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Nonprofit Radio for February 5, 2024: Zombie Loyalists

 

Peter ShankmanZombie Loyalists

Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of brom hydros if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony now I’m on it. It’s zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists focuses on customer service creating rabid fans who dear social media marketing and pr for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired December 19th 2014 on Tony’s Take Two. How’s your endowment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is zombie loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and pr for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Harrow, help a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment, Harrow was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the geek factory, a boutique social media marketing and pr strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on nasa’s civilian advisory council. You’ll find him at shankman.com and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio. Welcome Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks. Pleasure you um live on the uh on the west side of Manhattan. I do. And you, there’s a, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. Uh I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Morton’s correct. Why is that? I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Mortons or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous uh custom relationship management system uh when I call one number uh in New York or anywhere in the world, it, it, they know who I am by my cell phone and uh I’m treated with uh just, you know, phenomenal uh uh happiness to, to hear from me and, and my wishes are granted as it were. I, we have a happy hour uh holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And uh you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation and, you know, I called yesterday and said, hey, I need a, uh, any chance I get a reservation for seven people, um, you know, Thursday night at, uh, 7 p.m. which is, you know, the, the week of the holiday party. And, uh, they looked and they said, oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in, of course, Mr Shankman. Not a problem at all. We’ll get that for you right away. You know, we’ll have, we’ll have a great booth for you. Um, you know, and we’ll, we’ll, uh, tell us the names of the people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and with their names on them. So they really, they have a really high level of service that, uh, that they provide. Not just to me that’s the beauty of it. I mean, you know, it’s one thing, yeah, it’s one thing if they just provide it to me, but they they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes a reservation and, and not that I’m special, I’m actually rather abnormal. But, um, when a normal person makes a reservation and says, uh, you know, Morton says, ok, great. Are you celebrating anything? Oh, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. They always ask anyone who calls. I said, oh, you know what, it’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? Her name is Megan or whatever. And you go in and they um and you sit down on the, on the, on the uh menu, it says Happy Birthday, Megan and then Megan, whoever she happens to be will spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and, and, and that’ll go online and then when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go Morton’s. You say uh in, in the book you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton story which is in the middle of the book, but they do it for everybody and then they have the VIP S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting. Go tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s a good story. I love stories. I, I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and, um, day trip mean you’re flying down, I flew down at 6 a.m. at a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those, one of those days. And, uh, I jokingly said the tweet, hey Mortons, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a poer house in two hours? Ha ha ha, ha, ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, hey, winter, please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh, is a, a waiter in a tuxedo with a Morton’s bag. Uh, they saw my Tweet, they, they put it together, they managed to bring me a, uh, a, uh, steak and, and, you know, as great of a story as it is. That’s, that’s, it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t a stage and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering steaks to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like royalty when you come in. And, you know, I, I, if they just did that, if they just delivered the steak at the airport, but their quality and service sucked. You know, it wouldn’t be a story. He said, oh, you know, look what they did for Peter, but I, you know, my steaks cold, you know, so what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings and that’s, that’s really, really important because what winds up happening is you have a great experience at Morton’s and then you tell the world, you know. Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where, you know, review sites are going away and I don’t, I don’t need to go to Yelp to read reviews from people. I don’t know, you know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know, or tripadvisor, same thing. I want people in my network who I trust and, and people in their network who they trust and then by default I trust. So that’s gonna be, that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I, when I land in L A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steakhouse are in L A but if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook steakhouse in Los Angeles, you know, they’ll see all the steakhouses on a Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment was positive, will they see those first? And that’s pretty amazing because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out a photo. Oh, my God. Thanks so much, Mortons love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh my God, amazing steak. This is a great place there. The sentiment is gonna be there and, and, and the network will know that the network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists through this, through this awesome customer service of the customers. You, you have, uh say more about zombies. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the Facebook post, you know, we’re at 990 followers, our 10, our 1/1000 follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had, who were there since the beginning? We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the, the, the companies who see their numbers rise and who see their fans increase and their, their, um, um, revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers. They have, hey, you know, customer 852 it was really nice of you to join us a couple of months ago. How, you know how are you, we, we noticed that you posted on something about a, uh, you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business but, you know, you’re, you’re two blocks from our, our closest, uh, outlet or whatever and, you know, once you, if you, if you need to come in, have a free cup of coffee, we’ll use the phone, whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that, that, that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers, you have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you are. And this all applies to nonprofits certainly as well. I mean, the, the, but even more so, I mean, if you, you know, nonprofits are constantly worried about how to, how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And, uh, you know, you have this massive audience who, who has come to you, who’s a nonprofit and who said to you, you know, we wanna help here, we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple, hey, thanks for joining car, but actually reaching out asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information, things like that will greatly increase, um, your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are. And letting them do your pr for you. And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And, and this is for, this could be, donors could be volunteers to the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous. And if, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends as, as zombies. Do you know, zombies have one purpose in life. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, because a chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, uh how anyone’s doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter what matters with a zombie. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people otherwise they will die. Zombie loyalists are the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom, they, they tell the world and we all have that friend who does it. You know, that one friend who eats, eats nothing but the Olive Garden because, oh my God, it’s greatest breadsticks everywhere. You know, and they will drag your ass to the Olive Garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist. And you want them to do that for your nonprofit. And there’s, there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, a smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. We gotta go away for a couple of minutes. Stay with us. It’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Thus, your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your costs. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024 visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to zombie loyalists, Peter, it doesn’t take much to uh stand out in the customer service world does it, it really doesn’t, you know, and the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that III I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I ask, I ask everyone in the audience, I’m like, who here has had a great flight recently? At least one person will raise their hand. I’m like, ok, what made it great? And without fail, their answer said, well, we took off on time and, and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time and like, so you paid for a service, they delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like, that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do with nothing more, less than 20 minutes in the post office line. And I’m ecstatic. Exactly. You know, it’s, it’s so, we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I, I’m not even asking my clients to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite jokes. Um, the, uh, the two guys are out in the woods, hunting out in the woods and the, or just jogging out in the woods. The first one sees a, a bear and they see this bear and the bear is raised up and he’s about to strike. And the first one, you know, reaches down and tightens up his, his laces on his running shoes. And the second one says, dude, don’t be, don’t be, don’t be an idiot. You can’t run a bear. And he says, I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s, it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and, and you’ll win the whole ball game. Now, we have to set some things up internally in order to have the, the structure in place to create these, the zombie loyalists. Yeah. I mean, you have a, you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at, look at a cell phone company, you know, they, you call them because you have a problem right AT&T or T Mobile, you call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people that handle your call are actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone, which means how many more calls they get. I remember I worked, uh, when I worked in America online, we all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like, which I thought was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it’s this, it’s, it was a system called V I where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and, and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um You know, my favorite story about this is Verizon Wireless. I, I went overseas, I was in Dubai and I landed in Dubai and I turned on my phone, I had gotten global roaming on my phone which, you know, 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Ok. So I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, uh, like before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. I’m like, what the hell, you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane, I’m like, something’s up here. So I call Verizon and a nice guy answered the phone and, oh, yes, I mean, you know, the first thing is it was, yes. So you do have global roaming but it, it doesn’t work in Dubai. So I’m like, ok, well, that’s not really global, that’s more hemispherical roaming I think is, is the issue. And um, so he, uh I said, well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file bill me like, I don’t know. Can you bill me like 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for like the week and you know, that, you know, or 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Well, just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can, I’m like, so what do I have? He’s like, well, you can pay, uh, $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry, seriously, which equates essentially to, I would be charged $20.48 seconds, $20.48 for every, I think at the time for every four seconds of the video, Gangnam style if I decided to watch it on my phone, like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to the Dubai, the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world. Has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in this mall and uh went to one of like the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cellphone. I have went next door to the local uh SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an Android phone. I simply typed in my user name. And password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say, ok, you know what, we’ll cut your break. Uh, they’d still make a lot of money off me and I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful they, how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never, that they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take what, 15 of them a year because now my cell phone, um my international cell phone that I bought, all I do is pop out the SIM card and I land wherever I am put in a new SIM card. So, and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad stories and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon uh tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them at kittens. I read this on the internet. It must be true, but, you know, not necessarily, but you know, the concept that, that all they had to do, all they had to do was empower Mark customer service and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would have gotten fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know, and the funny thing is, is it comes down to, if you really wanna go, go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of, of, of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Ok. That’s what fiti responsibility means by not allowing me by not allowing mark the customer service agent to, to help me and, and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money too many CEO S think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers next quarter. I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think about the next quarter century and they make a much bigger difference because they think, ok, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 1015 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and, and augment and companies in America. Don’t, don’t tend to think about that and that’s a big problem. Um, I, I buy a product line, uh, that has a lot of natural and recycled materials in the seventh generation. And their, um, their tagline is that in, in, in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian. It’s a great, it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just, just in my overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them, about Morton’s like the one about MS, you know, look, a lot of people listen to me and they went for a time when you googled roaming charges. When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you know, damn well, Verizon wouldn’t know anything about that. They’d be like, oh, too bad, sorry about the fine print. And plus the, the employee who sold you the international plan. I’m sure you told her where you going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where Dubai was. She probably thought it was near Canada. But uh long story short, I couldn’t use it. All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be, we have to be but changing AAA thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer donor, the teer you get at the end of the day. Where’s your money coming from? I don’t care if you’re a nonprofit or fortune 100. Where’s your money coming from? You know, and if you, we see it happening over and over again. We see it. Right. You’re seeing it right now. Play out every single day with the company, Uber. Um, and Uber, it’s so funny because Uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean anything if people are running away in droves which people are, there’s a whole delete your Uber app movement. Oh God. Yeah, people are leaving. Uh Well, it’s several. Number one that Uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who on business in business insider said he started the company to get laid. Um His goal was to always have a black car when he was leaving a restaurant uh to impress the girl he was with. That’s he came out and said that and you see that culture run rampant throughout Uber um from their God mode where they can see they actually created. There was a uh uh I don’t know where I read this. It might have been Business Insider as well. There was a, they created a hookup page that showed or, or, or, or a walk of shame page that showed where uh women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends and going or leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um It was obvious that they, you know, met some guy and they did that and then, of course, just their, their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a, uh, a couple of days ago there was a, uh, the terrorist, uh, I think it was a terrorist attack in Sydney, uh, at that, at that bakery and Sydney, uh, Uber in Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know? And, and they, they later refunded it. Oh, it was a computer glitch. I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, you, you have a stop button and you can, when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office who can say, you know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and then hit the stop button and it was, yeah, bad, tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. And, you know, I was having an argument with someone on my Facebook page at facebook.com/peter Shankman because they said, oh, you know, um, so what they don’t, they don’t turn on surge pricing. They don’t have enough cabs there and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only company I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars there, private cabs, Ubers, whatever yet. The only stories I read about companies screwing up during that event were Uber, not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing it up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta, you gotta respect your customer. You have to, as we’re uh training for that, then not only uh trying to change that mindset, well, in, in trying to change that mindset rewards for, for customer, for employees that, that do take go do go the extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I I always tell, tell every one of my employees, you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking it, not doing everything that you know, Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they could fold the bed sheet but for how well they understand people because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic and that is such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many you’ve called customer service? Yeah. You know, I have to, I have to change my flight. My, my, my aunt just died. I really need to get home. Ok, great. That’s $300. I just wanna go an hour earlier, you know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $75. I just, I can, you can, you just cut me some slack. Nope, you know, so empathy and giving the cust, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is ok to make changes and, and this is where a smaller organization has huge advantage and it’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these, I, I try to frequent small businesses when I can, I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t, they, they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that, that they don’t have a, like, they wanna be respected almost. They don’t have like a six, a 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly and yet for whatever reason they won’t do it. And, and it’s the most frustrating thing is like, guys, you, you’re acting like a big, you’re acting like mega Laar here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lamar and you’re just Joe’s House of stationery, whatever it is and, you know, not being able to help me, you’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that have come through the door after me, you know. But I have a pretty big network and for a small business to get killed socially as social becomes more and more what, how we communicate. You know, it’s just craziness. It’s, you know, we’re, we’re pretty much in a world, I think where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless, unless you share it. I joked that, uh, you know, if I can’t take a selfie was I really there. Um, but it’s true, you know, we, we do live in a world where, you know, I, I remember God 10 years ago, maybe not even, not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera, you know, and it was like a new phone. That’s what I said, yeah, camera in my phone, right? And it was like a uh I think it was like a 0.8 megapixel. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato but it was, um it was this, I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video, you know, it was, I mean, it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, you know, II I started recording and the, the woman behind the woman behind the counter was going, the woman behind the counter was talking to the customer saying you do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now. And the customer was saying I just wanted my balance and you and the manager comes over and I get this whole thing on my little crappy three G uh Motorola phone phone. And I, I remember I posted online and gawker picks it up and II I gave him, I, I emailed it, you know, I, my, the headline I put on my blog was, you know, Chase where the right relationship is at. Go after yourself, you know, and it was, and it just got tons of play and then gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So it’s one of those things you’re just like, you know, this is in 2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I, I, I remember blowing, I, I sneezed a couple of weeks ago and, and, uh, uh not to get too graphic here, but it was, I, I needed a tissue big time after I was done sneezing. And I remember going through my pockets looking for desperately looking for tissue and like looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that and it was give me the next viral sensation, you know, I mean, I wait, God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today. Were there in 1989 1990. I’d be having this conversation entirely. I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof for myself. And you’d be, yeah. So, you know, you’d be, you’d be talking to me, you’d have to get special clearance to visit me. Probably be at the, the Super Max in Colorado or something. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid who’s, who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know, I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school, I thought the stupidest thing in the world. Thank God. There wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez. Thank God creating these uh zombie loyalists. And you know, we’ve got to change some, we’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the, the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors? I, I love, I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s, I’m in a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the, across the bar and she catches my eye catch her, I go up to her and I go, you know, you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m, I’m gonna impress I’m that good chances are she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably something I was gonna do now. Let’s assume, let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone, I’m just playing like, you know, some, you know, words with friends or something like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends and one of her friends look up said, holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. I, he’s in this fantasy world. I’m single too today. He, I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I, I know he has a cat. You have a cat. You should totally go talk to him at the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s pr ok. And what do we trust more? Me with my, you know, fancy suit collar going over there in my seventies, leisure suit. Hi. I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. You know, obviously that, that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play and that’s where corporate culture comes into play because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it and there’s nothing stronger than that. And these are the people who want to breed as Zz Willis that’s stronger than advertising, stronger than marketing. And they’re gonna share, people wanna share that. Think about the, the internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama, and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you, if you need uh any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad whatever. But then look at all the good hashtags you know it when our flights delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline, you know, worst airline ever but when we get upgraded, right? Hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know, something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s, it’s only a great experience if we could tell the world and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well. Its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. How’s your endowment endowment? That savings account that your nonprofit has that you only spend the interest of each year and maybe sometimes you don’t even spend that much from year to year planned giving. Can help you either launch your endowment if you don’t have one or grow your endowment if it needs to be bigger. And I don’t know many nonprofits that think uh we have enough, our endowment is big enough. We don’t need any more and giving accelerator. I will help you in the accelerator to launch planned giving so that you can start your endowment or grow your endowment throughout the three months of the course, We go March to May done by Memorial Day. So there’s no impinging on your summer plans. We’ll spend an hour a week together on Zoom over those 12 weeks and I will guide you step by step. Had a launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. I set those weekly meetings up as meetings in Zoom. So there’s lots of cross talk between the members. People are helping each other. There’s a lot of peer support. Uh Aside from the teaching that I’m doing uh each week, if thats of interest to you, please check out Planned Giving accelerator.com promoting the course in uh the rest of this month. And then it starts in early March. That is Tony’s take two Kate. It sounds like a very valuable course. We hope people join. Yes, we do. You’re right about that. We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman. Peter. You have a uh golden rule of social media that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people wanna share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and by stuff, I can mean, I mean, anything from like a bad experience to bad content, people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly, uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things. Uh, uh, after, after a random school shooting. Uh, no, it was after the, uh, the, the shooting at the, the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the Nr A tweets, hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just sitting there going really, you know, but, and of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the NR A. So we, we’re a society like I said earlier that loves to share when, when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable because we’re only truly miserable when we make everyone else miserable around us. Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, um, the Generosity series, uh, the, one of my favorite stories which goes to sort of a uh a bigger picture of culture and um somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re, you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I, I listen to your podcast among others uh when I’m running through Central Park. Um and more like if you know, my body type, more like lumbering through Central Park. But I, I get there, I’m an iron man. I have, I have that and um so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning because I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um I run like, I really don’t run fast but, but as I’m running, but let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I do, I do it. You know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But um on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone. Um But uh so I’m running through Central Park last year. It was February, uh February 13 and 14. It was of this year. And um it was probably around 445 in the morning because I had a uh I had an 8 a.m. meeting and I had to do 10 miles. So 445 in the morning, I’m running at around 90 79th 80th street on the east side in the park. And a cop pulls me over and he says, what are you doing? And I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees and I’m like, what, what playing checkers? You know what, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he, he’s like, ok, can you stop running? I’m like, ok, he’s like the park’s closed. I’m like, no, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around, there are other people. No park doesn’t open until 6 a.m. I’m like, he’s like, uh, do you have any idea on you? I’m like, no, I’m running. He goes, what’s your name? I’m like, seriously. He said, I’m writing you a summons. I’m like, you’re writing me a summons for exercising for I for ex, I just wanna clarify this. You’re writing music and sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The, the charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like, I get the concept of the curfew. It’s to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them from going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m doing something healthy and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said iii I kinda have some followers. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, you know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to. But ok, so I go back home, I take a picture of my ticket. I email it to a friend of mine of the New York Post, you know, front page, New York Post next day. No, running from this ticket, you know, front page, of course, that’s great. New York Times covered it. Uh Runners world covered it. I mean, I went everywhere, gawker covered it, you know, and, and my whole thing was, it’s just like, dude, you have discretion. Look at me, you know, I’m not, I’m not even going super fast for God’s sake. I’m just, I’m just trying to exercise here, you know, and of course I went to court and I, I beat it. But how much money did it cost the city for me to go to court? Fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion, the power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen. And again, small shops so much easier to do flat line flat organizations. I, I work with a nonprofit um animal rescue, no profit. Um A friend of mine was a skydiver and uh shout him out. What’s the, I can’t, there’s a reason I can. But, but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this nonprofit. So I sent him a check. And about three months later I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And um I uh I remember I call, I, I look at this coffee table, I throw, I throw it in the corner, I look at it over the next couple of days. It pisses me off about how much, how much of my donation did it cost to print mail and produce this book to me. And so I, I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably prefer to get a print version as opposed to like digital, you know, where they’d throw it away and like, you don’t throw digital away, but ok. Um I’m like, so, so you’ve asked your, you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked all, no, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, ok, so I opened my mouth wound up joining their board and I spent the next year interviewing uh customers interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shock, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh um uh Flickr account, uh youtube everything PS The following year for that donations went up 37% in one year. In that economy. It was right around 0809 donations went up 37% in one year and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, hey, boss, revenue is up 37% and we saved a half million dollars. Your boss is gonna buy you a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience be relevant to the audience you have and they will tell you what they want. We have tons of tools for segmentation. You gotta listen to what segment you wanna, people wanna be in. You know, someone, someone asked me the other day. So what, what’s the best? I, I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best uh social media I left for me to be on, should I be on Twitter or should I be on Facebook? I said, I’ll answer that question if you can answer this, this question, I’m gonna ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. And they say, I don’t understand. That’s not a real question. I’m like, neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience? Can I said, go ask your audience, believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I, I just love the name Kum and go, come and go and you can read more about the, their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on the jokes, just write them for god’s sake. But, um, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. I love that and knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I, I like, I remember they were in Iowa and I went up to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, you gotta get a photo of me in front of the come and go sign, you know, and, um, the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones in the stores and go, oh, you know, what do you use Twitter more? Or Facebook? And they say, oh, I use that and they record that information and they know it. God customers will give you so much info if you just ask them because then they feel invested, they feel invested in your company. They feel like they, that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request or their, their, their questions and they feel like they’re, I did it for Harrow every month. We’d have a one question. Harrow survey, you know, Harrow one question survey. And it was, we get like 1000 people respond and I’d spend the entire weekend emailing everyone who responded and thanking them personally, took my entire weekend. But it was great because what would wind up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched it on Monday with the new thing? They go, oh my God. How did this for me? They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice. But we took it and they’d be like, oh my God, it’s a good thing. And, and it just, it just made them so much more loyal and they’d tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we’d get, I mean, there were days my God, there were days I remember I was in temple one morning, the garment center synagogue and my phone, I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal and I was starting to hurt and I look at it, I, it’s, it’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog. And at that time I was getting uh emails every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and, and was like overheating. I take out the battery and like reset the entire phone because we just got so many new, like 14,000 subscribers in like three hours. It’s obscene, it’s obscene. You say, excuse me, you say uh that customer service is the new advertising. Marketing. N pr It really is. Well, again, you know, if we’re moving into that world where, so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source, right? The heat source heats the oil, the oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now, I’ve heard. Now, imagine if, oh, crystals. Imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network. Ok. Is a drop of oil? The water is your network and the water is your world. Everyone you meet in your network. Uh, from, from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with, to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend, to your wife. To not at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher, to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network. You know, right now when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid. I went to junior high school with, he, his post would have the same weight as like my current girlfriend. Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything. My friend from junior high school is doing. I haven’t talked to the kid in 15 years. Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as has Google. Now, I see the people I communicate with the most. Ok. And if I, if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet in my stream. If I don’t they fall, it’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising, raising or lowering. Those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat source is relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network and the more I see of them, the more trust level there is when I’m at a bar and I meet someone or at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to um connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend request them. You know how awkward friend requesting is when you stop and think that last time my friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that now she goes, you know, she goes, it’s like the cat. Will you be my friend? I’m like, honey, the cat doesn’t wanna be your friend. But you know, it’s this awkward thing who the hell friend requests someone anymore. If I’m, if I’m hanging out with you at a bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, so that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So, if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business. If I go to your nonprofit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more I interact with you, the more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to uh uh search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends see you, you’re gonna fade. I don’t have to unfriend you. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up, but it was nine months after we broke up, either of us wanted to unfriend the other one because it was just awkward. So I, I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know, the concept of not having to, to do that of just, you know, OK, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be, and if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. So I, I want to spend a little time on if you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want, talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is, you know, if I have a great experience with the restaurant, uh, every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurant’s doing less and less to uh take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s changed and I don’t feel that uh you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m ripe for someone else to come and say, you know, Peter. Uh cause if I tweet something like, wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table. It didn’t used to be like that. If I, if someone else is a smart restaurant, they’re following me and they’re gonna be great. You know what, Peter? There’s no way, no way over here. Why don’t you come two blocks north and we’ll give you a free drink, you know. Oh, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection and I might become infected by, by another company, become a zombie loyalist for them. And so let’s, let’s take, you have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that. The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. Um you know, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreak, small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is, getting them into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good uh united story right back when it was Continental, I was uh a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris and uh I was very angry because they charged me like $400 in, in booking fees or something like that. I don’t remember what it was. And, uh, I called the CEO, I just, just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I wrote, I wrote an email, this was before social and I wrote an email to the CEO and I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m a frequent da da da da and like 30 minutes later my phone rings like, hello Peter Jman, please hold for Larry Kellner CEO of cotton lines. I’m like, oh crap. You know, and the guy gets on the phone, he’s like Peter, how you doing, Mr Jman? How are you doing? Sorry, listen, these fees, they’re new. Um, we sent them a note, I’m guessing you didn’t see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But, uh, if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I hang up the phone for the next 40 minutes just sort of staring at it like, holy crap. Larry Kellner, the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me and I mean, it was like, it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And, um, so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now United ever since and, and they continue to treat me with respect and, and do great things and they’re, they’re improving. They, they were getting a lot of crap over the past several years and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see and not only, of course, your own loyalty but you’re a loyal guy. You’re a zombie loyalist for them. And how many times how, how much it’s unquantifiable. It’s un, I, I dragged so many friends to United. I’ve, I’ve made so many friends. Uh, I mean, my father, you know, uh, he only flies United now, which means he only drag, he drags my mom only on United. I only dragged my wife on United. There’s a lot of, a lot of work that way. Yeah, we gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January, zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving en masse like Dominoes, Netflix. They’re both, they’re both in the book. So, so one leaving, if you don’t, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving and then that’s the thing, you know, the beat will be the internet with the hashtags and everything like that, you know, it doesn’t take a long time um for those things to sort of blow up in your face. And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everyone say, oh, you know, Twitter’s responsible for, for us losing money. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing money. You know, and, and if your product isn’t great and you, your actions don’t speak well of who you are, then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know, and it was, oh, social media is really hurting us because no, you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about. They’re just telling the story. Dominos and Netflix are, are good examples because they, they bounced back. They took responsibility and they both owned the Dominoes came out and said, you know what? You’re right. Our pizza, we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I’m, I may or may not even have ordered them every once in a while. And I live in New York City. That’s, that’s a, that’s a sacrilege. But, um, you know, I have the app on my phone for when I’m over, you know, traveling somewhere. I’ll be in shea, whatever. And, and you know, what are you gonna get at 1130 at night when your flight’s delayed and you land? It’s Domino. Um, which reminds me I should probably go exercise on the flip side, you know, something like Netflix. They, uh, they also were screwing up, you know, they were losing, they tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was like gross in public. And so, and again, you’re watching the same thing happen with Uber right now. So it’ll be really interesting to see if they were able to repair themselves. Listening is important. Both, both those, both, those two examples, they listen to their customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now. But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen, actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen. You know, I, I use the example of my wife, I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know, but if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to, it’s a two way street, you know, listening is great, but you gotta respond and uh look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, oh, Twitter’s so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online and we, we saw the complaint and then we fix their problem and yeah, how about if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that, yeah, people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is they’re complaining about on you’re on Twitter. So it’s like, what if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if, what if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet. Uh Hertz is my favorite story of all this. Uh I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um And then I went to uh Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April and I gave it, I was giving a speech and I, I go and I, my name is supposed to be on the board, you know, so I can go right to my car and it wasn’t, it was ok. That happens. I got upstairs, I wait 40 minutes on the VIP line. Um After 40 minutes they finally say, you know, there’s a uh only one guy here, a lot of people might have a better chance if we go up to the regular line. Like, ok, you probably could have told us that a little earlier, go up to the regular line. Spend 45 minutes waiting in the regular line. It’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had, I was actually not only tweeting, I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with my cell phone. I was enough time to have a meme. I get it to the counter. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. Um I, I was downstairs at the VIP desk and they told me that oh your VIP reservation you have to go downstairs like yeah. Ok, let’s let’s put a pin in that. Um they just sent me up here like uh right. They have to help you. Well, it’s not really, they, you guys are the same company. I mean I could see the reservation on the screen. You, you, you, you can help me. Sorry sir, I can’t help. You have to go to the VIP next. I’m like you just next to me. Ok. So if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, um all of the rental car company, they’re all in the same place. So I walked 50 feet. It’s a bus takes you to the big to the big pavilion where they’re all next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the, the wonderful Zen Garden of tranquility. That was Avis. And in four minutes I had a nicer cheaper, more or a nicer less expensive car given to me, a woman named Phyllis who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, ah, it’s another refugee from, uh, Hertz. And I said, so this happens a lot. They’re like, yeah, I’m like, wow, you’d think they’d have done something about that. And so on the way out in Avis. Um I, I thank them, I walk past hers. I shoot them this, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car and I drive to my hotel. Once I get to my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hertz and the terrible, horrible, no good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find up rewriting titles about your blog posts that have to do with kids books. Um I do not like Hertz Sam. I am and things like that. And um I included in this blog post, the five things I’d rather do than ever. Uh ran from Herz again, I think number three was um was uh ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall um with just, you know, and, and so, but, but of course, the next day Hertz reaches out to me. Oh Mr Jman, this is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re about. I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to let Nick know like you, you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number one because I’m gonna Nas Car. I’m never going back to Hertz. Number two. There were five people yesterday, five people I interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A, a customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to what you wanna do is spend some of that energy, retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens because five people it it takes every single employee to keep your company running, it takes one to kill it. Yeah. PS Avis reached out um to thank me personally and uh I am now just this ridiculously huge loyal fan of Avis and always will be you have a pretty touching story about uh when you worked in a yogurt shop, you were really young. Um We have a couple of minutes tell that, tell that good story. That was on the east side, which again is another reason why I live on the west side. Nothing good ever happens in Manhattan’s East side. So I was uh I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, uh, which was a store that I think back in the eighties IC by. No, no. TCBY was the country’s best yoga. IC biy was a poor, I can’t believe it’s yo, I can’t believe it’s not yoga. I can’t believe it. Yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on. That was TCB. And I’m working at this store and, um, I go in every day and make the yogurt to clean the floors. I do. You know, it’s a typical high school job and, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think it was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, it was the, the, the, there was an awning, right? That’s a, that there and there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell. Right. I’m sure they’d never been polished ever. And I found some, I found some brass polish in the back like, oh, they buried in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and IP started polishing the poles. My logic was if the poles were shiny and people saw them, maybe they come into the store, maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more nice clean place. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I said, I told him what I thought, I don’t pay you to think, get inside. You know, I’m like, there’s no customers in there. I’m like, ok, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make sure the yogurt’s still pumping it full blast. And I quit, I just quit that job. Like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest, I mean, to own a franchise for 50 grand, to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds? It took little elbow grease to make the poll clean That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, but you’re not paid to think. You’re not paid to think. My favorite line. Yeah. Um, I, I just, I, I encourage if any kids are listening to this teenagers. If you, if your boss says that to you quit, quit, I will hire, you just quit. It’s, it’s, it’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you wanna hire. We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do. I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff. I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called Shank Minds Business. Masterminds. It’s shank minds.com. They’re day long seminars all around the country. And, uh I had someone come to me and say, you know, I took your advice about XYZ and I, I started listening a little more and I just got, uh, the largest, um, retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. And she goes, and I just can’t even thank you and I send me like a gorgeous bottle of tequila. She’s like, I can’t even thank you enough. Oh my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re, I, I have yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking so we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be as douche as we are as a society. We could probably all be a little nicer to each other and you’d be surprised how that will help. The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Palgrave macmillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman.com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman, Peter. Thank you so much. Pleasure is Amanda. Oh, thank you. Next week. That’s an open question. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking the supporter generosity donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 3, 2023: Brand Democracy & What To Avoid When Selecting Your Next CRM

