Tag Archives: Beeline

Nonprofit Radio for April 4, 2022: Your Corporate Partnership Strategy

Chris Barlow: Your Corporate Partnership Strategy

Chris Barlow from Beeline, returns to outline a savvy, winning strategy to help you get valuable corporate partnerships. Beeline has a free resource for you, their Corporate Partnerships Attraction Kit. This follows last week’s show, “Don’t Work For Free,” on not undervaluing your assets as you talk to potential partners.

 

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[00:01:20.24] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the The other 95%,, I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. We’ve got a listener of the week. It’s Adam norse on linkedin. He told me that the show is his weekly workout podcast. He said great topic as always, thank you very much for that adam when he was talking about uh the improve your relationship with failure episode. So adam Norris linkedin, Thank you very very much. Adam Norse our listener of the week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of hyper Kanae Miya, if you made my heart pound with the idea that you missed this week’s show, your corporate partnership strategy chris Barlow from beeline returns to outline a winning strategy to help you gain valuable corporate partnerships on tony state

[00:01:21.05] spk_1:
too.

[00:02:14.64] spk_0:
Don’t fear the reaper sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C O. It’s a pleasure to welcome back chris Barlow, he is founder and customer happiness director at Beeline Beeline since 2015 has helped nonprofits grow their donor base attract corporate partners and expand their missions. However, chris newest skill is bouncing his youngest to sleep while writing marketing copy or planning a donor journey. The company is at your beeline dot com and he’s at beeline underscore chris, welcome back to nonprofit radio chris,

[00:02:17.34] spk_1:
thank you so much tony it’s, it’s great to be with you today.

[00:02:20.22] spk_0:
Pleasure, thank you, congratulations. Now you have a child # seven bouncing on your knee. Now

[00:02:26.71] spk_1:
that’s right,

[00:02:31.64] spk_0:
that’s incredible. Um

[00:02:33.14] spk_1:
proportionately it becomes less of a difference when you go from 6 to 7 then when you go from 1 to 2

[00:02:38.84] spk_0:
or even zero or 0 to 1 even. Yes, of course, that’s true. But I mean, yes, the marginal

[00:02:44.36] spk_1:
increase

[00:02:49.94] spk_0:
is at this point it’s probably like de Minimus, but your, your latest is a boy or a girl girl,

[00:02:57.44] spk_1:
we have a girl, boy, boy girl, boy boy girl, you

[00:02:58.65] spk_0:
have a little rhythm going to

[00:03:01.86] spk_1:
Yeah

[00:03:09.14] spk_0:
right, Exactly. I was thinking of a paralegal for drummers, but yeah, you got okay boy girl, girl, boy girl girl. Uh

[00:03:10.28] spk_1:
boy girl, boy boy girl, boy boy girl

[00:03:12.50] spk_0:
oh, I started wrong girl boy boy girl, boy boy girl. Right. So now your fifth girl, I mean there’s plenty of hand me downs, there’s right, all the, all the infrastructure is already in, the infrastructure is already in place.

[00:03:31.64] spk_1:
It’s true and we have a lot of, a lot of other, you know, her siblings loved all over. So that’s a lot of help there. Um, but my wife and I still look at each other and like are we doing this again for real?

[00:03:37.88] spk_0:
Oh my God, how old are you?

[00:03:40.54] spk_1:
I am 37,

[00:03:45.34] spk_0:
37 and seven Children dang. You got years to come out, You can, you can come out of this with a dozen

[00:03:49.74] spk_1:
Uh seven is a good, is a he, is it in hebrew or Jewish tradition is a good number of completions. So we’ll see.

[00:03:57.44] spk_0:
Okay, okay. No pressure. But you could easily come out of this with True, that’s true. At this pace. For sure, wow. She’s congratulations.

[00:04:08.06] spk_1:
Congratulations.

[00:04:08.90] spk_0:
How, how recent is your, your newest girl?

[00:04:12.38] spk_1:
She is five weeks old.

[00:04:20.94] spk_0:
Oh, my five weeks only, wow. And yes, you save money on dolls to, for the, for the, for the girls that girls don’t have to grow up with dolls, but I shouldn’t say that for the girls. You grow up saving money on dolls for any of your

[00:04:28.65] spk_1:
Children.

[00:04:30.34] spk_0:
Any of your Children? Wonderful.

[00:04:32.68] spk_1:
Oh,

[00:04:36.74] spk_0:
congratulations. Okay. And the last time you were on you, you had some advice listeners could listen back for, uh, advice on it was, it was kind of resolving conflict. I believe

[00:04:46.45] spk_1:
it was on google grants and whether you’re a, whether you’re a good fit, whether it’s a good fit for your

[00:04:54.44] spk_0:
Well, no. Well that, well, that was the subject

[00:04:55.28] spk_1:
matter.

[00:04:57.66] spk_0:
Child advice. It’s much more important than family and child related advice. I think it was on conflict de escalation.

[00:05:05.54] spk_1:
Yeah, probably. So,

[00:05:07.80] spk_0:
um, yeah, like take a time, you know, take a deep breath. Was your, I think was your first, you know, one of your first pieces of advice.

[00:05:15.59] spk_1:
Yeah. Like you have to calm yourself first.

[00:05:17.90] spk_0:
Right. Right. Right.

[00:05:19.13] spk_1:
Because you can’t actually help them if you’re all stirred up yourself.

[00:05:29.54] spk_0:
Yes, I think it was the escalation. So alright, You, I’m sure you’ve only gotten better at that skill with and now

[00:05:29.87] spk_1:
I hope

[00:05:54.54] spk_0:
now you have more years to practice many more more years to practice. All right. So let’s take an overview of this corporate partnership. Corporate Yeah, let’s go partner Stick with partnership. Not necessarily sponsorship because they take different forms. Um, but this part of what our nonprofits, you know, like overview. Not quite getting right about these partnerships.

[00:06:07.44] spk_1:
Well, I think actually the way you started describing it shows all of our natural tendencies for corporate partnerships is that we we tend to, I feel like nonprofits tend to get stuck in this idea of of corporate sponsorships

[00:06:12.46] spk_0:
and

[00:06:39.94] spk_1:
there you’re, there is a real goal that companies would support your organization financially. But there’s so many things that a company can bring and that’s why it’s really I say the the core is a partnership and sponsorship can be part of that partnership and if you have multiple companies who are partnered with your organization, some of them might not be sponsors, but that they all can bring a lot of value the organization.

[00:07:02.94] spk_0:
Okay, Alright. So let’s not be myopic looking strictly at financial, financial sponsorship. Okay, Alright. Um, where, where, where where do you like to start with this? What’s the, what would we be thinking about if we’re going to embark on a partnership or if we’re gonna start paying more attention to this or start start paying attention to do. Maybe we don’t even have any partner, not just, you know, expanding, but maybe we don’t have any corporate partnerships. What do we need to be thinking through?

[00:09:23.04] spk_1:
Well, yeah, I mean the things that a corporate partner can bring to your organization and think about what you need. And I mean a company can obviously bring um they can bring you access to their audience, just awareness of who you are as an organization to their employees to their own customers. They can connect you to their employees directly at some point if there if there, if there’s a really good partnership, they can say, hey, this is a nonprofit, we believe in, they further our values as a company and you can support them. We, you can do automatic giving through your um deductions through your of the payroll or you can volunteer with them. Um There is some real good research out there that shows that millennials and generation Z um people employees don’t often will, will not stay at a company long term, usually won’t stick around more than I think it was two years what I read. Um if there isn’t a clear the way they can, they see the company living out values that they are in line with and they and so it can, it’s really valuable to the company to have a way to actually live that out by saying we work with this organization. So you, so all the connection to the employees. Obviously there’s the sponsorship, there’s in kind services that companies can bring you, um, free publishing, printing services or they can bring in their expertise directly and help your organization. Maybe they can consult and say, here’s how to improve how you operate as an organization. Maybe they’ve got some people who are very talented and skilled and have a lot of experience and they can bring that in and, and do some free training with you. Um, so there’s a whole lot of things that a company can bring. And I think just this awareness of a nonprofit to say, okay, maybe we’ve got some decent, a decent donor base, but we want to expand two other sources of support, financial and otherwise a great way to look as companies because you’re not going to have to go through, uh, not to say you shouldn’t pursue grants and other things, but it’s, it’s a lot, there’s a company relationship is a lot more like an individual donor in terms of, there’s a lot less red tape you have, you have to approach them the right way. Um, but then once you have that relationship, you can just maintain it and it can represent a huge value with just that one relationship.

[00:10:06.04] spk_0:
So should we be thinking through, well, maybe I’m, I probably am jumping ahead, but it’s what occurs to me, you know, thinking through like a solicitation that is multifaceted. It could include some in kind support, whether that’s um services or or some kind of goods, maybe tech or something like that, but but then it’s also volunteer opportunities for the employees, maybe there’s a financial component, maybe not. Um you know, brand awareness. So we wanna be thinking largely, you know, big scale about what what we’re what we’re pitching for and what we have to offer to.

[00:10:50.24] spk_1:
And I recommend. I mean the strategy I teach is start small and and get a quick win and then you can start having conversations with your partner and this is kind of starting at the back end. But when you have some kind of collaboration under your belt, you can reach out and say, look, let’s have a conversation. We want to know how can we help your company further its values? And you’re already gonna know when you have that conversation that you have overlapping values because you wouldn’t have tried to form that partnership in the first place. So you have overlapping values. Your mission can help that. So, you ask that question, how can we help you further your values? What are some things we can do from here and then you can start to make suggestions or ask them for ideas about what they’re open to.

[00:11:33.04] spk_0:
So now I I made you start at the back end. You know, you’re you’re stuck with a lackluster host. Uh Sorry about that. So All right. Um Well, okay, so where do where do we get started? Like how do we how do we devise our prospect list? Mhm. And let’s say, you know, our listeners small and midsize nonprofits, you know, they could have it could be just a few people could be, you know, a dozen people. I mean it could be 100 people. It’s still a small, it’s still a midsized non profit Um But you know, like overall how do we um Yeah, how do we start to develop a prospect list?

[00:13:33.84] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So um for the first mindset that help will help you to develop that prospect list is what should your first collaboration b and I like to recommend. Um and the thing that can bring a quick win and this easy yes. Is saying can we find a company that has subject matter expertise and knowledge that they could share? And together we create some kind of digital resource, like an e book or an infographic or a guide of some kind that would be we could use to help potential people who could be potentially our donors. So if we’re an animal sanctuary, we know a whole lot about taking care of animals. We know how to help create train an animal. But then a pet food company knows all about pet nutrition and specialized diets. What if we created an e book on on these some of these topics that every pet owner has to deal with and we reach out to this company. So I’m gonna give it on a high level we reach out to this company and say, hey, you guys know all about this topic and we know that our potential audience and our current audience would really benefit from learning how to pick the right food for their animal or what to do if they’re animal seems to have a special needs diet. And we would love to feature your, your knowledge in this, this digital guide we’re creating it and they’re like, they’re marketing team has to create content all the time. Anyway, and this is a new channel that you’re just saying, we want to feature you, we want to make you look like the hero, we want to put you front and center. So, so that is a, that is the idea. And so when you’re creating this list, you’re the first thing you’re looking for is expertise, subject matter, expertise and knowledge. A company that has that. And then the second thing is that their values, do they have, Do they publish their values? Can you see based on their actions or, or things that they do as a company that there is some overlap there? And if you’ve got those two things, those are that, that’s kind of the foundation for who might be a good partner

[00:13:56.94] spk_0:
subject matter and values. Okay. Um, uh, if you’re, you know, the local organization. I mean, you could do this with like a approach the, uh, local retailer, like maybe it’s a local following your example, your hypothetical, maybe it’s a local Petco, Right? I mean, you know, so, you know, you may not have to go to Petco International, but you could start with something with with the local, the local store.

