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Nonprofit Radio for June 2, 2025: Storytelling & Local Media

 

Fabiana Meléndez Ruiz: Storytelling & Local Media

Fabiana Meléndez Ruiz reminds us of the value of sound storytelling, and how to get your house in order before you go public with your stories. She shares sound advice on the great value of local media and how to build the journalist relationships that will help you get your stories told. Fabiana also reveals startling media consumption trends among Gen Z and Alphas. She’s the CEO of Refuerzo Collaborative.

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of polymyalgia if I had to endure the pain of you missing this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to give you the highlights. Hey Tony, this weekend. Storytelling and local media. Fabian Melendez Ruiz reminds us of the value of sound storytelling and how to get your house in order before you go public with your stories. She shares sound advice on the great value of local media and how to build the journalist relationships that will help you get your stories told. Fabian also reveals startling media consumption trends among Gen Z and Alphas. She’s the CEO of Refuerzo Collaborative. On Tony’s take 2. It’s time to contact your senators. Here is storytelling and local media. It’s a pleasure to welcome Fabian Melendez Ruiz. She is a Venezuelan American communications expert and CEO and co-founder of Refuerzo Collaborative, a Latina owned agency nurturing the stories that reinforce community. Her agency is at Raffuerzocollab.com, and you’ll find them on Instagram at Rafuerzo Collaborative. Welcome to nonprofit Radio, Fabian. Thanks for having me, Tony. I’m excited to be here. A pleasure. I’m glad you’re excited. Thank you. Let’s talk about storytelling. Uh, you, you’re an expert, you’ve done thousands of stories. Let’s just start with the, the value of good storytelling. Why so important? Absolutely. So I, I think we need to start with my background a little bit. So I started, um, Working in PR and I did all of, all of the things. I did food and Bev and, and motor sports, um, and science and book launches, and there was a common thread and that was that I wanted to work with mission driven and mission-oriented organizations. Um, and so I always had the philanthropic bug, right? I always wanted to volunteer and serve on boards, and I did those things. And when I launched Refuerzo, uh, we carved a niche in nonprofits. So that’s, um, I think what would be relevant for a lot of listeners is, you know, why is a publicist on the podcast? Well, I work with a lot of VDs and a lot of boards and a lot of nonprofits. So storytelling is we wouldn’t have you if you did. If you were if you were still working for motorsports and food and beverage, uh, you wouldn’t be on nonprofit radio. You’d be on some, some corporate, uh, corporate PR podcast, but you wouldn’t be on nonprofit radio. So, uh, but we know, we know you’re bona fide because you’re here, but it’s good to share your background too. That’s, that’s fine, yeah, thank you. And um, so, OK, let’s talk about storytelling now. So, when we started working with nonprofits or when I started even before before so, and we started Working on PR campaigns for them. There was a thing that I noticed. And that is, they didn’t have defined stories a lot of the time. So the mission was defined, right? And the values and like the work. But I’m like, that is not the story. That is a, a part of the story. And that’s what should drive the story. But Um, we would have these conversations, and a lot of nonprofits would wonder, well, why aren’t we getting on the news? Why aren’t we being asked to comment about, you know, XYZ when we’re an expert? And I would tell them, well, it’s a storytelling issue because y’all are in a lot of ways, focusing on something that’s a little, a little more self-serving. So y’all are one. To be on the news because y’all want to be on the news versus wanting to be on the news because you have an angle for a particular community issue that is important. And that’s the the importance or that’s where storytelling comes in is it can’t be self-serving, right? Um, really, it has to be because you as an organization. Or as an ED or, you know, whatever, as a program coordinator, have a perspective on an issue that impacts a community that ties into a community issue, and you can tell a story about the impact you’ve done to support in solving that issue, if you will, um, through storytelling. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, well, we’ll have time to flush it out. Yeah, of course it does, and your, your point is, uh, Very important about being, you know, mission centered, right? All the, all the stories are about the mission, of course, but the mission itself is not newsworthy. The, the work, the work around the mission is, but you know, like publicizing your mission statement is not gonna get you anything either in earned or owned uh media. Absolutely. Well, and you have to remember, and you know this, right? Because you work with nonprofits and, and you’re in radio, right? But a lot of people don’t, and they don’t have to, right? Because a lot of EDs or people in nonprofits have other roles that aren’t marketing. But I think it’s helpful to know that, you know, newsrooms are operating very lean. Um, and I don’t think a lot of people recognize that. I think they hear, you know, newspapers are closing, all of these things are happening, but they don’t really digest that. So when you’re storytelling, you have to make sure that it aligns with that particular radio show outlet, you know, newspaper, magazine. And that particular journalist, because they’re getting 500 emails a day, right? So, what are you doing as an organization that is different, that is impactful, that is backed by data, that is backed by people who maybe have been impacted by programs and can speak on it. Um, you essentially have to be a journalist. Or yeah, think like think like one. Yeah. Mhm. OK, uh, cause you’re gonna be appealing to them. Absolutely. Right, OK, um, so we’re, we’re talking about storytelling for, uh, journalist, journalism channels, you know, the news channels, uh, news outlets, not so much social media and, and earned, uh, and earned media or other, other, I should say social media. It’s definitely for both. So I’m starting with um earned or like journalism because that’s where a lot of the crux of my work is. But yeah, I mean, social media is the same thing. I think the issue with storytelling there is that people want to go viral. Um, and I’ve had a lot of nonprofits tell me, well, how can we tell, how can we tell a story so that we go viral? And that is the biggest mistake, right? You don’t, you don’t want to post with the goal of virality, right? Like, virality is, you know, really more of a more serendipitous than that. It kind of just happens, right? Like you can be on top of the pulse of pop culture. Um, but if you post with that intention, it doesn’t happen. It’s very funny. It’s almost like the the least you want it, the more you will get it. So the more you want it, the least you will get it. Yeah, absolutely, that, that shouldn’t be the goal, uh, because it’s, it is, it’s too fickle, uh, like you said, serendipitous, of course, but, but, um, but if we have the right perspective and our expectations are appropriate, and we’d be using the same stories for journalism outlets that we’re using for social uh social outlets and maybe our blog as well. Yes. So the good news about storytelling is that, um, it never dies. So you can recycle that content as much as possible. Um, and really, I think we need to go back a little bit because, um, I think a lot of the storytelling. Workshops that we do and narratives that we do where we rework a lot of that for nonprofits. There’s a lot of internal work that has to happen. So, um, sometimes before we even pitch or help them with social, we have to sit down and have essentially, um, you know, a come to Jesus or, you know, Muhammad come to the mountain situation because Um, you can’t have good storytelling if your house isn’t in order. So we’ve had a lot of situations where, you know, there’s, um, maybe some discontent and a board, and, and that causes everybody to disagree, um, on what the story should be or what they should be doing moving forward, or we come in really with the focus of story. We always come in with the focus of like narrative workshops, but then we find that there are symptoms of other things too, right? Or Um, you know, we’ve had situations where we come in and everything looks to be in order, right? We’re like, OK, we have the story, and then when we actually sit down and are discussing with the board and the ED and everybody, we realized, well, we thought we had the story, and it makes a lot of sense for 2025, for example. But it doesn’t carry the organization for the next 5 years. So maybe there’s um something bigger there where we need to rework the mission or rework like what the actual um What the actual programs are, the services, like it’s, it’s funny how we come in to do marketing and sometimes it ends up being a bit of a bigger project because we want to help with the narrative and a lot of that ties into the narrative and so we end up having to sit down with a lot of nonprofits and say, actually, um. There’s other, other things we need to tweak so it all makes sense. Because storytelling has to align at every level, like we had, you know, a, a nonprofit who um wasn’t getting um Wasn’t getting people to sign up for their programs, um, like wasn’t getting young boys, but they were getting young girls. A lot of girls signing up for this like college program, and they were like, we don’t understand why we’re not getting, you know. Teen boys to sign up. And I was like, well, your messaging says girls. So it was never clear that it was, it was, you know, for teen, you know, at risk in general. It was just, and I’m like, the branding is really, you know, pink and it’s like, you know, I love it because our branding is pink, but if that’s, if that is not what you want, if you want this other target audience, we need to completely Redo the whole thing basically. Um, so it’s always very interesting how storytelling is never just storytelling. Let’s talk more about the the the the house in order before we can start to create narratives and, and, you know, talk about news hooks and things like that, but let’s talk more about what, what needs to be in order before we can find good stories to be telling. I love that question, um, because it’s the hardest, the easiest. So, um, first things first. There needs to be consensus, and I think in nonprofits that’s actually very difficult. At least what I have found is it’s very difficult because Consensus about what by who? What do you mean? Well, I’m we’re we’re we’re about to dive in, Tony. I’m excited. Um, yeah, around all kinds of things. So let’s start here. The mission and the vision. Oftentimes look a certain way when the organization is founded and they have, you know, the founder or the founders of the founding board have a certain like, this is what we want it to look like for the next, you know, however long and then throughout the years or the decades, as there’s different boards and different EDs and it strays further from the founders, maybe the vision changes. Now, part of the consensus building is. If the way that we are carrying out the mission and vision changed. Is that something that happened because it is a natural evolution of the org, or did we lose our North Star at some point? So that’s a question we ask a lot is this is this is pretty fundamental. I mean, if, if the, if the leadership. And the board aren’t aligned around. The, the, the work that the mission statement and the vision call for, this is pretty basic. I mean, that they need, they need some more, they, they need some more foundational consulting before they can start talking about going, going public with their stories. Oh, yeah. Well, and it’s interesting because we see this a lot. We see this a lot, and we will tell them, you know, that is not the work that we do, right? Like we need, you know, we recommend a consultant that we can come in and PR. And I think that’s something that’s really important for us as an agency is to do these things equitably, is to be able to help people and organizations determine like, hey, there’s a, a bigger issue here and we don’t think. In good conscience, I can do PR for you until this is settled, right? But at least organizational development, strategic planning, leadership development. Absolutely. And then there’s other issues, right, that we’ve kind of come in to say we need the house in order before we talk about this. So we’ve had, you know, situations where there was malfeasance, which Happens and nonprofits for unfortunately. Um, and so, you know, cases where money has gone missing or whatever, and it’s like public knowledge, but they don’t ever want to address it. And so part of cleaning houses, we need to come up with some statement because if I’m asking questions about it during this discovery phase where we’re trying. To get everything in order, a journalist on the line is going to ask about it, or someone in social media might comment about it. Yeah, for sure, you’re you’re talking about communications, but it sounds like the crisis is over and they’ve never fully, yeah, they never fully addressed it. Well, yeah, so right, so any any journalist is gonna ask questions about the whether you want to talk about it or not. Yeah. Right, but you’d be surprised how many it works, and I understand, right? I think nonprofits want to be, want to focus on the thing that they do best and that’s serving the communities that they serve. And so sometimes a lot of these, when we come in to help people get their house in order, um. It’s out of fear, right? They’re like, well, what if people lose trust? And I always tell people, or, you know, leaders, people will lose trust if you’re dishonest. Point blank period. But if we’re honest and we address things, There is more forgiveness to be had. And then there’s a more benign, um, more benign versions of like getting the house in order or consensus building. So we’ve had situations where, you know, um, maybe the ED, when they go out to network, talk talks about the org one way, but then we learned that program managers, uh, talk about the org another. Way and it’s all good. It’s all positive. They just have differing messaging in which they’re talking about the impact of the org. And so that’s an easier fix because we get everybody in and we do these like narrative sessions where we say, OK, let’s all come to a consensus as to what we all think. You know, the, the bio of the org that isn’t the mission or the vision, but like how we’re talking about it makes sense. Like, what are the things we want to highlight, what are the impact points that matter, what are the data points that matter? And then let’s come to a definition together so that there’s alignment. And obviously those are um Those are a little bit easier because it’s just tweaking and refining certain things. So that’s usually what I mean by cleaning house. And it’s a spectrum, obviously. There’s the smaller things and the bigger things that we have to escalate, but really I think a good marketing team, which is funny because I think people don’t think that, but a good marketing team is, is. Foundational to any business, I mean nonprofit or for-profit, and should be able to flag things and say, hey, you know, the reason the external messaging isn’t working on social or earned media or what have you, is because of these things that I’m flagging. OK, no, that’s all valuable. You gotta have strong foundation. Before you can go out publicly and and ask journalists to, uh, you know, to promote to promote your work essentially. But people don’t know that, Tony, and it’s, it’s bunker. I mean, it’s it is, right? Because that’s my job. But, and I live in it, right? But you would be surprised or not at how many EDs or or leaders are like, I just, I really want to be on the news and I’m like, you can’t. The messaging is too, it’s too scattered, it’s too messy. Yeah. And OK. And so not only the messaging isn’t. Consistent and, and, and all positive because the house is not in order, but OK, let’s say now we’re past that. now, now don’t we need some kind of a news hook? I mean, a journalist is, is very, very unlikely to just do a general sort of puff piece about your work unless it relates to something that’s timely and topical. Right, so there are. I mean, the good news is nonprofits usually do an annual fundraiser. And so I would say that’s the lowest hanging fruit in terms of a hook. Um, because a lot of local TV alis and radio shows do want to talk about events that benefit the community. So that would be an example of a hook that maybe is a little bit easier to pitch around, um, maybe a fun event