 

Claire Taylor Hansen & Jennifer Daw Holloway: Brand Democracy

Continuing our coverage of the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, a conversation about letting go and democratizing your brand, so it’s collectively owned. The why’s, what’s and how’s are explained by Claire Taylor Hansen of Big Duck, and Jennifer Daw Holloway with Ipas.

 

 

 

 

John Coogan & J. Michael Fisher: What To Avoid When Selecting Your Next CRM

John Coogan of CharityEngine and J. Michael Fisher at the Army Historical Foundation, pose the key questions to answer internally before you go shopping, reveal must-have functionality, and share insider secrets, all to help you avoid the common pitfalls of CRM system purchases. This is also part of our 23NTC coverage.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:31.23] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of acute flaccid myelitis if you made me nervous because you missed this week’s show,

[00:01:48.87] spk_1:
Brand Democracy. Continuing our coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference, a conversation about letting go and democratizing your brand. So it’s collectively owned the wise. What’s and how’s are explained by Claire Taylor Hanson of Big Duck and Jennifer Doll Holloway with I Pass and what to avoid when selecting your next CRM, John Coogan of Charity Engine and J Michael Fisher at the Army Historical Foundation posed the key questions to answer internally before you go. Shopping, reveal must have functionality and share insider secrets all to help you avoid the common pitfalls of CRM system purchases. This is also part of our 23 and TC coverage on Tony’s take two. I’m available. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org here is Brand democracy.

[00:02:43.62] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC. You know what that is. You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference and that we are at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. And you also know that we are sponsored here at 23 NTC by Heller consulting technology strategy and implement it for nonprofits what you don’t know now, but you are about to is that my guests right now are Claire Taylor Hanson, who is creative director at Big Duck and Jennifer dot Holloway, Director of Communications at I pass, Claire and Jim. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to have you both. Your session is coming up. This is a good preparation on brand democracy. Um So I’m going to say Claire as the agency representative of the agency, client relationship, representing Big Duck agency. What is brand democracy?

[00:03:41.27] spk_2:
Sure. Well, first Big Duck, we think of brand as the impressions that you’re forming in your, in your audiences, the impressions that your nonprofit creates out in the world. And so when we think about brand democracy, we’re shifting our orientation to the history of branding, which is about single ownership. It’s about signaling value. It’s about tightly controlling the impressions that you’re making. It’s about regulating who’s communicating on behalf of the brand. And you’re switching, you’re thinking you’re thinking to instead being about collective ownership of the brand. And so you’re equipping your community of supporters to communicate on behalf of the brand and to really be the brand and inhabit the brand. So it’s really about sharing power and sharing the power of brand in a way that’s aligned more with many nonprofits these days that are thinking more about how can we share and distribute power and how we can communicate and build a brand. That’s more representative of who we are as a non profit and a mission led organization

[00:04:10.33] spk_0:
and Jen as the agent as the nonprofit representative. This all sounds very scary like it’s anarchy that we’re gonna lose control. The brand is going to be diluted. People aren’t going to use the right colors. There’s Farrah trumpeter trumpeter offstage. Hello, how are you? Good to see you. I love the purple highlight too. From Big Duck in Brooklyn in Brooklyn

[00:04:14.42] spk_2:
were now distributed across the country and beyond office in Brooklyn. No, we don’t. We’re now fully distributed, distributed.

[00:04:31.13] spk_0:
All right, used to be a Brooklyn based. Um So Jen, now I’m concerned the colors are gonna be right. People are gonna write, I pass with my period, period, period, period going to dilute the name, the brand, everything is gonna be anarchy and everything that we have invested in our brand is going to be lost. Why is that not true? If we democratize

[00:05:22.34] spk_3:
our brand, it is totally not true. And like Claire said, um we’re uh an ingo. So we’re fairly large, we’re working about 18 countries. Um We have offices in 18 countries. We work in about 30 countries around the world. So brand democracy for us is really important because we’re our core values are justice equity, right? So good. Um We are an organization that is working to expand abortion and contraception access around the world. We are working toward global reproductive. Your work is cut

[00:05:31.31] spk_0:
out for you in the United States for about the past 12 months

[00:06:26.18] spk_3:
or so. It’s true right now. Today news happening. Yes. So um brand democracy for us is really important because we are actually our structure is changing. So we’re we’re not when we will no longer be a kind of a hub and spoke organization with power centered in the United States. We are shifting it, pushing it out, decision make, authority, shared leadership to the places that are closest to our work and closest to the people we aim to serve. So brand democracy allows more engagement. It’s about representing the brand in a way that is best for the communities that you’re serving and that you are part of. So and it’s about trusting our teams to know what is best for the community and their context.

[00:06:27.90] spk_0:
Alright. Um Can you go further and allay the fears of your fellow directors of Directors of Communications may be ceos that everything we’ve invested in the brand is now going to be torn asunder.

[00:06:44.05] spk_3:
Oh, no, no, no. I how can we trust,

[00:06:47.31] spk_0:
you’re not community to do the brand, the justice that we want them to. Well,

[00:07:08.54] spk_3:
I think because in brand democracy, when you’re thinking about the brand, your refreshing it or you’re doing a kind of brand, check up what you’re doing is engaging your community in defining and refining the brand so that you’re kind of living it. You, you understand the brand, the brand represents your core values, represents your mission and vision. So those are common threads throughout our country offices around the world. The mission, the mission and the vision are the same the way that the colors that you might use. They may vary a little bit. It’s okay. It’s okay.

[00:07:31.05] spk_0:
Okay. Maybe a couple of weeks of decimals off. I

[00:07:43.33] spk_3:
mean, the logo is set, but you can use it in different ways. You can use it with a tag line, you can use it without a tag line, but it’s still the local.

[00:09:01.53] spk_2:
Can I build on that? Well, I think we were talking about last night, Jen um at our happy hour moment about really questioning like what’s at risk, you know, and, and, and exploring also frankly, we’re exploring like what this could look like and what the limits are. So a brand is important so that you have brand recognition and so that you’re signaling, you’re building on the reputation of the entity. But if your, if your primary motivation as an organization is really to get folks invested and feel it like it’s rooted authentically in the organization. Well, maybe there’s a greater risk in having folks feel that there’s sort of a top down or western imposition of what a brand or quality looks like. Maybe that’s a bigger risk for you organizationally than having a color, a slight color shift. And so also it’s about having lots of education. So I pass does all this amazing work having webinars having downloadable tools. So things that are truly important for brand recognition, like your logo and like your vision in your mission, ideally, you are building in tons of education around those parts of the brand. But then also leaving room for if you’re in a in a South America where a color has a very different meaning than it does in America. Well, then if that color really resonates allowing folks to enfold that color within the brand and use that brand and have a little bit more, not a little bit more, a lot more regional autonomy with what I pass looks and sounds and feels like in the context in which they operate.

[00:09:43.09] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. What do we, you know, something just occurred to me. I have to have to get something off my mind. I talked to my wife production assistant for a second. You Susan because we’re we are live tweeting that you’re with us. But Susan needs the names of of these two guests in the spreadsheet. Does she know them because, because they got added last minute. Okay, thank you. Okay. Now, now, now you have my complete attention, you give me 30 seconds,

[00:09:46.79] spk_2:
you’re going to ask

[00:09:49.66] spk_3:
you a question.

[00:09:52.30] spk_2:
Like

[00:10:19.45] spk_0:
what, what is this? We’re starting, we’re starting to talk about what this looks like. But I have a very neophyte question because I’ve been studying this for about 11 minutes and you’ve been working on this for months and your presentation is coming up years and your presentation is coming up. What are we allowing folks to do? What are we allowing the community to do? What does this democracy look like? Well,

[00:10:20.58] spk_3:
it looks like a little, a lot of what Claire said in that you are able to represent. I pass in the way that is best for your context. So it

[00:11:02.92] spk_0:
means I want to tweet about how do I as a um newly empowered brand owner, co owner of the bypass brand treat the brand or tweet tweet differently now than I did for the other nonprofit where it’s a top down model. But I wanted to shout out that nonprofit too because I still love that one. Even though I’m not a co owner in their brand. How does my tweet look different for? I pass that it does for the more traditional brand, traditionally branded non profit. I think that’s a pretty eloquent question. I must say.

[00:12:13.32] spk_3:
I don’t know if my answer will be half, but I’m gonna try but I think two things that I pass we have various Twitter handles, right? So if you’re I pass Nepal, you have, you may have your own Twitter handle, you may have all your own social media handles. You may have a website that I pass Nepal, I pass in the US doing tweeting. So I think the thing is that you’re again bound by your values. So are you talking about reproductive freedom and reproductive justice? Are you thinking expansively and inclusively about who is impacted by abortion? Right? Are you, is that coming through in what you’re saying, whatever channel you might be tweeting in French, you might be tweeting in Spanish from from I pass. But I think it’s the personality and the mission and the core values that are coming through in whatever medium you’re speaking in or writing centered

[00:12:17.49] spk_0:
centered around the

[00:12:18.25] spk_3:
value. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:12:20.37] spk_2:
Can I build on

[00:12:21.32] spk_0:
that Claire? Go ahead because I have a question for you. But yeah, go ahead.

[00:13:09.88] spk_2:
I think also we worked really hard with Jen and by we, I mean Big Deck and by then, I mean, I passed two, we also just develop this brand. So it’s a new brand and so we worked really hard when we created that fundamental over, you know, that overarching layer of their logo and the main color to make them have community input from all of the different countries to make sure that folks could get on board with those aspects and those elements. So I think a big shift now is in your analogy of the nonprofit that was before and the nonprofit was after before, I felt it could have felt like, okay, we’ve got this logo that’s a kind of one size fits all. And it has to work for literally every country across the world where every country across the world didn’t help, pick the logo or to find the logo. Now you’ve got a logo where everyone literally did help figure it out. So it feels a sense of ownership and there’s flexibility built in and encouragement built in to say like okay. So this is the base layer. This is the fundamental thread that is consistent through all and now adapt as it makes sense for you. So it’s it’s sort of working with a set of tools that were designed for this purpose and with the with the flexibility and the spectrum of flexibility kind of built in and communicated and reinforced for folks.

[00:14:30.17] spk_1:
It’s time for a break donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice for 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. It’s powerful enough to double donations and simple enough to be used by everyone. Black girls code increased donations by 400% upward. Scholars increase donations by 270%. Maya’s hope saw a 100% increase in donors. The donor box donation form is four times faster, checkout, no setup fees, no monthly fees. No contract and 50,000 or go all over the world donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to brand democracy.

[00:15:27.60] spk_3:
Well, I know we have a lot to say, brand, brand democracy and, and like, like Claire was saying this flexibility. So our teams in different countries know their audience is better than, I mean, that’s you know about not being this kind of hub in the United States. I can’t tweet something that is meant for uh you know, let’s say people in a health system in, you know, Kenya, for example, or, you know, for advocates working on law change in Mexico. So it, that allows you to again have the flexibility to know your audience, know your community, you know, talk directly to them, which is kind of comms 101, right? Know your audience.

[00:15:28.39] spk_0:
Yeah, and, and give them the freedom to speak to their audience who they know better than you do.

[00:15:36.46] spk_2:
But I would generally push back on the anarchy thing because I don’t think that is not here

[00:16:11.90] spk_0:
on this podcast. I gotta make sure. So we’re talking about an international NGO. I pass what if we’re a local uh local state? I mean, you know, small, small town, whatever uh um agency is there, is there value in democratizing our brand? And um is there, is there,

[00:17:04.72] spk_2:
well, I think if your organization is, is really interested in sharing power and uh and um kind of authentically routing your brand in your community, then for sure. Yes. And then I pass, it was an amazing opportunity for us because it was the most obvious and clear, you know, of course, when you’re dealing with international Autonomous, you know, culturally sensitive work, this is a great solution. But now it’s interesting to use some of the thinking that we worked on and developed in this project and to think about how does this, how does this look for a for a regional nonprofit that’s got a small staff, like, what does this look like? And I think some of the ideas about, okay, well, let’s deeply listen to stakeholders that maybe we didn’t historically listen to when we develop the brand, how do we um pressure test the brand during brand development and see what folks are thinking about? How do we train the community and the staff, how do we maybe open up some parts like maybe there’s a toolkit that we can offer for folks. So I think there’s aspects of it and elements of it that for mission aligned for organizations where it makes sense for them and that are interested in these ideas would definitely uh we’re incorporating into our projects right now that are very different than interesting. It

[00:17:33.88] spk_0:
sounds like an example that folks may be more familiar with would be like giving Tuesday, right? I mean, don’t they don’t they have tools, they do have tools and resources and you know, take the logo, use the brand completely decentralized. Folks might be more, be more familiar with um than, than, than I pass. Okay,

[00:17:56.29] spk_2:
you’re right, probably in the world of campaigns like now this is bring into brand, which maybe feels a bit riskier, but this is a common strategy for campaign work because you’re trying to recruit and advocate. And so this is interesting, it’s like taking some of the same ideas and approaches that have been used for campaigns and thinking about does some of that make sense for brand as

[00:18:18.89] spk_0:
well? Where do you think if someone some non profit wanted to explore this, does it need to be part of a rebranding exercise? Because you said there’s a new brand for I pass or I mean, can their existing brand be democratized? I

[00:18:43.80] spk_3:
do want to say it is, it is a, it’s fresh and dynamic and new and everything, but we’re still I pass our mission didn’t change. So the way that we’re working is changing, so we called it kind of a super brand refresh. Right. Right. So maybe a better description

[00:18:47.75] spk_0:
and refresh and rebrand. But still,

[00:18:50.27] spk_3:
I mean, it was, it was verging on rebrand, but we’re still, we’re still I passed. So it was a big deal. I don’t mean to minimize that.

[00:19:06.73] spk_2:
No, but it’s true. I think this is really like a shift in thinking and then actually when you look at the actual brand assets and tools. It’s not that, you know, it’s not a shocking change. It’s just thinking about how you share and distribute and you know, communicate the brand in different ways.

[00:19:13.77] spk_0:
Let’s talk a little about brand ambassadors. How do you, how do you identify these folks? Maybe it’s easier, maybe easier for I pass than, than for the typical US nonprofit that is not international. But uh go ahead explain Jen brand ambassadors.

[00:20:54.05] spk_3:
We kind of you anyone who really sort of has an external facing role, right? If you, you may be talking to the media that maybe that’s different, you might be talking to donors, you might be talking to partners. You’re still an ambassador for I pass for the brand, right? And we have some ways that we’re in in on my communications team at the network level that we’re really trying to build the platform and create the support Claire mentioned tool kits, that sort of thing. So what we view our role is is to to help our brand ambassadors be the be as effective as effective as they can be. So it’s you’re speaking to community members, it’s your, you know, your speaking, you’re giving a speech at a conference or you’re doing a presentation representing I pass on our work that’s ambassadorship. I don’t know that we necessarily always pick them. I think they surface. And I think that anyone in an organization who again is talking with people outside with their community members should be able to represent the brand. And if they have the right tools and, and they’re, you know, they understand the mission which everyone of my passes clearly is committed to our mission. They can be a good brand. That

[00:20:57.14] spk_0:
wasn’t a good question. How do you pick them? Because that top down model, you’re anointed.

[00:21:03.98] spk_3:
Exactly.

[00:21:18.52] spk_0:
So I just made the sign of the cross and giving my giving up my religious background that no longer applies. You’re anointed the canonized, not a process of canonization. That’s what I was looking for, right? They emerge, they want to have lunch and talk to some of their friends about I pass or they want to do an online campaign and give up their birthday, you know, whatever

[00:21:31.64] spk_3:
exactly a donor who feels strongly about why they support ipads, they’re an ambassador

[00:21:36.77] spk_0:
empowered, they’re supported, they just emerge, they’re not, they’re not, they’re not canonized.

[00:22:07.47] spk_2:
And I think the idea of a brand ambassador, that’s not a new concept, you know, in the nonprofit world, like we’ve been incorporating that role in our trainings for a long time. But really, it’s um I think it’s acknowledging and creating tools and resources and approaching the this community of folks in a deeper way. So you’re, you’re saying you’re acknowledging that especially in the nonprofit world where maybe you don’t have infinite dollars to, you know, work on marketing. You know, instead you’re saying you’re capitalizing on the power of your community and you’re saying okay, I’m gonna, we have all these folks that care about us and our communicating on behalf of us. And so rather than trying like control the message or, you know, only have designated spokespeople, let’s kind of release a little bit more and kind of embrace that and capitalize, capitalize the wrong word. But, you know, really lean into the power of our community.

[00:22:31.95] spk_0:
I like the word exploit. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not a pejorative exploit. The you’re taking advantage. Yes, you’re exploiting. I mean, we exploit resources but not to the not to the detriment of the resources. I don’t think leverages, I’m tired of leveraging. I just, I got

[00:22:50.63] spk_2:
I

[00:23:44.69] spk_0:
amplify, okay. I grew up just using things now. I have to leverage them. Um It sounds, it sounds like more work. Um Like I learned in fifth grade, like simple machines as a fulcrum and a power, you know, it sounds too, sounds, it sounds like too much energy expansion. Um Okay, I could see, you know, I’m trying to apply this more generally. I see how it fits perfectly with an international NGO you’re 18 different countries, right? Okay. Um But for, for the more typical listener, I mean, you could be like approaching this but maybe not a full on, you know, um democratization, but empowering your ambassadors letting ambassadors emerge, let let people use your brand for an event or, or uh something they want to do. You know, a peer to peer camp or something, right? I mean, so like, you know, but you have a toolkit for them, there’s some Google, Google Google Docs or something shared resources where you can grab our logo here, grab some of our key talking points there.

[00:23:57.95] spk_3:
Right. Right.