[00:15:34.44] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there’s all kinds of different, like, here’s another example. I work with a non profit, um, uh, the, a food bank and there, they happen to be jewish. And so they are reaching out to influencer and celebrity celebrity chefs and saying, we are creating a recipe book for our donors and potential donors on recipes with for, for the holidays. And would you be willing to just quote unquote, donate one of your recipes that we could just include in our recipe book. And so now they’re, they’re starting this, they’ve they’ve opened the door to continue this conversation with his influence or celebrity chef and they’re featuring the chef and now that people who might be interested in this recipe book and see, oh, there’s all these well known chefs who contributed to this book. Like this is good stuff. These are good recipes. So you have both on the, the potential donor side when you’re offering them this, there’s more value to it. And now you can report back to to these contributors, these chefs and say thank you so much, we’ve had 100 people download it and of course their name and their whatever, you know, we can link to, you know, you link to them in the book or whatever, it’s not like full of ads or anything, but it’s just like this, this is the people who are helping us out, these are our partners. Um and so you can, you know, reaching out to someone on instagram that has that kind of overlap with your organization. Again, it doesn’t have to be a huge brand, It can be a single person who has an audience,

[00:17:08.44] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications, what can they do for you start with media relations, media strategy, media and pr campaigns. Crisis, hopefully you never have one. Hopefully you joined their webinar just last week on having a crisis communications plan, content marketing, they can write white papers for you e books, they can do research and then publish that research for you write reports on it. Thought leadership, like executive communications, like speech writing, ghostwriting, your annual report. Yes, they can write your annual report, take that off your shoulders. So there’s some ideas of what they do for you. Turn to communications, your story is their mission. Now back to your corporate partnership strategy. This seems like a very easy on ramp to starting a relationship, you know, a short e book or a white paper or something like that, some some kind of co branded content. Um you know, it could, you know, again, in your hypothetical, that could be local veterinary practice maybe. I mean, that’s a smaller, it’s a smaller corporation, but you know, you don’t know what might be there in the future. You know, again, maybe small community, you start with a veterinary practice or something like that.

[00:18:06.24] spk_1:
Yes, we want, we we know that our donors really benefit and people who are not donors, but we’re trying to attract to us are are we want to teach them about some of the, you know, things that a vet knows that things signs to look for if you’re pessimistic, whatever or what your what your pet might be dealing with. And then here’s another thing you bring to the table. You’re not only bringing them like the fact that they’re working with the nonprofit and helping your work and the fact that now they can get their name out there and and and create content through another channel that helps, you know, the company get More followers and grow their audience and maybe customers your you can also say, look, we also have access to a Google grant that gives us $10,000 per month to advertise this piece of content and for even big companies that’s a lot of money to put behind an initiative.

[00:18:28.74] spk_0:
Look how savvy you are pulling in your, your last appearance 18 months ago, got to tie these together. Yes. And then look at the, look at the consistency. This doesn’t just, it doesn’t just happen, these guests just don’t fall out of the sky, you know, this small, this is all thought out in this case, it’s thought out by the guest, not by me, but. Okay, brilliant. Alright, Alright. Yeah, you’ve got these ad dollars,

[00:19:28.24] spk_1:
so yeah, so when you are crafting your list, you’re thinking about the expertise and the values, and then the next thing to consider is how big is their audience, and that could be their social media, following the number of customers, they might have their employee count. And and there is, it is helpful to, you know, you might want to reach out to really small companies at the beginning, small businesses just to get some practice, but once you’ve kind of figured out how to do how to do this outreach and and form these partnerships if if the company is too small to really be able to bring a lot of value to your organization um or they just have too many other organizations that are supporting right now, they’re working with then just keep those things in mind. It’s worth it. If you’re gonna go through the effort of reaching out and trying to form a relationship, you know, make sure it’s worth your while and and make sure they have some kind of audience that that would help you know, that they can bring to you eventually at some point um and introduce your organization to so

[00:19:36.24] spk_0:
you’re saying you keep the relationship open, You know, six nose and you’re halfway to a yes

[00:19:39.21] spk_1:
that’s right.

[00:19:56.64] spk_0:
That’s the, that’s the sort of a philosophy of individual giving, you know, donors, working with individual people, couples. Um, you know, unless they, unless you they they tell you get out of my face, I never want to hear from you again, which you know, I’ve been doing playing giving through 25 years is my 25th year and that’s never happened. So short of that. Thank you. So short of that. You know, you want to keep them in your prospect list, right?

[00:20:47.14] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. Okay. And don’t be afraid to reach out to the bigger companies. Um, but one thing that’s beautiful about this approach is you’re offering them a win and you’re not approaching the Director of community or the HR director or someone who’s got a clear title like there, you know, corporate social responsibility that the the title that all of the big nonprofits person that they’re going to be hitting up to try to form these partnerships and put these sponsorships pitches in front of your going to someone in the marketing department and you’re like, you guys have to create constant anyway, you’re the subject matter experts of the company or are some of anyway and you’re going in the side door, you’re going, you’re, you’re like, there are very few nonprofits who are going into the marketing person saying we’d love to collaborate with you

[00:20:55.47] spk_0:
because once you get that

[00:20:56.45] spk_1:
relationship,

[00:20:59.54] spk_0:
don’t go to the don’t go to the corporate social responsibility officer.

[00:21:42.54] spk_1:
No, no, go, go go to someone who has to, who’s done digital content in the company, who’s writing their blog. It might be a small business, that might be the owner who’s written a blog, that’s fine. But, but in a big company, you know, you’re approaching probably the marketing person wants someone in marketing. And then they’re again, they’re to them, they’re not thinking of you as, oh, this is just another nonprofit who wants money. They’re like, oh, this is a cool collaboration. And we’d love to find a way to support a nonprofit in a way that’s an easy win for us. I don’t have to go through all the channels to get money approved. I have to produce content anyway. I don’t have, I don’t need approval from anyone to create an e book with you. Um, you know, I can we can do that. That’s a great idea. And so you get that foot in the door and then you can start asking for introductions over time. You can start to build that relationship

[00:21:50.59] spk_0:
right, build the relationship and that this is what you find. You don’t find that they say, well now you need to talk to our CSR officer.

[00:22:30.74] spk_1:
I mean, no, because you’re you’re, you’re not at the the, the investment that they make is kind of up to them. Like you could get a company whose like, we’re going to help you do the graphic design or we’re gonna help you, if it’s a video, like, well, film this video, we’ll provide you. Like you could get someone who’s really gives a whole lot. Or you could get a company. I mean, it’s as simple of saying, yeah, you can use the recipe that’s already published on my website and the pictures that are already there. You know what, what, there’s no approval for that. If they’re just saying, yeah, you can put that in your things. Just give credit linked to us. Make sure that people know who it where it came from.

[00:22:49.94] spk_0:
Alright, alright. You’re going in through the side door, like you said, go to the marketing folks who need content. They’re looking for partners like this. Okay. All right. Very savvy. So that’s that’s

[00:22:51.63] spk_1:
who to reach out to

[00:22:54.04] spk_0:
and how,

[00:22:54.52] spk_1:
how,

[00:22:55.72] spk_0:
how and with what? Yeah. What do you, what do you what’s your pitching? What’s your pitch?

[00:25:02.54] spk_1:
Um, so I like to recommend, um, either social media or, or cold email. And I would usually start with cold email because everyone has an email address and email is not intrusive. You know, you’re not calling them out of the blue and you can craft your email to really be relevant to them. And so, um, some of the things I recommend is you start with, uh, hook of some kind that gets their attention. So I buy your pet food, I’ve been a customer, you know, of your store for my pets every year, or I just took my dog into the vet there, or we just made this recipe at home or whatever. It might be some personal reaction, like something that or my kids spilled coffee on the, on the book that you just released, Whatever, it might be something that would get their attention and then just say, I have appreciated your content and or or I I like your products or it doesn’t have to be like, just um it shouldn’t be flattery, it should be a response that you’ve had to, something that the company has done and it could be positive or negative, negative, it should still sound like you’re supporting them, but usually positive is easier to do. And 111 really easy, really easy thing you can do in this step is um that I do a lot is I read or what I read your blogger watched webinar and I loved this point and I shared it with my audience on clinton because I’m not just saying you guys are great. You got, you know, I love everything, it’s I took action based on your what your company is doing, your products, your content, your services, whatever it might be, and then you can transition, you can say because you care about X because your audience cares about X. I thought that we could do why and the why is your pitch for the collaboration of some kind and you don’t have to go into a lot of details. You could say, I thought we could create some resource together. Digital resource that helps people do this. Right,

[00:25:15.54] spk_0:
Right. Don’t go into great detail. And the first introduction just now, I thought we could partner together on some content partner, you know, and okay, so

[00:25:36.54] spk_1:
you and if you do that because of this, because of this other thing that I already responded to and I appreciate, you know, I think you care about this and so you’re you’re tying it to to your pitch, you’re making it clear like I think this is relevant for you and here’s the win for you. So if your your email should be, here’s the win, I can bring you not, here’s how you can support our organization because we have these same values.

[00:26:49.14] spk_0:
You’re the structure of your pitch is right in line with the kind that I like to receive from people who want to be guests on nonprofit radio Like, you know, I’ve had some folks say, you know, I love the show and I left you a review on apple podcasts and and then then occasionally they’ll even like screenshot it, you know, in case I didn’t believe them, you know, there’s the there’s the little written review that they so they gets my attention. Yeah, they did exactly what you’re describing. They took action, they didn’t just say they love the content, but they they either shared it or in this case, you know, they they they shouted out in a in a in a in a very kind review. And then, you know, they’ll say I uh in in a recent episode, or I love this recent episode where you talked about X, you know, related to that my client does y or you know, or I do why? And and I think it would be a it sounds like it would be a good fit for you. It feels like it’d be a good fit for for your listeners, etcetera. So very much in line with now I’m revealing what gets my attention for pictures, but but I mean, it works, you know, it gets my attention. They don’t all get they don’t all get Yes, yes, but but I read those

[00:26:58.74] spk_1:
pictures versus

[00:27:09.04] spk_0:
the ones you could tell or, you know, template boilerplate, you know, non profit radio is terrific. Um, my client, you know, so and so does this and should be great for your show. You know, they have just a shallow, shallow, so you got to do some research. That’s right, that’s right. You

[00:27:30.54] spk_1:
have to you have you have to take the time even if people are following the same kind of like steps, it’s still they had to take the time to get to know you a little bit, get to know the company a little bit.

[00:27:31.83] spk_0:
You’re asking them to get to know you you got to get to know them first, the first outreach, so do the do the freaking work.