like a run or a walk, you know, yeah, galas do get covered, um. You know, there are nonprofits here. We’re working with one who’s doing, um, not a gala. Their annual fundraiser is actually a food passport. Um, so they’re an AAPI organization and they work with the Asian community in, in Austin, and so they do um this really fun food passport where they connect with all the. Asian restaurants in the city, and they put together this like big discount passport and you purchase that and then you go to the restaurants that are affiliates and you get a discount at the restaurant. But again, see, that’s interesting. It’s newsworthy. It’s tied to like a specific cause. Um, they raise funds because they, you know, again, support health in the Asian community in, in Austin. So they do all of these translations in different languages. So that’s something that a reporter would be like, hmm. That’s very interesting. Um, now, in terms of news that isn’t, um, necessarily around an event or anchored around something like that, that’s where, you know, a lot of the cleaning housework really helps because as you’re defining narratives and things you find, um, you may find Uh, topics that are interesting. So this is an example. We work with, um, an organization that is actually like a non, it’s a nonprofit, but they’re like um a membership org, and they work with uh young women in Austin and basically help them develop their um their they help with professional development. And we were pitching around their big gala or their big, you know, award ceremony, and, and it was the, it was honestly a lukewarm reception and it happens from media, um, and we realized, OK, it’s very alumni centered. So this is in an Austin award that um That is open to the public. It’s the people that are nominated or alumni of the work. So maybe that’s why there’s a little bit of a barrier of entry for people to be interested in this particular event. But we went to the event and they had former scholarship winners speaking. And one of them said something that really stuck with us from a storytelling perspective. She goes, You know, I’m really thankful for this org because I went from a GED to a PhD because of their scholarship program. And I said, That’s it. That’s the story. Um, it is timely because there’s a lot of conversation, you know, I mean, we don’t have to get into it, of course, there’s a lot of conversations about, because of the current administration, things are shifting, and so, you know, that does impact scholarship recipients and so to have the story of this. Um, this, you know, she’s a woman now, um, was younger when she got the scholarship, but how she went from a GED to a PhD. I’m like, this is it, this is timely. It’s relevant, it’s interesting. We have the data to back it up. We have the scholarship numbers they’ve given out. Um, and That’s how we came, we came up with that that pitch angle. So really it’s thinking about, you know, what is going on in the news? What is going on in your city? What is going on in the world, and what are y’all doing to kind of move the needle with a particular issue. This is all valuable, uh, Fabiano, because, you know, we’re, we’re focusing on local media. You know, we’re not, we’re not setting our sights to, you know, whatever, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. We’re, we’re talking about local media, local media, smaller, smaller mid-size nonprofits, which is where our listeners are, um, and, and most likely, most of their donors or all their donors are in the local community. And I mean, the community might be a state, you know, it might not just be your local town, but, but we’re talking about local, local media. This is, this is really, this is valuable. um Right. Well, and so many, you know, again, when I come in, people want, you know, their pie in the sky goals are usually like a chronicle of philanthropy or like a CNN. And mind you, we’ve got clients in those outlets, so it’s not impossible, but Um, I believe that local media will never be low brow. This is like a joke I I make because I think people focus so much on like the Washington Post of the world and the New York Times, and the truth of the matter is we need local media because they cover your town and your city and your stories. The New York Times is not going to come in and cover. You know, whatever suburb of I live in Kyle, which is a suburb of Boston. They’re not going to do that. The only time we’ve gotten covered is because we ran out of water. So like, of course that made national news, but it was none of those like more positive stories are going to get covered because they’re focused on things that maybe are going to drive more eyeballs. So, you know, I think local media is incredibly important, and this is kind of my soapbox about we need to preserve it, but also Um, for a lot of nonprofits, it’s what moves the needle. Like we’ve had clients say our gala sold out because y’all got us on a local, you know, several local broadcast shows like we got more donors, we got more program participants, so it is very important. Let’s talk some about building relationships with local media outlets, which means local journalists, before you start pitching. Just getting them to know you, know your work before you’re looking for them to, to, uh, to publish about you. Yeah, so building relationships is instrumental, but sometimes what happens, everybody knows how to network, but nobody knows how to network right is another thing I kind of say. And because I think people do come into it, um, wanting it to be quid pro quo. And you can’t come into it like that. Even, even if the goal is to get them to cover your org, you have to make a genuine authentic connection with that person because they are a person first and a journalist second. So, um, and it’s the same thing with donors, the person first and a donor second, even though we want to get the other way. So, um, when you are out at, you know, a gala, a conference, like out on the town, make True genuine connections with people, find some sort of common ground. Like, I just, I mean, of course, that’s my my job, so I’m a yapper, but I’ll come in, you know, and start talking to people and they’ll say, you know, my daughter does dance. And I’m like, that’s wonderful. Like, what does she do? Ballet? Oh, I love that. I did, I still do point as an adult. And so we find an actual true common ground that builds. You know, a relationship. I also think the follow up is important. So I will meet people at events or I will tell clients like, You met this person, you need to email them the next morning and simply say, it was such a pleasure meeting you. You know, I would love to, I would love to chat more if you’re open to it. Like, you need to follow up because that’s, that’s really where you kind of funnel that relationship in and, and deepen it. Um, a lot of the journalists that we’ve built relationships with was just, Hey, I saw your pregnancy announcement. I’m so excited for you. You know, like emails like that, that became texts later, that now, you know, they’re they’re kind of on call. Now, mind you, I will say this, the relationship will not save you if the story is bad. So, the way to keep these relationships primed is one, Keep it authentic always. Like, these are not your friends, but also do not send them garbage stories. Send them good stories, really think about what you’re pitching. And that’s a great way to get them to call you. Like, we reached the point where I’ll get, you know, a local outlet that’s like, Hey, here’s our editorial calendar for the next 6 months. Like, do you have nonprofits that want to come on and talk about that? And that is golden. That’s how they’re like, OK, like we trust you because we, you know, we go to happy hour together, but you also never give us bad story. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. The federal budget proposal uh passed the House last week and is now in the Senate, so it’s time to contact your US senators. Importantly, something that was very bad, one of the many very bad things in the bill for our nonprofit community, got taken out. In the house that was the provision that the Secretary of the Treasury could unilaterally designate individual charities as terrorist supporting organizations and there was no way to appeal that so that got taken out in the house so our voice counts they didn’t, you know, Republicans have the majority and they didn’t just do it because they felt like it they did it because. People who support nonprofits, us included, spoke up. So that’s very good. So, now that, uh, that bill is now, as I said, it’s in the Senate. A few points that you want to make with your senators when you call or email. You want to keep that provision out. Remember that was the provision you may remember from last year it was House Resolution 9495. Well, it got put into the, the budget bill and as I said, it got stripped out in the house, so we wanna keep that out. So you just want to let your senators know it’s important to keep out that. Designation power that the Secretary of the Treasury had to designate charities as terrorist supporting all right? Also, the, the individual attacks on, on, on charities like on Harvard University, Columbia University, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio. Our nonprofit community is strongest when we are standing together and that means standing for each of our members of our community and it doesn’t matter if it’s Harvard University with the largest endowment of all the charities probably in the world that $50 billion dollar endowment doesn’t matter. When they come for Harvard and they come for Columbia. And they’re successful, then what’s the 3rd domino after those 1st 2? And how easily is that gonna fall, and where is your charity or your sector? You’re part of our community in the line of dominoes, so it doesn’t matter that it’s the wealthiest charity. We don’t like the cuts against Harvard, Columbia, and also the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio. Those 4 members of our nonprofit community have been singled out for defunding. And as I said, you know, after those 4, where is the 5th domino? Is that you? Are you the 5th domino? We all have to stand together. So there’s a couple of talking points, you know, generally you could remind your senators when you contact them about how important the work is that all the nonprofits in the country do, and you could target your own specify your own work if you wanna highlight that as well. All right, we’re in this together and we are strongest when we stand together. So I urge you to contact your two US senators. Uh, if you don’t know who they are, you don’t know how to contact them, just Google, who are my senators. The first link is a link to a government website. You put in your state, uh, in the poll down, and your two senators pop up, right? Google, who are my senators? Please reach out to them. Support the community. We’re in this together. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. Although they’re going after these like big corporations, you might tell yourself like, oh, they’re not gonna come after me, they will come after you. Like it starts with the top and then they work their way down and they they will. Yeah. Uh, yeah, and they’re all charities, and all the charities, all the nonprofits are vulnerable. So that’s why we each have to stand up for All of us, each of us. We’ve got Bou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of storytelling and local media with Fabian Lalendez Ruiz. I love the relationship will not save you if the story is bad. It won’t. And, and, you know, it’s, it’s like that with friends that you have normally too, right? Like how many good friends do you have that are like, Tony, you’ve told me this like 1000 times. Like I’m kind of sick of it. Yeah, actually my friends do say that, yeah, um. My, my few. So yeah, uh, you know, you can’t be pitching them every week or even every month, you know, your board meeting is not in a newsworthy event. Uh, you know, yeah, so you have to just manage expectations around the relationship. They’re not your journal, they’re not your publicist. They’re still a professional journalist. They’re still interested in what’s newsworthy, but, you know, everything that you think merits. Publicity doesn’t mean that. The, the broader world or anywhere the world outside your office is gonna be interested. Right. Well, and I also, this brings me to news shocking. I do want to talk about news shocking because that’s something people may not be, you know about it, but people may not be familiar, so. News shocking essentially is when there’s some sort of breaking news or a hot topic in the news and you leverage that to pitch your or, right? So, um, here’s the thing, here’s the caveat with that is, people abuse that and then it becomes either really insensitive really quickly or really frustrating for the journalist. Um, so you have to have a modicum of self-control with news jacking. Not every news jacking opportunity is relevant. But, you know, for example, we had an organization that works with um Latinos voting in Texas and so a lot of their Areas of expertise are helping Latinos in terms of civic engagement but also immigration issues and things like that. And so when um in you know January through the last couple months when there were all these administrative changes around immigration that were going to impact people, we started news jacking and we simply sent an email to like Politico and The Hill and all of the ones that were covering this and even local affiliates saying, hey, we represent this org. They can speak about this area of expertise or available to comment. And because of that, we got, um, I believe it was the Associated Press was like, hey, I’m actually writing a story about Like immigration, does the ED want to comment? So, we were very responsible and very strategic about the news hacking because it was, you know, we’re dealing with human lives, right? So, I think sometimes people get excited news hacking, like, there’s people who, you know, you can imagine, and journalists don’t love that because it seems very insensitive. And also like, why are you pitching me this thing that has nothing to do with like People dying. Um, so we were very strategic about it and it it paid off, so news shocking is fantastic, but again, we have to be very careful with it. Yeah, the messaging needs to be appropriate. Sure. All right, um. You, you, uh, Say that nonprofits should operate as businesses with experts. And not just Organizations focused on the social good. What what do you want us to take away from the corporate side? You know, um, not all of them, right? I don’t want to generalize, but a lot of businesses on the for-profit side do really well in terms of narrative building because they tout their leaders as experts, right? So, um, they are on MSNBC and stuff all the time talking about the market or, you know, whatever, because Because they’re seen as experts now. Whether they are or aren’t, that’s not my call. I focus on making sure our nonprofit experts are actually qualified to speak on things. So, really, you know, I’m a softy and I love the soft side of nonprofits, so that is not an issue for me. But I think for, you know, um, donors or even like the media, sometimes they need someone to come in and be more data-driven, more impact driven, and speak as an expert, as an authority on a thing. So I think nonprofits should balance the, um, how much they leverage like the softer side of things and how much they come in and say, hey, actually, I’m an expert in this topic. I’m qualified to speak on this thing, and, um, that is what we’re wanting to speak about. And usually when we pitch experts in that way, like we say, OK, yes, she’s an ED but she’s a certified clinical social worker, or yes, she’s an ED. But she’s, uh, she has a PhD in education and can speak about education. It goes a lot further than just, and I don’t, I don’t mean just as injust, right? Cause I think the impact is important, but it goes a lot further than just like, they helped 10,000 kids go to school. Cool, but like, what is she actually an expert? Yeah, well, uh, child development, uh, the, the benefits of early, early intervention, uh, the benefits of early education, uh, the benefits of structure and early ages, you know, yeah, so yeah, it’s it’s unfortunate. Go ahead. Well, and I was gonna say that’s, you’re absolutely right because what happens is a lot of EDs and leaders, those people lose themselves in the org, right? And it should be, again, it should be a balance of, we have this amazing impact, we have these amazing programs, but also I myself am an expert and that’s why I’m at the helm of this org, because I can speak on this thing. And I think that’s what we can learn from for-profits in that, in that case. But, um, what were you gonna say? Um, that, uh, it’s unfortunate that, you know, the thinking is, well, she’s