[00:24:53.73] spk_2:
And then also there’s so that’s the brand assets, but there’s also kind of brand feedback, we like to think of brands as like living and evolving things. So, you know, if you reach out to your community for feedback on your brands and to kind of include them on how is it performing in the world, are there ways we could shift or adapt? So then you’re really through how you walk and talk and every through signaling to folks that, hey, this is yours to like this is, this is our communities brand. How do you get that feedback? I’m Google Surveys. You could have listening sessions, you can offer free gift certificates to have folks show up and kind of share their feedback on some questions and hear how folks are responding to statements like your mission statement, your vision statement showed them some recent materials, you know, and also just full acknowledgement. Were we are as an agency really like thinking about this wrestling with this kind of playing around with different ideas. Like this is kind of a new uh framework and way of thinking about branding for us to like as recently as you know, five or 10 years ago, my goal in life was to make the brand as consistent and as, and shut down, you know, anything that could potentially erode the brand as

[00:25:08.59] spk_0:
possible. Yeah.

[00:25:45.41] spk_2:
And, and now I’m questioning that I question, I’m not, not, I’m in some ways, I’m just, you know, wrestling with like, well, what if your primary motivation is instead to, you know, to embody the brand in, in your entire community? how do you get people engaged and passionate about what you’re doing? How important is it really if your hex value is consistent across, I mean, and it isn’t, I’m a designer, it’s very important that your website appear correctly across certain ways and that you have accessible colors. So it’s just thinking about at every touch point, you know, questioning the way things have been done, you know, is there a different way approach that could be taken that would be more in service to the mission and thinking about being maybe a little bit less um tightly controlled about some things that have historically been very locked down.

[00:26:20.37] spk_0:
That’s cool. Alright, Jen, I’m gonna leave you with the last uh last um encouraging words of encouragement, words of empowerment around loosening up, loosening up, maybe not, you know, approaching full on the way the way I pass is able to and really suited for as you both, you both agreed. But um empowering are the rest of the folks around loosening up the their, their

[00:27:20.83] spk_3:
brand, I think it serves many purposes, right? If you’re loosening up in the sense that you are actually practicing or leaning into brand democracy, you are empowering your staff, your community, like Claire said to speak to represent the brand and you’re not um you know, it was this top down calms or marketing controlled the brand in the past and it in a smaller organization, you don’t have a lot of comms and marketing people, right? So you really need more brand ambassadors. You need people to be sort of living what the brand means, be able to represent it and to sort of share those core values. And I think, you know, any size organization, your supporters or your community want to feel a part of something. And this is another way to help do that.

[00:27:42.64] spk_0:
That’s Jennifer dot Holloway, Director of Communications at I Pass and also with me is Claire Taylor Hanson, creative Director at Big Duck, Gen Claire Claire Jen. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Glad it’s worked out. Thank you. Thank you, my pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NT see where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits.

[00:28:07.55] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate.

[00:28:58.22] spk_0:
Are you planning a conference or maybe some other training for later this year or in 2020 for I’m available if planned giving can fit into whatever it is you’ve got coming up training wise, then I’d be grateful if you would give me the opportunity to be a part of your program. I’m typically talking about launching planned giving at small and midsize nonprofits. That’s my target audience. So, if that’s your audience for whatever you’ve got coming up again, I’d be grateful if you’d, uh, give me the opportunity, I’d love to talk to you about it. You could use the contact page at tony-martignetti dot com or just email me tony at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:29:10.19] spk_1:
That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time here is what to avoid when selecting your next CRM.

[00:29:38.33] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference. We’re in Denver, Colorado and we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now, our John Coogan, who is vice president of client services at Charity Engine and J Michael Fisher, who is vice president of Development at the Army Historical Foundation. John Mike. Welcome to non profit radio. Thanks for

[00:29:55.39] spk_4:
having us. Thank you.

[00:29:58.40] spk_0:
Pleasure, pleasure to have you both. Your session topic is five pitfalls to avoid when selecting a CRM system. John, let’s start with you just high level. Why is this an important topic?

[00:30:48.95] spk_4:
Well, for me, it’s an important topic prior to Charity Engine. I was with, with non profits for about 15 years. And in each of my 43 of my four nonprofits had to migrate from one system to another for various reasons. And in each case, it was very difficult for me because I went in blind not knowing which questions to ask. And you know, I ran into a lot of implementation delays and you know, misunderstanding of the product. So we wanted to put together a quick session to help people who are shopping around for CRM. Ask the right questions, understand the perspectives, understand who to get in involved from an executive buy in within the organization. Um You know, you know, insists on things like transparency, understand data and the migration process. So they’re walking in with the right, I guess overall perspective. So that the buying process is a lot easier and the implementation process and and going live is even that much easier as well. Mike,

[00:31:10.08] spk_0:
is this something that Army Historical Foundation has been through

[00:31:14.23] spk_5:
and actually going through it right now?

[00:31:15.80] spk_0:
Is this a client vendor, client consultant relationship?

[00:31:19.52] spk_5:
Currently,

[00:31:21.34] spk_4:
he’s been a client of ours with two other nonprofits. He’s moved on to a new one that’s not yet a client.

[00:31:29.22] spk_0:
And so you’re going through a CRM selection now at the foundation,

[00:32:07.31] spk_5:
it was already done before my time and there’s been some implementation issues if you would. And you know, after I was talking to Charity Engine, you know, I was just telling them some of the things we’re going through, like, would you share that people would like to know because you’ve done it two times before and you’ll probably do it again in your career. And I said, of course, because the only way you can really help others is showing what you’ve learned. You know, it is free advice, you get a full refund and, you know, that’s one of those things. But it’s, uh, yeah, I’d like to share that information just because you do a lot digging as a nonprofit executive. You know, there’s no book, there’s no manual and you and I’ve done a lot of digging and I have some ideas of what I think is good and happy to share that and

[00:32:19.21] spk_0:
some sounds like some lessons learned as well. Yes.

[00:32:34.59] spk_4:
One of the big things is 10 years, 15 years ago when I was shopping for my first CRM, there were not a lot of options out there and nowadays there’s just so much noise, there’s so many different levels of CRM, you know, smaller, bigger all in one very specifically focused CRM. If you Google non profit CRM, you’re gonna be overwhelmed with the options. And I think that’s a big problem, especially for smaller nonprofits that neither have the time nor, nor maybe the sophistication with technology to wait to kind of wade through all of those, all the noise and really kind of come up with a product or a list of products that would make sense for them. So we want to help out with

[00:33:01.88] spk_0:
that John, let’s stay with you. You, you alluded to questions, questions, I think between the two of you, oh it’s five pitfalls to avoid, but you have a bunch of questions to ask. One of the pitfalls is not asking

[00:34:09.93] spk_4:
the right questions. It’s not, not being prepared, not being prepared for your. And so asking the right questions and understanding your current environment and who’s going to be using the system and what they needed for having the right people at the table when interviewing a potential partner in a CRM, because you need to represent everybody in the organization, you need to make sure this product is going to effectively give all those people what they need to do their job on a day to day basis. So if you’re coming in and you’re listening to a sales pitch and every, every sales pitch is gonna be similar, we’ve got these great features and great functionality. We do all these great things and we’re going to double or triple your fundraising in the year. But at the end of the day, you want to move past that you want to is this product the right product for me in terms of everyday use. Um my ability to understand it, my ability to leverage it in the right way, my ability to grow with it. And so you move past the sales and start getting into talking to people like me that run client services and actually install the product and get it going. Um So, so you can ask those deeper questions and really answers. Let’s

[00:34:13.92] spk_0:
drill down. So what are some questions that should be asked? What stage are we now? Were, are we evaluating choices at

[00:34:33.08] spk_4:
the stage we’re at now? I think, I think a lot of people in the room are probably, hey, we need to get out of what we’re in right now because either we need to grow or we don’t get what we need out of this or it’s too expensive. So there, there kind of just searching around. So you’re at the pre RFP

[00:34:35.98] spk_0:
stage. So you’re asking these questions internally. Yeah, you’re not asking them of the

[00:34:40.10] spk_4:
vendors. No, not yet. So and then, and then when you get the questions internally answered, then you can shop around and we’d off. Okay. So let’s

[00:34:48.13] spk_0:
get. So what are some of these internal questions?

[00:34:56.41] spk_4:
So for me, one of the, one of the biggest questions that, that I want people to ask is, is, you know, how is your customer support? And you know, do you, do you have a customer support team that’s gonna stay with us as partners?

[00:35:01.80] spk_0:
Well, that’s the question you’re asking the vendors.

[00:35:03.21] spk_4:
Yeah. Yeah. But internally the question has to be, what kind of support do I need?

[00:35:07.57] spk_0:
What do we

[00:35:21.74] spk_4:
have internally? So do I need, do I need support with like reporting. Do I need support with running queries or building building different cuts of data so that I can do segment, segment and emails and things like that. Let’s write that one.

[00:35:24.57] spk_0:
You gotta have

[00:35:38.89] spk_4:
segmented. Yes, you got a lot of segmented data. But I think, you know, if you don’t know what you need, if you don’t know what questions you need to answer for yourself internally, then how can you even expect to ask the right questions of the vendor? And I think that’s the big thing. So planning, sitting down planning, okay, what do we need? What are the questions we need to ask? What are the questions we need to answer for ourselves? So we can go out and look at products and eliminate those we know are not correct just based on our own needs. What else should we

[00:35:52.87] spk_0:
be doing? Introspectively look

[00:36:18.68] spk_4:
at your data? I mean, I think, I think one of the biggest things that trips nonprofits when they’re migrating is not understanding their, their data and where they sit right now, whether they’ve got a single database or multiple databases, are they using spreadsheets? What information is important? Are you managing duplicates the right way? Because what happens when you migrate first order of business is get your data into the new platform in the right way. So you can build everything on top of it and nine times out of 10, if you’re not understanding your data and keeping it clean and doing the things you need to do to prepare yourself to move in a new platform. You’re gonna end up adding a ton of overhead to the implementation timeline itself. And that’s a big deal,

[00:36:32.71] spk_0:
Mike in your experience. Now, I know currently you’re you and you joined the foundation after this stage. But in your previous two times, do you feel like what was your experience around the internal questions being asked? I

[00:37:25.08] spk_5:
think one of the hardest parts at this stage for the non profit of this putting the deal together is you actually have to go back in, make the new piece different than the old database. So a lot of times people sit around the table and they’ll re cobble this thing together and then you look at it like this is exactly what we already have and then you have to logically think, well, that’s if we’re really just gonna build the same thing, right? Have, then why putting lipstick on a pig and send it down the road? And the reality is technology changes so quickly now that, you know, even if you redid your database five or 10 years ago, there’s a lot of different pieces. You don’t have a lot of pieces, you could just jettison aside. And so I think that’s one of the biggest pieces at this point is don’t just remake your same database. That’s, that’s a big mistake that a lot of people

[00:38:29.31] spk_4:
make. Yeah. Again, when you get back to the questions, you know, if you’re asking yourself the right questions, then you’re, you’re understanding why you’re even looking to begin with. So, so we’ve seen some clients come in that end up expecting the same thing out of our product because they didn’t ask certain questions and they are basically trying to replace what they have for price alone. I think if you, if you’re shopping for price, you still need to understand what you’re getting into and you need to be able to think outside the box. What you know, I have an opportunity now to change my database infrastructure in my crm. What are things that I don’t like about my current environment? You know, what, what can I leverage out of the product to make my life easier to make us more efficient so that we can raise more money and do more things for our recipients. I don’t think a lot of nonprofits will sit back and think about that if they’re only shopping for price, you know, and I think that’s an important one. So, okay.

[00:38:32.13] spk_0:
Okay. Anything else about the planning stage before we move on to some must have anything else? Uh I think

[00:38:56.93] spk_5:
we touched on briefly and invite all of your, your interested parties who, who can give input, who can uh test early and they can see previews so they buy in it, calms the waters of this event because to a lot of people. This is a huge event. And if you, if you include the stakeholders early, it’s not as big of a

[00:39:00.88] spk_0:
deal. Who are some of those stakeholders that you see sometimes maybe this goes to lessons learned, but stakeholders get forgotten.

[00:39:21.51] spk_5:
It could be, it could be major gifts, the database based managers, customer service reps, uh the back end guys, if you would that, that are doing the actual data augmentation and you know, so it’s just a, it’s a wide variety, but it

[00:39:48.74] spk_4:
can also be the board member of the board member that is looking at the bottom line and getting the report on a quarterly basis, you know, they need to understand the product as well. Um And they didn’t understand why, you know, you’re moving into that product or they’re not gonna support it going forward. So I think at all levels, if you’re not having everybody at every level that’s gonna be leveraging the product or affected by the product, you’re basically doing yourself a disservice. Um and ultimately potentially creating downstream problems internally about the about the system, even if it’s perfect and,

[00:39:55.60] spk_0:
and including the board helps for some buying. Absolutely. Get that upper level management buy in.

[00:40:03.75] spk_4:
Yeah. So when you need to expand or you want to do certain things with the product that may cause, you know, cost a little bit more, whether it’s a new integration that was built into the product or new functionality that they want to leverage if the boards bought into it, it’s an easier process to adopt that, that new functionality.

[00:40:19.17] spk_0:
You have some must have functionalities that you think. You think every nonprofit

[00:41:09.59] spk_4:
needs. For me, the biggest one is a single database. Like I have lived through running non profit, smaller nonprofits where we’ve had distributed data. And there’s a lot of issues that go with that. Not the least of which is, you’ve got a contact record or a donor or a prospect that’s living in more than one data source, which can lead to uh siloed outreach. So you may have a major donor if this happened to me where we had a donor that wrote a check for $5000 for, you know, major gift end of your giving. And a week later got a solicitation in the mail for $25 and he called and said, what’s going on, don’t you know me? You know, why, why am I hearing from these people as well? I just gave you $5000 and so it could creates problems. So a single source of data for me is critical and that, and I think everything needs to be built from that.

[00:41:12.51] spk_0:
That’s, that’s not standard. I mean, that just seems like there’s a lot of,

[00:41:48.07] spk_4:
well, what happens is this, you know, you’ve got CRM nowadays um that may not have had certain components of technology, like, let’s say, advocacy or events. And so instead of building it, they’ve acquired another organization or integrated. And so what they’ve done is they’ve created siloed databases and I don’t know, I can’t speak to any one particular organization, but what ends up happening is you got duplicate records, you’ve got data that’s inconsistent across the organization. It just becomes a frustrating thing, especially for I was an executive director for a couple of nonprofits. It’s just frustrating because your reporting is not accurate, especially to the board. You know, you’re not, you’re not able to accurately represent the revenue or the donor’s activity. In some cases, you’re not acknowledging correct.

[00:42:06.56] spk_0:
You don’t even know what is accurate. Yourself don’t even know because you’ve got inconsistent data across more than one database.

[00:42:21.82] spk_4:
And what’s funny is now in my role on the for profit side as charity engine, overseeing professional services. We’re seeing that come in because we have to bring all that data in and map it into our environment. And as we’re doing that these, these nonprofits are discovering, oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize this one donor who was our monthly donor giving, you know, $15 a month also attended these events because there was a bucket ID database somewhere that, that they weren’t, they weren’t looking at something as simple as that could be. It could, it could really hurt an organization’s ability to raise money and build relationships.

[00:42:43.09] spk_0:
Mike, do you have a must have,

[00:43:07.90] spk_5:
I agree with that. The data points to their missed. So you could be Anthony and my one list, tony and the other two different emails and we could be talking to you two different ways and you’re, you’re going a little mad like, what are these people doing? They talked to me this way one day and then they talked to me this way another and, and that’s where I think there’s a lot of mistakes are being made when they, there’s too many systems and when you can consolidate them, they eventually they won’t catch everything 100% but it’ll be 99% much better. Other

[00:43:17.84] spk_0:
must have, must have

[00:43:32.95] spk_4:
functionalities. I mean, you need the standard stuff. I mean, I think, you know, the CRM needs to be integrated with email marketing. You need, you need good solid reporting, the ability to build advanced reports and customized reports. Um You know, I believe a great must have is open a pis into the nonprofit

[00:43:40.10] spk_0:
nonprofit radio. We’re not here so well.

[00:44:05.26] spk_4:
So it’s simple. Yeah, open api so for me, so to explain it in layman’s terms, um Charity engine offers, you know, let’s say a dozen different inherent functionality within our system. If somebody comes and says, hey, I’m using this other thing that does this thing that you guys will never do because it’s something separate from, from your, your core roadmap. Um But we want to integrate and we want to store the information in your database. So that we have that single source. Still, we have two way integration. So we can, they can bring data in through that other application no different than a user entering it through our user interface and they can pull data back out. So in that way, no matter what happens outside of our environment, we still have the most updated data.

[00:44:29.90] spk_0:
So open, meaning not only the the providers that carry the engine has contracted with other sources,

[00:44:34.13] spk_4:
exactly not

[00:44:34.83] spk_0:
open source. But

[00:44:36.65] spk_4:
yeah. So, so charity Engine, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got A P I is that we built that are very specific like Wealth Engine and Quickbooks and double the donation as part of ours. That’s here this week and double

[00:44:48.03] spk_0:
donation, Adam wegner and

[00:44:54.54] spk_4:
so on the show, it is a great organization. The immigration is easy, we tapped into their and built it so that, you know, when a donor gives one of one of our nonprofits, they get a prompt essentially to double the donation, which is great.

[00:45:02.58] spk_0:
Double the donation is referring to corporate corporate corporate matching, whether your company has a matching gift. That’s what double donation is all about.

[00:45:19.37] spk_4:
Yeah. And so we’ve got integrations that we build into the product based on other A pis and I’m here shopping for partners that we want to build more integration with. But then for those that podcast, podcast production partner. Yeah, let’s do it. Can you can you build, can you build some API calls into our system. I don’t even know what

[00:45:27.37] spk_0:
they are, but I would be happy to produce podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. You

[00:45:31.37] spk_4:
know, we can do that.

[00:45:34.42] spk_0:
So open A P I so I, we can bring in me as the, as the, as, as the user organization can bring in other, other vendors. Our

[00:45:41.32] spk_4:
primary goal, we want to preserve the single database. We want to give everybody the opportunity to bring data into.

[00:45:52.89] spk_0:
Um anything else must have functionality? Okay. Just wanna make sure we cover it. I don’t want to hold that on non profit.

[00:45:55.57] spk_4:
No, no, no, we’re good. Have you done this session yet? I’m not. No, no, we did the session already had some good follow up this session. I was like, no, we’re in the middle.

[00:46:24.37] spk_0:
You really don’t hold hold. Tony-martignetti in very high esteem guy doesn’t even know where he is from moment to moment. Okay. Um You, I’m taking this from your takeaways or learning objectives, whatever industry insider secrets to help you shop smarter. That’s a good

[00:47:46.28] spk_4:
move past the sales team. Like hear the pitch, insists on talking to the head of customer service, insists on talking to somebody in the professional services team. Ask deeper questions because the sales, the sales team will be well equipped to talk about features, functionality pricing, that sort of thing. But when they, when they’re ask deeper questions, oftentimes they don’t know the answer and they’re gonna go internally questions like what like, you know, like some of the things like tell me more about the integration API and how it works. You know, is there a library that you can provide to us or you know, do you have a query tool that allows for, you know, uh sub queries and querying across the database? You know, there’s things that the sales team, there’s things underneath each of the features that someone’s going to dig deeper into. There gonna be a tech guy or somebody that wants to ask a better question. And so I as, as the head of client services often get on the sales calls and I’m, I make myself available deliberately for these prospects because I need to know what they’re asking too. And I wanna understand at the end of the day, it’s a relationship in both directions. You know, we don’t want a client that doesn’t fit with us because they’ll get frustrated and they’ll go away at some point and they definitely don’t want a CRM that doesn’t fit with them because, you know, the money is limited and these processes are, are difficult to, to migrate. So, you know, we open ourselves up to if you want to talk to our head of customer support, Destino, more about how we support our slas. Yeah, you’re

[00:47:52.40] spk_0:
welcome. I don’t know what the

[00:48:08.13] spk_4:
service level agreements. So if you open up a critical ticket, how quickly do we do we respond to you, how quickly do we, do we resolve it? There’s SLS based on levels of criticality and impact of the business and that sort of thing. I as a, as a person shopping for a CRM, want to talk to all those people because these are the people that I’m living

[00:48:20.35] spk_0:
with, the ones who are fulfilling the sl A, I’m going to come back to industry insider secrets, but I want to go to Mike for some lessons, learned some things. You, well, lessons learned. What, what’s in your past? That first you can help people

[00:49:35.08] spk_5:
with when you’re shopping. If you would for this type of group, don’t find a vendor, find a partner. And that’s really, it sounds a little cliche but find somebody that will go in deeper with you just like John was saying, you know, uh I end up doing a lot of hands on stuff like I’m sending an email for the end of the year. It’s in, you know, the end of December, I’m the only one in the office or doing it at home. And I run into a snag. I can actually call somebody and not like, hey, we’ll get back to you January 1st, you know, the third. After all the stuff, all the emails that need to be sent out to make the end of your push. You know, even though you test things, I retest right before I send them again. And if I get a snag it gives me a chance to, to get everything done. So, when you find a partner, they’ll, they’ll be there for you no matter what. They’re not just waiting for your check in the mail. And, uh really the other part that I find is find a group that is creating innovation, not chasing innovation. And so, you know, you can find like these bigger groups that are called like a Frankenstein uh back end where they’re just bolting on. Hey, we, here’s the next best idea. We, we bought a smaller group bolted on, you know, like a big bolt on Frankenstein’s neck and here it is, and they don’t always work together. But if you’re creating innovation, you’re finding ways that, hey, this is the next big idea and we partnered with someone or we made it ourselves and it really works. And

[00:49:55.06] spk_0:
how could you tell if a vendor is creating versus chasing innovation?

[00:50:26.84] spk_5:
What would I do a lot of homework? So, uh the short story is, you know, John, 15 years ago, did this thing with wounded warrior project. I was at a group called American Veterans, Amvets and I sat down and I’m like, who was making the most money in this market, wounded warrior project. So I went and I did as much research on them as I could. I didn’t know him at the time. He had just started doing this other thing with Charity Engine. And I was like, if they’re doing it. I should be doing it. So I called them out of the blue and they were just really getting going charity Engine. Like, how’d you find us? And you’re like our fifth client? And we’re not even, like, set up to do this yet. I’m like, we’re only 20 minutes away. I want to see you next week and they’re like, holy cow, you know. So they showed up at our office and, and that’s how our relationship started, but it was just really digging in kind of the way you find major donors is the way you find partners, you go out and you really do the research and dig it up.

[00:51:43.08] spk_4:
Yeah, I think if I can add, I thought, you know, if you’re building, if your crm that’s, that’s building things inherently, you’re thinking through all this stuff. So, you know, a good example is Chat GPT and AI it’s all the bits, all the buzz. Now, you know, if you’re gonna just slap on a component that says, okay. Now I’ve got a, I because they want to check off a box where, you know, uh charity Engine over the years for me, a wounded warrior project built AI into, into the product itself to be more predictive about, you know, things like, uh fraud and, you know, who’s, who’s accessing forms, um you know, from a boat or a hacker. And so what we’ve already got in the product that’s been inherent for a decade is artificial intelligence to respond to certain things so that we can protect the non profit. So I think, you know, if, if a CRM vendor is growing based on acquisition and slapping things together, they’re probably less innovative and more reactive. And I think that’s the for me that’s kind of the litmus test.

[00:51:55.42] spk_0:
Another lesson learned, Mike,

[00:51:58.64] spk_5:
that’s really the big, the big pieces, find innovation, you know, and don’t chase it.