[00:27:58.74] spk_1:
That’s right. That’s right. I like to say if you’re at a party and you’re just like you see someone you want to meet standing there and be like, oh I hope they come talk to me like or or even if you were like putting up a sign with their name on it, like that would be really awkward. Like no, you go talk to them, ask them their name, you listen to them, ask them their story, you do walk to them

[00:28:04.04] spk_0:
right, right? You yeah, you’re making Yes, you’re you’re taking the first step, you gotta you gotta be the first one to do the work. All right. And I also I also appreciate not uh you know, you’re saying not not how you can support the organization, but how we can work together. Because this is such a this is a very good idea, chris is a great easy on ramp to to building a relationship,

[00:28:24.34] spk_1:
but

[00:28:36.54] spk_0:
you know, get your foot in the door and then as you said, you know, ask for, ask for introductions later on, things like that, you know, grow the relationship. But Alright, alright, what else? Um What else what else we got to do to get this get this relationship,

[00:30:29.64] spk_1:
I think another important thing to and just in the outreach processes. Um, you know, if someone doesn’t respond to your email a lot of times, you’re not gonna get a yes right away. Um, do some follow up, uh, not a ton to, you don’t want to like pester people, but, you know, reply a few days later, send them a follow up email and then maybe a week or two later, send another one or two more follow ups. You know, don’t, don’t pester them, but just people need, you know, sometimes you’re going to write the perfect pitch that someone would want to respond to and they just, it’s a bad time. You just caught him at a bad time. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to follow up and then, um, if you don’t get a response, sometimes you can switch channels, go to go try social media and send a direct message, whatever it might be. And if you can get, if someone is gonna, is gonna be a good fit, they’re going to respond and you can always come back to him like you, like you said, If someone, unless someone says, don’t ever talk to me again, then, you know, to say, okay, I’m gonna reach out to some other people and I’ll come back. So another thing to just consider is this, this approach really can work with, I don’t, I can’t think of any nonprofit that it couldn’t work for. There probably are some, but I haven’t run into any yet. Um, we, uh we are currently working with a nonprofit that helps, uh, they’re anti sex trafficking organization and they, we are, we are going to be reaching out to um, law firms that deal with that topic. Um, universities that have counseling programs. Um, we’re gonna reach out to some personal like security, you know, like I think a little alarm companies or things that were, you know, when people are going out, they have a way to to be safe, safety devices, apps that help with like internet monitoring and watching it for cyber bullying, all those kinds of things. There’s so many things that subject matter experts that could partner with your organization regardless of who you are.

[00:32:18.74] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Don’t fear the reaper planned giving isn’t the death conversation. That’s a free webinar. I’ve got coming up. We’re going to be hosted by Kayla. I’m very grateful for that. And I’m going to talk about what planned giving conversations are about, Okay, it’s not about death. Let’s debunk that idea. So join me and Kayla for don’t fear the reaper planned giving isn’t the death conversation. I’m going to do that on april 12th At one p.m. Eastern time. But you know, attending these things live is so 2021 you sign up, you register and then they send you the link for the video. That’s the way to do it. You watch at your leisure at your leisure. How do you sign up though? You got to know that you do have to sign up. You wanna you wanna watch at your leisure? Er You got to sign up, you do that at kayla K E L a kilo dot com click resources. And then webinars right? Where you expect it to be? Right. Webinar? It’s a resource. It’s hosted by Kayla Be with me April 12 if you like or watch the video. Either way, I hope you’ll be with me. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for your corporate partnership strategy with chris Barlow. Mhm. You like you like email as the as the first approach.

[00:32:26.34] spk_1:
Yeah. Again, because everyone does have an email address and you can there are tools like sometimes companies published the email, their email addresses on the website. There are some tools that you can use to find people’s email addresses or at least the pattern that a company uses. That you can just

[00:32:42.00] spk_0:
Hunter.

[00:32:44.44] spk_1:
Hunter dot io is a tool you can use just a few times per day for free. I think it’s like five times. You can do a

[00:32:48.84] spk_0:
search.

[00:32:51.24] spk_1:
Very

[00:32:52.40] spk_0:
Gracious of them offering 5 5 a day. That’s I mean you could do

[00:32:55.81] spk_1:
20

[00:32:56.85] spk_0:
five. Well if you work on Saturday and Sunday could do 35 a week.

[00:33:01.84] spk_1:
Yeah. And you can just use it will give you the actual email that you’re looking for or just the pattern at least and that’s usually good enough

[00:33:07.88] spk_0:
pattern. Right, Right. Um and then you’re so you’re looking for the marketing, you’re looking for the chief marketing person, you

[00:33:17.94] spk_1:
or someone in charge of content. Um Yeah, or sometimes someone who does partnerships, you could, you could reach out to usually that what the company means by partnerships isn’t what you’re thinking of, like

[00:33:24.81] spk_0:
the person, but

[00:33:33.94] spk_1:
it still might be someone in partnerships often has something to do with marketing and new channels and stuff, so that’s another option. Um and and linkedin is a great tool to find people if the website doesn’t have it,

[00:33:52.24] spk_0:
anything else uh because I want to move to expanding the relationship getting but but but you know, give as much share as much as you can about this. Yeah, it’s easy onboarding.

[00:34:55.14] spk_1:
Yeah, so, I mean, you you’re you’re just you are offering to, you know, feature them and and again, bring in the google grant, I think that’s a really like, underutilized a strategy for attracting a company because the companies can’t use that those free ads and even if they’re a major large company and they have their own huge marketing budgets, I know 10,000 month is nothing to shake a stick at, like that’s that’s nice. Um and you’re saying like, look, this collaboration isn’t is can go somewhere, like it’s not just like we collaborated on it and then there’s there’s silence. Um one thing you can do before you even start reaching out before you create your ideal list is two. There’s two things I like to recommend do some keyword research. There’s a tool that google offers inside google ads whether you have a grant account or whether you create an account just to do this research. You can do it for free ads dot google dot com. The key google keyword planner. And you can just type

[00:34:56.81] spk_0:
ads dot google dot com. And then

[00:34:59.69] spk_1:
inside that inside there’s the tools and settings you’ll find the google keyword planner,

[00:35:04.84] spk_0:
google keyword planner. And

[00:36:27.53] spk_1:
you can just search for some keyword ideas. Say how many people are searching for, how to create train my pet and you know or you know holly you know Passover recipe book whatever just all different talks. And you can then see okay there’s a lot of people searching for this across the U. S. Or across our state or across my city. That would be a I can take that as not only knowledge that this could be a really helpful resource for people and that a lot of people are there’s some demand but I could bring that to my corporate partner and say I know there’s demand for this and and you guys already have the knowledge and expertise to kind of help address this particular question or problem. You could even send um I recommend sending out a survey to your current subscribers and donors and say we’re thinking about creating a resource that helps with one of these following topics which one would be most valuable and then combine those two things to say we got this, we got feedback from our own audience. We know there’s overall volume and demand. We think it would be great to feature you guys and help us because we have we have some acknowledge in this area ourselves but we want to bring in another perspective and you guys, your company has been around all this long or maybe it’s an area we don’t have as much expertise but it’s related. So you know then you can bring in, look we’ve done our research, we know what you that this is why we’re reaching out to you guys,

[00:36:34.58] spk_0:
you

[00:36:38.33] spk_1:
can help us solve this problem and grow your audience

[00:36:51.53] spk_0:
and give you credibility to your partnering with our with our respected name in the in the community or you know, however however you define community. Alright, right. Because remember, you know, you bring value to you also you’re not you’re not a supplicant in this relationship, you know from the beginning, even this, you know this easy onramp,

[00:37:02.73] spk_1:
you

[00:37:25.03] spk_0:
want to make it clear that you bring value also that’s and listeners know we just talked about that last week, that’s why this is a perfect follow on for what we talked about last week. Not you know, not undervaluing your assets, both tangible and intangible. Alright, alright, um when might we start to look for a little broader relationship?

[00:37:28.84] spk_1:
We’ve got got

[00:37:41.03] spk_0:
our content marketing piece out, we’ve got some good exposure, you know, we got hundreds of pieces out. Hundreds of downloads, let’s say from a landing page or however, what what when when is the right time to look to? Broaden.

[00:39:57.82] spk_1:
Yeah. So I’d say the very first thing you do is you make a big deal about thinking them, thank them publicly. Obviously thank them personally share the fact that this company helped you get this out. Um and you know, just again make them look like a hero. You are appreciative of them working with you. Um In fact, if they, you know, you could, I think it’s appropriate to say when you’re in these initial conversations like can your marketing department help with some of the graphic design, like we’ve done this before, but or you know, we have some some resources but you guys are really good at this. Could your could you? So then you can thank them specifically for how they contributed beyond just the knowledge. Um and then collaborate on how you’re going to promote it? So how are we gonna promote? Well, we’re gonna do the grant, we’re gonna run, you know, and post on. So is there anything that you guys you want to send it to your email list or how and then and then after that. Well from during that planning time let’s say can we, when this is all done, let’s set up a call in a month and just reconnect and see if there’s another way we can collaborate or plan something out for later in the year. And then when you have that conversation, you know, again, talk about the values and bring it back to again the, what you, what you bring to a company long term. Um, besides these kinds of collaborations, which you can of course repeat. Is that living out their values and employee retention? I mean reply employee retention is so important right now, every company knows that, right? And just how difficult the, um, hiring environment is and, and finding good people. And so finding tangible ways for the company, a company to have ways to say, Well, we partnered with this nonprofit because they’re in line with who we are and we want to give you the employee opportunities to see and to do whether that’s to donate some volunteer or share this, their story with others and or learn about who they are. Um, so that’s the kind of thing that you can bring long term. So, and, and, and again, you have that just ask them questions. I mean, I think, I think ultimately the kinds of conversations you have are the same kinds of conversations you probably have with planned giving. So I would turn around to you and say, what are the kinds of questions you ask? People were planned giving. I think it would probably be very similar kinds of questions.

[00:41:03.81] spk_0:
Yeah. Well it’s a lot about what the, what the work is that moves the donor. You know, we have the mission in common. We’re talking to establish long term donors and encouraging a gift in their in their will or some other estate plan. So we know that we have in common the work that the that the nonprofit does because the charity is doing it and the person is giving to it and they’ve been giving for many, many years, many, many times over, lots of times over. It could be decades of giving. So we have the mission in common. So we focus on the mission. So you’re suggesting, you know, focus on the mission and focus on the values of the company and how what the overlap is there. And you’ve already established that because you’ve got your your your well received the content piece of content that that talked about the overlap and and and exploited it in very tangible ways with with knowledge, you know, broke that down. So you

[00:41:17.01] spk_1:
can always another another excuse to reaching back out is to just give them an update. Say we’ve had, you know, this month, over the last this many months we’ve had this many people, you know, download the, watch the video,

[00:41:20.30] spk_0:
right update. Can we talk about the other ways we might collaborate. Can we plan a call? Right?