an executive director, but like that’s a, like that’s a negative, you know, being an executive director or anywhere leadership in, in a nonprofit is a, is a, is disadvantageous is it means they’re unaware, you know, but we can overcome that. Negative stigma and stereotype because she has a degree or because she’s worked in the field for so 25 years, you know, nonprofit leadership is expertise in in the area. It’s acquired over decades, um, it’s leadership, it’s, it’s drawing people to the cause as, as investors call them donors, but they’re all, they’re investors as well. Um, it’s, it’s hiring and retaining. Talented people to work with the, the program, whatever, whether the program is humans or animals or the climate or or water, you know. So it is, I mean, that the it it subsumed in being a CEO or executive director is expertise. I think it should be more like she’s an executive director and she she can speak on this topic that’s, you know, water, she can speak on water quality or food deserts or, you know, whatever it might be, whatever the, whatever the new jacking situation is. Absolutely. Well I think a lot of the issue, Tony, is, and this is my personal opinion, just based on the orders I work with, there is a crisis of empathy, and I think we’ve been in a crisis of empathy for a long time, um, where people see the softer jobs as less valuable than, say, a CEO. But again, when I come in to work with orgs, the first thing I tell the board or whomever’s in that prelim meeting is, the ED is a CEO. Yeah, so we, we need to treat it in this way. Yeah, I, I prefer the title CEO president or uh or executive director, um, but because it establishes chief executive officer, yeah, but the hypothetical person you’re you’re suggesting like shouldn’t shouldn’t even be on a nonprofit board. If they think they think nonprofit leadership is lesser than corporate leadership, I mean, all the things I mentioned, plus I didn’t even mention financial management is, is balancing budgets and budgeting and forecasting just, just the way corporations do. So, you know, that’s bullshit if, if they’re looking down at the CEO, uh, they don’t belong on a nonprofit board. But and it’s not even, you know, there’s a very, very small percentage, I think, of boards where I’ve had to come in and say, uh, the CEO does not work for you, right? Because there are some that think they can boss the ED around, but that’s neither here nor there. But even, even outside of nonprofits, like, there are, there is, I believe, uh, a belief that these leaders are somehow, I don’t want to say less capable, but are somehow. You know, because it’s a softer, perceived as softer, there’s something lacking, and it’s, it’s very interesting to me because I don’t see it that way at all. And, you know, do you find this in uh in journalism circles? Not necessarily journalism. I think that’s the perception of um. Regular people. So people are involved in the world, and I think that is important though, it’s important to have a barometer of those things because I think engaging the community is important. I think community education is important and a lot of the work we do as a, not even with clients, I mean, yes, but as us as a PR agency as an authority is talking about. The importance of these organizations and how you can see a nonprofit and think it’s soft, but they do a lot of technical work, a lot of things that are valuable, and they uphold a lot of the things that we need in society. So, you know, I, I always think it’s important to discuss because I’m like, no, this is what people think and it And it’s bananas because it’s sometimes it could even be people who benefit from the programs who are like, well, I don’t know. I don’t know if nonprofits are actually, you know, like, good. Um, but again, it goes back to storytelling and how we’re telling stories and how we position leaders and, and, you know, how we build public trust. Yeah, that’s all, that is all essential. Um, and especially now I think with this administration, you know, Elon Musk saying nonprofits are a Ponzi scheme, people just get rich and then they retire, you know, all these. Not even stereotypes. It’s more it’s talking about bullshit. It’s just nonsense and totally reflective of the, the cadre of. People who are, you know, if you want to talk about the soft side, that means they’re passionate, that means they have a passion for the work that goes deeper than, uh, earnings per share and, and stock price and, you know, buybacks and, well, that’s buyback is not a measure of financial stability of a company, but you know, earnings per share and, and, and profit and quarterly. Um, quarterly quarterly metrics that are all financial. There’s a passion that goes beyond all that. So that’s what I would call the soft side zeal for the work. Absolutely, and I think that there’s a level of strength. And that is immeasurable when you’re a leader that is OK with putting yourself in the line of fire. Which a lot of nonprofits end up being, especially, you know, currently, I think there’s a lot of strength. That is or isn’t so, you know, but it shows so much passion to say, I care so much about the mission. That even if, you know, someone picks on me specifically and and is trying to defend us, like, I will fight it tooth and nail, right? And, and I think that that strength, then it shows so much about the, the level of, of care and and level of the work. But yeah, I mean, ultimately, that’s why I’m so. passionate myself about positioning these nonprofit leaders as, as experts because I’m like, this is how we have to cut through the disinformation because people don’t know. All right, well, there’s some work to do on the, on the public side. So much of, well, uh, you know, I. I see some outside the nonprofit community, but so much of my contact is inside the nonprofit community that’s you you get into your own echo chamber and, uh, you forget what perceptions are and they’re and perceptions are being hurt as the community gets. Defied and dismissed as Ponzi scheme. All right, let’s bring it back to, well, this is all related though. This is all you, you, this is all related to journalism and and media and storytelling because our stories need to overcome the perception of weakness and squishiness. That, um, that the public may feel about our about our work and the, you know, the, the, the, the luxury of it and because they don’t understand what how basic so, so much of the work is. Absolutely. Well that’s why I always say, I always tell clients, arm yourself with data. Arm yourself with data, because, um, if you want to fight this misconception that soft is bad, you need to have the data to back up that soft is good, right? That the work and the passion has had an impact. And mind you, a lot of nonprofits already do that, but you’d be surprised at how many, you know, haven’t like checked their numbers in 2 years. And I’m like, Guys, we need to, we need to Really, really like being meticulous about the data, but this is where storytelling comes in comes in as well, because journalism’s journalism’s journalists really do like the data. So that’s where that really shines. But the general public likes the storytelling. So like there is this component of storytelling in the journalism side, but if we’re talking about public perception, that’s where you need storytelling. Um, and you know, you and I are on social, so we’ve seen when you try to talk to someone and dispel something with data, they’re like, show me your sources or whatever, which is fine, but again, that’s not what’s getting through to the general public. The general public wants stories. So storytelling, I think is essential in a lot of ways, and you can pull different levers for different audiences, right? Like you can tell a story that’s more data heavy for a journalist and tell a story that’s maybe a little more, uh, emotionally driven for social media or for the general public. So that they understand ultimately what the work is. What more do you want folks to know about storytelling? And, and working with media that uh we haven’t talked about yet. Um, I think something that’s really important to note is there will be, you know, moments of, um, where the fire hose opens and then moments where it seems like you’re in a drought. And, um, what I mean by that is we have times where, you know, we, we work on a pitch and then that kind of takes off and a client is getting like 7 interviews and then they’ll start going live. Um, and it feels really exciting. And then that kind of stops for a little bit, and the client is panicking, and they’re like, What does this mean? And the work never stops. Like, we’re always pitching, but that just means, OK, like, you had your 15 minutes in a lot of ways for this segment of media. Let’s focus on social for a little bit. Let’s maybe, let’s see if there’s something you can talk about, or let’s write a blog, or like, what does the newsletter look like? So, the work never stops. It just changes medium. And we all change medium all the time, right? Like, I, I still watch the news. I have subscriptions to newspapers because that is my job and I like it. But, um, sometimes I get tired and I’m like, I need to get on Instagram or I actually want to watch TV. Um, so just as we change our own mediums in our lives, you know, nonprofits need to be agile and, and just and pulling levers at different times. And just because your local news isn’t covering you all the time doesn’t mean there isn’t a story to tell, just, you just have to find where to tell that story. Brilliant. Do you, do you still read um physical newspapers? I do. I do. Yes, and physical magazines. I have a whole stack behind me in that shelf down there, but, um, I grew up. So, like, I have fond memories of waking up every morning and my parents reading the news like physical newspapers at the breakfast table until I do that. Um, and if I can’t, for some reason get the physical edition, or they don’t give send it to me, I have the, the like physical on my iPad. Which is still, you know, and it’s funny because I think that there’s a level of education and PR that is going away, or like a level of knowledge, because I’ll, I’ll tell, you know, interns, Oh, this is above the fold news. And they’re like, What does that mean? And I’m like, right. Um, and it’s still a term that is used, but I think the The um origin is now lost, whereas I’ve had to physically show them a newspaper and say this is above the fold. So yeah, I mean, I think there’s there’s lots of instances of that, you know, lots of things that are. Current and popular now relate to the past. I mean, I, I look at my phone, my cell phone has an image of a, of an old kind of phone that you used to hold up to your, you know, the icon is a phone that you used to hold up to your head and had a wire attached to it, you know, nobody under 40 knows what that means, I don’t think. When we’re seeing a resurgence of physical media, um, so Gen Z and Jan Alpha do want subscription, like physical subscriptions. They want CDs, they want DVDs, like, yeah, yeah, like magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Yes, we’re seeing a resurgence. Because I think um people are tired of the fickleness of like the new subscription models. So, you know, having Netflix, but it goes up $30 every 6 months on a whim, and you don’t own any of those movies and so we’re seeing. Uh, younger generations return to physical things, like tangible things. A lot of them are giving up iPhones for flip phones. A lot of them are getting landlines installed. A lot of them are going back to malls, they miss physical shopping. So, and I’m very, I mean, again, I read physical newspapers, so I’m very pro own the things that you buy. Um, otherwise they go away, right? Like, and they’re never seen again. They’re in the Disney vault forever. So, um, own, you know, we’re getting a VHS because we started collecting VHS’s again and we watch them. So the physical media back, and I think that’s, yes. This is very interesting. All right, I, I, I am not aware of this at all, Fabian. Um, younger folks going back to DVDs for movies and, and physical subscriptions delivered. Newspapers and magazines. Yeah. I think we all got tired of, I think we all got tired of everything being so ephemeral. I understand that’s the same reason that I at 63 years old. Uh, baby boomer, but young, young baby boomer, young. It’s very important to know that. Um, I, I have a collection of a couple 100 DVDs that the movies that if I want to watch them. I’m, I don’t feel like waiting until they show up on, um, on Prime again where I don’t have to pay $4 for them. I wanna watch, I wanna watch. Well, my most recent one was, um, Citizen Kane. I want to watch Citizen Kane tonight, and I don’t want to have to go shopping around for it. And if it’s not on any of the services, then I don’t get to watch. Uh, no, no, I wanna watch it tonight. So that’s one of the couple 100 movies in my collection that are just essential when I want to watch them, I can. When it it goes to this idea, also there’s a little bit of um revisionist history happening with a lot of media where You know, I, I work on the PR side where if I don’t have the physical thing, the links will disappear. So if I don’t clip them, if I don’t get the physical subscription and a client was in a magazine or a newspaper, and they say, Oh, don’t worry, it’s also on digital, that’s cool. But sometimes websites get scrubbed and those links disappear and it’s like it never happened. So that’s, you know, my professional reasoning, but on my, in my personal life. You know, I love film. I’m like a big film person, and I’ve noticed that sometimes films get altered. Like the version on Prime, they changed certain things because they were like, Well, you know, and I get it. Like I understand it, the, the theory of why that’s happening because they’re like, Well, it was made at a certain time and maybe certain things aren’t appropriate, but I’m like, Yes, but also it’s it’s not the same thing. Now, now it’s the Amazon redux version, which, which I’m not at all interested in. No, it’s not the same. Yeah, but of course things have evolved. Times have changed, but the movie, the way it was made, that’s, do you have, can you, is it possible for you to name a favorite, can you name a favorite movie? Or is that, that’s, it’s too hard? No, I can name a favorite movie. Um, I’ve been watching a lot of black and black and white films right now, and, um, I just watched Mildred Pierce and I realized how much I love Mildred Pierce and how much I love that movie, um, and I just rewatched the original, um. The portrait of Dorian Gray, and I forget that that one was, um, it’s black and white, but every time they show they show the portraits in color, and I really love that, uh, because I think it’s a beautiful use of technicolor. I yearn for technicolor personally. I think movies now are too dark. Um, there’s not a lot of saturation or like beautiful colors, and it’s funny because directors say we’re aiming for authenticity, and I’m like, you can be authentic and still have some sort of color saturation. OK, right. If you like, um, picture of Dorian Gray, have you ever seen Sunset Boulevard? Yes. OK, you have, you know it. OK, good, good. Um, all right, very interesting, very interesting information about, uh, you’re talking about Gen Z, I guess, Gen Z and alpha. Which goes after Gen Z, yeah, they, they’re bringing, so there’s a statistic that like 29% of them now shop in store, so they’re reviving malls. We’re going back to mall culture because they want to hang out in a third space, um, but then, you know, there’s other grim statistics like 50% of them say that their career aspirations are to be an influencer, so, you know, balance. Mm. All right. Yeah, um, I’m focusing on the positive. They wanna be, they wanna be with people in real life. They wanna see their friends in real life. They don’t just want a game with them. Right. OK. That’s all very interesting. You wanna leave us with um just like a little wrap up, a little motivation. Reminder about storytelling and its value and local media, you know, tie it all together. You’re the expert. Absolutely nonprofits are doing incredibly important work. And the best way to thrive and survive during these uncertain times is to tell your story. Fabiano Melendez Ruiz. She’s CEO and also co-founder of Refuerzo Collaborative. You’ll find the collaborative at Raffuerzo Collab.com and also on Instagram Rafuerzo Collaborative. Fabian, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing everything. Thanks for revealing some things about uh Gen Z and Alpha that I had no idea of. Thank you very much. It’s a real pleasure. Yes, you too. Thank you. Next week, consciousness and intentionality in work and retirement. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s 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 17, 2023: Communications & Development Teams Working Better Together