[00:52:04.67] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. I’m coming back to you John for the insider tips insider

[00:52:25.03] spk_4:
secrets, insider secrets. Uh back to help you shop smarter. I mean, I think the biggest one is move, move downstream past sales. But I also, I also think for me, the biggest thing is is do your homework internally before you start doing your homework externally um understand your own team, understand what you need to understand what people are using, understand what people are complaining about, understand how many different components you’ve got in your environment today. Because if you start shopping before you even have those answers, you’re doing something wrong, you’re gonna, you’re basically not you not, you don’t even know what you’re looking for at that point. So start internally, spend a lot of good time, you know, really understanding your current environment and people’s mentality about your current environment before you get out there and start looking around,

[00:52:56.14] spk_0:
what are some of the questions you got in the in the session? Um

[00:53:23.80] spk_4:
Well, so we we ran to the end and people walked up with questions afterwards and I think the biggest question was related to shopping around, like, you know, where do you start? And it was, it was a couple of smaller nonprofits asking, you know, we don’t know, technology, like, where do I go? Do I search Google? You know, and, and if I do, what are the key words that I’m looking for? And I said, you know, obviously, you know, if you’re starting there, I’d say take a step back and really ask yourself your questions first and then it’s gonna drive how you search. So yeah, Google is gonna be a great source for a lot of people, referrals are good as well, but most people are gonna go to the web, every CRM is doing their search engine optimization and they’re, they’re getting their rankings and everyone’s putting up their marketing messaging. But at the beginning, you need to know specifically what you need before you start searching for anything. Otherwise it’s, it’s misaligned

[00:53:58.04] spk_0:
questions. Exactly, Mike, you want to give us parting thoughts on no pitfalls to avoid a little. Well, just some uh parting encouragement for doing it the right way. Of

[00:55:53.56] spk_5:
course, uh like John said, do your homework. That’s really, you’re, you’re responsible for yourself in the nonprofit world because they hire you to do one job and then you end up having five or 10 or 20. And, you know, it’s really hard to kind of slow things down and really look. But, but call your friends, hey, what, what’s, what are you using? That’s good. Ask, ask for referrals and, uh, and really just go out and see who’s, who’s doing things together with clients more or less than just, hey, I just add a new client. So it’s that partner piece is, to me is the biggest on everything that I do is if you’re not, I don’t, I don’t want a vendor. I don’t, I don’t want a pay for play even though it does kind of break down to that a little bit. I want someone that if there’s a problem, they’re going to help me come through it and, and John, uh, you know, he, he alluded to uh, some things, uh, I don’t even know he, that we had, he knew I had this in our past, but we had a thing where we bought a bad list and a bad list. So it was at another nonprofit before my time and it was integrated by and, and a vendor if you would, that was, uh, that we were getting rid of, but they had integrated like 100,000 emails and it just uh sent off a lot of alarms and Charity Engine and they said stop and we see that you’re not, you’re not getting the response rates. And, uh, you know, you got a little, I hate to use this word honeypot and I don’t want you to put me in jail. But, you know, it’s like all these pieces where they were not great email addresses, they were going to bed, you know, dead ends and so forth and they stopped us from really going down a slippery slope and we had to parse out. Yeah. And it really, it saved us a lot of time and money in the long run and if they would have just let it ride and we were just like another number on their list, it would have cost us money and in terms of donations and fixing. So those are the things I look for.

[00:56:42.80] spk_0:
All right, that’s J Michael Fisher. He’s Vice president of Development at Army Historical Foundation and also with John Coogan, vice president of Client services at Charity Engine, John and Mike. Thank you very much. Thanks very much for sharing my pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference in Denver, Colorado, where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with me

[00:56:59.27] spk_1:
next week. 10 fundraising boosts on a budget and personalized fundraising at scale. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:57:02.73] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:57:33.16] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your announcer, Kate martignetti. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:57:49.85] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 5, 2020: SEO For Your Fundraising Campaign & Rebrand Vs. Refresh

My Guests:

Michelle Frechette & Amanda Gorman: SEO For Your Fundraising Campaign

Our 20NTC panel helps you build your online community and increase engagement with 3 SEO strategies: keywords research; competitor analysis; and, content writing. They’re Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman, both from GiveWP.

 

 

 

 

Yvette Scorse, Christopher Wallace, Taylor Shanklin & Serrie Fung: Rebrand Vs. Refresh

Which is better for you, rebranding or refreshing your brand? Our final 20NTC panel helps you choose, then shares the case study of Byte Back and reveals strategies for getting the buy-in you’ll need for success. They’re Yvette Scorse and Christopher Wallace from Byte Back; Taylor Shanklin at Firefly Partners; and, Serrie Fung, founder of Zest.

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

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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[00:02:30.54] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Ikaria if you irritated me with the idea that you missed today’s show s CEO for your fundraising campaign. Our 20 NTC panel helps you build your online community and increase engagement with three S c o strategies, keywords, research competitors, er analysis and content rating. They’re Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman, both from give W P and rebrand versus Refresh, which is better for you re branding or refreshing your brand. Our final 20 NTC panel helps you choose, then shares the case study of bite back and reveals strategies for getting the buy in. You’ll need for success. They’re Evette Scores and Christopher Wallace from Bite Back Taylor Shanklin at Firefly Partners and Sorry Fung, founder of Zest Antonis, take two planned giving accelerator were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives raise more money, changed more lives tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for a free demo and free month Here is our 20 NTC penultimate panel. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC. That’s a 2020 non profit technology conference. The conference regrettably had to be canceled, but non profit radio is persevering, of course. Virtually sponsored at 20 NTC by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial. With me now are Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman. They are both with give. W. P. Shell is head of customer success, and Amanda is customer success manager Shell and Amanda. Welcome.

[00:02:32.44] spk_1:
Thanks for having us

[00:02:54.94] spk_0:
the pleasure. Thank you. I’m glad we were able to put this all together. The three of us. Thank you, Andi. It’s good to know that each of you is well and safe both in Rochester. Alright, Alright. Um, you’re 20. NTC topic is three s CEO strategies for optimizing your fundraising campaign. Um, Michelle, why don’t you start us off? What? Why did you feel a need? Thio have this workshop?

[00:03:01.64] spk_1:
Sure. So you know, we work with nonprofits all day, every day, helping them do fundraising. And Amanda’s area of expertise outside of working with nonprofits, is actually, um, s CEO. And so it was just a natural, um, natural thing for her to want to help, uh, people’s organizations be found on the web, especially so that they can collect donations.

[00:03:24.87] spk_0:
Okay. Um, Amanda What? What? Air Nonprofits Not getting so right about the S e O That that we needed this this session.

[00:03:35.14] spk_1:
Looks like a man has just lost her connection.

[00:03:37.34] spk_0:
Yeah, Amanda did. She’s back. Okay, there she is. Your back Amanda

[00:03:41.98] spk_2:
back. I’m sorry. My Internet just decided to kick me out first.

[00:03:45.54] spk_0:
Okay. That’s why I had to cancel the session earlier. I lost it for too long, and I had a whole bunch of them back to back. Um, did you hear? Did you hear what I was asking you? Why? What air? Non profit. Really not getting right with S e O. That that we We needed this session.

[00:04:00.84] spk_2:
Yes. Yes. And Michelle, did you already give your answer?

[00:04:09.44] spk_1:
Yeah, I already talked a little bit, but But, you know, what are they doing wrong? Or they missing the mark on is really for you,

[00:04:09.88] spk_2:
right? Right. Absolutely.

[00:04:11.83] spk_1:
So there’s a couple of things

[00:04:13.18] spk_2:
that we we definitely see and just in my experience, working with a lot of our customers and working with kind of my own intention of starting on non profit and getting excited about that kind of looking at what is out there and what I am saying in the gaps is just like we get really excited about producing a campaign and kind of jump a lot of steps of just getting things started to start raising money. But we don’t necessarily look at the initial steps that should be thought about before the campaign actually hits the page. So what should the content look like? What kind of people are we actually hoping? Engage with us? What are our expectations for those people and how are they going to feel while engaging with our brand or company or organization? I think some more thought needs to be done with all of that before just kind of putting something on the website s o. I try to slow it down a little bit and really get careful about the messaging. Really? Get careful about exactly what we’re trying to communicate on. That all starts with, you know, keyword research and ah, lot of other strategies,

[00:05:43.94] spk_0:
which which we’re gonna get into. We have time. Eso You’re the troublemaker, Like people want to get, like, you just Can we just start the campaign, You know, way, you know, why do we have to have mawr ground work We’ve already done. You know, we’ve talked to our key stakeholders, and we’ve got me first dozen donors lined up and and we’ve We’ve got messaging out, you know? So you wanna lay more groundwork? Yes. Yeah, For success. So you have better outcomes. Of course.

[00:05:47.41] spk_1:
Sometimes you hear that people say to us, you know, I built a website and I have a fundraising page, but we’re not raising any money. And so it’s not like the field of dreams, right? You don’t just build it and they show up. There’s a lot of work that goes into driving people to your donation page

[00:06:34.94] spk_0:
where we should have learned that with first with websites on, then with blog’s and then with podcasts. You know, you don’t just put it out and people come to it. You should have. We should have learned this lesson by now. All right, way. Haven’t Yeah, not. Not satisfactorily. Not all right, um All right, so let’s Let’s stay with you, Michelle. You have three principles of building the online community. Uh, be intentional, aware on build trust. It sounds like most of the most of the time will be spent with the three s e o strategies. So but just can we go through the The three principles of building kind of quickly is that I have That

[00:06:42.56] spk_1:
s so you know, the way that Amanda and I have kind of structure is it’s like building a garden. You can’t just throw the seeds in the yard and expect that you’re gonna have a beautiful garden at the end. You have It has to be intentional. You have to, you know, turn the soil. You have to plant the seeds. You have to water them. You have to tend them. You have to weed things out. Um, you have to decide what you’re planting. Are you planting? Ah, perennial, Are you planting an annual? So do you want these things to continue to grow and continue to come back? Or is it something that’s a one time one time deal? So it really has to be. It has really a lot of those same ideas behind anything that you do and you want to do well, is it has to have those those principles behind it in order for it to flourish.

[00:07:21.24] spk_0:
Okay, Michelle, that’s a particularly apt metaphor for you the garden, because in the background, I see a flowering. I don’t know if those air daisies, uh, in the in the brown frame, but

[00:07:31.76] spk_1:
flower you painted

[00:07:42.14] spk_0:
that. Oh, awesome. All right, all right. They’re flattering. They’re flourishing. So perfect. Perfect metaphor. Um, so be intentional. Be aware. Oh, and build trust, say a little about building trust.

[00:07:47.24] spk_1:
So building trust is super important. But you have to be a kn organization that people want to give money to. So in order for somebody to give you their money, they have to know that it’s going for a good cause. So you have to have put out there be a transparent, uh, you

[00:08:01.12] spk_3:
know, be

[00:08:01.93] spk_1:
intentional. Show where that money is being used. Show how it’s being used. Ah, lot of nonprofits that don’t succeed aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong, but they’re not being transparent and how their money is being spent. And so sometimes people assume because CEO is putting or the director’s lining their pockets, things like that. So with intentional, you know, um and and building trust, it has a lot to do with just making sure that people understand what you’re doing.

[00:08:28.44] spk_0:
And how about be aware, Amanda, What does what does that one mean?

[00:08:33.24] spk_2:
Uh, that kind of really comes down Thio not stopping your efforts after all the great work you’ve done of getting your campaign out there but continuing to be aware of your market, your your industry overall and being an authority in that industry so that you are continuing to update your website your landing page for your campaign. You’re keeping your donors informed. The newsletter by Social Media. You’re making changes to your campaign as things start to change in your goals and whatever else might come your way. Eso really being aware of where you stand and how others air being helped, how you’re helping and how you can really fill in the gap. If there are any gaps out there that you’re aware of,

[00:09:46.74] spk_0:
okay, and all this has to be communicated. Thing is, all part of your messaging right is how you fill the gap where what important role you play exactly. Exactly. Okay. All right. So, Thio, build this online community. You have. You have 33 seo strategies. Eso keyword research, competition and competitive analysis and content writing. You wanna you wanna kick us off with keyword research? What?

[00:09:51.94] spk_2:
Yeah,

[00:09:52.53] spk_0:
but how? This relates to the groundwork we gotta lay beforehand.

[00:09:56.64] spk_2:
Absolutely. So keyword research is always a great place to start for N E S C o strategy, but especially for our nonprofits. We want to make sure that we get a really good understanding of what our goals are right from the beginning. And that has to do with keyword research Because N E S C o campaign, it isn’t a campaign for ASIO without keywords, right? We have to be able to know what keepers we want to show up for in search s so that we can connect with our ideal customers or are ideal clients in that way. So keyword research for me is this kind of going with the metaphor of the garden is this idea of planting seeds. So we’re starting with those little seed keywords. We’re putting them in the ground and kind of burying them with a bunch of fertile soil and then hoping that they grow into something really excellent for our campaigns. Eso specifically using a lot of tools, uh, to access keywords on the Web. I have a lot of free tools that I utilize. Um, so just Google itself, using the Google, suggest bar where you just type in your ideal keyword and then seeing the suggested key words that come up when you search in any keyword. That’s a great place just to get some ideas. If you’re stuck or you just don’t know what keywords could be related to your topic s. Oh, that’s a really great way to see what people are actually searching. And then thio kind of go from there to develop your content and toe, understand how your best going toe, You know, find yourself in search.

[00:11:24.04] spk_0:
Is there another free tool that you can shout out?

[00:11:27.24] spk_2:
Yeah, mas dot com has ah free keyword tool. I m o z m o z dot com. They could do have some free tools that you can use just to get some quick searches out there for your a topic that you’re looking for. The Google trends uh, tool on Google also is a great one to check out. And just Google keyword planner, Uh, that’s a free tool. You do have to have an ADWORDS account, but you don’t have to run any ads with Google in orderto use that tool, and you can search for keywords. You can see the competitors, er analysis for all those, as in terms of how many clicks they’re getting or how much people are bidding on those keywords in ad words. But again, you don’t need to use or spend any money on ads in order to see that information

[00:12:20.89] spk_0:
to get get the value of the of the keyword research you don’t have. Right,

[00:12:21.77] spk_2:
right? If

[00:12:22.64] spk_1:
you do

[00:12:23.20] spk_2:
run an ad, you would get more detailed research. You’d be able to get specifics about exact dollar amounts as to what is being spent. But in the free version, you just kind of get an estimate of low medium high. What somebody is spending on a particular keywords so you can kind of gauge for yourself. Is this worth going after or is this something people are paying for ads on And I don’t wanna waste my time here if I’m not going to spend ads myself.

[00:12:50.84] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Michelle, can you tell us about competitive analysis? Which to me, sounds like some kind of corporate espionage

[00:13:32.64] spk_1:
work. It’s not so much corporate benchmarking, right? Taking a look at what is what is your competition doing? So, um, you know, non profit don’t compete in the same way that for profit organizations do. They’re not selling widgets, for example. But they’re competing for those discretionary dollars that people are looking to spend, um, via donations. And so it’s important to look at other organizations that are similar to yours, See what they’re doing. Look at their content. Look a TTE how they structured their There you are Else. Take a look at all of the different things that go into play a SZ faras how they’re putting themselves on the web, search for them. See what kind of search using search terms that you think they might be using and see what comes up on. Do you know you can’t really just call them up and say, Hey, what keywords are you using? Because, you know, that’s kind of your little secret, but you can. There’s a lot you still can do as far as, um, you know, using Google to find things and then also just looking at their website and looking at the way they formatted. They’re blogged looking at their donation page there about us Page and things like that and how they structured all their content.

[00:14:01.06] spk_0:
Okay. And, um, you said, And I think you said benchmarking. But you can also use all that competitive information to distinguish yourself. Sure, if there’s a niche, you’re you’re tryingto fit into that, they don’t do. You can? Yeah, Like I said, distinguish yourself. I’m not sure how you would do that, though.

[00:14:24.45] spk_1:
Well, for example, there’s e think there’s 14 dog shelters in our county here outside of Rochester, you know, And so $14 or animal shelters? Um, some of them are no kill shelters. So if if you have half of them are kill shelters and half of them are no kill shelters. You wanna make sure to use words that people are searching for specifically, so can you distinguish yourself is a no kill shelter? Can you distinguish yourself? A zone organization that fosters out pets is not just keeps them engages in your own in your own space. So there are different things that you can do by looking at your competition in your area to make sure that what you’re doing might be different and how you can distinguish yourself. That way.

[00:15:53.54] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Last week I told you a friend got a long quote in Business Insider magazine. It was beautiful. I asked him how he landed it because he had a relationship with the journalist. Longstanding relationship. The writer called my friend when he needed someone with recruiting expertise. Turn Two will help you build journalist relationships like that so solid that journalists are calling you. They specialize in working with nonprofits. One of the partners, Peter Pan A. Pento, was an editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They’re at turn hyphen two dot ceo now back to S. C. O for your fundraising campaign. Also,

[00:15:54.02] spk_2:
when it comes to the content that you’re writing, I just wanna add that you’re really in terms of S C o U. You wanna earn those clicks, right? So the more content you have on your website relating to your service is but also relating to just things that you’re passionate about, things in your community that your followers are really at attuned to. What can you write that’s going thio connect with them more deeply than maybe some of those competitors are. What are people not talking about? That you want to talk about in your space that you find is important?

[00:16:27.24] spk_0:
Okay, okay. And that was that was the third strategy. Content writing eyes. Anything more You wanna, either if you want to add about about

[00:16:34.90] spk_1:
that, it was like I got this a

[00:16:37.75] spk_0:
lot more. Yeah, please.

[00:16:38.67] spk_2:
Yeah. I

[00:16:39.73] spk_1:
mean, when it comes

[00:16:40.47] spk_2:
to content rating, it’s that’s kind of the end result for your strategy, of course, with those keywords planning Ah, the competitors research and then actually getting content on there on your website, that is, or your landing page for your campaign. It’s all about connecting with your audience and doing so again and again and again. Eso providing value is really what the content is all about. It’s not necessarily just I want to get clicks. I wanna provide value. I wanna be there for my community and provide them with a place to get authority of information, and I mean in information with integrity, something that they can trust and that they can lean on to come back to for fax. Being an advocate in your community, for research to be a deliver of information, especially as a non profit, can become a really awesome way to connect with your community. If there’s a study that’s been done in your industry that no one’s written about yet, something that has a lot of data and numbers that you can put into some context for your community to better understand, that’s going to really build trust in your community. And that’s all done through the way that you write your content.

[00:18:01.04] spk_0:
That’s a long term process to. That’s not. That’s not something you you throw together because you’re anticipating volunteer campaign in the next six months. Building trust, ability. You know your bona fides wherever you want to describe it. That takes time,

[00:18:07.34] spk_2:
absolutely, and

[00:18:08.55] spk_0:
it takes

[00:18:09.34] spk_2:
dedication because it it is hard work and typically a block post that I see that rank in Google because there are so much content coming out. There’s so many block posts being released every single minute of every day. It has toe have your blood, sweat and tears in it. You’ve really gotta put your energy into writing a piece of content that’s going to get shared, and that’s going to get some love on it. On social media and just from your community, however, you’re sharing it. Eso really putting in the time and effort to know what’s already out there and what you can do better is where you could really distinguish yourself.

[00:18:46.14] spk_6:
A

[00:18:47.31] spk_1:
lot of, ah lot of non profit don’t even have blog’s. You know, I would say anecdotally, probably, you know, less than half of what we see on a regular basis are building regular content, um, new content onto their websites. So, you know, just getting the block and getting it going is half the staff is half the process. But following the steps for S e. O. Is going to take that even the next level.

[00:19:09.54] spk_0:
Okay, um, since you both give W p. Michelle and you’re the you’re the head of customer success, what’s give W P about you couldn’t explain a little bit.

[00:19:18.72] spk_1:
So give w P. Is WordPress is a WordPress plug in, and what we do is we build dynamic donations pages for people so they can use our software to make a really, truly dynamic donation page for their website. You can build in all those keywords and and do a lot of content on their images. Video text for sure. And then we have a suite of add ons that give you additional functionality. So recurring donations, you know, few recovery tributes, functions things like that.

[00:19:47.54] spk_0:
Okay, so W p is the WordPress now Western Pennsylvania.

[00:19:54.75] spk_1:
Correct. Were a little bar global. Okay.

[00:20:04.54] spk_0:
I knew it wasn’t Western Pennsylvania when you told me you both in Rochester. So, uh, okay, WordPress Alright. Um, okay. Uh, we we’ve I mean you pretty much. We’ve covered your three principles of building and the three Seo strategies. Um, who wants toe leave us with some parting thoughts.

[00:20:16.64] spk_1:
Go ahead, Amanda.

[00:20:28.34] spk_2:
Eso eso gracious. Thank you. Yeah, s Oh, thank u s o. All of this is to again build that community, right? So it can be a little dangerous at first when you’re approaching SDO strategy to kind of get lost. And I need x y z toe happen. I need so many clicks. I need this kind of engagement for my campaign to be successful. Uh, I think it’s more important. Thio. Measure your success by the way you’re providing value and to keep at it. And if your timeline that you’ve originally set yourself up with isn’t necessarily met, adjust it. Make changes, return to the start of your keyword research. Go back through the competitors er research, and then start writing content in a different way, doing a B testing or whatever you can do within your markets. Thio produce content in different ways and test and see what works best is really important and to not get discouraged because as long as you’re producing and you’re providing value, that’s what’s really going to be important for your community in relying on your community to ask questions and Thio engage with you and to help you be better is something that should definitely be leaned on.

[00:21:42.74] spk_0:
Okay, be willing to listen. Yes, yeah, yeah, both from Rochester, New York that was Amanda Gorman, customer success manager. It give W P and Michelle Frechette head of customer success, give w P on Michelle Amanda, Thank you very much. Thanks so much for sharing.

[00:21:59.04] spk_1:
Thanks for having us.

[00:24:35.84] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure Thank you. Thank you. Stay safe and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020 non profit technology Conference sponsored there, here, everywhere by Cougar Mountain Software. Thanks so much for being with us. It’s time for Tony’s Take two planned giving accelerator. It’s a brain dump. I’m gonna teach you everything I know about getting your plan giving program started in 2021. I’m going to do live trainings, which, of course, will be recorded for those who can’t make it live. Ask me anything. Sessions, exclusive podcasts. There’ll be a Facebook community all exclusive for members of planned giving accelerator. You’re gonna get your plan giving program started in 2021. We’re gonna identify the top prospects and the Tier two prospects. We’re gonna get the promotions started. We’re gonna develop a solicitor cultivation and solicitation plan for your top prospects. We’ll get the wider spread promotions, go out and going. I’m gonna help you reply. Answer those replies. You reply back. Thio requests for information. I’m gonna show you what to do. When folks tell you that they’ve included you in their wills. We’re gonna get you started I’m gonna get you started and we’ll get Yeah, we were gonna get started as a community going together. I’m leaving it. I’ll teach you everything I know. It’s all the info that you need. Is that planned giving accelerator dot com. I hope you’re gonna join me. We’re gonna kick this off in 2021. This being your plan? Giving program planned giving accelerator dot com. That is tony Steak too. It’s time for rebrand versus Refresh. Our last final ultimate panel from 20 and TC. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020. Non profit Technology Conference sponsored A 20 NTC by Cougar Mountain Software. My guest now are Evette Scores Christopher Wallace, Taylor Shanklin and sorry Fung. If that is communications director and bite back Christopher is also a bite back. He’s development director there. Taylor Shanklin is vice president of growth at Firefly Partners. And sorry is founder, branding and communications strategist at zest. All right, everybody welcome. Welcome to each of you. I

[00:24:38.93] spk_3:
tony. Hey there.

[00:24:40.74] spk_4:
Thanks for having us.

[00:25:04.14] spk_0:
Yes, I’m glad. Thank you. I’m glad we’re able to work this out virtually. And I know that you’re each well and safe in your respective places throughout the country. So I’m glad you’re 20. NTC Topic is brand new rebranding that will literally pay off event. Let’s start with you. What? What are nonprofits not getting quite right? Why did you Why did you all feel you needed this session? That’s a better way to put it.

[00:25:10.84] spk_1:
That’s a great

[00:26:01.34] spk_4:
question. I think there, of course, a lot of non profits are re branding and looking at that for us at bite back. We’re quite a small non profit were founded in 1997. So our branding really wasn’t matching up with our values the way we we’re communicating and the audience is that we wanted to attract where a tech organization and our reputation was kind of a ZX teaching older ladies how Thio use a mouse, how to type in the public libraries here, which is great work. And it’s work that we dio Um but we also needed to incorporate the really important tech training that we did that we still do Thio help people get careers that use technology. Eso For us, it was a matter of having our branding really match what we were doing in our work.

[00:26:06.94] spk_0:
Okay, s so that was a rebranding versus Ah, refresh, right?

[00:26:11.84] spk_4:
Yes, that’s right.

[00:26:23.44] spk_0:
Who’s the? Who’s the best person? Toe? Answer the question. What’s the difference between a refresh and rebrand? And how do you know which is best for your organization? Who? A tailor. You wanna talk about that?