[00:41:25.74] spk_1:
Easy,

[00:42:00.20] spk_0:
easy way to stay in touch. Um, okay, I’ll follow your, your analogy to to plan giving and say when a person has a life insurance gift each quarter or at least each year. But sometimes even more often than that, you can show them the appreciating cash value of the, of the life insurance policy on his life insurance policies gain gain cash value every every time there’s a premium payment made. So if its quarterly you’re in touch quarterly, if its annual, you’re in touch at least and you’re at least annually. Look at look how much it’s grown in the past, since, since the, since the last time, you know, could we, could we talk about some other way that we might be able to work together

[00:42:44.80] spk_1:
and if you want to get an introduction, A great question is, um, if it’s not, you know, a smaller company where it’s obvious like who is in charge of your company’s values or who helped form them and shape them and, and, and yeah, because knowing who is in charge of the values obviously cares about them and wants to see the company live those out. So, um, and you know, there might not be one person who came up with him, but there was probably someone who helped, you know, form them and helped kind of oversee that. So if you can, yeah, that’s a good way just to find who you should, who else you can meet at the company and start those deeper conversations

[00:42:46.74] spk_0:
and then you’re just asking for uh an introduction, Right?

[00:43:05.90] spk_1:
That’s right, that’s right, yep. And you can then you can point to the collaboration that already happened, you’re not new to the company and you can say, look, we are doing, and then you can do your pitch, you could say, look, we are doing is a fundraising event, and we would love to invite you guys to consider helping us in partnering with us in this.

[00:43:51.90] spk_0:
Let me uh let us let us allay any fears that people may have, like, you know, this guy chris has good ideas, but but it is all very contrived and I feel like I’m exploiting a relationship, like, you know, I’m starting out with something small, but only with the with the intention of going bigger, as I feel like I’m being disingenuous when I’m approaching them because I don’t just want their their collaboration on a on a piece of content, but I want more than that. And so I feel like I’m being dishonest, you know, in my relationship with them. Now, I know what I would say if somebody said that to me about personal relationships individual, like this individual relationships in terms of fundraising, there’s planned giving or any other type of fundraising, but let me give you the chance to describe it on the, to allay these concerns on the, on the corporate side.

[00:45:19.79] spk_1:
Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is there’s value inherent in that initial collaboration because again, if you’re reaching out to a company that has a peril or, or lateral subject matter expertise, they may actually have something really helpful to share that will help you attract new potential donors. If you’re using this resource to grow your email list, then there’s inherent value immediately. And if that corporate partner relationship never goes anywhere else, if all it is is that collaboration that you helped them get a little more reach and they helped you get some put something together, um, there’s already value in it for you both. So, um, yeah, it’s it’s really just you’re honestly wanting to work with the company has, who has shared values and the best the an easy way to do that is if they have that expertise and then you’re just starting that conversation and and seeing if that if their values are where they say they are and you again, you’re you have all these things that you bring to the table. And so if it if it’s not a good fit, that’s fine, like you don’t you’re not, you’re not just doing this collaboration for the sake of opening the door. So that would be the, the first thing I would respond to

[00:46:23.28] spk_0:
that, I would add that, this is the way it’s done. You know, you have to be strategic about relationships. Uh this is how it’s done on the individual side. And for reasons you’re describing this is how it’s done on the, on the corporate side. You want to, you want to grow your work, You want to grow your revenue. You need to be strategic about the relationships that your nonprofit, uh, embarks on and, and, and looks to build and that’s on the individual side. And it’s also on the corporate side, it might be on the government agency and granting and the foundation side, you know, wherever it is, you, you have to be strategic about relationships. You don’t just willy nilly, you know, randomly reach out to people with, you know, without thought and research and you’re not even, and you know, and not being careful about who it is you’re reaching out to and with a longer term objective. Yeah. I mean, this is so it’s not exploitation. It’s, it’s strategy. If you want to build or build your, build your revenue, you gotta be strategic about your revenue sources.

[00:46:38.98] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. And then again, you’re, you’re offering a win for the partner from the very beginning. So you’re trying to serve them to, and, and if you can turn into something more, that’s, that’s great. That’s what you hope. Absolutely

[00:47:13.58] spk_0:
yes. You’re bringing value. You’re bringing value to the relationship. We’re not, we’re not just saying that to make it sound good. You actually are, you are helping, you’re helping with employee retention, employee engagement. You’re helping enhance the brand of the, of the company that you’re talking to. Um, You’re helping them create valuable content. They you’re talking to the marketing people, they have to create content anyway. You know, all these things, you know, you’ve already laid them out. I’m just putting them in one paragraph. You’ve been talking about them for 40 minutes. So, um All right,

[00:47:16.28] spk_1:
what

[00:47:25.98] spk_0:
else? Anything else you wanna, Is there anything else you want to share about this, this process? Uh Onboarding it we grew it or how to grow it. Anything you want to leave folks with or more advice you want to share?

[00:48:22.17] spk_1:
I guess I’ll add, you know, in your pitch, don’t, you know, they’re asked can just be, are you interested? Can we get on a call? Like keep it really short. Don’t try to break down the whole thing. Are you interested? If they say yes, then you can set up a call with them. Um, so I think that one mistake people have is like, oh, we could do this, this and this and get the email too long or make it too complex. Just yes or no question. So that’s one little thing I would add. Um Yeah, just just try it. Just do some read. I mean, we we get and our own uh experience, we’ve seen about half of the people we reach out to respond with a yes or a no, or maybe yes later. And about a third of the people say yes. So it’s a very high great of people who are interested. Um, and we are we’re strategic, we’re not just like blasting out hundreds of these. We take the time. We we know it’s a good fit until we really believe that it’s a good fit when we make the

[00:48:38.17] spk_0:
pitch chris Barlow, Father of now seven and founder and customer happiness director at beeline your beeline dot com and he’s at beeline underscore chris thank you very much. Chris, savvy ideas. Thank you. I love it.

[00:48:48.67] spk_1:
Thank you, Tony.

[00:48:49.77] spk_0:
Pleasure to have you back.

[00:48:51.27] spk_1:
Good to be here

[00:49:11.27] spk_0:
Next week. We will definitely kick off our 2022 and TC coverage. 22, what am I saying? 22. NTC coverage kicks off next week. Got lots of interviews coming over the next many months. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot

[00:49:12.88] spk_1:
com.

[00:49:57.37] spk_0:
We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the I have their 95 go out and be great. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm

Nonprofit Radio for August 17, 2020: Google Ad Grants & Be A Payment Processing Pro

My Guests:

Chris Barlow: Google Ad Grants
These are generous grants, up to $10,000 per month. What do you need in place to take advantage of the grants? How do you get in? What are best practices? Plus advice on 3-year-old tantrums from a father of 6. Hear it all from Chris Barlow at Beeline.

 

 

Christina Schnoor, Lily Ickow, & Maureen Wallbeof: Be A Payment Processing Pro
You’ll keep more of your online gifts if you make informed decisions about online payment processors. They’re not all the same. Our 20NTC panel gets you where you’d like to be. They’re Christina Schnoor with American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera); Lily Ickow from EveryAction; and Maureen Wallbeoff at Practical Wisdom for Nonprofit Accidental Techies.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

 

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[00:00:12.58] spk_1:
welcome tony-martignetti non profit radio big

[00:01:47.54] spk_2:
non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of leptospirosis if you infected me with the idea that you missed today’s show. Google Ad grants These are generous grants up to $10,000 per month. What do you need in place to take advantage of the grants? How do you get in what are best practices? Plus advice on three year old tantrums from a father of six? Here it all from Chris Barlow at Beeline and be a payment processing pro. You’ll keep more of your online gift if you make informed decisions about online payment processors. They’re not all the same are 20 and TC Panel gets you where you’d like to be. They’re Christina. Snore with American Near East Refugee Aid Lily Aiko from every action and Maureen will be off at practical wisdom for non profit accidental techies. Tony Steak to a free how to guide were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com and by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen. Two dot ceo. Here is Google ad Grants

[00:01:50.14] spk_4:
It’s

[00:02:23.09] spk_1:
my pleasure to welcome Chris Barlow to the show. He is the director of Beeline, a marketing firm that helps nonprofits further their missions and grow their supporter bases through Google ads. The man, the main the main hat he wears is being a father to six kids, six kids and trying to raise them bilingual. Although most of the credit for that goes to his German wife. The company is at beeline dot marketing, and he’s at Beeline. Underscore, Chris, Chris Partlow. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:24.94] spk_0:
Thank you very much, tony.

[00:02:26.54] spk_1:
Pleasure to have you six kids. How old do they?

[00:02:30.04] spk_0:
My oldest is 13 and just start 13. My youngest is 18 months.

[00:02:41.09] spk_1:
Okay, That’s Ah, that’s a lot of kids by today’s standards. 60 s. Yeah, right.

[00:02:48.59] spk_0:
We’ve learned that we’ve learned a thing or two about how to do more with less by the share. I think that helps helps with the understanding what nonprofits after that make do it.

[00:02:58.56] spk_1:
Okay. And and eight people together during a pandemic. No school. What the, uh, were the prospects for school in Fort Collins, Colorado, this fall.

[00:03:32.84] spk_0:
Um, so they as of yesterday, they closed schools and, Ah, but we weren’t too worried about it. Our kids go to we’re just doing, ah, once a week school and and home school the other day. So we’re used to having him around. Yeah. Uh, OK. They were sad to have that. Their their enrichment classes canceled, but yeah, I’m sure, But we’re we work. We’ve been doing pretty well. It’s, uh that’s all. Things considered eight

[00:03:34.94] spk_1:
people eight people together is a lot. Yeah, and one is the youngest is with 13 months.

[00:03:40.07] spk_0:
18 months. Yeah,

[00:03:43.54] spk_1:
OK, OK. All right. I don’t Maybe this is a distraction for you from from family. No, no, not at all. Okay. Google ad grants. So the company gives up to $10,000 a month for advertising, which for most of our listeners, at least many of our listeners, that’s a lot of money and maybe even too much. So how’d oh, Adam people know if if the grants or something that they should even apply for

[00:05:19.37] spk_0:
that’s a really good question. Um, right. Cause the one thing that separates Google ad grants from any other kind of grant that I know off is, um if you’re eligible, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get in the program. If you can get through the application process, it’s not a matter of whether you’re gonna win the craft or not. So the more important question is is our non profit positions to make use of this? Is it going to be worth our time? Um, and there are four main things that, um, I would consider as a non profit to help you decide. Help me decide whether this is a program I should apply for. Um, I’ll just list them real quick, and then we want to look at talk about each one we can is how how big is our region that we serve or the or the our donor base? Are people actually searching for what we do on the Internet? Um, how strong is our website and our digital presence and forth? Do we have announced expertise or some budget to to help manage this this grant program in the ads? Okay, um, I can list those region,

[00:05:20.68] spk_1:
right? Right. Your region. And are people searching?

[00:05:24.54] spk_0:
Yeah. How strong is our digital presence or the website? Right broker and then in house expertise or budget.

[00:05:30.64] spk_1:
Okay, so let’s talk about the region. Why is why is this important?

[00:05:55.54] spk_0:
So it you can if you are a local non profit only serving within your city, you can still make use of blue black grants depending on how big your city is, or I should say anyone can apply, of course, and you can get it. But if you’re in a small city and there’s a limited amount of people searching it made, the results may not be that impactful. Okay,

[00:06:05.33] spk_1:
so you’re gonna have to put some time into creating your ad grants campaign, right? There is a potential downside if the upside isn’t gonna be significant enoughto justify it

[00:06:46.34] spk_0:
exactly. Now, I work with nonprofits in S cities, cities of you know, 150,000 people, and it’s worth it to them. Um, but, you know, if it again that the larger your region is, the bigger impact advance will be for him. So if you’ve got donors across the country or you you want to start if you if you feel like you’re going, you could have Ah, if you have a large enough mission that people could from around the nation could support you. And you want to get donors through the campaign that’ll work. Or if you serve a really large area, um, again, Then it’ll be worthwhile program. Okay, From matter.