 

Misty McLaughlin & Alice HendricksCommunications & Development Teams Working Better Together

Misty McLaughlin and Alice Hendricks close our 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage, as they reveal how these two teams can avoid the common conflicts and tensions, to come together collaboratively. They’re the principals and founders of Cause Craft Consulting.

 

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:34.85] 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 us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of mono aphasia if you uttered the word fail because you missed this week’s show. Here’s Kate, our new associate producer just promoted from announcer with highlights of this week’s show, Kate. Congratulations on your promotion.

[00:01:13.64] spk_1:
Thank you, Tony. I’m happy to be here and now communications and development teams working better together. Misty mclaughlin and Alice Hendricks close our 2023 nonprofit technology conference coverage as they reveal how these two teams can avoid the common conflicts and tensions to come together collaboratively. They’re the principals and founders of cause craft consulting on Tony’s take two.

[00:01:15.88] spk_0:
I finally have someone to blame.

[00:01:20.84] 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.

[00:01:34.89] spk_2:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference in Denver, Colorado, where we

[00:01:49.07] spk_0:
are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology

[00:01:50.04] spk_2:
strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me now at the, at the conference are Misty mclaughlin and Alice Hendricks. They are both principles and co founders of cause craft consulting, Misty. Welcome back.

[00:02:08.19] spk_3:
Welcome to non profit

[00:02:09.04] spk_4:
radio.

[00:02:10.13] spk_2:
Pleasure to have you both co founders, the

[00:02:11.96] spk_3:
principles. Thank

[00:02:18.51] spk_2:
you. Your session is communications and development team working better together. Alright, Alice, since you’re the first time non profit radio, why don’t you give us an overview of what’s, what’s out there between these two teams and why this is important,

[00:02:47.95] spk_4:
you know, tony, it’s a really important topic because over the 20 years that I’ve been in the sector working on both development and communications teams projects from a technology perspective, we’ve noticed that there’s often inherent conflict between those two teams primarily because their mission are very different. Development departments need to raise the money, communications departments need to get the word out and so nobody is doing anything wrong. They’re all living their jobs in the right way, doing the right thing. However, because of the inherent conflict, friction occurs between people and teams often don’t get along. They fight over resources, they don’t have good processes and that can lead to a feeling of discord between staff and organizations.

[00:03:17.40] spk_2:
Interesting. Okay, I, I was very interested to read this uh because I’ve not, I’ve not seen this but I’ve been a consultant for so many years. Um you know, I could see why I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t know about it. I do plan giving consulting. So that’s a narrow niche within one of the two silos we’re talking about, well, hopefully not silos within one of the two teams that we’re talking about, you know, in development. Um So, yeah, I’m not aware of that, Misty, how does this conflict sometimes play

[00:04:06.19] spk_3:
out? Well, Tony, that’s a great question. So, um we have been seeing it for years but then we saw an article a few years ago in the Chronicle of Philanthropy kind of talking about what the implications of this phenomenon are because it is kind of, I think it’s reasonably well acknowledged that this happens sometimes to the point that those two teams don’t work together at all. And so you have kind of two separate pieces and they just decided we’re not going to work together. And then there are times that it’s actually a

[00:04:12.09] spk_2:
disaster. We can’t raise money if we can’t get the message

[00:04:25.54] spk_3:
out. Exactly. And we can’t, and we can’t get the message out if we don’t have that kind of core audience on board. Right? I mean, fundraising represents a significant audience of importance for the organization. So the Chronicle of Philanthropy did a piece about this and then we just continued to see it, continue to see it, see it play out in all these ways. And we decided to do some research about this. So our session is actually kind of presenting some of the results of that research. We heard from 85 organizations about what this looks like in their organizations and how it plays out from, I would say dynamics that are mildly ineffective and involve some minor friction to complete breakdowns.

[00:04:50.06] spk_2:
We’re not talking to each other. We’re not, we’re not going to send your messages or we’re not going to support your message. Support your messaging.