[00:26:27.04] spk_1:
Yeah, sure. I

[00:26:27.74] spk_5:
mean, I’ve done everything under the sun in terms of rebranded and refreshing e, I think. Here’s how I think it I think about a refresh as sort of like a light rebranding. Right? Maybe you’re swapping out the logo a little bit or changing colors or coming up with a new tagline. But most of the things they’re staying the same. I think of a rebranding, Morris, something where you are going all in to say, What is it that we want people to always think about when they when they think about our organization and what’s that first impression we’re making? And we’re going to get at a real overhaul. So you might completely redo the logo. You might completely radio. Um, you know all of your assets and you know, color schemes and things like that. So I think there’s a lot that can go into it. Um, a refresh could be a good starting point for some organizations who maybe are not yet quite there and ready to go through a full rebranding when you’re thinking about all of the costs and things like that that come from it. So that’s a little bit of my perspective. I’d be interested to hear what some of the others here think about the differences between the two.

[00:28:20.64] spk_3:
I think sometimes it’s a little bit hard to tell whether you need a refresh or rebrand when you’re just kind of asking that that question of where our organization needs to grow. Um, so one of the organizations that I used to work for in Hong Kong, we felt like we just needed a refresh. We said We just need to kind of tweak the mission statement because I don’t think it’s quite sitting right. What ended up happening was, um, as we started asking the questions of what’s not right about this, what’s what. How are other people seeing our organization? We actually realized we needed to revisit the vision, the mission. We redid the logo. We redid our brand colors like and that was not where we thought we would end up. We thought we were just tweaking a couple of words. Um, so I You know, obviously this is this is also dependent on how much budget you have, how much capacity your team has. Um, but I’d say that it’s a little bit hard to know when you’re just starting the process.

[00:28:40.52] spk_0:
Okay, So is this a little bit of a cautionary tale that this thing can? Can Raval unravel out of control?

[00:28:46.74] spk_3:
It absolutely can

[00:28:48.54] spk_0:
boundary put boundaries around it.

[00:28:50.54] spk_3:
It absolutely can. But also, you know, you don’t have to do everything at once just because you know that eventually your organization needs to be in a state where you have rebranded, you can take smaller steps. Now, you know, we could have started with saying, OK, let’s let’s just tweak a little bit and then we’re going to keep keep working on it. Yeah, so it could be like,

[00:29:13.99] spk_5:
you know, let’s just risk in our website a little bit, and that’s a refresh versus Let’s redo our mission statement our values and our logo and our

[00:29:23.85] spk_0:
power

[00:29:24.26] spk_5:
point templates and our website and that’s a rebrand, right.

[00:29:28.14] spk_0:
And? And Christopher, what does this mean for the fundraising at, uh, bite back?

[00:29:34.54] spk_6:
Thanks, tony. Eso for us. We were making a big pivot from 60% government fundraising to trying to get a more sustainable model and approaching corporations and foundations and individuals in a different way. And so it really set us up in a way that we were able to highlight those other things and shared what we’ve been doing in a different way and have that at the forefront of our mission and our values and our activities in a way that people began to see that and see the workforce development and see that we were part of the tech community, not just a small training provider in a public library.

[00:30:03.92] spk_0:
So this was intentional on in your orc that you wanted to diversify revenue. That was that was known going into the rebrand.

[00:30:14.78] spk_6:
Yeah, Absolutely. Was definitely a driving point for us.

[00:30:20.34] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um, so let’s stay with you, Christopher. What? What do you think organizations should be thinking about or what? Like what? Questions should they answer in advance of either a refresher or rebrand? Or but you could you could make it. You know, you could stick with the rebrand, since that’s what, like Back did.

[00:30:36.94] spk_6:
Yeah, great question as well. And I know my fellow Panelists and go to that even deeper for us to

[00:30:41.99] spk_0:
great questions. Already s all downhill downhill from here. You got a very lackluster host. I’m surprised.

[00:31:09.84] spk_6:
Make the exit. Um, e um, for us. Yet defining the goals up front was really important. And so it was revenue. It was fundraising and thinking about how it was going to impact that, but also how it impacted the participants, that we work within the community, how they would see what we’re doing, how our partners would see us and and making sure that we were able to reflect, um, the values in a different way. So So setting those goals up front and knowing who your stakeholders are, you’ve got to define your stakeholders and who needs to be involved? Um, it is going to be more than just a communications department, um, during the development apartment and finding those before you start, it’s always going to be a key.

[00:31:30.34] spk_0:
Okay, Um did that Anything you wanna add? Thio? Uh, What What bite back was thinking about before you got started?

[00:32:16.04] spk_4:
Yeah, I would add that It was a really important part of our process involving our students who are adults taking our computer training. When at the beginning of the process of kind of looking at a rebrand Andi actually, looking at our mission statement, I brought it to a class of our students, and the language didn’t connect with them. Um, there were clear quotes of saying like, I don’t wanna be called underserved. Like, What does that mean? I don’t relate to that. And that really helped us in the process of getting buy in from leadership and from the board toe, Have that student opinion really tied into our we brand.

[00:32:21.64] spk_0:
So if that where did the process start? Was it between you and Christopher or because you said getting leadership by in So it didn’t start at the very top. Where did the conversation about this project start?

[00:32:33.24] spk_4:
Um, it really started with me. I was looking at our language. Our look on dhe kind of went through the process of getting that buy in and involving other leadership in the conversation and building it out,

[00:32:58.69] spk_0:
okay? And I do want to spend some time. We’ll get Thio getting that, making the case to the CEO, et cetera. Um, let’s see what else Eso taylor? What else? Uh, I guess we’ve kind of exhausted. Like what you should be thinking about. What? About? Do you have advice around finding the right provider to work with for your for your rebrand?

[00:33:12.34] spk_5:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a good question. Um, you

[00:33:15.08] spk_0:
were going from great to good. See that already? I told you that.

[00:33:18.44] spk_5:
Great e don’t know if I can handle this. Those by the

[00:33:21.80] spk_0:
end, by the end of the that was a lousy question, but I’ll do the best I can

[00:33:25.49] spk_5:
with tony. There was an all right question. That was an

[00:33:31.21] spk_0:
all right question. Going downhill very rapidly. Go ahead.

[00:34:08.14] spk_5:
You know, I think you could go through r f P processes. If you want to depend. I think on how much you are doing a refresh, you know, versus a rebrand. Uh, I would say a couple of my tips. Its first. Ask who you ask in your circle. Who you know who’s good. Um, see, if you have a friend and other organizations who have worked with someone to help them and see what that experience was like. I didn’t think if you do go into, like, an R F P process where you’re saying, Hey, I wanna this is what we want, you know, providers. Um, how can you service? I think just being very upfront about your needs is really important. I think a lot of times it’s easy to sort of, like put something put in, r P out there and then not be very specific. I think the more specific you get about your needs and the more authentic and conversational you are about that those needs in that process helps both the organization shopping for provider and the provider who is thinking through how they can best serve that organization.

[00:34:38.04] spk_0:
Sorry, you got some suggestions, like maybe things

[00:34:40.35] spk_2:
I wish

[00:34:41.23] spk_0:
people had thought through or asked before started. They started working with you.

[00:36:10.93] spk_3:
Yeah, so I definitely think well, back to your earlier question about things to think about. I think timing is a really big questions. So one of the first questions I always ask my clients is, Do you have a deadline? And when I say a deadline. I don’t mean in the sense of like, Oh, yeah, we want to get this done by next week. I mean, do you have a major fundraising event coming up? You know, Are you printing? You know, a new annual report anytime soon, because all of those things are major touch points with your clients that, um you would want to get right with your new branding before having those events. You know, the worst thing is, when you have your major gala dinner, your major fundraiser and then two weeks later you say, actually, just kidding. We’ve rebranded. Right? So you really wanna consider consider the timing of it? Um, I would say also in terms of picking, you know, someone Thio help you work on this. Having outside help really, really does help. And I’m not just trying to make a case for, like, all the consultants out there, Um but I think having fresh eyes um, What I found when I was working in house at a non profit was that I was so in it and I was using the language every day. I was using the materials every day that I couldn’t kind of take a step out to see what was wrong with it. Ah, nde, it really took. We were lucky enough to have the support of a pro bono agency. So that’s another consideration. There may be local agencies, advertising agencies or marketing agencies that may want to volunteer their time to support you in this area. On DSO, using that pro bono agency really helped us to get a fresh look on what we had been like struggling through for for a number of years,

[00:37:10.73] spk_0:
time for our last break. Dot drives that drives engagement that drives relationships. Dot drives is a donor pipeline fundraising tool, and it is the simplest one out there. If you want to move the needle on your prospect and donor relationships, get the free demo for listeners. There’s also a free month. You go to the listener landing page at tony dot m. A slash dot We’ve got but loads more time for rebrand versus refresh. Did you do R f p or what was your process at bite back?

[00:37:17.13] spk_4:
I I let it. We had few of resource is like we have fewer resource is then because we didn’t have Chris doing this amazing fundraising work. Eso We spent about $270 at 99 designs and got a new logo, and I did most of the other work. Um, yeah, that that’s about how it happened.

[00:38:17.12] spk_3:
So I definitely think that you need someone internal. So even if you’re gonna find an outside consultant or outside pro bono agency, you need someone in house like event who’s like, really championing it, really driving it forward. Andi, I think the strength of what you did with fight back was that because you did all that research on discovery with your clients, with your donors, etcetera, that you were able to give very clear directions to these graphic designers that you were outsourcing the work thio in order to come up with a logo that actually fits What? You’re what you’re looking for. Yeah, that’s a good

[00:38:18.51] spk_5:
point. I mean of that. I’m glad you brought that up to. I think a rebrand doesn’t necessarily have to be out of your budget. There’s ways to do it. No matter what budget you have, you might have the budget to go out and hire an agency to do this or you might have the budget to freelance it and outsource it. And there’s so many tools that make that easier these days with resource is like 99 designs and fiber and up work. You can get really good work. Um, you know, by using those types of resources to

[00:38:51.92] spk_0:
Christopher, did you end up joining bike back after the after this project? Because there was no development director before then. Uh,

[00:39:00.76] spk_6:
e started just before. Just was in a different role within development department

[00:39:09.42] spk_0:
E. Okay, Um, what do you What do you see? Is the development department contribution, Teoh a rebrand? Yeah,

[00:39:15.92] spk_6:
absolutely. So if raising money and the way you raise money is a part of the goal, then the development department and your donors and key stakeholders, whether that’s individuals or corporations or foundations that you’re already working with, um, getting their opinion and and understanding the way that they see us an organization is going to be really important in that.

[00:39:36.12] spk_0:
So did you survey or focus group or just how did you go about understanding what their perceptions are?

[00:39:44.32] spk_6:
Yeah, Well, we’ve done is pick out like individual, um, stakeholders that we knew would be willing toe talk for, you know, 10 minutes and get opinions and thoughts and and here the way that they do the organization whenever we’ve been through this process.

[00:39:58.72] spk_0:
Okay, So you just did as individual interviews?

[00:40:01.11] spk_6:
Yep. Absolutely.

[00:40:17.31] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um event. Let’s let’s move Thio Getting the leadership by in. Uh, how did you approach that? You said you were the genesis of the idea. You have to get budget. You have to get time. Um, how did you How did you approach your leadership?

[00:40:22.81] spk_4:
Um, yeah, well, we had a new pretty new executive director at the time. And now our CEO, Elizabeth Lindsey. So a tw the same time that I was thinking about these things that was very much part of her role As she started thinking about the direction of bite back eso It wasn’t too difficult in my case. Thio get the buy in because it was clear we were founded in 1997. Um, our look, our feel our messaging was feeling like it wasn’t moving along with the direction of our work. Eso really We were partners in doing that and moving it along on dhe then as far as getting buy in from staff and board and other stakeholders. I think there are are always people who may be somewhat attached to an old look or a nolde feeling or an old message that you’re distributing. Um, but really, we had most people get on board pretty easily make good contributions as they were involved in the process, and asking them early on made a big difference in that,

[00:41:34.77] spk_0:
too. Sorry. Do you have some advice? Maybe for organizations that are not as unfortunate as if that was a bite back when there might be some reluctance?

[00:41:45.14] spk_3:
Yeah, eso in In the previous case that I was talking about, thankfully, the CEO was on board. However, what we didn’t realize this was a big mistake that we made was that you know, myself and some of the leaders in the organization with this pro bono agency, we kind of like went into a room and we came up with the new brand and then we you know, we just announced it to people and people were horrified. You know, this was a 30 year old organization, and, like Yvette said, people have really emotional connections to the old logo on dhe people. We got all kinds of questions, like, what’s wrong with the old logo? But we love the old logo. Ah, nde. And quickly we said we actually need to explain to people and bring people on board. Eso we

[00:42:36.80] spk_0:
did not. You did not evaluate who? The key stakeholders.

[00:42:39.80] spk_3:
No, we didn’t. We just kind of announced it at a staff meeting

[00:42:43.88] spk_0:
earlier. Okay?

[00:43:01.40] spk_3:
Yeah. And so and so what we did was we developed a a narrative for why we were doing this. We knew why, but we hadn’t told anybody. Why on dso we kind of outlined some of the challenges that we were having with our old branding and why it wasn’t working. Um, and then explain to people like, this is the vision of the next 30 years. This is where we wanna go. And this is why we feel this new vision really articulates not only where we’ve come from, but also where we’re going. Um And then at that point, we then went and did a whole stakeholder mapping on who are major donors who absolutely needs to know. Before we publicly launched the new brand because that was really important for people who had been involved with the organization for a very long time. It was especially important to get them on board. Um, and then one final tip that our agency gave us, which was excellent advice, which was, if you can give people a very small gift with your new branding on it. So we actually just came up with, like, a little bookmark that was very cheap, very cheap to make that we gave all of our donors all of our volunteers on Basically, the agency explained to us, the psychology is that people will feel mawr engaged when they own something. They feel like they also own the brand on dso that that was a really good move on our organizations

[00:44:12.41] spk_0:
part. Taylor, you have you have ideas around executive Buy in?

[00:44:48.19] spk_5:
Yeah, I think going back to just pulling in stakeholders early is important. Um, getting people to sort of workshop out in a room. Why, this is important and what the goals are behind it. And you know, something that I’ve done before in this kind of work shopping exercise is really just casting like the big picture vision of like, who are we? And how are we even trying to explain that? You know, what are the words we want people to think about? When when they think about our organization. For example, Andi even doing some fun exercises. Like what? You know, car, are we like, or what movie are we like? And, like, some of those kinds of exercises in a workshop can really pull out the creative juices and getting people to start thinking in a little bit of a different way. And then I think if the team feels like they’ve come up with it together, then they’re bought in, um, as opposed to because I’ve also been in those situations like Syria, where the marketing team wrote something out. And then you’re like,

[00:45:23.02] spk_1:
Hey, this is

[00:45:23.57] spk_5:
what we’re doing and everyone, huh? Why? And so, you know, also going through that learning, learning from those experiences and deciding, Hey, we need to bring in stakeholders from across the organization in a lot earlier to really talk about, like, who are we and what is our brand? Let’s talk about that first, and then that will help us think through

[00:45:45.79] spk_3:
what does

[00:45:46.13] spk_5:
the new brand need toe look like. And what does it need to say about us?

[00:45:49.80] spk_0:
Yeah, filling that gap between current perception and what? Where we actually are or wannabe. Um, Christopher, I’m gonna give you the last word since you’re in development, and you can again speak to what? What? What? The impact was what the great outcomes were for. Bite back.

[00:46:07.48] spk_6:
Yeah. So for us, we’ve gone from a $2 million organization to a $3 million organization and 60% government funding to 25% government funding. Um, yeah, it’s been a It’s been real for us.

[00:46:58.88] spk_0:
Okay, It could be real for you to We’re gonna leave it there. All right, that was That’s Christopher Wallace, development director. Bite back. He’s in New York City with him. Is, uh, that scores communications director. Bite back. She’s in Washington, D. C also, Taylor Shanklin, Sugar Mountain, North Carolina in the west of North Carolina and founder, branding and communication strategist exist in Memphis, Tennessee, on Tele Shanklin, vice president of Growth at Firefly Partners. Christopher, development director, bite back and event communications director. Bite back. Thanks to each of you. Thanks all for Thank you so much.

[00:47:02.48] spk_3:
Thanks, tony. much. Tony,

[00:48:14.58] spk_0:
Thank you. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC sponsored by Cougar Mountain Software Finale Fund is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits? Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for free 60 day trial Thanks so much for being with us next week. Amy Sample Ward returns with a report on Equity in Technology. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money changed more lives for a free demo and a free first month. Tony dot Emma slash dot Our creative producer is clear. Meyer, huh? Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this excellent music is by Scott Stein of Brooklyn, New York You with me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for October 5, 2018: The State Of Good 2018 & Your Brand Personality

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Mike Rusch: The State Of Good 2018
Pure Charity released this report and CEO Mike Rusch shares the results from their survey of mostly small- and mid-size nonprofits, plus his recommendations.

 

 

Farra Trompeter, Taylor Leake & Zhanna Veyts: Your Brand Personality
This is a long-term play, letting people understand who your nonprofit is, what you do, why you do it and what you stand for. Our panel has tips on identity, strength and consistency of your personality. They’re Farra Trompeter from Big Duck; Taylor Leake with Corporate Accountability; and Zhanna Veyts at HIAS. (Recorded at the 2018 Nonprofit Technology Conference)

 