[00:07:05.13] spk_1:
If you’re in a small community, what’s the word of mouth? People know you. Just because everybody knows the handful of nonprofits in town, there’s probably not a lot of advantage for you. Yep. Okay, if you’re not serving a broader a broader base than your small community, Okay, so so at least really to the next point. You are people searching for what you do,

[00:08:19.44] spk_0:
right? Yep. So I’m unlike a nab that you would do on social media or, you know, on a website where you put a banner you are with Google ads. You can only do keyword based ads on a Google search, and so you are limited by the number of people who are searching, So maybe you’re across the nation. But for whatever reason, what you do is very niche or people don’t think no, you even exist or even that your service’s exist. So people aren’t necessarily going to be searching for what you do or anything related. If that’s the case, you You know, I What I recommend is doing some research. There are some free tools online that you could get an estimated number of searches being done, and you could just put in different keywords and c o r people searching for this problem that we solved on. If you’ve If you find that, OK, there are, then it might be worth it. But if if if it’s really niche, you know, no one searching for what you guys do, then it’s gonna be limited. What you’re the impact is gonna be for you. So that’s one way you can kind of make the decision.

[00:08:20.84] spk_1:
Chris, can you name wanted to those sites that people can use to estimate search traffic around phrases?

[00:08:41.34] spk_0:
Yes. Um, there is one called ECM Rush s search engine marketing SCM Rush. Um, there’s another one called Spy Fu. Um, and if you just do a search, Okay? Google Google has one. It’s themselves that you can use to Google keyword planner.

[00:08:49.54] spk_1:
And how do you spell ZX by food?

[00:08:52.06] spk_0:
S s p y like you’re spying f you like, come food.

[00:09:09.51] spk_1:
Okay, I would said fo So I’m glad you said okay. SP y f you okay? Just in case listeners want to do their own the test marketing of some keywords to see whether people are searching for what they’re with their work is and then your your digital presence.

[00:10:48.04] spk_0:
Yeah, So it kind of depends on what your goal is. Um, for the campaigns. If you, um, are a local non profit and you have service is for the community a large enough community that it’s worth, um, you know, using Google advance, Um, then maybe you don’t need if you’re if you’re very service but based your in person or you’re bringing meals or whatever it might be you don’t. Your website needs to be good, but it doesn’t need to have anything particularly compelling. It just needs to really show what you guys do. And and, of course, if you want donors your goals to get donors, you need to have you need to tell your story really well digitally because you’re trying to bring new people to your site and tell your story. But if you’re just trying to help people access, your service is it just needs to really make the point clear and across and no say whether it’s making appointment with you or or showing up to one of your pop up events or whatever it might be that your non profit does. The website doesn’t necessarily need to be, you know, really, really, you know, amazing content. But if your goal is, um to get donors, yeah, you need. If you want to get people to subscribe and want to keep learning about your mission, then you have to tell your story well, and you know you have to have If you have video, that’s gonna be really important. Um, some some nonprofits, um, you know, you they provide their service is digitally they have on my courses, um, or other online resource is they’re gonna probably already have a really good digital presence. And there are a perfect fit for Google ad grants. I worked with a non profit. They do parenting resources, and so, you know they have people searching pit parents are searching across the country. How do you know sibling conflict in the midst of a pandemic and

[00:10:54.82] spk_1:
you could write those you can. You should be a contributing blogger for them

[00:11:08.59] spk_0:
Yeah, exactly. So? So they get tons of people who are finding them and go there blawg and download stuff and get on to the email list. And and so that’s what they’re great fit. Um, but you have to if you know, the stronger your online presence is stronger, website them or impact that the grants is gonna have you.

[00:11:31.68] spk_1:
Okay, cool. And then either needs some in house expertise, I guess, to manage all your campaign and or you need to have some money to spend. So I take it this is not something that say an executive director can take on and and learn and then manage when you know it’s like a one or two employees shop.

[00:11:40.44] spk_0:
I don’t think so. If you’re

[00:11:42.34] spk_4:
in

[00:11:57.16] spk_0:
the executive director with some marketing experience, are already have worked with Google, I would say, definitely, you don’t have to be running perfectly, Um, because you’re getting free ad spend. If you waste some of it, it’s not a big deal. Um, it doesn’t have to be perfect. And if you, um,

[00:11:59.24] spk_1:
there’s a learning curve to, there’s

[00:12:00.40] spk_0:
a learning curve, you have to spend a little time learning, and it isn’t the most time intensive kind of campaign you can run, but yeah, you can’t just expect you can do it while you’re wearing five other hats and you’ve never done it before. You need to have someone who can learn it in your house in house, for you have to know the higher it.

[00:12:21.84] spk_1:
Okay. Like the B line marketing? Yeah, for example, for example. Right. Okay. Okay, um, now you don’t have to take all $10,000 I guess. Or do you? Should you, Justin, may as well spend as much as you can.

[00:12:48.04] spk_0:
Yeah. You may as well spend as much. You can’t some. The thing is, it’s at 10,000 per month. 329 per day is what it actually is. So, um, you might hit that $300 million spend in our A nonprofit that really is able to spend it might hit that number really fast, and then you’re out of budget for the day. But if you’re only spending 2000 of it Hey, that’s $2000. You weren’t spending before, and now you’re getting that kind of exposure?

[00:13:03.04] spk_1:
Yeah. Okay. You may as well take the maximum and and work with it and play with it. All right, So if we feel like we’ve got our our foundation laid the way you’re just describing, how do you apply?

[00:14:28.40] spk_0:
Um, so you can just go to Google for non profits and you have tow. Essentially, you can start the application there. You have to be basically be approved by rule. As a non profit organization, they you start with tech soup, you get it verified by tech soup as non profit. Okay, that’s what Google uses to do the non profit verification process. And then applying for Google for nonprofits is really easy. That doesn’t take too much time. Um, and I have a guide. I’m happy to share with you, tony, that people can follow step by step. Uh, the checklist. The harder part is, once your angle for non profits, you have to apply for at grants. And, um, that involves setting up a campaign a start, you know, starter campaign. It doesn’t have to be what you find, you know, you can continue to work on it and change it, but you have to start with something and go will review that campaign and say, OK, you’ve done. You’ve chucked dot all your i’s and cross border tease. Your campaign looks ready to go. And now we will give you the grabs. Okay, Okay. And at the guy offer. And you could find stuff online. Two guides to to apply. What does you know Kind of give you those steps, but it doesn’t tell you how to do the campaigns that, but Google also does some of that on their site.

[00:14:39.74] spk_1:
Is this guide at your site be lined up marketing guy? Do you have?

[00:14:40.56] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s some. Yeah, it’s just under my service is tap. Um, but I’m also happy to send it to anyone who asks.

[00:14:52.64] spk_1:
OK, OK, well, people can go to your website. I don’t want you to be burdened with 1000 emails.

[00:15:22.29] spk_2:
It’s time for a break wegner-C.P.As paycheck protection program. Loan forgiveness. This is still out there looming. You need to get your forgiveness application in. Wegner has you covered? They’re free. Webinar explains p p p loan forgiveness. Go to wegner-C.P.As dot com. Click resource is and recorded events. Now back to Google ad grants with Chris Barlow.

[00:15:35.04] spk_1:
If we’ve now we’ve applied, we’ve been approved. What are some good practices. Let’s start off with what’s your top tip for using this? This $10,000 a month?

[00:17:07.23] spk_0:
Yeah. Obviously, this is kind of an obvious thing, but you want to think about what your goal is and decide what it conversion ISS, and you might have more than one goal or war. The one conversion, a lot of non profit Start with, um, how can we further our mission and help more people find us? Just that we that we conserve because those people are a lot more likely to convert, um, those that that requires less effort because you’re there to help them already and whether you’re serving them physically and you’re just making them helping them avail them of your service is or they can get something online digital from your block or whatever. Um, that is a much quicker win. Um, if you want to grow your supporter base, um that, you know, again, just being aware of what your goal is and deciding what is the smallest step a person can take toward that goal, like of my ultimate goal, is to get supporters and donors. Then what’s the smaller step that someone can take, you know, the first time they come to our site, they’ve never heard of us. The smallest step they can take is to watch one of our videos. Or can we get them to sign up for our analyst? Because if they just come to our site one time and go away, we have no way to reconnect with those people. We don’t know who they are. So the importance of realizing that Google ad grants is great for getting people to your site. Um, but you need to really know what their next step is gonna be. And the smaller that is, the easier that is, the more likely they’re going to take that step.

[00:17:15.53] spk_1:
Did you have a specific landing page of what? Your advance? Incoming traffic?

[00:17:43.81] spk_0:
Yeah. Depends. I think, you know, having a landing page is great if you have a very specific goal in mind. Um, you know, I want to offer this this resource, um, five ways toe to apply to, You know, maybe you help low income people, families or individuals, you know, get a job or whatever at my career Resource is

[00:17:48.76] spk_1:
or sign a petition or something.

[00:18:29.50] spk_0:
Yeah, sign a petition, Right. So So you have a landing page specific for that goal. It could be great. Also, just to send for people to your website, your general website, as long as there’s an easy way for them to take the next step whether that stopped in or call you or whatever it is, The main thing to consider there is I want a match. The page that I sent people to to the key where they searched as closely as I can. The more relevant, um, you know, if they’re searching for, ah, something related to, um, you know, gruel, you know, hygiene kit for homeless. You know, you wanna you want to make sure that we’re, you know, as close as you can you match. So if you just send them to your home page website, that’s a very generic place to send them. So if you have a block post addressing that specific question, that’s a great place to send them.

[00:18:50.14] spk_1:
Okay? And this all goes back to your goal. Exactly. Go is donor acquisition? Then they should get to an information page. That’s gonna Or maybe maybe they should just be right that the donation page. I don’t know what that

[00:18:54.01] spk_0:
donation page can work. A ZX long as your donation page has videos and things that will get people excited.

[00:19:22.00] spk_1:
Okay, They need a little bit more information that quite radio give you the credit card number. Yes. But you also don’t want them wandering around reading block posts. Yes. You distracted by the petition, et cetera, when you know that they searched for, you know, giving or you’re confident that whatever brought them in, they are in the mind of donating.

[00:19:25.65] spk_0:
Yeah, Yeah, you’re a ghoul Cares about relevance. And that that the relevance is what you’re abscess and how relevant are at is to the what they searched. And then the page two and goodwill measures that by

[00:19:36.84] spk_1:
oh ho hos that Google knows that your head sends people do. And they

[00:19:41.46] spk_0:
well, they know how long people stand the page. If you have Google analytics on the site, they know that. And so the longer people stay, that’s a better user experience,

[00:20:03.74] spk_1:
right? All right, maybe this is maybe this is obvious, but I’m trainable. So Google Analytics works both ways. It gives you gives you data, but it also gives feedback toe Google. Okay.

[00:20:04.52] spk_0:
And I mean, maybe

[00:20:09.91] spk_1:
that maybe that’s commonly known among Google analytics users. All right, I didn’t know that. Yeah. Let your surrendering data as well as retrieving it for yourself.

