing and fundraising guru John Haydon, failing to share impact stories following an initial gift is among the top ten reasons that nonprofits lose first-time donors. (Haydon, Top Ten Mistakes). Could we find a fun way to communicate with donors on Valentine's Day, Groundhog Day, etc.?

With tools like Salesforce, Mailchimp and many others, a lot of these follow-up steps could be set up to “drip” out automatically over time with little effort expended by staff after the drip series is created.  It is also useful to think, moreover, about how our board members could be enlisted in the task of making particular touchpoints for donors and volunteers “wow” moments.  In its free Donor Retention Handbook, Classy describes how to set up a unique donor email series and other ways of going the extra mile with content and special events to make a donor’s journey special.

The ultimate payoff, of course, is that more donors are retained and the income stream from individual fundraising becomes more robust.  The national average annual rate for overall donor retention is around 45%.  What if, by implementing the Yellow Tux Model, we could raise that figure by 20, 30, or even 40 percentage points? Think of the possibilities for future-proofing your nonprofit that such a turn-around in donor retention presents. Think also, of the powerful, word-of-mouth marketing that could follow from a legion of fired-up donors and volunteers who believe that we, and what we are doing, are a “wow!”  Think, finally, of the happy, excited, well-performing staff that we are able to keep because they love what they are doing and the organization for which they are working. Implementing the Yellow Tux Model would undoubtedly take some work, but the payoffs would likely make it all very worthwhile. Pick up a copy of Find Your Yellow Tux on my Resources page today.

Resources:

Classy. The Donor Retention Handbook. (Available in print and audio format at: https://go.classy.org/guide-donor-retention-handbook).

Cole, Jesse. Business Done Differently. (Available at: https://businessdonedifferently.podbean.com/).

Cole, Jesse. Find Your Yellow Tux. (Available on Amazon).

Flynn, Pat. The Smart Passive Income Podcast. “Episode 401:  Jesse Cole – The Yellow Tux Guy.” (Available at: https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/podcasts/jesse-cole-the-yellow-tux-guy/).

Haydon, John. Top 10 Mistakes That Cause First-Time Donors to Leave. (Available at: https://www.johnhaydon.com/mistakes-that-cause-first-time-donors-to-leave/).

The Savannah Bananas (https://thesavannahbananas.com/).