[00:05:14.57] spk_3:
Exactly. Or we’re going to circumvent the approval process and we’re just gonna send something out before you can stop us. And if it contradicts the mission or it contradicts, for example, like a shared messaging hierarchy. Oh, well, as long as I got my message to my audience and it happens on both sides, it’s no one’s at fault. I mean, people really in general, people aren’t devious, they want to work together. They sometimes just can’t figure out exactly how to make that happen. Um And then, you know, often what is just a kind of personal conflict blows up to be something happening more at a team level or more at the departmental level, leaders have a huge role to play in this. And if two leaders between those two departments don’t get along, it’s difficult for staff to kind of figure out how to navigate the

[00:05:39.74] spk_2:
President’s or something. Exactly. Um Is there uh do either of you have, well, you work, you work in the same company, you know, all the same, you have the same clients? I mean, is there a, I don’t mean to focus on the inflammatory. But is there, is there like a story of conflict, maybe, maybe like a good story of conflict and then later on, we could tell the epilogue where it came out, came out. Well, after cause craft consulting intervened. Is there a story like that?

[00:07:14.95] spk_4:
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s lots of stories like that. What we see often dynamics that happen because of this is delayed getting emails out the door or vetting process is just it’s going to take me four days to get back to you to approve the content or choose the photo or complaints about just the lack of collaborative working together. We also often see the leaders might not get along of these two departments, but staff themselves develop and forged relationships of trust amongst each other, which is great. You really want to have good, strong personal 1 to 1 relationships. In fact, in our research results, one of the ways that we saw people who responded, that mitigate the fact that the teams themselves weren’t getting along is that just they made friends with someone on the other team so that they needed a file update or some piece of collateral, they would ask their friend, which is wonderful because you have a trusted friend. But for us as process design consultants, we see that as a dysfunction, we see that as a lack of people really understanding what their role is, who’s supposed to be doing what, what lane they should stay in, what you can expect from someone and another team. So the really the solution to all of this is good, strong leadership, building trust and good process. So everyone is clear about what you’re supposed to do, what happens next and that helps mitigate the conflict. But yeah, I mean, it can be very hard to work in an organization where you don’t get along with others.

[00:08:56.77] spk_3:
One organization that we came across the international relief organization, so obviously a big part of their, their work is fundraising and engagement went in times of crisis, right. So rapid response, emergency response is huge for them. And it’s kind of the core source of their fundraising. Um the development department in the communications department sort of went through this period of years where they just couldn’t figure out how they were going to message in these moments and it would sort of be a simmering tension. Um And when it was a non conflict, exactly, it’s a core function of the organization. And so it would be a kind of a problem, but they would sort of come to some sort of agreement, but then a crisis would happen and they couldn’t get a message out the door in order to be able to fundraise around that message. And so they would miss the moment again and again and again, in these moments that they should have been coming together and pulling together as a team. So in that case, they brought us in to say, how can we get these two teams to work together? We want a message and comply completely different ways, particularly in these moments of crisis, we want to use the channels. So the digital channels, in particular, with this kind of hot spot of, well, who’s going to say one, an email and who gets to press the send button, who gets to have the final word on how we’re going to talk about this. Um And we went through a whole initiative to try and solve this and get them talking to each other. And it was a lot about getting them to use the same language and recognize each other’s expertise that they just come from different worlds. Somebody who responded to our survey said, communications is all about saying what the message that the organization needs to get out and development is all about trying to say what the donors want to hear. And those are just two completely different worldviews. And so when you can put those together and say, where’s the common ground in this? How can we represent our organizational priorities? And at the same time time, really translate that to words and language that really resonates with donors and causes them to act.

[00:09:47.72] spk_2:
Okay. So let’s start to get to some specifics that we can, we can recommend if you are uh suffering the symptoms that the two of you were talking about 55 minutes ago um disharmony and yeah, antagonism, frustration. All right. Um because we’re, we’re, we’re, yeah, we’re striving for harmony. We’re gonna leave disharmony behind and striving for harmony. Alright. Um you talk about a clear message prioritization, so deciding in advance, I guess this instead of me trying to guess Alice or Misty, you’re better. Alice is waving to Misty. So different

[00:10:11.08] spk_4:
in terms of doing a content strategy where it’s clear about what we’re trying to do and having things planned in advance. So we know what, how we will behave in any given situation. It’s governance, it’s a process governor project of understanding when this crisis is going to occur. If you’re an international relief organization and there’s a tsunami, what do you do having those plans already laid out? So it’s clear about what you’re supposed to do, what the other people on what other team is supposed to do. And that’s a process design. In our research we asked, is there any governance over the messaging? And most of the respondents said no, there might be some process or a shared calendar, but we really don’t have a way of knowing how to behave when something happens.

[00:10:40.61] spk_2:
Okay. What does this governance look like?

[00:11:39.72] spk_3:
That’s a great question. So governance can happen at a lot of a lot of different points in working together a lot of different points in that sort of relationship life cycle. So for example, when you have a project, making sure that if those teams are gonna be working together on, for example, a campaign or a long term body of work, or maybe there’s a new programmatic area that’s rolling out. You always start with a tool like a project charter or terms of reference as an international organizations, they call a charter terms of reference. Um But the idea is that you’re so together and you’re saying, okay, how are we going to talk about this? What is our organizational positioning, not just messaging but positioning? What is our relationship to this thing that’s happening part of the social problem? What’s our unique value proposition? And how are we comfortable talking about this as an organization? How are we not? That’s the content strategy piece that Alice was speaking to? What do we think the best channels to do that? And how when something happens around this, when there’s a big news event, when there’s something to respond to, how are are we going to work together? And that’s, you know, forever, how are we going to work together? But in this specific case, on this topic, how are we going to work

[00:11:46.52] spk_2:
together these workflows, workflow process? Exactly. All shared and agreed in

[00:12:32.68] spk_3:
advance. Exactly. And that everybody on the team knows, right. It’s not just an agreement that two leaders make everybody, individual contributors need to understand what they’re supposed to do. How do they feed into the system overall? So that they’re working hand in hand together. And a lot of the time, there are certain teams, for example, digital teams, they are forced to operate between communications and fundraising wherever they sit there, controlling channels that all these different parts of the organization need to use a lot of the time. That’s a starting place for forming some shared working agreements or some principles that are used in moments like this. There are a lot of other tools to. So for example, she calendars so that there is one shared view of every external communication that’s happening, whether it’s a fundraising ask or it’s a media piece coming out or it’s some sort of campaign, broad marketing campaign that there is one shared view and everyone gets a view of the whole of what the audience is seeing instead of a kind of micro departmental specific view,

[00:13:00.50] spk_2:
other other other processes that you can share that. Yeah.

[00:13:24.31] spk_3:
Yeah. So we have a whole list in our presentation of hard tools and I would say something like the calendar and the workflows, those are hard tools. Um There are also soft tools and I will just say for fairness purposes, these soft tools like work in any two departments that are having a breakdown. We were here two years ago where we were online two years ago at NTC talking about fundraising and it teams and frictions between those teams. There are lots of places, obviously, it’s not just limited to development and communications. But some examples of some of the soft tools would be um you know, doing shared planning activities. So doing your annual annual plans together, not doing separate departmental plans but saying, what do we want to accomplish this year? What does that look like?

[00:13:48.11] spk_2:
It’s an outside consultant? So what do I know from collaborative calendars? I thought, I thought this especially communications and fundraising. I would have thought that this was all happening.

[00:15:03.09] spk_4:
Think about even pre internet fundraising departments were doing plan giving major gifts and direct mail and they were doing their own thing and direct mail is kind of its own bespoke thing. It’s still kind of done the same way. It was about 25 30 years ago, right? When you enter, when all of a sudden digital happened, everyone, the the email list is really a file of all the supporters. Communications often feels like there’s an audience about just awareness and brand engagement and marketing and all I want to do is engage those supporters in that way. Development looks at that list and says these are prospects or they’re already donors that I need to feed and nurture. And so part of it was the shared technology often created the conflict around who’s list is who’s who gets to message to who about what message, right? So what is the content of the message that’s a fundraising message versus a educational message or what the organization is? Doing the part of that has been, I think that most of the conflicts are around ownership of the odd, they believe they have different audiences. But supporters of an organization don’t have a hat on and say, I’m a donor or another hat on and say, oh, I’m interested in this content. That’s not how it really works. But that shift is slowly happening and we’re seeing more collaboration around that because of the proliferation of channels that everyone is engaging on social email.

[00:15:52.01] spk_2:
What’s your advice around who should be in these conversations were doing the annual calendar? Is it I imagine it’s not only the two heads of the of each team, but how deep do we go to every, all the members of each, both teams? I mean, our listeners are small and midsize nonprofits. So we’re not talking about 25 person fundraising or communicate, but still there could be six or eight people on each or even combined. What’s your advice around? Who

[00:16:40.93] spk_4:
does this planning? Transparency is super important especially to employees now, you know, where we live in an age where feeling aligned with the mission and your work and coming to work and really having a good experience at work is very helpful. So our advice is usually be as inclusive as possible with everyone who can participate in a planning exercise. Bring them in because you know, we live in an age where people are quitting and quiet, quitting and if you live, if you are working in an environment where there’s tension with other teams, that’s a good sign. That’s a problem. I mean, it might be a retention issue there for organizations. So when you do strategic planning together or redesigning a process or anything that will enable a change to happen, it’s, it’s best to be as inclusive as possible.

[00:16:45.92] spk_2:
Or, or if everyone is not included in the actual meeting, then bringing it back to your team incrementally. It’s not like it’s all going to be decided in a 90 minute meeting, bring it back feedback, representing that feedback to the, to the working group or the

[00:17:01.53] spk_4:
collaboration.

[00:17:10.59] spk_2:
Okay. Okay. Um Anything else we should be talking about work processes planning besides, well, you were starting to talk about soft, you didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t really flesh out. We got digressed, digressed you into more discussion of the hard tools, lackluster, you’re suffering a lackluster host.