[00:21:03.91] spk_0:
Yeah, well, it’s It’s so that, you know, because if your users are having a good experience, Google will show your ads will give you give you more ad impressions because people are having a date. They won’t care about what the user experiences when they click on your ad and stuff. And so, you know, give him a good experience. If they take that, they convert. Maybe they don’t spend a lot of time on your site, but they convert. They give you guys a call or fill in a form, and that’s what you said as one of your goals. Google. You know, that gets measured into your at, um at data and Google says, Okay, we’ll show your adds more often, or, um, you know, you know how Google as is it is an auction. Well, will be it higher for this ad to show on these keywords because people tend to convert, and that’s a good experience with user. So we’re gonna make sure your ad gets shown because people are converting.

[00:21:05.74] spk_1:
Okay, Okay, is excellent advice. What else? For using this grant money.

[00:21:43.44] spk_0:
Um, if you can focus on traffic first, um, it you don’t want to ignore conversions and ignore getting people to take the next step. But higher traffic, the higher traffic you have the more of that grant or spending that it’s faster and easier to to test what? You know that conversion. Maybe you’re trying to get donors. And, you know, if you’re getting 100 people to your site, um, that’s gonna take a lot longer than if you get 1000 people to your site to figure out OK, people are really responding to this video. Are there? Are there are they’re signing up for our list or they’re donating.

[00:21:46.44] spk_1:
It’s a matter of more validity in a larger sample size. Exactly. You could drop more conclusions from 1000 people than you can from a population of 100

[00:23:20.50] spk_0:
yet, And so to get more traffic, um, I mean they’re number ways, but one of the best things you can do is to, um, add, keep adding he works, and because it’s at grants. They don’t have to be the perfect keywords that, um, are are your absolute ideal donors. They could be people who are searching for kind of related topics that they’re still, you know, related to what you do. And, um, you can, you know, get people further, further away from the final, you know, instead of the very most qualified people. So adding keywords and then another good practice is along with that, um, when you organize your campaign, people typically take a pool of keywords, say, 20 keywords, and then they create and their related to each other. And then they create one app for those keywords. Um, because they’re fairly related keywords. And I recommend using single theme or single keyword ad groups where you each at each keyword has a unique first headline. So you work. That ad is close to that. This is the key word s possible, or Hubert phrase. Or maybe you have just three or four different keywords cubits radio phrases for at so just having much smaller groups because that makes sure that the ad the first headline that people see and your ad is as close to what they actually search.

[00:23:23.58] spk_1:
Can you give an example of that?

[00:24:55.04] spk_0:
Yeah. Um, so if someone searches for it, got using this example that I mentioned before of parenting resources. If someone searches for, ah, three years, three year old tantrum, Um, the standard philosophy might be three year old tan drum, five year old tantrum child hand drum. You haven’t ad about tantrums with single keyword or single theme at groups. You instead say, three year old tantrum as the headline, and then you have a different at for five year old tantrum because it matches exactly what the person searched. Um, you don’t necessarily have to get back granular by creating that many different, unique first headlines, but you can try to make it as narrow as possible. Um, and that way, people, because here’s another best practice or way to think about Google ads as opposed to like Facebook or another kind of ad platform. It’s not about like having the ideal branded like emotional trigger that really draws people in. People do a Google search, and they look at the search results and then make a split second decision. Um, and it and you really just want to make show people. I understand your intent and I match what you’re thinking. And so the relevance that could match of the key word just getting that is as close as possible is what helps ensure that you can have a really high number of people who are clicking on your abs.

[00:25:07.34] spk_1:
Do you have a three year old?

[00:25:09.34] spk_0:
I’m a four year old.

[00:25:21.34] spk_1:
So you’ve been to you’ve been down a three year old a few times. Eso eso alright, don’t told aggression. What’s your top top top tip for three year old tantrums?

[00:25:56.04] spk_0:
Um, you’ve got Teoh. Do you show show empathy. You gotta show You have to show empathy on and telling a while that is Are you are feeling really mad about that and validate a feeling, Um, and you have to you have to be calm yourself. You have to. Sometimes you have to step away and calling yourself first. That’s probably the most important thing. And then you can show empathy and how you are feeling something really strong and back. Tens toe helped start just yet.

[00:25:56.93] spk_1:
Okay, because your your father expert as well you have six Children.

[00:26:00.40] spk_0:
I have a lot of a lot. You know, what I found is more kits I’ve had, you know, other more. I need to work.

[00:26:20.70] spk_1:
Well, yeah, OK, but there are people with one or two. You could learn a lot from a guy. Time six. So All right. Um, thank you. Topping up three year old tension, Right? So, yes, you gotta deescalate yourself. You got to take a deep yourself, then. All right, then show your empathy. You got to get yourself under control.

[00:26:25.28] spk_0:
That’s right. Yeah. If you if you’re not safe in terms of just your if your flight or flight is going off, If you’re feeling really stressed out, it’s gonna come through and how you address it. Um, that’s really how I feel. Like that’s half the battle. You can calm yourself down. You’ll be able that manage the rest.

[00:26:43.84] spk_1:
OK? All right. We still got a couple minutes left, so don’t hold out.

[00:27:13.74] spk_0:
S o. One interesting thing about adds to with Google is, um, low. The lowest common denominator. Um, with the ad itself is good, like, unfortunately, but it’s it’s just a fact like your would have your ad written at a level that third grader lower. Okay. Use really simple words. Use you. So, you know, um, you’re not trying to sound really sophisticated, because again, people aren’t reading things in death

[00:27:34.54] spk_1:
way. Think about our own behavior. And a The page of Google Search results were scanning. We’re looking for the the most closely related to what we want, and we’re grabbing it. So you do have to keep it simple.

[00:28:23.54] spk_0:
That’s right. Um, another thing that’s kind of worth trying is, um, Google Ghoul really wants to keep growing their use of machine learning and ai ai, and they have two kinds of ads that take advantage of that. There’s one kind of ad called Responsive, sir. Chats R S A. This is where you write headlines and descriptions and then Google intelligible. You mix and match and find what works best. I think this is a great advocate, great kind of way to do it because you control what and says, but Google decides what it shows instead of you writing. You know, I’m Here’s the first headline. Here’s a second and buying Here’s the description. I want you to show this exact thing. You just give it. Here’s your toolbox and you find what works best?

[00:28:27.32] spk_1:
Oh, really? And then Google chooses

[00:29:04.74] spk_0:
you. Go chooses, Um, and then another one, which is, um, has its It’s worth trying. It can work well. It can also work really merely and poorly. Um, and it’s getting It’s getting better. It’s called dynamic search Jets, and basically you just set up a campaign that’s the dynamics or Jack campaign. And Google scans your website, and it does everything. When someone does a keyword search, it picks the landing page. It writes the ad and shows the ad. So it it does the whole of

[00:29:06.75] spk_1:
your surrendering, your surrendering, training, everything. So what do you What do you give it to chips from?

[00:29:15.11] spk_0:
Um, your website? Okay, that’s it.

[00:29:16.19] spk_1:
Falls, That’s That’s this Ball Z.

[00:29:17.78] spk_0:
Yeah, so I mean,

[00:29:19.19] spk_5:
you can experiment. You can

[00:29:34.38] spk_0:
experiment, you can absolutely experiment. And, um, you know, sometimes that Google rights and add that really isn’t so good. But it does a pretty good job of matching the page that they send people to to the terms that they searched because that’s what Google does best.

[00:29:37.93] spk_1:
All right, now that was dynamic search ads. What’s the What’s the R s a

[00:30:56.74] spk_0:
responsive search at. Okay. Okay, um, and then another thing, no matter what your goal is, you really need to have you have in mind follow up. Um, especially with donors you need tohave, you know, email marketing, or have something in plant but in place where you can continue to reach out to people. Um, if you’re serving clientele, um, you know, maybe people aren’t ready to come in, like if there, if they need to make an appointment with you or our work with you directly. One on one. Maybe people searching on Google aren’t ready to do that, but so instead, you offer a non online resource where they get it for free, and then you follow up with him via email and address some other questions they might have and encourage them that now you can come in and take advantage of our service is our or whatever. It might be our you know, if it’s a petition like okay, you’re not ready to sign the petition. Here’s some questions to Beacon thinking about, you know, and along this issue care clearly you care about this issue, and so then you can follow up with them with with over email. Exactly. Now, when you consider how we asked questions why you consider signing the petition? So that’s a, um, another really important factor. And that’s actually, um, you know,

[00:30:57.39] spk_1:
plan. You don’t have a

[00:30:58.23] spk_0:
follow up, Ellen. And it’s also another factor in whether this is the right program for you. If you don’t have the resources to be able to follow up, especially if you’re trying to get you want donors from Google ads, then it’s probably not the right program for you right now. You can’t do the follow up.

[00:31:18.10] spk_1:
Okay. All right. So, uh, I certainly don’t wanna leave it on the negative. No right program for you if you can’t follow up. So leave us with ah, motivation.

[00:32:04.44] spk_0:
Yeah, well, I mean Google ad grants once you get it set up. Um, you know, if you’re just trying to do it yourself, I would say you could get it done in one of two hours per week of maintenance. And you can definitely see thousands of new visitors to your site. Hundreds of new people signing up for your email list. Um and ah, you know it. It’s like I said at the beginning. It is one of the neatest programs in terms of from on profits, because you can no, upfront. Is this gonna be something we should try And where are we going to get it? And you don’t have to take the risk of putting all the effort into applying. And then, you know, like most rants, you’re you’re lucky if you win it.

[00:32:10.04] spk_1:
Okay? I thought of another thing that I should have asked. You tell a story. Tell a good tele good at grand story.

[00:33:11.24] spk_0:
Okay, so I’m there was, ah, a lot of of nonprofits experience. They signed up for ad grants at one point, and then it didn’t go anywhere. Um, and I had a client like this, and they, um they had tried it, paid someone a lot of money, and it gotten in, but And that didn’t do anything. And ah asked me to take it over, and I just I was just trying to help them out. And I, um no volunteer my time for a little while with them and got got got things going cause I want They said, Let’s prove this out. If we can see that this is gonna be worth our while. We be happy that to hire you long term. Well, after six months, we were spending the entire $10,000. They were getting a few 100 use of strivers per month. And, uh, yeah, so it’s That was definitely an ink encouraging, uh, story.

[00:33:19.14] spk_1:
OK, yeah. A couple 100 new, quite newly acquired donors. That’s all right. He’s Chris Barlow at B line. Underscore Chris the company again. Beeline dot marketing Thank you very much, Chris. Real pleasure. Thanks for sharing.

[00:33:27.16] spk_0:
Thank you, tony. Great to be on

[00:34:46.37] spk_2:
absolutely time for a break. Tony’s take two. I’ve got a free how to guide for you to get your planned giving program started. It’s time. It’s time you can do this. The download is unleash the game changing power of planned giving at your non profit. It’s my ideas for how to get your program started. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. You don’t need expertise on your board or on your staff. You’re not talking to donors about their deaths. This is not going to cannibalize your fundraising. All these misconceptions, myths around, planned giving. All right, so I bust all those, and I explained how to get your program started. Step by step. You can get the free download Very simple. You don’t have to go to a site. This is It’s amazing. It’s amazing what we can do. Just text guide guide to 565 to 5 and you will get yours. It’s that simple text guide to 565 to 5. And that is tony Steak, too. Now it’s time for Be a payment processing pro.