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of ac andthe assis if you pickled me with the idea that you missed today’s show the state of good twenty eighteen pure charity released this report and ceo mike rush shares the results from their survey of mostly small and midsize non-profits plus his recommendations and your brand personality. This is a long term play letting people understand who your non-profit is what you do, why you do it and what you stand for. Our panel has tips on identity, strength and consistency of your personality there farrah trompeter from big duck taylor leak with corporate accountability and gina bates at highest that was recorded at the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference where we were on tony’s steak too. Remembering mom responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant wagner, sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com bye tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us and by text, to give mobile donations made easy text npr to. Four, four, four, nine nine nine. Pleased to welcome make-a-wish to the show. He’s, based in downtown bentonville, arkansas, and he is ceo at pure charity, a non profit dedicated to building world class technology solutions for non-profits individual fund-raising and community advocacy. He serves on the board of directors for help. One now mercy house, global canopy, northwest arkansas ninety nine balloons and others. He’s worked for nickelodeon, walt disney, hershey foods, and he served in the u s marine corps. He’s. Never far from a fly fishing river, you’ll find pure charity at pure charity dot com. Welcome to the show my crush, sonny, thanks for having me, it’s, a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Glad to have you pleasure on the signed as well, um what i’m interested in all these non-profit you’re on your own, a lot of different boards. Yeah, we’ve had the privilege over the past, oh five or six years of pure charity to interact with, just, you know, luckily, thousands of non-profits around the world before that, my heart and passion was about how do we make a difference in the world ? And so i had the opportunity and privilege to serve on some of those non-profit boards before we entered into the maturity space. And then since then, i’ve been able to kind of strategically serve in some areas where we think there’s some non-profits who are really leading innovation, who have the opportunity of really addressing the whole sector of needs of some of the world’s, most difficult problems, and so in trying to not only help in the fund-raising space, but also make sure that we are really students of the non-profit space and really in the weeds and in the dirt with non-profit partners have the privilege of being able to serve on the board of directors of some non-profits that i really feel provide some opportunities to continue to learn, but also to be able to share an implement some of the ideas that we see happening all over the non-profits space continuing your service from the from the marine corps dedicated to well and i think came too soon, not quite as rigorous is definitely think part of what we do is, you know, we’re in the technology space, and so a lot of our time spent behind a computer thinking about how people interact with technology, how do they interact with non-profits how did they see messaging on if we stay there that we’re gonna be disconnected from what we’re actually trying to occur polish and what we’re actually trying to accomplish didn’t see the lives of people improved, and so we we want to be not only involved in how that takes place on line, but we want to be personally involved, it keeps us grounded, keeps us connected and make sure that we’re always in a position of learning and listening. I’ve witnessed, and i’ve heard of some tense board meetings, i hope that your service in the marines was more rigorous than any of the board service. Yeah, definitely. So i think maybe maybe the marine corps was the perfect training to make sure that we could work, walk into the non-profit space on be effective. Yeah, right. Let’s, let’s keep things in perspective, please. You know, people, i remember i knew someone who, when anybody said, you know, i’m having a really bad day or they were really down or something. He i was in the army and was in vietnam. And he said a bad day is when the helicopter that rescues you crashes on the helicopter that rescued you from that crash is also that was that was his definition of a bad day to helicopter crashes, same day. Yeah, that’s, that is a bad day. And i think, you know, obviously we’re involved in working with non profit organisations all over the world, doing all kinds of work. And we also have the privilege of serving non-profits who are working to serve our veterans here in united states as well. And so for me, that’s a personal privilege, i think it’s in those places where we really we remember, like we as a country, we as a people, those that get to serve in the non-profit space. But we have the tremendous honor of tremendous privilege of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. And anyway, what we would like to consider this force of good that eyes really working its way around the world through just people like you and me who have a desire to not be content with the state of where we are today. But i want to see, you know, and that’s the name of our study, the state of good, we wantto state of good move forward. Well, let’s talk about the state it’s uh, it’s realistic, you know ? And i want to be realistic about it. Uh, but we’ll, you know, we’ll get to the we’ll get to the challenges, talk about your methodology. I was drawn to it because it’s mostly a survey of small and midsize non-profits but tell us how you did it, how many ? How many organizations were talking about how you chose them ? Sure, i think part of this is number one. We typically start with the non-profit partners that we’ve been able to work with on drily the focus on the pure charity side is working with non-profits who are what we would consider trying to solve some of the most difficult problems in the world. So when we started, we really the millennium development goals at that. Time and said, ok, these are the some of the most difficult problems that really the whole world is working to solve. And so we said, hey, if we could take our our expertise, if we can take our best practice sharing on and the tools that were creating two really apply those to those kinds of really serious situations in problems and issues that way felt like that was a good place to start, and so we lifted the state of good. We obviously started with all the non-profits that we’ve worked with before and really sending out these questions to them, we did later open that up, tio non-profits really within our network or those that are following on social media and then sought out some friends and partners to ask them to provide their feedback as well, too. So it really is a survey, i think we wanted to use it really as a listening device, teo really ask people what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling and really open ourselves up to kind of be moved from what we thought or move from where we think our traditional problems and challenges are to really listen to those. That are out in the world at the forefront of some of these problems. And how do they feel ? And i think that’s important to remember that a lot of people working in the non-profit space, how they feel and the things they’re doing, are going to project to the organizations that they’re serving. In-kind project into the people that they’re serving our community, that they’re serving. So we really felt like, really asking people, how do you feel ? What are you seeing ? What what’s the world that you’re seeing within your sphere of influence in your sphere of work, on trying to aggregate those opinions and thoughts and ideas to see honestly, what we would find ? How many non-profits were surveyed, total. Sure, we had the privilege of talking about over two hundred, non-profits participated in the survey, so we had within those two hundred non-profits people, from all levels of the organization, from the executive level toe development directors, to marketing directors of program coordinators. Way like we got a really good sampling of both non-profits doing a whole lot of different types of work, but also different people within the within the organization, and it really does weight towards small, i would say small, not even midsize, but certainly it’s, a two, least small and midsize, the number of donors who gave to your non-profit in twenty seventeen, that was a question. One, two, fifty was was thirty percent. Almost twenty nine percent and fifty two, five hundred was forty two percent. So when you put those two together, seventy two percent of your respondents had fewer than five hundred donors. So that’s, you know, that’s, our that’s, our audience here. Ah, in terms of total annual receipts for twenty, seventeen, just up to one hundred thousand was fifty percent of the survey, and a hundred thousand to a million was another thirty one percent. So there you got it, just like they got eighty percent a million dollars or less. Aunt stella, we definitely, i think, was in the network of people that we’ve been working with most of the non-profits are probably that we see anyway are anywhere from five to ten years old, they have usually annual donations of half a million to a million dollars so it’s typically where i think the types of organizations that we’ve been working with there’s just a lot of those organizations out there in the world, those are a lot of organizations working on on kind of the problem problems that we would consider a kind of a really detailed micro level, um, that we think are pretty typical of the non-profit space i know there’s a lot of big organizations doing a whole lot of very good work out there, but when we see new ideas, emerging new ways of thinking about innovation in the non-profit space knew programs being created way see a lot of obviously i think as well with i have a new generation of philanthropist, a new generation of innovators, new generation of people entering into the work force air into the non-profit space single, obviously a lot of new non-profits that air starting really tackling ? Problems in new ways or different ways. So we want to make sure we capture that, that ethos of what we feel like it’s, kind of the up and coming organisations and leaders who are who are really able tto look att problems may be in a very critical eye, and while they understand that traditionally problems have been dealt with this way, maybe their space and opportunity to deal with them and look at them in new ways as well. Yeah, we gotta take a break, mike. Pursuant they’re e book is fast non-profit growth stealing from the start ups, they take the secrets from the fastest growing startups and apply those methods and practices to your non-profit it’s free as you’re accustomed to all the pursuant resources are free. You will find it on the listener landing page. Tony dahna slash pursuant with a capital p for please and i guess for pursuing ilsen now back to the state of good. Twenty eighteen. Thank you, mike. All right, let’s, get into let’s. Get into some of the results. What ? What struck you ? Mostly. What was the most outstanding thing when when you pushed through this data that, uh that hit you ? Yeah, i think there’s a number of things, obviously, but when you look at, um, the nonprofit sector, i think there’s this overarching theme that sometimes the way i look at my non-profit is not the way that i look at the non-profit industry on that could be good or bad, and the things that i feel like i should be prioritizing for my non-profit are sometimes very different than the things that we feel like the non-profit industry should be prioritizing and and i think what that means is that to me, there’s, a little bit of a disconnect and maybe there’s this expectation of the nonprofit sector or this view of the nonprofit sector, how well informed that is sometimes khun b question, yeah, let’s talk about what you think that we would expect, yeah, what’d you learn from the survey, i think some of our biggest takeaways was really maybe some of the untapped potential that we see out out in the non-profit space, i think we all know that i think we all know that non-profits rather trying to solve problems that haven’t been solved yet. Andi, i think, unfortunately, sometimes there’s a very critical, very skeptical view point, sometimes within those that are in that in that space. When we look at the study, we found that one out of every three other respondents said that the non profit sector really wasn’t very healthy when you looked at the executive leaders within these non-profits they thought that even more and so we know this work is hard, we know this work is difficult, but way couldn’t let that set the tone for what we thought was really this untapped potential out in the world of doing good, so we need to step back a little bit and really make sure i think one of our biggest collapse non-profit since we talked to them is ok let’s, let’s withhold maybe some judgment around the non-profit space and industry, and maybe look at our own organization a little bit more critically and maybe not such a rose colored glasses sometimes, and so seeing that there’s untapped potential, you know how ? How can the it’s, the sometimes frustrated and struggling small, a midsize shop ? We’re going to talk about what challenges they saw very shortly, but, you know, how can they capitalized on that ? And grasped them that potential ? Yeah, i think well, we see back with them. Maybe some of the comments, especially that we received back, is that we have to remember that number one, the space that we’re working probably has some inherent challenges that are, you know, that are greater than most may think sometimes the work that we’re doing it’s not going to move the needle is as quickly as we thought, but that shouldn’t be discouraging, and it shouldn’t mean that the work we’re doing isn’t working, so it really takes those within leadership positions that non-profit organizations to continue to reinforce that what we, what we have ahead of us is greater than what was behind and that the challenges that we have in front of us are not insurmountable. We do have the ability, it may take a little bit longer. It may take a little bit more focus on the programs that we have in the programs were working in, but we really have to set the tone within our organizations and within our industry that that there is hope and that there is good being done in the world. We all know that, but sometimes i think those especially who have been in this industry for five to ten years, they have to take care of themselves, they’ve got to make sure that they’re keeping, you know, their their views and their ideas of what’s happening in the industry, you know, positive and hopeful and really, i think they could draw that from being within networks of other non-profit leaders and other people with same types of areas that they’re working, so i think somebody, you know, first of all how we feel with non-profit space sometimes that’s, maybe not always accurate, and we have to really make sure we check ourselves and not sometimes let the overarching hardness of what we’re doing start to impact our ability to see what that kind of new tomorrow could look like for the people we’re serving. I have a therapist used to say the way you field drives, how you act on dh, you know, if if you if you’re thinking regularly constantly about, you know, shortages and scarcity mentality that’s going toe that’s goingto drive your organizations, but if you’re in the leadership is going to drive your staff and your organisation toe act in certain ways and send certain messages that, you know are not are not optimistic, like, you know, like like you’re encouraging the way you the way you feel is going to drive the way you act. Dahna and you absolutely true and it’s, not that’s, not unique to the non-profit world, but i do think because the nature of the problems we’re trying to solve, we do have to have an awareness that way we do have to rise above in many ways and that even though it’s hard, what actually is the light at the end of the tunnel is that we do have an opportunity to make a really positive impact on someone’s life. I should give a disclaimer, too, that i fired that therapist. I never i never got that. I never got any value on her so very good, okay, you, uh, you report on challenges for non-profits and the you first you aggregate and then you have reported challenges for smaller non-profits and then for larger ones, the in the aggregate, almost sixty percent ofyou respondents said fund-raising lack of funding is a top challenge on then, about thirty three percent said exactly thirty three percent. Socio political environment on dh, then close to that thirty one percent lack of incentive for donors to give. So those were the ones with the aggregated ones. I wonder, i wonder, focused more on the the challenges for smaller non-profits vs versus larger, because i thought that the disparity between the two was interesting, and you certainly bring it out in the report. For the smaller non-profits, the top challenge is, in fact, fund-raising that’s sixty. Sixty four percent so close to two thirds think fund-raising and lack of, uh, lack of funding is a problem, you know. And again, that’s that’s that well, you don’t want that to turn into a scarcity mentality. You want to recognize it as real, but but not not, let your messaging. Drive. Drive. A sense of, i guess, have sense of discouragement. I think, you know, this was probably unfortunately the one thing in the study that kind of confirmed what we were thinking, and i think part of that we’re number one, we are in the fund-raising space, so most people, when they come to our doors, they are thinking about how do i get help ? Fund-raising so that’s not an uncommon question to us on dh it’s kind of one we have begun to anticipate, but when you put the survey out, um, i think it confirmed that, you know, sometimes this is a long term versus short term view of what we’re trying to get done. I think in our experience, we’ve we’ve kind of used this term that fund-raising is the symptom meaning that, yes, you may have fund-raising opportunities you may have lack of funding, but as you start to dig into why that maybe or or what you’re doing to solve that problem typically that’s not the root of the problem we’re trying to get done, and so it always causes us to kind of back up into hyre level questions around either leadership or around the division admission of the organization or in program execution. To understand how those kinds of things where the messaging about our non-profit actually affects our ability to fundraise, and so if those things are not done correctly, fund-raising is always going going to be a problem, and i think smaller non-profits will inherently feel this tension of being super competitive because they’re trying to break out a new idea into the world or they’re trying to understand their messaging or they feel like no one understands what they’re trying to get done, and so that manifests itself back within this offered this idea of lack of funding, and so i think, number one that’s confirming ofwhat we maybe had expected to hear, but number two, i think it’s also hopeful because it is an overcome oppcoll problem in many ways, andi, i think that also speaks toe wide, maybe with some larger non-profits you actually see some of these challenges start to kind of almost flip, if you will, because they’ve started to think through or maybe solved some of those problems. Yeah, i see in yeah, for larger organizations and that’s, those with five million dollars revenue annually or mohr fund-raising opportunities is it actually is flip it’s. Only one third, ranking mattias, as one of the top three challenges versus the two thirds. At the smaller words. Mike’s. A little more about what might actually be the cause. The disease, if you well, i mean, if fund-raising is the symptom, you mentioned some broad categories, like leadership. But when the clients you’re working with what ? What do you find ? To be a little more precise about what you find as the the root cause of that fund-raising symptom. Sure. And i think sometimes, um, broadly, i would say it usually comes back to how i’m able to communicate about the impact on the work that my organization is doing and typically and smaller organizations or younger organizations, typically those who are our founder lead there’s just so much information around passion, uh, that we feel like we can, and typically this is what gets a non-profit kind of puppet running out the doors, this idea of a very dynamic leader who has a lot of passion for our cause is right, and people will come alongside that leader because of that passion eventually, though, that has to translate into execution into programs that are actually, uh, appropriate and making a difference within this idea of what we would consider almost a continuum of care. So my organization is exist to solve this problem. This is how we solve this problem and then here’s the results of solving this problem, and unfortunately, i think within smaller non-profits they’re still working that out, and i think you could find yourself in a position where kind of the car gets in front of the horse where we think if we just had more money, i could be more effective in my programs, or i could i could get more people involved, or i could do whatever i’m trying t get done, and i think i have very rarely run into problems situations with non-profits where if they just had more money, all of their problems would go away. I think in many ways, just having more money can actually amplify their effectiveness, or sometimes unfortunately they’re ineffectiveness is, well, too. And so i think younger, smaller organizations where it may be run by a handful of people, unfortunately, sometimes there’s, not that critical eye to come in and say, we understand you’re passionate, we understand you care about these. We’re not calling any of those things in the question, but we do need to think critically about the programs and the way we’re serving people in the impact we’re having. First, how we message that to our donors, how we and this you know this as well, if not better, than i do, how even communicate to our donors how we thank them, who acknowledged how we invite them into our work. So that it’s not a financial transaction, this is a way of making a difference in the world ? Yes, we need financial resources to do that. But it’s not the only thing that we need to move our vision and mission forward. And so i think it comes down to leadership. I think it comes down to, you know, having permission to be critical of the work that we’re doing internally. Andi thinkit’s i think it’s okay to ask and invite other people to come in and speak into the work that we’re doing to make sure that we’re, uh, in the interest of serving the people and our communities the right way, the most effective way to alleviate whatever problem we’re trying to solve, we owe it to the people that we’re serving to do it the best way we can. And we shouldn’t be expected to have all the answers out of the gate. Yeah, yeah. I absolutely agree with you about the passion that gets thie organization started, but it takes ah, much savvy, your business sense to get to the next level and that’s a question i get so often how do we get to the next level ? Look so well said thankyou. So on. The on the top reporter challenges for larger if it’s again, you asked for what people named their top three, the one that got the most half said the socio political environment, and i felt like that they’re there. They were saying they’re having trouble standing out in a crowded and noisy environment where lots of people are signing more petitions, getting more calls to action, whatever they might be. Sabat and i, uh well before i say what i thought, my my sense of that what what the real trouble could be ? What what, what what did you take away from that half the half of the larger non-profits again, five million dollars in revenue annually, saying the social political environment is their biggest challenge ? Sure and this, you know, this was actually a question that we have non-profits ask us all the time like, hey, what’s happening in the daily news. To what extent does that affect the work that i’m doing ? Andi, i think we can all admit whichever side of the political spectrum you’re on the past few years have taken on a very different tone than we’ve had in years before, and i think that has an impact on how people think about philanthropy, about the causes they want to support, whether there will be international supported programs or domestically, you know, the most domestic programs. And so this was a big question, like, how worried are you in the changing how quickly our culture is changing, especially over the past few years ? Mike ? Mike it just to interrupt you for a sec ? Well, you have about a minute left. Unfortunately. So ok. Eso se concise, i think. Yeah, i think i think that was that was our biggest question. Like, do you really think this environment something maybe outside of your control is really impacting some of the challenge you’re having and pushing your mission forward ? Okay, andi, i i saw the problem there is, you know, your messaging. You need to be able to stand out. You need to make your make your case for why your organization is unique and on dh on dh deserves attention. Not just your support, but attention in this in this. What is ah ah, noisier environment. Mike tell people how they can get the full survey because we’re just scratching the surface. People need to read. The whole thing. How did you get it ? Yeah, absolutely. I would say if you want to follow along with conversation go, you can go down the full download the full report at state of good dot org’s, that state of good dot organ will give you all the information that we have. We try to summarise in a way that’s, kind of short and concise, but take a look at that and then shoot a certain questions way we’d love to engage with people to understand how you see these issues and maybe how they could be applied to your organization. Move that state of good forward. Can they send questions at state of good dot or ge ? Well, that’ll take you into ah paige, on the pure charity website where you’ll have the opportunity to send questions and, if you want or when you down that download that report, you’ll get an email from us and you can respond to that email of questions or thoughts or, well, happy to dig into it a lot more. Okay, we got to leave it there. Thank you very much, mike durney, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate my pleasure. Thank you, ceo and pure charity, which you’ll find a pure charity. Dot com. And, of course, the report is that state of good dot or ge. Now it is time for another break. When you’re cps, do you need help with accounting or your nine ninety ? Are you thinking about a change of accountants ? Maybe for next year, the next cycle, check out wagner. Cps dot com. Start your due diligence there. Then pick up the phone and talk to them. Partner yet huge tomb. You know he’s. Been on the show. He’s smart, he’s. A good guy. Hey, will explain whether they can help you at wagner. So get yourself started at wagner. Cps dot com now time for tony stick too. My mom died a year ago today and while the time she was declining all last summer and early fall seems like it was so long ago. The year that she’s been gone has really flown by. And while the loss still hurts and there are times that i miss her a lot. It’s no longer sad all the time. Sometimes now i confess think about her and i smile. And joe biden mentioned that in his eulogy to john mccain he was talking to the mccain family. He said that that time would come and it struck me. How right that he is that over time the memories bring a smile it’s not always tears that always sad anymore on dh. So i know that i have lots of more smiles to come as my memories of my mom remained vivid. I say a little more about this in my video at tony martignetti dot com now it’s time for your brand personality welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc you know what that is ? Two thousand eighteen non-profit technology conference. We’re coming to you from new orleans at the convention center. This interview is sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits. My guests are farrah trompeter taylor leak and gina bates para closest to me. Is vice president of big duck and she’s also chaired the board of non-profit technology network. Taylor leak is digital engagement director, corporate accountability. And john avi is director of digital strategy and engagement at highest. Welcome. You good to have you all seen my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for taking time. I know because i know the bar is open. Has anyone bought a drink ? Not yet. We’re waiting for you to buy. A street you are going to hold your breath a long time going blue in the face. Your seminar topic is courageous or cautious establishing you’re non-profits brand personality tara, i don’t know how many different ways you can carve up brand personality. You and i have been talking about this for about six years. I think no video, i don’t know multiple times on non-profit radio and here in the studio. Why is the brand personality so damn important ? Well, the kinds of their brand personality is one of two parts of brand strategy. The other part is positioning, and at big duck we wrote a book many years ago. You’ve had sarah on the show. Sarah durham, our ceo wrote a book called brandraise ing and at the heart of brandraise ng we look att brand strategy of positioning and personality as really being the essential ingredients to guiding your brand identity and the experience of your brand, and we really believe personality especially, is a concept that is really easy to hone in on and then used to make decisions from big things like your brand to day to day decisions like what should i post on ? Facebook and how should i say it ? Ok, ok teller brand personality takes on things like that are kind of esoteric, like tone short, right and it’s just a little bit. It is a person i mean gets to tone and whether we’re humorous or or serious and things like that, right ? Right ? Absolutely. Yeah. And that we a corporate accountability a couple years ago started working with big duck teo do ah whole organizational identity campaign on one of the first things we did was take a look at what our personality waas. So we went through a process with our staff are bored remember some of the folks who are most engaged, teo really figure out sort of what was resonating, what wasn’t what work we were doing and how all that fit in on what we came up with was a personality with forwards and smart, optimistic, fierce and genuine. Wei used that sort of our north star guiding light for everything that we did after that which included coming up with a whole new name for the organisation. Omar okay, hold the website so it really was sort of the starting point for this really big long process. That has been really phenomenal and paid really nice dividends in the end. Softy. Softy. Soft optimistic what ? What else ? Smart, smart, smart, optimistic, genuine and fierce. So gf okay. Don’t make an acronym. Adam, come on. All right, jonah, down the end. What is your your rules are working with big duck at highest way works with what ? It took five years. Okay. What did you discover in this in the brand personality process ? Uh, well, we had to dio three sixty as well, and it was very intensive and quite long process. And what we learned was that our brand was scene very differently outside than the way that people saw it. Inside the organization. It was a one hundred thirty year old organization. And people thought of it as your grandmother’s highest, an organization that brought your grandparent’s over from the holocaust or brought soviet jews over in the early nineties late eighties, which it had on. And i was actually a refugee brought over by highest. But we were still around. And now we were working in twenty states across the country, in ten countries across the globe in washington, doing fierce advocacy and we wanted to communicate that. And so we couldn’t be the hebrew immigrant society of organisation that sounds like at least two of those words are outdated. Instead, we became highest. We got a tagline. Welcome the stranger. Protect the refugee so that it would be in lock up and always tell people that highest was the jewish refugee protection agency on. And we got some brand personality words. Okay, so, there’s, a lot of introspection. Oh, yeah. You had to admit that people thought you were dead. You had to hear people thought you were either dead or relevant. I mean, that’s hard to hear. I mean, not that i would be difficult for me, but you. I mean, you ask hard questions, you have to be willing to hear the answers power on my right ? Yeah. I don’t think there was ever worry that highest was dead. I think it was just more like there was a guy group of people who understood its work based in the past. And there was a fear, i think to a two point if we talk about what we’re doing now, we might lose some of those people who only knew. Us in a certain way, men, often with brandon projects not just with highest with almost every non-profit organisation we work with theirs, as we think about shifting our identity, how do we make new friends and keep the old ana and right when we’re taking this really hard look at ourselves and we’re trying, teo, you know, whatever, trying to remake an organization, and we’re just trying to bring out who you really are now and tap into the best of who you are and make sure your communications actually reflect that. Ok, ok, so now, okay, so you’re you both have worked with big duck, but i don’t want to ask all the questions of sarah the exit now so let’s see your experts as well, okay, i so one of you identifying where you stand now like what your personality is now, how do you how do you do that process ? How do you start that process ? Go ahead, tell him. So. We started a couple years back and really you’re just saying it really started with introspection. It really started with sitting down figuring out exactly who we were, what work we did. And then what ? Other folks who are closest to us thought so how do you how do you gauge that ? How do you find that out ? We did a lot of interviews with staff and board members as well as some of our closest philanthropic partners on, and then we did sort of a broader survey of a few more of our members. I came up with you, no word clouds and data points, and andrea lee crunched through just sort of what folks thought of us, and one of a few of the things that we found was that folks really resonated with our mission, which is to challenge corporate abuse challenge lifesaving corporate abuse, but they didn’t necessarily know who we were. One of the reasons was that we had developed a whole bunch of campaigns and people knew our campaign, so they knew then you kick big tobacco out and they knew take back the top. They knew of these campaigns that we were doing, but they didn’t know that we were the ones doing and then, you know, we had also transitioned from organization started in the seventies with the nestle boycott around infant formula, so we started is this really scrappy, that grassroots organized organization that, you know, it’s, just a couple folks taking on this giant corporation on dh. Then when we took on more campaigns, we transitioned into corporate accountability international, we were doing a lot of work with the u n so we had put out sort of a different view of us being sort of stuffy policy wonks who are at the u n and, you know, taking on really important decisions with ambassadors eso a lot of the work we have to do is both to say, you know, how do we marry those two things ? Because they’re both true on how do we reflect that in what we look like to the world, which was not the case before we went through this process ? Now, jonah, you as you’re going through this process, they’re going to be people who are reluctant two abandoned, whatever he ruin migrants aid society, even though farah saying, you know, you, you don’t want to lose the past a cz you embrace the future, but there are still people that are not going to go along with hyre it’s, the hebrew immigrant aid society or it’s ? Nothing. Wait, just let those people go are what we do to try to bring them along, and some people will never but what are we doing ? Try anyway, it’s an interesting question to ask, but we’ve been at it for five years since the rebrand and luckily and unluckily, a lot of things have happened in the world to really help us do that. We’re in the midst of the largest refugee crisis the world has ever seen, and as a jewish organising agent rooted in jewish history and values where the jewish refugee experiences really central, um, i wouldn’t say that we lost that many people, but, boy, did we gain a lot, uh, it’s an experience that it’s a crisis that is in the news every single day these days when when i started out, i’m not going to lie on a content side. It was talking about the syrian refugee crisis, global refugees there, sixty five million people displaced around the world, twenty two plus million of them are refugees and uh yes, over five million are syrian refugees, but we’re talking about we’re talking about the whole entire world, world on and we’re talking about refugees. In this country and what’s happening in the administration and what the administration is doing to turn off refugee admissions to this country on dso, the jewish community has been empowered and mobilized. Teo advocate for refugees too stand with highest in a really powerful and profound way to say that this is not what our country’s about. This is not what our people are about. This is not what we want to be, and highest has been able teo brand personality words are agile, fearless, intelligent. It was just the right fit. You only got three words. It was in the top three corporate account e-giving got four. You got screwed. Now they have five or six actually she’s just talking about the top three. I don’t want to clarify something earlier you were asking about, like what’s your brand personality. Now ideally, you don’t change your brand personality, right ? That you might you should every year do what we call a brand check up our brand audit and you should just say okay here’s, our positioning and personality here’s how we’ve been communicating, here’s, what’s happening in the world or our world does this all still feel relevant ? But your brand personality and your brand positioning, which are internal tools, are meant to guide the organization for several years. You don’t change it every year. You might accentuate certain treats in some places more than others, but you’re not re changing your brand personality every year. Yeah, no. Okay, okay got to take a break tell us you’ve heard from the charities that referred companies for credit card processing, and they’re getting that revenue each month you’ve heard from the companies who are using tello’s for credit card processing can use more revenue. I know you can start with the video at tony dahna slash tony tell us now back to our panel from auntie si how do you assess these things like tone and attitude, which are which are part of personality humor or not ? How do you ? Yeah, i don’t know you’re shaking your head, so i hope you understand like i can’t i can’t articulated any further. How do you assess these things ? He’s, amorphous personality attributes so how do you first define what they should be ? Or how do you assess if you’re actually expressing them ? No, you have a lot of if they’re actually expressing what we’re reaching, where you want to be. I mean, i think i’d be curious to hear from john and taylor on this too. I think it’s hard, because a lot of this is very subjective. Yeah, right. So i might you know what i think is funny or witty ? Like i might think something’s witty and you find it insulting or you find that hysterical, like we all have different interpretations. What does it mean to be fierce ? What does it mean to be lifesaving ? There are different ways we might express these ideas. So i mean, often it’s a matter of asking for a few people their opinion does this feel this way on and also just asking the people you’re trying to engage ? How do you see us ? But the most important is that donor that activists that volunteer, that audience member were trying to engage with our communications because at the end of the day, communications and your brand, this part of that is about building relationships and making connections. Personality is making easy for maybe needs see myself in you, but if you don’t see it, then something’s wrong. So even talking to the people you’re trying to reach and ask them how they describe your, how you make them feel that’s the best way to assess it short of that talking teo your coworkers and say, does this feel extra ? Why and getting their feedback ? But i’m curious how you guys sort of think about using the brand personality and dated a ways and how you assess if you’re living up to that. Welcome to farrah trompeter way you’re putting my profits with you if that’s what you’re asking now, go ahead, of course, sorry, don’t be sorry, you know, i think what fair said about it being something that is sort of already part of who you are really resonate, so i think we use it as sort of a guide, right ? So we have those words in mind when we’re drafting content when we’re posting on social media on dh, you know, oftentimes it will it will be that we’re emphasizing one over the other, you know ? You can’t be all four of those things that at all times, but i think you know, for me, it’s really a thing to keep in mind as you’re working on everything you put out day today a cz, you know, a reflection of what we do, but i think to me it feels like those just are sort of intrinsic to the organizing we do. That is sort of why the organization hired all of us because we as individuals who work there represent that, and the work that comes out of us represents that too. So it’s, it’s hard to really assess because it feels just like it’s, part of who we are and that’s, what we’re doing is sort of representing that in the world in the best possible way we can. Do you have a concern that as staff turnover in the organization, that the learning is that you have one convey one could be over ? I don’t think so. I mean, i think we have some really incredible staff who’ve been there for a long time, and we have some really strong sort of internal process cities that keep things pretty pretty consistent. Okay, let’s, talk about this. Get that to the list of discussion in the process because, i mean, there is a fair amount of turnover, okay ? Horsepower said you do an annual check up, so that is goingto reinforce for people who weren’t there in the past, but we’ll talk about some process. Dahna did you want to respond to what there was talking about ? Sure so i think i could talk about it in two parts on the one hand, um, i think that our personality as a brand be seeped into our personality as an organization, i’m not sure, um, if that was truly intentional, but it was but an entirely necessary, uh, and by that i mean, now we are in the process of suing the u s government, our biggest funder for posing such a threat, teo refugee resettlement, which we which is at the core of what we do. And at the core of what this country really stands for that that’s a lot more than brand colors or guidelines or a tagline that’s about being lifesaving at the core. S o i don’t think that, uh, that that’s the kind of thing that requires, you know, an annual refresh that’s just who we are on and then the other piece is about how you make people feel, and i think that because he is a huge part of what ? We do and community engagement in our work, it’s a huge part of what we do, and so we give people a lot of different ways to take action, and we try to be very responsive to events and report those events to our supporters so that they can take action and that includes situation in this country as well as internet national issues affecting refugees. And so weii, we empower our supporters too, be a reflection of our brand personality as well, and i think that that creates a really strong connection. You work in digital engagement strategy. Back-up how do you ensure that mother teams in the air in highest feel the same ? I mean, communicate in the same way if their outward facing, even if they’re not outward facing, but even if they’re strictly an internal team department, how do you convey this personality outside your your team, your engagement team ? Or how do you make sure that they feel what you feel, but maybe it’s, not your thing ? It may not be your responsibility to do that, but how do out of out of the organization ? I mean ways, please large and small is all a lot of it is personal connections with our community engagement team who are the people that are out in synagogues and at other conferences and in the jewish community, engaging people in our mission. So being in close communications with them and help working on the campaigns that we do together with communications with development teo, to display our brand properly in an outward facing way. Um, internal communications way have an internet where we talk with the program’s people and share our brand guidelines, and any time i see a programs person talking to our partners and sending out materials that are not on brand because they might be new and i haven’t had a chance to meet them, uh, and they need to be looped into you know what our communications do, one should look like, you know, then then we have conversations i’ve travelled to our offices too give lynton learns on our branding and to our field office this’s with communicated with our global directors to make sure that globally our brand is well represented, which is by no means tricky, but you just it just requires jutze buy-in nothing’s easy again, it is it’s an ongoing process and yes, there’s, you know, turn over and volunteers and new people to educate all the time. I think that when the personality is so closely aligned with the mission, the people that are joining the team, wherever they may be, i already sort of half indoctrinated and it’s just a matter of, you know, giving them some templates and some tools and opening up the lines of communication. Yeah, very well said, because we do have to make sure that this pervades the entire organization and even even internal i had mentioned not only for the outward facing teams. Yeah, i mean, some organizations use brand personality, and they’re hiring, right ? So we want to be seen as a b and c we need to make sure that everyone who works for us is naturally that way. Both john and taylor have spoken about how making the switch to train everyone in the brand personality actually wasn’t that hard because what we did in the process is figure out who they were and, in essence, fine there’s. Lots of things, lots of adjectives, ways we might describe people, what we want to do is hone in on those three to six that we want to amplify, right ? That we really want to be most known for ? We want most resonate, but they’re who we are, so we’re turning up on the volume of something we already have so organizations can use that in hiring and even shaping conversations. Yes, every single person, you know, if an organization wants to be seen as friendly, if i call them on the phone and the person who answers the phone sounds pissed off or drops me on the line, or it takes twenty minutes with someone live, answers the phone and they were going to be seen us open and accessible. If it takes me twenty minutes to get a person on the phone, you never want to go for a brand personnel city that, in essence, will never be who you are. And every single person who represents the organization and that includes inside needs to understand what it iss okay ? Yeah, your point is you’re just you’re emphasizing what already exists. Exactly you’re you’re bringing it to the top and prioritising right ? Prioritizing us a good warning, people probably already feel, but right not articulated. We’re making explosion. Let’s, be intentional and start trying to do that more and everything that we’re doing. Okay, okay, time for our last break text to give you’ll get more revenue because text to give makes e-giving easy for your donors. If they can send a text, they could make a donation. It’s simple, affordable, secure, plus the ceo chadband oid is a smart guy. He set up a really smart company text npr to four, four, four, nine nine nine for info. Here’s the wrap up of your brand personality. Okay, perfect. So let’s talk about some of these internal processes that could be valuable, teo making this pervade and be and be consistent across all our teams, et cetera. So i mean some things we recommend our makeup part of orientation, so every time a new staff person, you know comes in someone like dahna, trains them and goes through the brand guide explains the brand strategy shows how we use it, just make that part of a standard thing as on any other on boarding have regular presentations that staff meeting, depending on an organization. Some organizations have staff meetings once a week, some have them once a year. What and whatever form at the staff is getting together, or they might use slack or hip chatter, stride whatever it may be. You know, these tools were organizations are communicating already take those ongoing moments and figure out where to plug communications, including the brand into that, and not just saying this is our brand personality but saying this is our brand personality. We were debating two covers for annual report, which one you think looks more like acts or more like why and getting people to understand how they use their brand personality in real time railways. Okay, excellent. Anybody else have examples of what you do internally ? Tell her i think one of the biggest parts of our organizational identity campaign was coming out of it. We not only had a new name, but a new website. So that’s just one thing off the bat where that sort of our most public facing piece on dh we worked really hard to make sure that our new website represented our brand and are brand personality on then we have had for a long time a style guide, so it guides what words we use in communications. Make sure. We’re being inclusive and not using violent language, things like that, and then we also developed a brandon guide. So it’s, a written document that explains what, when our personality is what our positioning is on, then how to use that and, you know, also has things like colors and those sorts of things that just make it morgan, make it able to be consistent for everybody, who’s using it. Johnny, you talked a lot about what you do. Anything more you want to add about what you’re doing it at highest. You gave us. The whole time you’re you’re you’re you’re drop by this time up, we have still have, like, another three minutes or so left. Implementing one of the things you mentioned in your session description, implementing your personality throughout your communications. I mean, i don’t know, it really pervades a lot of what we already talked about anything more you want to make you anything you want explicit about about the communications i mean, i would just say, don’t just think about the big, so your website is hugely important. Your facebook page, your annual report, your newsletter all of these things that we immediately think of us communication tools are very important to represent us, but don’t discount the things like the person who answers the phone or answers the email or the conference here at you know, and you meet taylor, who works for corporate accountability. You have a great experience with taylor, of course, and taylor represents certain feelings you’re going to cement in your brain and help see corporate accountability. That way, you need to realize that your brand is emphasized across every single touchpoint i know points kind of charge anywhere and throughout every person, every interaction, every person, you know, even if you don’t represent the organization on social media, it says you work there people think about you that way. So your staff and your board are extensions of your brand as well as every single person your donors, you’re volunteers, the more they understand what you’re about and are trained as well as like, you know, you talk about how to represent you there better. You are actually being seen that way. You hope to be seen volunteers interesting once. And they you guys did some volunteer train, organizational ambassador work that might be interesting to talk about. Yeah, the sort of most immediate adoration is right after the trump election. We started the corporate accountability action league s so this is a group of really dedicated volunteers who just raise their hand and said this is unacceptable that the president is now a person who is cementing corporate power at the federal level on dh. I need to do something about that, eh ? So we now have a network of a couple thousand folks who are really engaged with our work, do some really high level organizing around very specific issues that we sort of point them towards and let them them go and make some impact. Um and yeah, i think you know it. Was self selecting at first, but then we’ve done a lot of work around sort of i’m developing organizing guides that, you know, gives them the templates of howto run a campaign with tools to empower them exactly take it within within certain constraints. Yeah, exactly where they want to go. Yep. And then we’d done some digital work around webinars to sort of give them all of the fact that they need around an issue and explain why it’s important and set them on the on the path to organizing around it. We’re gonna leave it there. All right ? All right. They are farrah trompeter, vice president of big duck and chair of the inten board. Terribly digital engagement director att at corporate accountability and jonah, director of digital strategy and engagement hyre thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, tony. You’re very welcome. This interview sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits and thank you for being with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc next week. Amy sample ward returns with fund-raising jing. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot. Com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing capital. P well, you see, piela is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps, dot com bye tello’s, credit card payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna, slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr, to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine a. Creative producers. Clam meyerhoff. 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Nonprofit Radio for August 17, 2018: Branding & Focus and Attention