[00:18:53.56] spk_3:
There’s a lot, there’s a lot and this is I think where I was going with that was to say these are tools that work in other breakdowns, they work in any breakdown in the human system. But for example, saying we’re taking the whole team away twice a year for one day or two days. And that means development and communications. That might also be a marketing group that might also be a digital team or it might be sub working groups, but we’re going to do these two day intensive retreats where we really try and understand each other’s expertise and map solutions together and those could be processed solutions or that could be campaign planning. It could be anything, it could be exploring new audience opportunities um There and there’s all of the piece we’ve just heard so many clients say this year, you know, this wasn’t working well before the pandemic, but now we’re just broke down by the side of the road. Our ropes have frayed between these two teams and even within our own teams, we’ve on boarded new staff, they’ve never met each other. And so what is it that we’re going to do? So understanding, for example, when you need to pick up the phone, when email is not enough, our slack is not enough, texting is not enough. We need to actually pick up the phone and work together in a human way towards a solution. Um That, that those kinds of pieces as obvious as it sounds, they’re not pieces that people have necessarily incorporated into their ways of working, particularly younger staff. So understanding that there’s a whole range of those kind of tools that you can use um and sort of working norms that you can establish with those teams if you were a leader or even just a manager of a small team. I think one of the most interesting things we found in this survey is that this tends to be less of a problem at small organizations, particularly when you have like a one person development and communications team, you have to work together. You don’t have a choice. This is a problem that happens often with growth and scaling that relationships that once worked. It’s just harder to figure out how to do that. The more humans you have in the

[00:19:17.28] spk_2:
mix retreats. Plus there’s social time built in. What about? It cannot be a soft tulle, just social time that we’re not doing any planning. But we’re doing, I don’t know, you know, one of the mystery, one of the mystery places, solve the murder mystery places or, you know, whatever or just drinks a game room. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Just get to know each other outside our, our marketing and communicate.

[00:20:04.70] spk_3:
This can be very social. But the idea of like after we do something, we have to do some retrospection together, I think that often gets lost in these teams because people are moving so fast, you move from one campaign to the next campaign to the next ask. And now so many teams have the data to sit down together after doing something, even something that maybe didn’t go very well and saying, well, what worked here? Is there something we can learn together and kind of using the data is a way to have an independent objective view. You can all analyze together and say, what does this mean for the future? How do we do it? And you can do those in a fun social way. It doesn’t have to be a boring, sort of like. Now we’re going to do a postmortem and we’re all going to look at it. You can, you can sort of make this a part of the way that you work together.

[00:21:13.56] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice for 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. They’ve got something new. Now, you can accept cashless donations anytime and anywhere with donor box live kiosk, turn your ipad or Android tablet into a kiosk to boost in person giving. And with their new additions to donor box events, you can sell tickets in 43 currencies and ask buyers to cover fees. Put these two together and you’re in person events will take off donor box helping you help others. Donor box dot org. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:21:16.08] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. How, how are you?

[00:21:18.85] spk_1:
I’m doing well. How are

[00:22:58.51] spk_0:
you? Uh, I’m great. I’m great. I’m glad you’re with us. And, uh, and congratulations again on your promotion. That’s so, that’s Kate. She’s not an intern. She’s our associate producer, but I have someone I can blame. Now, I’ve been saying for years, where’s the intern? Yeah, I wish I had an intern every time I make a mistake who would say who writes this crappy copy? I wish I had an intern to blame. Well, I don’t have an intern but I have an associate producer now, I have an associate producer that I can blame. It’s beautiful. So, any flubs? Well, I’ll just leave them at flubs. I won’t go more, uh, I won’t be more extreme with another F word with any, with any, with any flubs. I’ve got an associate producer that is now going to be responsible. I’m thinking this, this is today’s news. I’m just thinking, I’m glad that Kate is not a member of Sag after yet. Otherwise I would have lost her. She’d be, be on the line so we wouldn’t have her but not a member yet. It’s relieving. It’s sort of, there’s a burden lifted from my shoulders that I no longer have to bear the responsibility of my own mistakes. That’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to be responsible for my own flubs any, any longer. Very relieving. That is Tony’s take two.

[00:23:20.68] spk_1:
Not what I was expecting and I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into here but whatever we’ve got just about a butt load more time now. Back to communications and development. Teens working better together. Hmm.

[00:23:23.89] spk_2:
Where else should we go with the topic? We still have some time together. You know, we haven’t

[00:25:24.42] spk_4:
talked about yet when you, if there’s something broken that needs, that needs healing, you know, you think about these conflicts in any, whether it’s between communications and development, between it and development, any kind of processes that are broken and cause frustration and friction within teams. It’s useful to have another event happening and that needs change and then you can overlay process improvement during another change. So a good example that we often find is that if someone is migrating from one software tool to another, it’s a great opportunity because people are going to use a different technology when they come to work every day. The common thing between development departments and communications departments is that they all use digital tools. They use CRM S, they use email marketing tools, they are always tied to technology. And so if the technology is changing, it’s a great opportunity to think about what role do we need doing? What activity in this tool? And then you can take that one step further and say, how should all these roles work together? What’s the workflow? What’s the process here? Who’s supposed to be doing what and what you find in a lot of organizations is there’s a often individuals that they’re just willing to learn everything. So they’ll take on any project and they can use the tools really easily and they end up doing more than their job description, then you have others who just really don’t, don’t have their role clear about what they’re supposed to be doing. So you have an opportunity in something as, as something like a CRM migration. You can also take a look at the staffing and the staffing structure and the processes and improve some of these frictions almost under the guise of as we go through this technology migration. Let’s take a look at how we’re actually doing our work and that’s useful because sometimes new technology has different features. So you need a skill set of a subject matter, expert in a purse skill. How did that person fit in? Which means how to other people’s jobs change. So if you look at the human component around technology

[00:25:40.50] spk_2:
and sometimes technology is not the sole solution, the people in the processes could very well be contributing to the to the problem that we’re looking for the tech to solve.

[00:26:22.77] spk_4:
Usually the text, I would say almost all the time when we hear about a technology problem, the technology is working as intended. It’s a people and process and workflow problem. Sometimes tools are older and they need to be renovated or an organization has developed a new strategy, an organization that mostly does touch engagement or gets corporate gift or grants wants to start a mass marketing program. They need technology that can better accommodate those different strategies. Those are all opportunities to stop and look at process. How are we looking, how are we working together? What organizational structure do we have? Is everybody is or do we have all the right roles in our team? And it’s a great opportunity, we find that a lot of the time we do a lot of change management and process design around the human component of the technology and it really has nothing to do with the tech itself.

[00:26:34.31] spk_2:
Is there another example, Alice that you can share around an event that merits this this kind of attention and planning and introspect. Really, it’s introspection, I think its organizational introspection, something else non tech

[00:27:33.47] spk_4:
oftentimes a new leader will come in so a new leader can come in and have a new idea or a new program. Like the example of now we’re going to start doing a new strategy. So any type of external force of change, if there’s a moment of critical change, that requires the opportunity to take a step back and look at how things are working. You’re absolutely right. It takes a very self actualized executive director to say here, I’m getting complaints from my development director and complaints from my communications director. I need to bring in an outside consultant and figure out a better process so people can work together. That doesn’t often happen. Usually there’s some other pressing external event like a new person comes in, who’s a leader, a new development director and director and executive director who says, wait a minute, this doesn’t seem right. Why are people complaining and not getting along? Let’s take a look at that or it’s a technology thing. It’s like our tools aren’t working together.

[00:27:58.51] spk_2:
Okay. That was a good example. Thank you. Alright, cool. I’ll put you on the spot. Thank you. All right now. You’re cause craft consulting, you’re not flustered. I, I put you on the spot and you rose to the moment. Of course. What is no surprise, surprise? Yeah, that’s right. All right. Um We still have some time if there’s other stuff you want to, we talked through your three learning objectives, stated, learning objectives for the, for the session. But what else, what else you’re gonna share with folks that we haven’t talked about? Maybe we

[00:28:11.46] spk_3:
could talk a little bit about our survey results. Um I think we learned some

[00:28:14.54] spk_2:
more motivation type. Okay.

[00:28:57.93] spk_3:
Well, one of the things we asked about values beyond motivation, beyond motivation. Uh the subject of structure because we were, we were curious about and we have observed a lot. It’s not a perfect structure that perfect organizational way of structuring this work of these teams that works well every time. But what we really noticed is there are big differences in the way that these breakdowns happen that are a result of structure. So when you have a development in the communications team and one department, it’s not that that’s a perfect structure. It’s just harder to have a lot of conflict where people don’t work together, right? But as an organization grows, you tend to have two separate functions, people specialize and they pull apart. That’s one moment where a lot of conflicts can happen. Um where digital lives in an organization that’s a big differentiator in terms of. So if digital lives in communications. Sometimes there’s a real breakdown between development and calms. Digital are the ambassadors that go back and forth and the emissaries between those teams and are the ones that are trying to connect the ropes. Even when those

[00:29:17.95] spk_2:
earlier you said something similar. Yeah,

[00:29:27.92] spk_4:
they have to be the mitigators, you know, they have to, they’re getting the pressure from both sides and they actually have to serve both departments. So oftentimes the attitude and approach the digital team can be one of either exacerbating conflict or bringing people together.

[00:29:32.93] spk_2:
What about the existence or not? Of the same leader over two different teams. So, but they’re not the same team, they’re two separate teams but same director or vice president. Does that, does that make a difference in terms of likelihood or not of conflict? That’s a good

[00:29:57.92] spk_3:
question. I would say it depends sometimes that leader themselves really has a career that aligns with one function or another. We’ve seen, I have an exam recently, the department that its development in communications, but the leader is really a long term career fundraiser and communications. A little left out. It’s like kind of a child that has the parent that’s really aligned with the other child. So if you have a strong leader who equally invested in both sides and really thinks from the perspective of both sides that actually can work very well as a structure, we’ve seen a lot of that

[00:30:28.41] spk_2:
interesting because they come from a background of one of the other. So they’re going to be much more fluent with one function.

[00:30:51.56] spk_3:
Exactly. As something else we saw that I thought was really fascinating. Is we asked how many of these organizations have a dedicated marketing or engagement team that’s not exactly calm and it’s not exactly development. It’s a marketing function and a huge portion. I think almost 70% said that they have marketing teams when we would have these conversations 10 years ago. Marketing, it’s still a very dirty word in organizations. If you said marketing people would say, well, I’m a nonprofit. We don’t do marketing that’s changed hugely railed

[00:31:14.88] spk_2:
against that, but I always bristled against that, but it has changed, it has changed marketing and promotion. Now we talk about promotion. Promotion used to be sales promotion, like selling lay’s potato chips at a point of sale, you know, in a supermarket that was sales promotion. Uh You know, we’ve, we’ve there are things we can learn from the for profit sector, right? Everything corporate is not dirty. Exactly and marketing and promotion, I think are

[00:31:41.11] spk_3:
examples and marketing. A lot of those teams see themselves as engagement functions as thinking across all the ways that an organization might engage and thinking about the full funnel, the kind of full end to end relationship even for non donors, like volunteers, activists. Um lots of other folks, service recipients even, how do they play into the way the organization needs to be engaging them. Well, the

[00:32:46.09] spk_4:
for profit world has kind of nailed this with the idea of customer experience management. Now you have big companies that have CX. So when you think about the donor experience or the supporter experience, thinking about it, from that perspective, it’s about the curation of an entire holistic experience. The for profit world has nailed that when you, it’s, it’s important to actually for all of the teams to consider their audience as one audience. And how do we, what do we want that experience of our audience to be? And that like I said before, you don’t put your hat on as a donor and a hat on to someone else. So thinking from all of the new knowledge we have from customer experience management, applying that to how we’re going to engage our supporters. We have seen organizations combine their development and communications teams like you said before into a public engagement, um External affairs, other names of teams that have a single leader, the benefit of that is also there’s a single source of making a decision or setting priorities, which is really helpful to have right now, the teams have competing priorities and there’s no arbitrator besides maybe the executive director or the executive committee to say yes, we’re going to focus on this and we’re not going to focus on that. We talked

[00:33:07.22] spk_2:
about message prioritization, okay. Right. Single single decision maker. Alright. Anything you want to leave us with, I let Alice open. So Mr, you want to leave us with something harmonious and uplifting, empowering

[00:33:17.27] spk_4:
the harmonious and uplifting, encouraging,

[00:33:19.09] spk_2:
encouraging, and empowering.