[00:36:01.83] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020 non profit Technology Conference. Our coverage of 20 NTC is sponsored by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits? 20. Got em a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial, I guess now are Christina Snore Lily Aiko and Marine Wall be off. Christina is director of digital fundraising at America. American Near East Refugee Aid On era, Lily is vice president of payments and online fundraising at every action, and Maureen is non profit digital strategist and coach at practical wisdom for non profit accidental techies. So if you were deliberate techie accident, if you stumbled in like so many. Is Marines the right person doctor? All right, um, your NTC session is resume or by knowing more, become a payment processing pro. Uh, really, Are we, uh, we getting screwed by our payment processing contracts?

[00:36:08.30] spk_0:
I don’t

[00:36:08.55] spk_3:
know that that’s the way I would phrase it exactly. But I do think that there’s a lot of folks who you know payments is not many people’s areas, expertise, understandably, and they don’t want it to be also understandably. But there’s a lot that I think folks are leaving on the table because they don’t know what questions to be asking. Um, the naturally what we’re trying to help people understand is how can they go in and ask the right questions and make the right choices so that their maximizing your fundraising

[00:36:50.43] spk_1:
Okay, so you know what? What’s possible to put on the table that looks like it may looks non negotiable from the contract that you’re reading. Okay, there are things we can talk about. OK, um so now, um, yeah, really. Your vice president of payments that I haven’t seen that in a title before. I know it’s not your full title payments and online fundraising, but, uh, you does your organization, um is every action spending a lot of money on payments or

[00:37:08.13] spk_3:
Yeah, so explain kind of what that means. So I work on our product team, so I help figure out what new things we want to build into our software. So where us? A software provider for non profits for fundraising in a number of other things. And I focus on our fundraising, uh, products and specifically the kind of nitty gritty of how contributions are processed as part of a nonprofit fundraising. How do we make sure that as many contributions as possible are being processing process successfully? Eso that’s kind of my area of expertise, both in the product in just kind of in our business. More generally, how do we help make sure that clients are taking advantage? Everything can there.

[00:37:45.96] spk_1:
I see. Okay, Christina, what is your relationship with payment processing?

[00:37:51.61] spk_5:
So I kind of oversee our database, so just making sure that all of that is set up and working with their finance team. Um, you know, since I’m also manage all of our online donation for him, So it’s important that we, you know, have that set up correctly so everything can come through smoothly.

[00:38:13.42] spk_1:
Okay. Thank you. And, uh, Marine, what’s your What’s your role around? Payment processing. Are you Are you Are you like the holistic counselor for people who are frustrated by their by their lousy contracts?

[00:38:26.32] spk_4:
Um, I make sure So So this session actually came out of, Ah, Facebook Live that Lily and I did last summer on my facebook page because people, when they’re looking at new systems, especially CIA, rams or databases that have some type of transactional functionality is part of the system. They often don’t know what they should be looking for. Can they move to a new system and keep their existing processor? Where can they look for glossary of terms? So Christina happened to be one of my my clients and moved into every action and part of what we did together was she just said, make sure that the finance team was participating because some stuff is is not going to be part of Christina’s purview, you know, deciding and signing contracts and things for processors. The other thing that we’re finding comes up a lot is peanut types. People want to be able to offer Apple pay or Google wallet or Bitcoin. And how does a non profit accidental techie or fundraiser kind of navigate those waters most of the time? Folks on the ground or doing fundraising really don’t understand. And I certainly didn’t. What happens once a donor puts their pardon? You know, we know that everybody takes a little bites, but really, what happens? What is the non profit themselves responsible for? What’s the process of responsible for what’s the tool provider responsible for? And that’s why we wanted to submit this session to NTC this year. Teoh clear some of that up. What’s the ownership? How does it all work? And how do I take control of my pieces if I’m working exciting organization.

[00:40:29.49] spk_1:
Okay, Maureen, since have, uh, hosted something on exactly on this. You and Lily. I’m gonna deputize you as co host of this episode because it’s so you know, it’s so niche. And I don’t wanna want to focus on the wrong area. You know, I keep saying contracts or crummy, but maybe I’m over over overemphasizing that part of it. So, um, you know, I’m not giving you carte blanche about believing leading but ah, deputized you get the idea. So, Dio where where should we start with this? But I

[00:40:54.78] spk_4:
think I’ve loved going on that we talked a little bit about, you know, some of the some of the terminology. And in my favorite phrase, lily that I learned from you that I’d love to have you talk about today is meat or beach. The the rates. So I’m not gonna be tony, because I could never be tony. But But it would be great for you to just share a little bit about the didactic ce that we were hoping to present

[00:41:23.16] spk_1:
our tactics. That’s a big word. Or see, I would never use that on. Believe me, you don’t want to be tony. It’s no place to be. Um, all

[00:41:32.28] spk_4:
right, how about definition of terms? How about that?

[00:41:35.31] spk_1:
Okay. No, didactic is wonderful. No, um, the only thing we have to bear in mind is we’re doing this in about 25 minutes. Okay? Roughly. Okay. Please go ahead. Really

[00:44:37.04] spk_3:
great. Yeah. So I think I think that’s a great point, Maureen. And I think this is often, you know, one of the first places where nonprofits run into questions on dhe feel a little bit stuck is when they’re talking to potential vendors. Often you’re talking Teoh, a digital tools provider or digital C R M. And and that’s where the payments piece of the conversation comes up is OK. What what payment provider you’re going to use with your online contribution forms may be your A digital vendor has a payment provider they work with. Maybe they have an insurer. Maybe they have, like an in house team it provider that they kind of built, and that’s that’s their offering. Maybe there’s a whole bunch of different processors that you can integrate with, Um, and I think that’s often a non profits first. Start running into these questions, and it’s hard to understand sort of the different the different pieces that you need lined up to make sure you can successfully profit contributions online alone with, You know, obviously the vendor that’s providing you’re helping you build your online contribution forms. You need a merchant account. Eso you’re gonna need a merchant account provider, which is a vendor that helps that will set up that account for you, into which you can accept donors purchase or donations online. Um, money from that merchant count will go right into your normal bank account, but it always has to a first into a merchant account that’s just sort of part of online credit card processing. That merchant account also needs a payment gateway, and this is again where it can get a little confusing For some nonprofits. Many providers can be both your payment gateway it and you’re merchant account provider. But some are not some vendors or just a payment gateway or just a merchant account provider on nothing that you know your digital tools better should be able to help you navigate that conversation. They should be able to tell you what your options are there and help you understand what you know, what accounts you might need to go out and get and help set up that conversation for you and then that merchant account and that being the gateway or at the end of the day, gonna be connecting to a payment processor. That’s the service that actually accepts the transaction, authorizes it with the credit card provider and provides a response to you and again that could be yet another vendor or it can be a part of one of those other kind of two pieces that I already mention the team, a gateway in the merchant account that’s more in the weeds than nonprofits typically need to get. Usually again, you can go to a digital service is provider like every action that can help. You kind of figure out which of those pieces you need to worry about. But those are just some terms that are often gonna come up, and it can be a little bit confusing in those initial conversations. Um, and all of those tie into the pricing fact. Ah, factor here because obviously it’s a boring allude to kind of the more vendors you have in the chain of your payment processing. Each one of those vendors is taking their own piece of every transaction. So the more vendors that you have there, but the more you have to kind of think about that and make sure you understand what fees are being taken out of each point. So again, the more you can kind of work with one provider, and they can just give you one clear fee that ties everything together. It makes it a little bit easier for you to understand what you’re actually letting from those contributions. At the end of the day,

[00:45:06.89] spk_1:
I’ve been binge watching The Sopranos, and they would call that the the big That’s right. Every three, every different level level of vendor gets, gets their big

[00:45:12.68] spk_3:
Exactly. Yeah, that’s pretty much pretty much for payment. Processing is. Unfortunately, it’s, you know, there’s one transaction and there’s just lots of little pieces that get split out to lots of different people.

[00:45:22.94] spk_1:
All right, hopefully the consequences of not quite as grave sopranos if you don’t pay your

[00:45:27.63] spk_3:
yes, hopefully,

[00:45:31.09] spk_1:
um, all right, so, Marine, please jump in. Well,

[00:45:35.75] spk_4:
one of the things

[00:45:36.69] spk_1:
that our definition of time one of

[00:45:38.71] spk_4:
the places that this gets rial for non profits, and I know it got real for Christina was, if you’ve got sustaining donors, so let’s say you’re using a system that is connected to your online fundraising system. It’s one tool, and so you’ve got You’ve built up these monthly donors for years, right? We’ve all really worked hard to get our sustainer programs up and running and healthy, but when you move, those transactions need to go somewhere and continue to be processed if you stopped. And you said, Hey, all my monthly sustainer is I want you to go sign up again on my new donation form. You could lose up to 75 or higher percent of those monthly gifts. So you’re sort of starting that program over again? Christina needed to spend quite a bit of time thinking about this in her move. So I love to hear Cristina tell her sustain sustainer story.

[00:47:26.14] spk_5:
Sure. So we actually did have our sustain er’s spread out. Unfortunately, since our program is pretty established, this happened. Unfortunately, before I, um, started working at it Neera. But we had it in them in three different places, um, two of which were easily migrate herbal, and one of which we had Teoh speak with the donors, and it was only about 40 people. So it wasn’t so bad out of our, like, 500 plus, um, monthly donors. So we had to tell them Hey, we’re moving up opportunities system, and unfortunately, we can’t migrate you over there, so we’re gonna have to cancel your gift, and will you please restart? So, um, it was a little frustrating trying to get in touch with all of all three of those and figure out how to do that. But, um, in the end, we got it done, and it was It was fine. And it was much easier than having people start and restart.

[00:47:34.48] spk_1:
Did you? Did you find a lot of attrition?

[00:47:39.78] spk_5:
Um, it wasn’t so bad. Yeah, it was okay.

[00:47:42.85] spk_1:
All right. It wasn’t the 75 or more percent that Maureen said is possible,

[00:48:21.03] spk_5:
right? I think because the majority of ours were in a system that were easily able Teoh migrate from one Teoh the other, We didn’t really have any problems. And we had previously a credit card up of data, um, with them. So those credit cards were ready, ready to go, and we had no problem moving them over. There were a couple, I want to say a handful of people with a CH monthly donations and those are easy enough to move over as well because those never expire. Um, that’s

[00:48:21.86] spk_1:
coming from their bank accounts, right?

[00:48:35.21] spk_5:
Right. Yes. Sorry, but I think there’s a lot of those 40 people are 47 people that we had Teoh to worry about, and I think where we were able to get a little over half of them to restart their gifts, so we were really happy about that.

[00:48:38.46] spk_4:
But everybody else, the lion share kind of got somebody came in with very protective gloves on, kind of, because that’s that’s data that the non profit doesn’t want. You know they don’t want to store the credit card. They don’t want to store this the, um, the Cvv, because that’s banking information and no non profit anywhere, I think, has the security in place that they need to actually keep that locked down. So that’s where Lily and her team kind of came in and helped to facilitate the transfer of that protected data from where it waas in Christina’s legacy system into the new the new database.