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James Wu, Kristyna Jones & Rhiannon Tasker: Branding
How do you get people to care about your brand and your cause when there’s so much noise out there? It helps to be inclusive and authentic. Our panel from the Nonprofit Technology Conference (18NTC) explains how. They’re James Wu, brand consultant; Kristyna Jones with Brothers Empowered 2 Teach; and Rhiannon Tasker from The Public Theater.

 

 

Steve Rio: Focus and Attention
Steve Rio has been researching the intersection of mindfulness, creativity and productivity. He’s CEO of Briteweb.

 

 

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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host today’s show is dedicated to my mom. She would have been eighty five today would have been her eighty fifth birthday. Hi, mom. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with zoho no sis, if you made me sick with the idea that you missed today’s show co-branding how do you get people to care about your brand and your cause? When there’s so much noise out there, it helps to be inclusive and authentic. Our panel from the non-profit technology conference eighteen ntc explains how they’re james woo brand consultant christina jones with brothers empowered to teach and ran in tasker from the public theater and focus and attention, steve rio has been researching the intersection of mindfulness, creativity and productivity. He’s ceo of bright webb on tony’s steak, too, baby boomers, we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing capital p wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com bye tello’s durney credit card processing into your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four four nine, nine nine here is branding from the non-profit technology conference welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc that’s, a non-profit technology conference in new orleans hosted by the non-profit technology network interview like all our eighteen ntcdinosaur views is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donorsearch and fund-raising software for non-profits my guests are james wou christina jones and ran in tasker. James is an independent brand consultant. Christina is co founder and ceo. Seo of brothers empowered to teach by here in new orleans. Andre hannan tasker is donor communications project manager at the public theater. Welcome. Thank you for having a pleasant have all three of you. Your workshop topic is branding for the apocalypse very ominous how to get people to care about your cause when everything is horrible. Okay, eyes the horrible that we’re, uh, is part of the horrible that we’re thinking about the current political environment and how there’s something new every couple of hours. Do you like he’s a crisis? Yes, that that is exactly what we’re talking. About that was certainly that’s the driver of the conversation and that i remember one day, you know, logging off twitter for about thirty minutes, coming back on and literally, there are six new horrible things that happened that we’re very much tied to the current political climate in the country we just learned a couple hours ago that paul ryan is not going to run for for the house in wisconsin. Well, there you go. Speak something about what’s going on on dh there’s news like that very, very often. Yeah, our challenge is to stand out, okay? Apocalyptic? Yeah, we have an apocalyptic e i mean, i think that the khan, the environment that we’re in right now is very divided. And no matter how quickly things change and how every how fast news is happening, it still feels like we’re in a very sort of divided world in the way that we’re feeling after post election, especially no matter what side you’re on it’s feeling very divided and very sort of there’s a lot of tension right now, and so it feels a little bit of tense and uncomfortable sometimes, okay, but, kristina, we can’t overcome your your organ has done it. I guess you’ve got some lessons to share. Yes, i think that we have overcome that because one of the things that we always do, regardless of what’s happening politically in the world stay true to who we are is an organization. So, you know, part of you know, your branding is sort of interpreting that message for what’s happening in the world as long as it’s a part of who you are. Okay, so, is that your first advice for rising above this noise is staying true. Yes, you are. I think so. I think what happens when we have these, you know, something, something that happens with non-profit sometimes is that wear always putting out a fire, right? We’re responding to a crisis. And in responding to those crises, sometimes we can lose a part of who we are or staying kind of on message of what we’re trying to accomplish or what our mission is. And so i think it was sort of like being i think i used on the panel today is like being a bully and a storm, right? So that’s, my part might take. Okay, so your panel’s already done. You’re relaxing them. That’s. Right, guys, take it easy on us. All right? Congratulations. Yeah, this is fun. This is not from radio. No, no, you got yours here. Anything okay? And i gather from the session description. Christina and rhiannon. You’ve taken two different approaches in terms of politics. Hyre christina apolitical. Pretty much staying mostly apolitical and reaction. Uh, using the arts to be political, using theater to be political. Yeah. Anything, something about the public theater as we try and represent all sort of views were opened everyone and we want to tell all stories and especially in our branding, we did the same thing where we said, very true to who we were as an organization and the urgency that people are few going in the community in the power of storytelling, to sort of tell people to share different perspectives and the power that storytelling really has. Teo help people feel like they understand a different viewpoint than their own, whether that’s, depending on all sides of the political spectrum, i mean the public theater being in new york city, we do tend to lean a certain way, but we try toe be as open just all, all voices in all stories on dh, hopefully help other people understand, especially as i said, we’re divided right now, helping understand other people and under perspective helps sort of refused attention and help people come in issues in a different way. James, i think it’s pretty well recognized that storytelling is critical. We’re not a theater group that has a stage literally, yeah, how can we effectively, compellingly is better. Tell tell, have the storytelling or telling ourselves yeah, yeah, that is a great question and one question, that question that doesn’t have fans, we have to have a fan, i have know that we’re seeing a james now you both way or lindsay is a small town, there was astra, everybody about each other’s people and your, uh, your home i’m leaving now way that was legitimate, okay, just kind of make up having any family. So how do we do this compelling? You know, that’s a great question is actually question that came up in a in our panel conversation today from the audience and ran and answered it beautifully, and i’ll try my best kind of encapsulate her great response in that. At the end of the day, yes, we might not be affiliated with an organization that is in the arts or in the future, or use this storytelling as the primary medium or platform. But the work that were in in the nonprofit world is all about human stories, right, it’s all about change and transformation within humans and communities that they dwell in, that we serve. And so i think at the end of the day, you know, you might not have art as kind of the channel for telling these stories. But the better you can get at telling very human stories that connect to people at a very human emotional level. I think that’s, where you get really, really, really power. How do you do drill down into that? Getting that making that connection with with the leader of the viewer? S o i think one of the mistakes that a lot of organizations do is they get caught up in kind of explaining their model like this is our theory of change. And this is here all of our programs, right? We invest in building community, we invest in entrepreneurs, whatever it is way train leaders instead of thinking about why, like, why do you exist? What is your purpose? What is your reason for being right? If you can start there, then you can begin inspire people in a way that if you start talking about your products and programs, you might lose them. Right? So if you can start with why you exist, really drill down and get to your core purpose. I think anyone can really identify with that. Begin. Teo, resonate with that message. It’s. Time for a break pursuant the round up the fund-raising round up it’s called the pursuing e-giving outlook. They took all the latest fund-raising reports. Boiled it down to just what you need to know. Plus they did a webinar on it. And you can watch the archive of that it’s, an ensemble piece, the content paper and the webinar both. Are on the listener landing page that is at tony dot m a slash pursuant remember the capital p for please. Now, back to branding. Cristina’s doing a lot of nodding. Yeah, i what’s your way, you know, brothers and power to teach, unlike the public fears only four years old, right? Um and so we’re still kind of a startup, but when we first started, it was very much like, this is our model. We have these three steps. This is what we do, and people would be like dahna and so when we started telling the story about why we do the work and why we think the way we do, it matters, it was much easier for people to connect. And so i think that that’s really, really important and you’re trying to get black men to go into teaching, right? Right? Education. That’s right, brothers? Yeah. Weather’s empowered to teach brothers and power to teach and sister bras and power to teach. But, yes. Okay. Okay. Uh, and you’re you feel like you’re creating a lot of boats and a lot of conversation around your mission. How? Yeah, on the way of rising above you, get talking about you? Yeah, i mean, uh, one of the things that i said today was that, like, show up, right? So we show up to lots of different things, and we show up in lots of different ways. So we participate in lots of activities going on around town related to the issues that we work on, but also on larger issues like there’s, an initiative in new orleans called forward together politicians non-profits people who work in the private sector come together, so we go to those things. We’re all constantly wearing a b, right? So that’s one of your share, one of the ways we show up the every way is that we know on your shoulder turned my shoulder way. We have young people who are very much engaged in the work that we do, and so they do a lot of videos for us. They do a lot of tweeting for us. They we do a lot of social activities, so people see us collectively together, and they’re like, what, that beaming? What hashtag real bro teach? What does that mean? So that’s how we really driven people to think about it, brandon, how about the public theater. How are you creating buzz conversation about about the pub. I mean, the public theater is a definitely a growing brand, especially in new york city. We had hamilton, which was like a huge, huge threat. Hamilton before was on broadway. Yeah, we created hamilton here the way we did the workshops and, like, sort of helped. It could be that show. And then we did the first production. That was the production that moved to broadway. So we had a lot of sort of, like buzz from that show. And i were now in the place of like, okay, now that hamilton’s sort of moved on, continuing those conversations and keeping us in the forefront of people’s mind as a theatrical in student as well. Civic inge institution. We hold a lot of talk are that are hosted the republic form team at our home in astor place. We also were doing them a delacorte. We hold other sort of initiatives. We did. Voter registration was a big thing. We had a table on our lobby on bistro. Participated with other non-profit geever okay. Interesting voter registration. That’s. Um, that’s. Not something that intuitively i would. Link with with a theater? Yeah, it was initiative that was started by believing playwrights horizons. They got theaters throughout the country to set up voter registration foods for when people came and saw shows they could register for vote while they’re like waiting in line or internet during intermission or after the show. And the idea is just to help people engage civically within their communities in the country by voting, and we had a huge turnout. We also did some pushes on our social media and through emails, and we got a lot of people registered to vote and it’s our way of sort of helping people just be active within our community and engage socially not just with the conversations that we’re having with the work we’re resenting, but just like in the real world outside of what’s on our stage is james, you’re our resident consultant. How generally, how can we create conversation and buzz around our work? I mean, i think we just heard some great examples, but beyond those, yeah, i think it does at the end of the day, come back to having a clear sense of who you are, but also who your audience is and we talked a lot today about authenticity, right? Yeah, doing here too, yeah, allowed on non-profit radio on and i think the theme of authenticity is something that we keep the three of us keep coming back to and is a common thread in all of our work. But, you know, like rian instead of beginning organization that’s yours and organizations that tend to shift their messaging or change, they are in response to what’s happening the world today without remaining true to kind of their core purpose or kind of their their identity. I think there’s a real danger, they’re kind of losing sight of what you’re all about and why you exist. I think when you have a clear sense of who you are and more importantly, how your audience connects with that, then that kind of authenticity shines through no matter what is happening around you. And i’m sure these to concede say more about that. Yeah, i think a lot of the questions we have today, no matter what the question was, are always kind of brought back to that authenticity and who you are and sticking true to who you are. Whether it is like a post election end of your campaign where there’s a little different urgency within it, it’s still about those fundamental things that make your organization what it is people are going to see right through you if you’re trying to, like, do something urgent, that doesn’t feel authentic or real because they don’t want to give money to an organization that’s not going to do something with it, that’s what that is fundamental to who they are, and so the public theater and, like we have always stuck true to those values that were theater of by and for the people on that culture belongs to everyone one and this is we are places, storytelling, and those are the things that are important to us and just framing it in the way of the moment of it, whether it’s urgency or what, no matter what it is, it is it’s still, those things at every question we got today, we kept coming back to that authenticity and who you are, because, christina, you’re not only alienating your mission, but you’re also alienating your core supporters, right? You’re awful, haley expecting work for you, you and your employees, your staff, they have certain expectations. Now we’re adjusting just because there’s tha multi in the in the political economy, right? Exactly. I mean, we think of our brand is a person, right? So one of the activities we did when we did our brand refresh was okay. His brothers and power to teach was a person who are they use a person? This ah, james is a user persona, or i think that’s part of it certainly part of it and so, you know, kept coming up with all the things that we already do that sort of reinforce who we are as a person, so we’re twenty something creative, collaborative, fresh and fashionable group what we read, what we listen to way to our podcast, you know, all about those things that connects our brand to people who want to hear about the work we’re doing in more detail, and it translates into the photos we take into our website. All of those things signify that you think, tony, you just used an interesting word a minute ago, and then there was expectation, and i think, that’s one thing that we actually didn’t talk a lot about. Directly today but certainly was a theme that i see woven in a lot of the work, especially the tactics that both of your organizations have used in the past year and can be something as small as the public theater in there. You’re an fund-raising campaign last year instead of their typical just we’re just going toe send email after email appeal at the end of the year asking for our audience to give us money they actually hand wrote notes on postcards thanking people for their contributions for their engagement, a very analog old school approach in this very hyper, you know, social media, digital world, and they saw a huge bump in terms of kind of hoping to see a big bump in terms of renewal sze but did see a big bump in terms of engagement, justin, based in response to that tactic, which so that kind of analog very old fashioned, if you will approach really, really cut through the clutter when you’re just getting bombarded on social media or email today and similarly with brothers empire to teach, i think one of the things that was really interesting when they were going through their brand refresh. They had an exercise where there, you know, looking at something as mundane as colors which should our color palette be that represents our visual identity. It’s a very standard part of any branding exercise. But the way that they thought about colors was really provocative for me. And i should probably just, like christina tell the story herself. But essentially, you know what? What i heard was correct me if i’m wrong that yeah, you tell us. Thank you. S r color palette is soft. So its environs so it’s yellow, teal of, like, a lavender. And i grayce right. And the reason for those colors is because we did this today we had all feel like you’re hearing. Yes, you’re going down going down with you. Eventually wei had everybody close their eyes and say and think to themselves, not necessarily share like you think of a young black man. What do you see? Right? And so when they open their eyes and said the reason these colors are the colors they are because they signify liveliness and collaboration and nurturing. So a softening of the idea of a young black man is because we want people to see young men as nurturers, right as having potential to nurture so that’s why our color palette is the way it is. We talked about this idea of i used to come from the international development world in this this expression or phrase club poverty porn. But if you’ve heard that but it’s kind of this, you know, in our imagery we either really negative imagery that’s very exploitive in an effort to raise money and awareness, right? So malnourished kids and sub saharan african with flies on their faces, right? That kind of creates this sympathy or pity. On the other hand, the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction in the last five, ten years, where everyone uses just images filled with happiness and optimism and joy. And i feel like there needs to be a recall calibration again and something that’s kind of in between that prevent presents a mork, nuanced complete hole and maybe complex picture of what the issues are that we’re dealing with in the communities that we’re serving. I think that there’s a real danger and kind of dumbing down your message rebrand or simplifying it to say, this is this is who we are, this is what we’re all about and it’s it’s kind of playing into what people expect right versus some little what brothers in power to teach duitz he said, how do we create an image that is more about fostering this nurturing environment? And then also in some of the photographs, you see it’s, like, sometimes it’s really struggle on diversity that you see sometimes it’s real celebration enjoy and just the complete humanity that’s presented kind of a whole human being, i think that’s um, something that we don’t see enough of today, christine what’s a home run for you is that when when someone decides to and embark on a career in education is that i like the grand slam home run and a stadium fans would be if a young man starts with us and doesn’t want to teach, and by the time he leaves he’s like you know what i’m going to teach. So that’s that’s a grand slogan, the basic home run is basically a young man who should, who may want to teach what isn’t really sure and decides to teach, but we’ve had a lot of success with guys who had no intention of teaching because only three percent of all the teachers in the entire country are black men, they don’t see themselves and teaching, so the idea that they now see themselves with the teacher or working in education period is like, phenomenal, really, yeah, and you talked a bit about inclusive hyre say more about that in terms of the public’s brand. How do you feel being inclusive sets you? Aside from competition in new york city, the public theater, it’s one of our fundamental sort of missions is tio provide theatre to everyone no matter what background you are. And i mean, if we dio free shakespeare in the park where we give one hundred thousand tickets, world class shakespeare every summer, all for free heart is held to get to former new york come on, we’re making i mean that’s the thing that they are hard to get, people have to wait in line for hours. So what? We’re taking steps to make it easier to get tickets for everyone. So we do distributions in all five boroughs. We like what they’re like throughout the week we’ll be, we’ll be in queens one. Week will be in brooklyn will be in the bronx and staten island dahna distributing tickets there so that they don’t have to come into the city, wait in line for hours, maybe, or maybe not, get a ticket and then wait until the show in the evening. It’s a more accessible moment for them to get tickets there. We also have a digital online lottery so people could do it from work or from where they are. We do a lottery downtown, it are after a place home. So again, you’re not waiting in line. You can come enter the lottery, get john, be quick, we so we are trying to you offer more and more opportunities to help like to help expand who is seeing the theater versus the people who are able to write in line. We also do the mobile unit, which takes shakespeare to prisons, homeless shelters and community centers do out all five boroughs, and we do that twice a year. Once a year, we’ve now expanded twice a year, their twenty stopped tour, and then they come downtown and dio a three week, three week run at our theater and astor place and all those tickets are also free inclusion. Yeah, well, i just want to talk about. No, but the wraps. Okay, what else could we talk about you, you had your your workshop. We’ve got another five minutes or so together. What happened? We touched on anybody that we want to. You did ninety minutes. I know. We’re all talked out questions, maybe questions you got that we haven’t talked about yet. Well, one thing that that we didn’t that didn’t come up, that some folks ask me after our panel was, you know, it’s it’s interesting because you have a very founder lead organising your small organization, you’re young organization upmifa on the contrary, public theatre has been around for sixty five years, almost and their founder is not, you know, directly involved anymore, but oscar eustis who’s been there for how long? It was ten years when i started so twelve, thirteen years he’s kind of an iconic institution in another sound. And so how do you think about brandon relation too? The founders personality, and if you work in an organization that doesn’t have a strong founder with that really influences that culture than then what do you do? I don’t know if you guys have thoughts on that. Well, i’ve worked in no book fired-up buy-in my previous career, i was investment banker, community development and one organisation i work for went through a big brand refresh the founder had long been gone and what they did. Internally was sort of theater does with the stash and sent out a survey. Like, who are we way say we are. Who do you think we are? Wait, you think we should be? And they did a whole entire brand refresh based on sort of who’s in the building. Now, who works for the company now? Why did they come to this place to work here? And i think they did a great job rebranding themselves. Enterprise community partners. I haven’t looked at co-branding lately, but a few years ago, they did that. I thought that was a really great way to do it when you don’t have a strong founding founders culture anymore. The founder has, you know, your organization has evolved over the years. You’ve had another executive director, but you still want to stay kind of truth to your original mission. I thought that that was a great way, actually. Survey surveyed the staff surveyed the stand. Why are you here? Right? Right. Right. And i guess you know another question. Taking that a step further that i get all the time. Okay? We were sold. We should go through a branding exercise. That brand refresh. If you will, how do we get the leaders of our organization on board? How do we get the entire staff on board to really buy into this? So this doesn’t just feel like a bunch of pretty words that we stick in a mark getting drawer, but has riel impact on how we show up in every department throughout the organization every single day. So how do we get that buy-in that’s my question, i don’t know, i mean, you guys are both live and breathe this every single day, and i’m happy to share my thoughts, but i mean it’s, the public theater is such a deeply rooted mission and oscar, whose artistic director really lives and breathes the mission of the public and truly the people who work there want to be there. I want to be there for the mission of the public it’s, you know, it’s non-profit you want to be there for that, you you want to be there to help give thousands of people free tickets in the park and the work that goes behind it and to create good work. So we are kind of in a a very lucky situation and that we are very, very rooted in our mission and our brandon who we are on it, it stuns from having a strong artistic director leader who any speech he gives any from, like a staff meeting, agreed to the delicate and opening night of shakespeare in the park. It is so rooted and who we are and so rooted in the deep belief of who we are every so it really helps everyone in the organization really get behind it because you know that you’re working towards something not for our leader believes and i also that’s something that we believe in a cz group and as a theatre, so we’re kind of we’re lucky and that our way it’s so embedded in us is a public you don’t know, a lot of cedars don’t necessarily even have that theater is not something that people think of in these huge, huge, deeply founded missions and values and big we have brought their broad and really lofti of culture belongs to everyone and theatre should be free for all and all those things that but there are things to aspire to and there things that we all are working towards. Is an organization, james, if we don’t enjoy that luxury that the public has yeah, you yeah, i think one of the biggest things that i tried it teach my clients is that when they’re going through branding, exercise, it’s really critical to bring the entire organization on board throughout the process, right? There’s, nothing worse than going through a six month rebranding and the leadership says tata, we’re done look at our new brand and he says, what, like, how come i didn’t have my how come i wasn’t hurt happened? I didn’t get a chance to weigh in or at least share my opinions or and so i think that’s a really, um, the fine line between, you know, a successful branding and co-branding that ends up failing one of the i think it comes down to when you’re when you’re developing a mission or purpose statement, if you’re developing core values for the organization that you don’t fall into the trap, which is choosing empty words, right? We’ve also core values like empathy, innovation, honesty, well, who’s, who’s not going to be honest, like, who wants to be the opposite of that, right? So those kind of be empty, meaningless core values. How can you create a set of values that really change the way we show up to work every single day? And so one of the things that i do is my clients is after we have this branding, we bring everyone along throughout the process there entirely bought in, we say, okay, now we have this new set of values. Now we have these new purpose. Maybe we’ve written a manifesto. Really? Look at these words break up into teams. So finance department, accounting department marketing department operations team i want you each to go and meet and look at these words and really understand what they mean and have a conversation about what’s going to change. What you going to start doing mohr of today that you’re not doing enough of what you going to stop doing as a result of the language on the words at the end of the day, a lot of rebranding tze come down to a language and words and the intention that you put into those really can go a long way. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there, ok? Alright, right they are james woo, independent brand. Consultant christina jones, co founder, ceo of brothers empowered to teach rehan in tasker dahna communications project manager at the public theater. Thank you all. Thank you all very much things interview scheduled sponsored by network for good. Easy to use donor-centric software for now. Non-profits thank you so much for being with non-profit radio coverage of eighteen. Auntie si. We need to take a break. Regular cps, please talk to eat. Which tomb? You heard him on the four hundredth show. Plus he’s. Been a guest on the show a couple of times. Check out the firm. Of course. Do your research, then talk to e tell him what you need. He’ll tell you whether wagner can help you with your accounting needs. No pressure, all professional. Got to do your due diligence. Get started at wagner cps dot com now, tony’s, take two. I’m paying attention to baby boomers. Millennials get a lot of attention. Of course on dh that’s deserved. That could be a very, very important part of your fund-raising prospect pool course. Depending on your mission, they’ll be donors for fifty or sixty years. I am not saying ignore millennials at all we’ve covered in here on the show many times what the trends involving millennials, etcetera and will continue to but that i don’t mean that is the universal no gator along with that my consulting, and hence my focus is on baby boomers. They’ll be around because i’m one and i’ll be around for a good forty years. Actually, i’ll be around for another forty four because i’m living two hundred so they’ll be around there’s a lot of wealth in the baby boomer generation, they have proven to be generous with their wealth, lots of reasons to pay attention to baby boomers and to promote and market the state and retirement plan gifts to them, as well as paying attention a millennial’s again, this is not an either or depending on your mission and depending on the makeup of your constituents, they may both very well fit in. Okay, my video saying a little more on that is at tony martignetti dot com it’s my pleasure to welcome steve rio to the show. He is founder and ceo of bright webb, a social impact consultancy delivering strategy, branding and digital. He aims to build the world’s most flexible, engaged and efficient company. He’s, an expert in exponential organizations, remote and distributed teams and workforce, wellness and performance. He consults with impact leaders to reimagine their organizational strategies, systems and company cultures. The companies that bright webb b r i t e web dot com and he’s at steve rio. Welcome to the show, steve. Hi, how are you? I’m very well. How you doing? I’m doing great. Good. Were you calling in from? I’m calling from my home office on bowen island in british columbia, canada. Wonderful bowing island. How far offshore is bowen island? Probono island is the closest island to vancouver. It’s about a twenty minute fairy. But it’s a small little community about thirty, five hundred people. So just a small, small island. Okay. And you’re a good, uh, i don’t know. Six, seven thousand miles from new york city. That’s about right. That’s. All right. Right now. Yeah. Okay. That’s where i’m sitting so, uh, okay. It doesn’t matter who got twenty. Eighteen. It hasn’t mattered for a long time. Okay. Um, you’ve been you’ve been spending a lot of time learning about researching the science of focus and attention. What? What? What brought you to this? Yeah. So, i mean, i’ve been thinking about this, i guess, as a leader of a company of about five years ago, we moved to more of a remote model where we’re kind of embracing twenty first century practices around, you know, organizing people, so we started allowing people to work remotely and and travel while working and doing things like that. And then a couple years ago, we launched a distributed workforce of freelancers, so we have freelancers in twenty five cities around the world now and, you know, over that time, one of what i’ve learned for knowledge workers there’s an increasing onus on the individual to think about how they manage their time, their work have it how we organize our offices, whether those air, virtual or physical spaces and just really thinking about, you know, the capacity and capabilities of our teams. And so i guess even for myself thinking about how to maximize productivity and howto really achieved the most impact i can have in the work we do it’s become a key part of my thinking on howto really maximize their teams. So it’s been a few years now where i’ve been focused pretty heavily. On this subject did you used to have a more traditional office where all our most people worked in one place? Yeah, i guess that would have been about four years ago was when we started making that transition. We were we were working out of an office. So we have an officer, vancouver. But we serve clients mainly in the united states. So we have an office in new york as well. So as soon as we had two officers that’s when we started to think about howto have you no more of a distributed approach toe work. And so four years ago, we started making that transition. Okay, i see what drove you to that. All right. So you could have come to the studio. You you could’ve visited the new york office and come to our studio here. That’s, right? But it happens to be summertime and summer time on the island is pretty good. So i understand how you could be with you in new york. That’s okay? We tried, tio. We tried to, but the schedules were just, you know, i’m not in new york all the time, either. I’m, uh, i spend a lot. Of time in north carolina, where the beach yes, i have a beach house there, and the beach is also very nice. During the summer, you might have heard rumors to that effect the ocean and beach life. Very nice in the summer months. Um, yeah, okay, so you’re and you’re interested not only in the not only interested, but you’ve been spending time researching not only the conscious aspects of this, but unconscious earth. Yeah, well, so to me, there’s sort of a couple of key components. One thing is how we organize our time. You know, i think about this from if we’re thinking about the social sector, which is who our clients are in a lot of who i consult with and work with. I think about the capacity of our teams because i think we have pretty severe limitations on budgets on operational budget specifically and thinking about howto increase the capacity of our workforce. And i think one of the ways we can do that is by really looking at the way we structure our time and the way we you know what kind of habits we reinforce in the office place and i think first off, there’s the component of just getting focused, work done and thinking about distractions, thinking about how we’re implementing technology and the sort of core components of that, i think a second component is around creativity and around creating space and allowing people actually have the time to think big and come up with creative solutions, which doesn’t happen in a busy, distracted work environment. And when you’re right in front of technology all the time, it kind of requires ah level of space to be created for people and so let’s. Ah, let’s, get some ideas. How do you how do you create that space? So i think creating spaces, it comes with first off and understanding what it means, you know, what’s interesting, like, you know, we’re starting to work with universities in canada as well as the u s and thinking about how we start to educate people from a younger age about what it means to be productive. I think we have, you know, his knowledge workers. Most of us are knowledge workers in today’s world who were working in front of a computer, and we’re creating documents or information products or things like that. Were a lot of communications, so oftentimes we feel like productivity is time spent in front of the computer o r on our devices and and i think it’s really important to realize that productivity and creativity comes also when you create space, when you go for a walk, when you take breaks when you actually disengage from the, you know, actual document creation or the actual work you’re doing and take time to process what’s happened so what’s interesting is that we have a conscious mind in a subconscious mind, and, for instance, when we learn new information, um, about six percent of that goes into our conscious mind, which is immediately available, and the other ninety four percent goes in our conscious mind, and that takes time to process and that’s where we kind of put things together and think that’s where correlation happened, that’s where true creativity happens. So, you know, i think most people would, you know, relate to the idea of the best ideas might come to them in the shower when they’re doing the dishes or when they’re, you know, doing some task that requires very little cognitive effort and that and that’s when our creativity strikes, and so what i what i try and teach my team and what i talked to people about in our workshops and the work we’re doing is about think rethinking what productivity’s means and how creating space in your days and you’re weak can actually be a very productive way to be a more creative contributor to your work. This reminds me of the dark days when i practiced law, and in those days we didn’t have why didn’t you have a computer at my desk? We’re talking about nineteen, ninety four, nine, nine, nine nine to nineteen ninety two andi i i’d have to stare at a blank ledger every day, and i knew i had to fill it up with atleast ten hours of billable activity. Otherwise i’d be working that weekend to make up the difference, and there were all kinds of building codes for for producing tangible output, but there was never a code for thinking. You know what? I just spent time thinking about your case, thinking about what the best strategy would be thinking about how to manage the relationship with this adversarial party, but i could never build for i thought and i i i had to build it into some document, some letter memo to the file or to the client that i had written this thinking time was never a billable activity, that it wasn’t a recognized thing that we should ask clients to pay for. Yeah, sorry, we feel the exact same thing as a consultant, you know, we were able to build for designing a website or creating a strategic brief for leading a workshop, but a lot of that that the thinking time is sort of out in space that we’re not. We’re not ableto billed for, which creates on, as, you know, an inverse relationship with the actual quality of the work that we’re trying to deliver. Yeah, wait, we just have a minute before a break tell me how you enforce this. How do you get people to it’s create this white space in their in their work days? Well, i think you just i mean, it’s been very interesting trying to implement this with my own company over the last couple of years and the hardest route to do this with his with young folks with the millennials grownup as digital natives. In so it’s kind of repeatedly letting them know that they’re a part of their job is delivering value like deep, valuable thinking, and to do that, they need to create some separation from technology and from their devices, and they need to create space and so really encouraging people to get up and walk around to take way. Taking meditation moments through our days, we have these virtual meditations we do throughout the week that are just three to five minutes, because i don’t think it could be. It could be a short period of time or a longer period of time longer the better. But even to destry minutes can make a big difference in your day where you’re actually fully disengaged in either in a short meditation or even just day dreaming and looking out the window. Hold that’s all we’ve got to take a break. Yeah, tell us you’ve heard the tell us mony als from charities that referred companies for credit card processing and, of course, they’re getting the revenue each month on dh from companies who are using tello’s for credit card processing can use more revenue big question can use more revenue that long stream of passive revenue. Ah, i’ll bet you could watch the video at tony dahna slash tony tello’s that’s the way to get started now back to steve rio. Steve, i am guessing that a part of this is the especially the millennials where the tougher nuts to crack, he said they need to see you doing these things a swell like you’re you’re taking the virtual meditations with them, of course, that’s, right? Yeah. So so i think i mean, i think what’s very key for organizations realized that has to start with leadership, and so i think in my case, i’m the ceo of my company, i’m the founder of my company, so i’m ableto teo live this toe live this thes recommendations and these ideas and to really create that opportunity for people to pick it up. Now, it’s a serious behavior change for a lot of people who are very accustomed and, you know, perhaps addicted to their devices into being engaged with technology and those things so really creating behavior change, which could take some time, but it does start with leadership. Mm. And i think it all you know, it also we also have to rethink the way we organize our offices and the way we organize our work days and start to create, you know, periods of the day where people are allowed to work uninterrupted without the expectation that they’re going to re responding to emails or or taps on the shoulder or slack black messages that air coming in. I mean, the amount of distractions were seeing in our workplace today is is pretty insane, actually, when you think about how the brain works and what we actually need to do, teo, to be focused, creative and productive. So again, maybe maybe enforcement is not quite the right word, but encouragement or, uh, seems sounds like you’re stronger than just encouraging. Do you have these periods where people are no, during which people are not expected to to respond? So that’s their long term, you know, sort of thinking time and creative time. Yeah, we yeah, we do. We encourage way encouraged people to to use their calendars as a tool to block out time for that they’re weak. Where it’s very clear to everyone if they’re looking at other, you know, trying to find a time to book a meeting that these, you know, we encouraged ninety minute blocks of time because that’s really the amount of time that the the brain can, you know, we can focus on a hard cognitive tasks without meeting a break. So these ninety minute blocks, we encouraged those in the morning whenever possible because that’s really the most, uh, energy or your brain is going to have for the for the day. And we also created some tools, so we use black, like many, you know, like many companies, we use flak for internal communications, kind of quick, quick communications, but we’ve created a tool where people can basically turn on a snooze button for their slack, which notifies others when they messaged them to say, this person is in a focus what we call a focus block for x amount of minutes, and it indicates the amount of minutes before that person will be available again. Okay, so both some tools as well as practices and then what we’re what we’re looking at now is looking at sort of a shared a shared timeline throughout the day that works because we work on both the primarily the west coast in east coast time zones in north america, but basically looking at a calendar format that works for both, where there’s specific periods of the day where everyone is encouraged to focus in on their work and other shorter periods of time where everyone is focused to then use those periods to collaborate, communicate, ask questions and do all the regular sort of things that are necessary to move project forward. When you’re interviewing people to work for you, do you bring up these topics and sort of assess their their willingness? We do we? I mean, i don’t expect i don’t really feel like it a subject that is taught in universities or that many workplaces have ever really considered, so i don’t necessarily expect people to come in with a knowledge of it, but i do expect people to be open to it and willing to adopt it, and actually, as we’ve developed this content, more and more we’ve done two things one is internally, we’re starting to build a curriculum for this that will be basically required learning it’ll be part of our onboarding process that people will go through over the first a month or two of being being part of our company, where they will, they’re basically build these habits up, and these will be poor expectations of our of our work, of our workforce. The second thing we’re doing is is creating we’ve created a new entity called right well on break wells, you know, mandate is to help train and educate people through workshops were working like i said, we’re about to embark on a university tour to start teaching this as a supplementary content to college students. So my my my goal would be that people start to recognize this is the core necessity for for the workforce, not just being a subject matter expert and say, fund-raising or marketing or whatever, you know, your your specific areas, but also your work habits. So really thinking about both as as critical to success. How often do you do the virtual meditations? We have those happening every day of the week and there in a couple different times and what they are, they’re basically optional five minute meditations where people can jump on a video call, yeah, like on a video link, and they every we jump on the video and we just start with everybody sharing a one word kind of update on where they’re at so it could be stressed or excited or tired or just something to check in really quickly. And then we have a three, three, two, four minute guided medication that we all listen to. What it was really interesting is that the the actual active taking those three to four minutes is really relaxing and rejuvenating, you know, energetically, but it also brings people together in a very interesting way that we always end the calls of people, the big smile on their face and kind of connected in a way, even though we’ve been mostly silent together for those three to four minutes pretty neat how many of those do you participate in? I try to do them at least three or four times a week. I participate in a lot of them, i don’t i don’t leave them, but yeah, i try to participate in them a lot. I mean, i think, like i say, a lot of this is lead by example and and show that even a busy ceo of the company can take that time, you know, creating that space is possible, it’s a matter of sort of changing your mind set around how you structure your day no, we’re going tow. We’ll take another break and when we come back, i want to i want to start talking about your encouragement for non-cash hour, mindfulness and and attention. Great text to give. You’ll get more revenue because they make e-giving easy for your donors is our newest sponsor welcoming them again? If your donor’s consent a text, they could make a donation. How much simpler could it be? It’s simple, affordable, it’s secure the ceo is chad chad boyd. You can talk to him. The way to get started is text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine for info and to claim a special listener offer. We got about six more minutes for focus and attention. And so, steve really let’s make that shift what’s your encouragement for people outside the work day. Yeah, this is to me is a such a critical area and it’s very interesting to try and, you know, impact people’s personal behaviors, right? And i think it’s a critical component of our success that work is their success out of work. And i think to me, they’re all combined these days. So there’s a few things we really focus in on one is people’s morning habit. So how did they start their day? Particularly the first thirty minutes to their day. So really encouraging people to wake up without technology. So just stay off of of the internet, on off social media and off their email and things like that for the first thirty minutes of the day. It’s proven it’s a very critical time where we’re shifting mind state from, you know, from asleep to a conscious state, and it is a key time to sort of tell the tell the brain what type of what type of hey, am i gonna have is going to be a fragmented, distracted day where there’s all sorts of news and e mails and alert coming in? Or is it going to be a day where i’m focused on my priority? So the morning routine, we talk a lot about there’s, other aspects of that too, where we wait, just think about can you get some physical time in o r sum? Like even if it’s just yoga or a walk or something like that? But how? Do you think about your morning? And similarly before you okay? Before you move on, i want to focus on the morning. All right, so so you’re recommending eso. Okay. So, it’s, fine to wake up with your phone. Okay, your phone is your alarm. Okay? You silence. That sounds like don’t put it on snooze taken extra ten to fifteen minutes. Right? That’s bad. Probably, uh, okay. And now set aside. Don’t check e mail. Don’t look at the latest alerts. Um, what do you want? What do you want me to do? Right after i hit that silence button on the alarm. Yeah. So i think probably the most. The healthiest thing you could do for your day is to wake up to spend the first few minutes of your day, perhaps thinking about your top, you know, maybe what you want to achieve that day, maybe thinking about what? Your great before, like, you know, taking a few minutes to have a bit of a gratitude practice. So a simple way to think about that is just every morning. Think about three things that you’re grateful for and those could be, you know, somebody important in your life some projects you’re working on, you know, the sun is out. It could be very simple things, but taking a few moments to be grateful and two to to, you know, feel good and excited about your day. And then i think also spending the first few minutes, uh, doing something physical, if possible, if you can get up in the first thing you do is get outside and breathe fresh air and go for a walk. That’s a very healthy way to start your day and to warm up your body in your mind so i can stop in the bathroom first, right on my way to the walk. Absolutely. Okay, but don’t eat anything, you know, okay, because otherwise out of bladder pain be terrible walk so yeah, and it could you might, you know, you could wake up and make your coffee or make your tea or, like, i think, just having basically a morning routine that is calm and present, where you’re spending time in the present moment, whether it’s like a lot of people for them it’s the ritual of making a great coffee and thinking about their day and looking out the window. And just, you know, taking a few moments to be very present at the beginning here today is a great way to ground your energy and be more resilient when you do start, you know, getting your work environment and you start getting emails or not you and all sorts of information, you’re a lot. You have a lot more resilience and ability to be, you know, president and capable of handling whatever stone at you. Now, this sounds good intuitively is their research that bears this out. What this is this effect throughout the day that you’re describing there is a lot of there is research around, yeah, around the way that you start your day. So when people, when people start today with technology, whether it’s, whether it’s work related, so se e mails rather kind of alert first off, any type of work e mails or things like that can immediately trigger an anxiety response, even if it’s not necessarily a negative thing, it could just mean hope there’s an urgent thing or something pops up, and so when you start your day with that way, you’re basically haven’t heightened, uh, heightened dose of what we call cortical zoho yeah, yeah, and this is where your stress is, one of those one of reaction to stress hormones well, basically spike right out of the gate without having a warm up to the day and then there’s also research that shows when you start your day with technology, your brain is basically triggered into a highly reactive state, which means that you’re more likely to be distracted on dh less able to stay on task through the morning after the day. I mean, so so you’re more likely you’re basically telling your brain if you think about our brain in a more about, you know, primitive sense, if you wake up and you’re immediately alerted to thirty different things, you’re basically telling your brain today is a day where i just need to be aware of anything that moves around me, which is not necessarily the state you want to be in when you wantto get him focused. Work done. Okay, so the research bears it out. All right, all right, all right. What? Anything else we have? Just about two minutes or so left. Anything else for outside the work hours that you reckon e i would. Say the at, like, the absolute most important thing people should be thinking about outside of their work is their sleep. And and in north america, we have a serious issue. One into adults are sleep deprived. You know, one in three adults in north america are working our surviving on less than six or left hours of sleep, and this is having a massive effect on not only our cognitive ability, but our health and well being and our mood and our mindset. And so i think, it’s one of the most undervalued, most important things we should be thinking about is getting the necessary amount of sleep there’s just an incredible amount of research, not only showing the health issues that are related to a lack of sleep and by a lack of sleep, i really mean six hours or less, or anything in that area which a lot of people consider to be a fairly normal amount osili but also the amount of cognitive decline that you that you experience. So i think a lot of times we have this this this relationship with time where we think, well, there’s not enough time to sleep. There’s so much i got to get done, but then when we don’t sleep, our productivity in our capacity and our ability to process is so low that we’re actually kind of creating a creating a negative feedback loop on where we’re getting less done with our time. I think sleep is the other area that i think people should be really focused in on and for optimal sleep. You want a dark and quiet space? I’ve done the way. Yes, we’re gonna leave it there those steve. But thank you for saying one hundred percent steve rio, you want to learn more from him finding that bright b r i t web dot com and treat him directly at steve rio. Thank you, steve. Thank you every day. Thank you. And a good night, too. Next week, amy sample ward returns with over marketing. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant capital p weather. See piela is guiding you beyond the numbers when you’re cps dot com bye tello’s credit card. And payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna, slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr. To four, four, four, nine, nine, nine ah, creative producers, clam meyerhoff, sam leave lorts is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guys, and this music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternative network duitz to get you thinking. Dahna cubine you’re listening to the talking alternative network, are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? Hi, i’m nor in sometime, potentially, ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Yawned potential. 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