[00:33:57.97] spk_3:
Well, one of the things that gave me great relief in analyzing the survey results was to realize that I think most people know that these two teams actually have more in common than many of the other teams in the organ. There are some natural points of harmony built in. They both really care about results and outcomes. They are very focused on reaching audiences. They think from outside in and not just an inside out perspective. And by that, I mean, they think about these audiences and what do these audience needs. They’re curious about how to reach them, they want to message right and represent the organization, well, they want to get it right. And they see themselves as bro the work of the organization to the world at large, making it relevant and meaningful. So there’s a ton of common ground. I think that just gets obscured a lot of the time by these persistent thorny dynamics. And when you can help people to see the common ground, people are relieved and excited to work together almost universally. We’ve seen that over and over again. The will is there people just sort of need to be given permission and shown the way

[00:34:26.58] spk_2:
Mr mclaughlin Alice Hendricks, both principles and co founders of cars, craft consulting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you Alice and thank you for being with nonprofit radio coverage of 23 nt. See where we are not sponsored by lay’s potato chips. Even though I gave them a shout out, we are sponsored, in fact by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us

[00:35:02.90] spk_1:
next week giving circles with the woman who popularized them. Sarah Llewellyn. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:35:06.21] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:35:25.10] 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 associate producer, Kate martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:35:51.75] 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 January 16, 2023: Overcome Common Communications Conundrums

 

Erica Mills BarnhartOvercome Common Communications Conundrums

It’s time to change the way you think about marketing, says Erica Mills Barnhart. You’ll make it more successful, find your true believers, and have more fun. She’s CEO of Claxon.

 

 

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[00:01:22.42] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite he abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of a phone. Yah. If I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show overcome common communications conundrums, it’s time to change the way you think about marketing says Erica Mills Barnhart, you’ll make it more successful, find your true believers and have more fun. She’s ceo of klaxon On Tony’s take two planned giving accelerator here is overcome common communications conundrums. It’s a pleasure to welcome Erica Mills Barnhart to non profit radio Erica is a communication expert, speaker, author and coach. She’s founder and Ceo of Klaxon focused on teaching companies and leaders how to use words to change workplaces and the world. Erica also serves as an associate teaching professor at the University of Washington. She’s at Erica Mills barn and the company is at klaxon hyphen communication dot com. Welcome e M B

[00:01:37.34] spk_1:
Thank you Tony for having me.

[00:01:39.41] spk_0:
Pleasure to have you. Happy new year.

[00:01:41.33] spk_1:
Happy new year back at you.

[00:02:23.35] spk_0:
Thank you. I hope you enjoyed holidays and time off very much. Let’s talk, let’s talk marketing because this, this is your, this is, this is your world and because you think about this stuff every day and others of us only get to think of it when uh things are not going right, we’re, we don’t feel like we’re, we’re having a struggling with 8.5 by 11 inch blank piece of digital paper and we feel like we have to fill it and it’s not flowing? And we feel like we’re not we’re not reaching our audiences. Maybe not in the right places, maybe not in the right ways. Were people have questions that we feel like they shouldn’t have they, people should know all this. You know, I think all this gives rise to us the rest of us thinking about marketing, but uh, you know, trying to piece it together and go as well. So I know you can uh allay our concerns

[00:02:41.93] spk_1:
and

[00:02:43.64] spk_0:
it doesn’t

[00:02:44.26] spk_1:
have to be that complicated.

[00:02:45.96] spk_0:
Thank you. Thank you. I I feel the same way about the work that I planned giving. Keep it simple. Thank you. All right, that’s enough of me talking. So you want us to change the way we think about marketing? What do you want us to do?

[00:03:00.16] spk_1:
Um I want you to start with the what? Rather than the how,

[00:03:04.21] spk_0:
here’s what I mean.

[00:03:10.17] spk_1:
So you gave, you gave a beautiful example, tony Um I mean years with a blank piece of paper, but oftentimes when we’re thinking about marketing, we go straight to like

[00:03:15.87] spk_0:
should

[00:03:16.21] spk_1:
we be on twitter? Should I be on linkedin? Should be on instagram? Should we do a newsletter? Should be online. But those are all

[00:03:21.69] spk_0:
house

[00:03:27.31] spk_1:
and there are I mean so many house, that’s the wrong question to ask

[00:03:29.45] spk_0:
first.

[00:03:30.79] spk_1:
You first want to ask, what does success look

[00:03:33.55] spk_0:
like? What

[00:03:34.94] spk_1:
are the results that we are looking to achieve? What are the outcomes that we

[00:03:38.58] spk_0:
want? Right?

[00:03:50.20] spk_1:
And these, you know, you want them to align with your organizational goals. Marketing and communication doesn’t means to an end, right? Let’s let’s start there. So it’s always a means to an end, Right? So how is it gonna

[00:03:51.26] spk_0:
support your

[00:03:52.41] spk_1:
organization? So always start with the what and then the

[00:03:55.13] spk_0:
who, who

[00:03:56.48] spk_1:
are you, who do you need to

[00:03:58.24] spk_0:
reach and

[00:03:59.48] spk_1:
engage with in order to achieve

[00:04:02.57] spk_0:
the

[00:04:19.85] spk_1:
goals that you set for your marketing, once those two things are answered and your real clear and don’t move on, like the best thing that you can do for yourself and your team, your organization is to like hold off on the how conversation until you’re what you’re who are very clear. And then, and the reason it’s so important to do in that order is because if you don’t, if you aren’t clear on who your target audience is, you’ll sort of project into the house, like, well, I love an annual report, I’m making this up, Right. Um How about we do an annual

[00:04:32.89] spk_0:
report.

[00:04:34.27] spk_1:
Well, if your target audience is, you know, gen z,

[00:04:38.40] spk_0:
they’re

[00:04:56.67] spk_1:
probably not looking for a, you know, multi page annual report, they’re looking for something really different. So it mitigates projecting your own personal preferences into your strategies and your tactics. So what, who, how, that’s what I call the Klaxon method? What, who, how what who, how always grounded in the UAE the bigger picture y for the organization, but also, you know, with what does success look like?

[00:05:01.60] spk_0:
Why is that important?

[00:05:02.78] spk_1:
Why is that goal important to the organization? Right? Who’s your target audience? Why are those

[00:05:07.40] spk_0:
people so

[00:05:08.72] spk_1:
important to you in the work that

[00:05:09.80] spk_0:
you’re doing?

[00:05:10.81] spk_1:
Right? So always what who, how backed by the way? Um And that keeps things

[00:05:36.55] spk_0:
simple. Which which I’m grateful for. Let’s let’s let’s unpack some of that. Um Marketing is a means to an end. You said it’s you’ve heard you say somewhere it’s in service to your mission. Alright. Let’s let’s let’s start with say a little more about why, why this is merely but an important means to an end.

[00:06:03.64] spk_1:
Yeah. Because if you’re not, if you’re not clear on that, like you’re sort of saying the beginning and I appreciate it. It’s like marketing can be a little existential, right? There’s a lot of the sense of like, I should know what I’m doing. We should, you know, we should be on Tiktok, we should be on all these things, right? It can be kind of like a fear guilt, shame based activity, right? Um

[00:06:07.19] spk_0:
And that’s

[00:06:07.75] spk_1:
when you’re just doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff because you know that you should do it, but you’re not quite, you know, like this, like what you were talking about? Like, I know I should be doing things, but I don’t really want to do. And I know, right. I just want to release that for people in the way. One of the ways there’s a few ways, but one of the ways that you do that is by really reminding yourself like doing this just for the sake

[00:06:27.75] spk_0:
of it, right?

[00:06:40.76] spk_1:
We’re not posting on Tiktok if you decide or linkedin, we’re not putting on newsletters or annual reports. We’re not doing any of that just for the sake of it. We’re doing it because it’s a service storm mission. It is in support of our mission. And that just, you know what I found because I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, it can really calm people down. It can help you get grounded and then you can get that clarity and focus going

[00:06:54.14] spk_0:
alright. You also said start with outcomes. What does, what does success look like? Right. All right. So what are some of these, could you give us some like, sample outcomes? Is it, is it fundraising related? Is it, uh, engagement on linkedin related or maybe it’s all that, you know, give us some sample outcomes to, to start with,

[00:07:21.65] spk_1:
um, in for nonprofits, there’s sort of a hit parade. Right? So fundraising for sure. Um, programs definitely, um, sometimes can be internal engagement also

[00:07:27.57] spk_0:
by the way.

[00:07:28.53] spk_1:
Um, if we’re talking internal, but I’m going to keep the conversation sort of focused external. But I just want to note that, right? Sometimes you actually need internal marketing in order for the external activities. Marketing to be

[00:07:38.44] spk_0:
Successful. And internal internal outcome might be 50% reduction in turnover. Exactly like that.

[00:07:48.07] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s a simple

[00:07:49.30] spk_0:
minded ones. I’m scratching the surface, simple minded, you know. But for

[00:08:08.12] spk_1:
non profits, it’s always gonna be fundraising and programs. Right? But there’s a third that actually it will surface uh, initially, which is raising awareness and when I work with clients

[00:08:12.42] spk_0:
so

[00:08:26.27] spk_1:
mushy. Exactly, tony It’s like very amorphous also. So that’s fine. Oftentimes you do need to raise awareness, but you’re going to add two words raising awareness. So that dot dot dot right?

[00:08:28.11] spk_0:
It’s

[00:08:28.39] spk_1:
Fine to raise awareness, but it needs again raising awareness. So that what so that you bring in, you know, more donors so that you increase your retention rate, you know, for existing donors. So that you attract 100 new clients or custom, you know, whatever it is. It’s, it’s like the means to an end to the means to an end that is marketing.

[00:08:47.87] spk_0:
Yeah, right. We have to hold our feet to the fire, raise awareness. Okay. 11 person in the community now knows that we exist who didn’t know. Okay, we raised awareness. We’re done.

[00:08:58.39] spk_1:
And you know what I want to say. Get

[00:09:01.02] spk_0:
away with that.

[00:09:01.99] spk_1:
The balance of staff versus volunteers or board members for your, for your podcast listeners. But the people who are, who offer raising awareness as a goal in and of itself, mainly board members.