[00:49:56.97] spk_2:
Time for our last break turn to communications relationships. The world runs on them. We all know this. If you’re a fundraiser, you especially know it turn to is led by former journalists so that you’ll get help building relationships with journalists. Those relationships will help you when you’d like to be heard so that people know you’re a thought leader in your field. They specialize in working with nonprofits. They’re at turn hyphen two dot ceo. We’ve got but loads more time for be a payment processing pro.

[00:50:54.64] spk_3:
This is a definitely an area where I would encourage people to actually dig in a little bit more on that payment processor contract, because it’s really important that you make sure that you own your data, especially when it comes to sustain Er’s. And it’s as boring said. You don’t want to be storing that data. You don’t want to be storing the credit card numbers because there’s a lot of security PC I compliance concerns that come along with that. But you do want to make sure that at the end of the day, if you walk away from a vendor Onda payments provider that you can take that deal with you. And we say that data, really, what we’re meaning by that is the credit card tokens. So it’s the secure token that represents the credit card number, and as long as you have in your contract that you own that data, you should be able to work with your current under. If you ever are transitioning off of them to have them securely, send that data to your new vendor, your new payment provider, and they will re token, eyes it into another secure soak in that lives in their system and can then be charged to your new vendor. So that’s kind of the process of migrating sustainer is over. And so it’s really important that you make sure that at the end of the day, you are the one that owns that data. Obviously, it can still be a little bit of pulling teeth to get the thunder that you’re leaving to feel incentivised to give it to you. But you want to make sure that you know that you have that

[00:51:25.46] spk_1:
right? So So that’s there’s terminology. There’s language should say language in the contract that will specify who owns. Is this organized data?

[00:51:27.92] spk_3:
Exactly, exactly. And that’s something again where if you’re depending on kind of a model that your digital tools provider has, they can often kind of answer that question for you because it’s often written into their contract with the femur provider that they partner with eso. It’s often not something that you know. The non profit themselves has to, you know, get out there. Ah, red pen and they go through the contract for. But it’s a question you want to make sure you’re asking.

[00:51:52.11] spk_1:
Okay, Lily, do you feel like this is something that a new organization should have an attorney review? These different agreements? Or is that is that you don’t think is necessary?

[00:52:46.15] spk_3:
I mean, I don’t ever want to say you shouldn’t have been assured the review a contract before you sign it. Um, you know, I think I think again, this is where it depends a little bit on how much a non profit is going out and contracting for the service is on their own versus how much they’re going through a provider. If you know, for example, if you’re working with a digital vendor that kind of handles payments in a house, this would likely be part of your contract with vendor, as opposed to a contract with an external payment provider. A lot of digital vendors don’t handle humans and house, but then partner with someone who does, and so they can kind of help you through that process a little bit. But is it a best practice, you know, Probably have having attorney. Look at it. I would say, Yeah, it was saying this.

[00:52:58.15] spk_1:
Any advice on how we know whether the fees that were being charged are within a normal range?

[00:53:00.91] spk_3:
Yeah, that is a great question. Um, so

[00:53:04.07] spk_1:
we’ve got a good morning. Okay? Medicine. All right.

[00:55:41.12] spk_3:
Um, yes. So the first thing I would say about pricing and is that there are different models. There’s kind of three main models that you’re going to see when it comes to payment processing fees. So the first is a flat rate. This is the easiest for anyone to understand. It is We’re gonna get charged X person and X number of sense on every transaction, no matter what. That’s obviously you know, it’s it’s very straightforward. It’s easy to calculate that, um, there’s also gonna be a tiered pricing model. And a tier pricing model is meant to kind of take into account the fact that different transactions do have different fees associated with them. Um, so when a human is processed online, uh, the credit card fees are gonna vary and a very pretty significantly, depending on a number of factors. Eso There’s what’s called interchange interchanges. Basically, the combination of fees that credit card companies charge there’s they’re gonna very depending on the credit card provider they’re gonna do very depending on the type of card. For example, rewards cards have a very big effect on processing fees. It’s actually why a lot of folks have seen their processing fees go up is because is more and more and more of us have rewards cards. Those usually incur higher processing fee. So this this kind of why instead of seas and it’s hundreds of different categories for disease, it makes up what’s called interchange. And so the tiered pricing model is usually mention to kind of it. To account for that, it’ll usually mean that there’s, you know, maybe three buckets or so where the femur provider has kind of taken every possible interchange, price and category, and it’s put it in one of these three buckets, and they charge a different rate. Based on that, it’s still not exactly what the credit card company is charging for that colored, but it it kind of balances that out more as opposed it a flat rate, which is just one number, and it’s sometimes the providers actually gonna be losing money on that transaction because they’ve had to pay more than that to the credit card company to charge it. In some cases, they’re gonna be making money on it. They just sort of, you know, they find what they think is a balancing between. Okay, and then the third model. It’s called Interchange Plus on. But that basically means is that your provider is just passing on those credit card company fees directly to you. And then they’re adding on some percentage for their own profit. That one. There’s a certain used to it and that you know exactly what you’re paying that provider. They’re not obscuring that profit for you. Um, but it’s also very hard to predict because obviously, again, interchange fees from the credit card companies very on every transaction. So you don’t You don’t know what you’re gonna pay on any transaction until it happens.

[00:56:14.48] spk_1:
Okay, Lily, if you ever leave every action, you have a niche consulting practice with payments transferrable to a private practice. Maureen, What else? What else? We

[00:56:22.53] spk_4:
way. I’d love to get Kristina to speak a little bit about those ranges and fees because you were using, as you said, a mix of different processors at a narrow before you major big move. And I think you saw awesome rial fluctuation between digital tool provider. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:57:48.13] spk_5:
So we were using 1/3 party, a peer to peer tool, um, whose prices were or their their fees were a lot higher than our main processor. So we definitely wanted to get away from that, Um, went looking at any system, and we also just wanted to find something. Of course, that was all of one. So we wouldn’t have to worry about having so many different processing fees for all these different types of tools. So, um, it’s another thing to consider to, um So, yeah. I mean, because we those 40 people that we had to cancel, they were kind of a mystery, and it took us a while to hunt them down. I don’t I’m not even sure what those processing fees were because they were just in there for so long and, like, had transferred over to, like, our old system. So, um, but yeah, I think I think what? You know, when we were looking for a new system, we wanted to find something because we were happy with our current processing fees. And so we wanted again something that either you know, meter beat, type of thing that we were saying before. Um um, Plus, you know, what are the things that you really like? Like the credit card update? Our was something we had to have. And then we also you did something that offered different pain and types as well. So, like, apple pay pay, pal, You know all the major credit cards. Um, so, yeah, that was that was an important thing for us.

[00:59:13.53] spk_3:
And that’s a really great point that you bring up to. Is that all those kind of additional things that you’re talking about? The other payment types, credit card update or card account update? Er, those often comes with visas. Well, they may be monthly, set up fees, then maybe per transaction fees. But they made very a ch, for example, different feed and credit cards. Typically. So those are all kind of questions you wanna ask when you think about you know, what are the must have features when it comes to my own life fund raising and my peanut processing? Make a list of those and then go talk to every vendor that you’re talking to and find out what the fees are for those because it’s really easy for blunders, especially on the reason that flat rate model you just hear what number and you’re like, Great, that’s that’s in the range I want to be in like I’m good and it’s it’s easy to like, not realize kind of all these other things that may seek in there. So it’s good to kind of get that get together. A list of questions when asked the same questions of every 100 it might be talking to, um, and there’s a fair amount you confined, you know, even honestly, just doing a quick Google search for some of the processors that you may know of names that you’ve heard in the past or vendors that you’ve worked with. You can often see some pricing information right on their site. It’s not necessarily gonna tell you everything, but if you’re just kind of looking for a ballpark, that could be helpful as well. And non profit should also know that some writers are able to give them discounted rates as non profit. So that’s always you should ask.

[01:00:41.14] spk_4:
Yeah, I think this is one of those those places where nobody owns it inside an organization, you know? Does your CFO or your accounts payable person own it? Does your operations person own it? Just someone like Christina was managing all the digital fundraising. Own it. Um, So the first step, whether you’re moving or not, is to kind of huddle eternally and tap someone to be the person who’s going to own this, learn about it and kind of Carrie Carrie. Things forward, re negotiate or influence rates when you’re when you’re moving. There’s just a lot of people switching systems. Right now, there’s a ton of different products on the market, and this is one of those things that you think you know. Like Lily says. You ask your questions, you check all your boxes and then six months in. You have this horrible discovery because I’ve raised X, but only why has hit my bank account. And now what do I dio? So it’s It’s a good thing to pay attention to, even if you don’t quite know what to ask, you’re not quite sure how to go about it. At least start the conversation internally, and then you’re a little bit more empowered to go talk with your your payment processor or your tool provider.

[01:01:16.49] spk_5:
I know another thing for us was the ability to process international donations as well. So, having knowing what they’re, um, what kind of security measures they take to for that as well, and then like, how easy is it for people to donate, if their overseas, whether they’re, you know, us people traveling overseas or residents or citizens that are living in other countries,

[01:01:18.84] spk_3:
I think a great way to think about it is kind of like inventory, what your current system is doing and what you’re program looks like today and then think about where do we want to grow our program? Where do we want for him to be in a year or two years? And, you know, maybe I talked to a lot of people, for example, who they want to get more into international fund raising. They’re not doing it now, but it’s a goal. What? That’s a goal. You should make sure that you’re thinking about that. When you switch to a new vendor or payment provider. Make sure that’s making supports that as you grow your organization you could help meet those goals and that you’re working with a provider that can help you do that.

[01:01:55.71] spk_1:
Right, Marine? Uh, you think Anything else pressing?

[01:01:57.98] spk_4:
I feel like we without getting into the super Weeds, E I think we’re there. I think we got it.

[01:02:34.60] spk_1:
Okay, then, uh, we’re gonna wrap it up there. All right? Thank you. Thanks. Thanks to all three of you. And I know you reach well and safe in your own locations. I’m very glad of that. I’m glad we were able to get together. Um, it’s Christina Snore, director of digital fundraising for American Near East Refugee Aid a nera Billy I, co vice president of payments and online fundraising and future payment processing consultant. Uh, she’s currently remaining at every action. Is

[01:02:40.48] spk_3:
a guest as CEO. Something that,

[01:02:42.44] spk_1:
um, and Marine will be off non profit digital strategist and technology coach. Practical wisdom for non profit accidental techies. Marine, this was unprecedented that I had a co host in any show. Um, I don’t know exactly. Well, we’re and I do know exactly I’m like your 480 or so 500 is coming up in July. I’ve been doing this 10 years never had a co host.

[01:03:04.64] spk_4:
I am honored. I’m

[01:03:06.80] spk_1:
absolutely I knew I could trust you from from your contribution first, The first session yesterday. So but don’t get carried away. Don’t come back.

[01:03:15.05] spk_4:
I won’t let it go to my head. And

[01:03:17.04] spk_1:
you know weekly. Not quarterly. Not semiannual. Carried away. All right.

[01:03:22.01] spk_4:
Sounds good. Alright,

[01:03:23.96] spk_1:
Thanks, Teoh. Thank you. Especially Maureen. Thanks to all three of you

[01:03:47.20] spk_2:
next week, let’s have more 20 and TC smartness. If you missed any part of today’s show you know what I beseech you Find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com and by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo.

[01:04:16.02] spk_1:
Our creative producer is clear. Meyer shows social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy. And this music is by Scott Stein of Brooklyn with me next week for not profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great