[00:09:15.55] spk_0:
It’s

[00:09:16.61] spk_1:
often board members. Um but this comes from a from a beautiful place. So I also want to acknowledge that they’re so excited to work with the organization, right? Like of course they want people to know about,

[00:09:27.85] spk_0:
you know, we

[00:09:28.39] spk_1:
want more people to know. So I want to say it comes from a really beautiful place that we want to honor that, right? And and then also go to that next step, because that’s where things get strategic.

[00:09:45.21] spk_0:
Okay, okay, thank you. Alright, so, so we’re starting with our objectives. Um you you want us to have objectives that are objective neutral?

[00:09:50.75] spk_1:
Yes,

[00:09:51.61] spk_0:
talk about that.

[00:10:10.09] spk_1:
Yeah, well, so I distinguish between goals and objectives and it’s, you know, it doesn’t really matter, it’s a little nitpicky, but I have found and I have a podcast, communicate for good. And one of the early episodes is dedicated entirely to this topic, which is um I find it helpful if you’re semantically

[00:10:13.22] spk_0:
tidy,

[00:10:27.85] spk_1:
right? So that you have organizational goals and then you have marketing objectives or communication objectives and it just sort of reinforces that hierarchy of marketing and communication being in service to the organization and the organization’s mission. Um

[00:10:28.56] spk_0:
you know, and we’re here to talk about the klaxon method, so that’s fine.

[00:10:32.78] spk_1:
So we’re

[00:10:33.97] spk_0:
gonna we’re differentiate between objectives and goals. Starting with starting with objectives?

[00:10:43.92] spk_1:
Well, no, you would start with goals, organizational goals, organizational goals don’t move onto marketing. Let’s say

[00:10:47.11] spk_0:
that like

[00:10:48.41] spk_1:
if you’re not clear on your organizational goals, no marketing for you yet.

[00:10:52.49] spk_0:
And

[00:10:53.18] spk_1:
again, that can be simple too. I’m sure you’ve had other folks on here. You talked about this. You don’t need to be complicated to be effective with your goals, but you gotta have those. Otherwise you can’t move on to the marketing objectives because you don’t

[00:11:05.23] spk_0:
know, right?

[00:11:14.47] spk_1:
You don’t know what you’re being in service to. So, um, and yeah, you want the objectives to be something you can measure. Like did we make progress over, you know, a quarter or a year or whatever your time horizon is. Did we make progress? Did we increase

[00:11:21.13] spk_0:
retention? Did

[00:11:29.95] spk_1:
we grow acquisition? Do we have more donors? Right. Um, so it has to be something that you can measure. And oftentimes

[00:11:31.67] spk_0:
we

[00:11:32.42] spk_1:
resist in the nonprofit space getting this

[00:11:35.85] spk_0:
concrete right.

[00:11:43.15] spk_1:
We’re like, well, you know, we’ll just increase retention. Let’s stick with that because increasing retention is fantastic. But we don’t say by what percent right? Or by how much? Um, and this, what I find most often is that’s a fear of failure.

[00:11:53.77] spk_0:
Oh yeah. Right. We don’t,

[00:11:56.26] spk_1:
if

[00:11:57.31] spk_0:
we put a number to it now, we’re now we’re gonna be accountable at the end of whatever our time period is and you know, there’s the acronym for smart goals specific measurable. Is it attainable achievable is realistic

[00:12:14.20] spk_1:
and time and

[00:12:15.37] spk_0:
time bound. Right, okay. smart goals and that, that’s, you know, folks, you know, our listeners just google smart goals, You’ll find a million articles on

[00:12:25.38] spk_1:
smart what smart

[00:13:08.49] spk_0:
stands for and what smart means and etcetera. So, um, yeah, but right. But if we’re not gonna, but we’re not gonna be realistic and, and hold our own selves, hold ourselves in our organization accountable. You know what I mean? We’re supposed to be running this thing like a business. It’s a nonprofit business, but it is a business. I’m not saying, I don’t mean business pejoratively like cutthroat, but you know, we’re running a business here. We have employees, we have people who are serving or counting on us for, for for what we deliver. We have people who support us. They don’t necessarily buy things, but they support us with their time and their money more, You know, so, so I believe it is a business and it should be

[00:13:11.23] spk_1:
corporations, right? Nonprofits are, are technically corporations. Yeah,

[00:13:26.57] spk_0:
they are, they’re just non profit corporations. So, so, so don’t be afraid to hold yourself accountable. And, and so this leads to something that you believe that failure should be, not, not feared, but you know, accepted. And so, so, so don’t be afraid. I’m gonna give you a second. Just so folks, you know, don’t be afraid to set goals and objectives that are measurable. So, you know, whether you’ve achieved them because failure is not, um, I’m not gonna say failure is not an option, because that’s not true, failure should be, should be accepted and maybe even embraced, you learn something,

[00:13:59.38] spk_1:
it’s all in and what you do with the failure, right? I mean, it’s it’s, it’s somewhat inevitable, like we were all coming through covid, right? We tried all sorts of things, like we just had kind of had a failure fest in a lot of ways over the past few years and if you look at like how the sheer volume of things we learned,

[00:14:15.61] spk_0:
that’s

[00:14:18.03] spk_1:
success, that’s winning, right? Like failure has such a negative connotation and I do want to unpack this a little bit because I can imagine that that you have listeners and they’re like, that is not an option in my organizational culture, it’s not safe to fail. So this is, this is a leadership issue, issue in a culture

[00:14:34.67] spk_0:
issue, right?

[00:14:45.07] spk_1:
Like we have to lay this firmly at the feet of the leadership, that is where this culture either is or is not created. Um, and when, when, when failure isn’t an option just to play that out a little bit, people play

[00:14:49.72] spk_0:
small, they’re

[00:14:51.03] spk_1:
doing the same things over and over again, right? You actually become less effective over time,

[00:14:55.64] spk_0:
small, safe,

[00:14:56.80] spk_1:
safe. This is how we do it. And you know, this is how we do it a shorthand for, this feels safe to me,

[00:15:02.68] spk_0:
right?

[00:15:04.01] spk_1:
So, so a piece of this

[00:15:05.15] spk_0:
is

[00:15:08.38] spk_1:
psychological safety, this feels safe to me, right? And so you have to bring great intentionality as a leader when I’m coaching, you know, I do a lot of coaching one on one with leaders and with teams about one on one. We talk about failure a lot, like, because you have to start with what’s what’s your personal relationship with

[00:15:21.36] spk_0:
failure? Because

[00:15:27.70] spk_1:
failure feel safe to you, because if it doesn’t feel safe to you, well, that’s first step for you, right? You can’t be up there pontificating about like sailors, great, we’re gonna embrace it and meanwhile you’re like, oh my God, please, I never wanna fail. Um that’s not gonna work. You know, you have to unpack that. Like, what is your subconscious mind telling

[00:15:40.73] spk_0:
you, what

[00:15:41.00] spk_1:
are your beliefs about failure? What was modeled for you growing

[00:15:44.36] spk_0:
up around

[00:15:49.17] spk_1:
failure? You know, you have to do that inner work first that inner game, and then when you’re like, okay, I see the positivity and failure, then you can bring that forward um

[00:15:56.96] spk_0:
as

[00:15:57.51] spk_1:
a leader, but really this is about culture and it’s about leadership.

[00:16:28.35] spk_0:
Yeah. And I would say, you know, if if you’re in a place where failure is not at least accepted, I mean, we’re not gonna we’re not cheering for it, but at least accepted. You know, it may not be the right place if you because because it is it’s a place that’s playing like you said Erica it’s a place that’s playing safe and small, and, you know, we have enormous problems. Whatever whatever work you’re doing from education to animal welfare to the environment or whatever religion, whatever you’re doing, we’ve got a lot to do and playing safe and small is not going to get us there.

[00:16:48.96] spk_1:
Yeah. But you know what’s interesting tony is when we look at both like inter internal to the sector, but also external constraints to the sector. Um, but I just always wanna acknowledge when we talk about failure as it relates to nonprofits and they’re very

[00:16:53.60] spk_0:
world

[00:17:17.46] spk_1:
changing work. Like donors are not always super jazzed about the idea of failure. So there are some legitimate external constraints, funding constraints, largely funding related or partnership related, but mainly funding is what we’re talking about here, where it’s like, no, we’re not, no, that’s not on the table. And so you have to, you know, really figure that out for you. You know, look at your funding sources and risk tolerance and failure tolerance as it relates to those and then figure out like how can, how can you create a funding portfolio that does allow you to take risks. It does allow you to fail. Um, so I just always want to acknowledge, you know, uh, you know, listeners, if if you’re getting funding from pretty traditional sources that have like where that’s not an option. I just want to acknowledge that that’s a dynamic.

[00:17:42.67] spk_0:
Okay. Yeah. And I’m, I’m not disagreeing.

[00:17:46.40] spk_1:
Yeah, I don’t, I just never want to come off as like failure and embrace it and say hooray and whatnot. You know, like given given all the variables that leaders are dealing with. I just I want to acknowledge it’s not it’s it’s it’s messy, right? It’s

[00:18:25.62] spk_0:
part of that also is messaging though the way you, the way you go back to those funders and and and and even not only after the fact, but before before, you know, right before here’s something we’re going to try and launch this program and we’re gonna try to reach 2500 people in the next year, you know, but acknowledging that that’s that’s a stretch, you know? So I mean there’s there’s messaging, maybe it’s even marketing involved in all those in the whole process

[00:18:41.95] spk_1:
relationship building, right? So if from the I would hope like when I, you know, was in development that one, um you know, especially with institutional funders, um you know, you have the conversation up front, so are we gonna set big audacious goals together

[00:18:49.82] spk_0:
and if

[00:18:50.61] spk_1:
so we might not achieve them. What are we gonna do when we don’t achieve

[00:18:54.14] spk_0:
them? Right,

[00:19:08.68] spk_1:
Like and having those conversations upfront, what are we gonna do if we do? Because that’s what we’re going for, what are we gonna do if we if we don’t right? And where the course corrections gonna gonna come along the way, you know, I started talking about this idea of micro communication, which is, we tend to think about like big picture communication and big picture messaging and you know, a lot of my work with clients is

[00:19:17.25] spk_0:
developing,

[00:19:38.44] spk_1:
I call them identity statements but mission vision values, purpose statements right? Like you nail that and the rest of your messaging becomes so much easier, right? It just all closed. That’s lead domino. So we always start there. Um, so rightfully so big big ticket, big ticket messaging and communication elements. But increasingly, especially given what happened to our brains and our essential nervous systems with Covid,

[00:19:44.63] spk_0:
I’m

[00:19:45.16] spk_1:
really working with clients about being more attentive and intentional about micro communication. So what’s happening in between the big moments? How are you creating that

[00:19:54.10] spk_0:
connectivity?

[00:19:58.74] spk_1:
Right? And this can be very light touches doesn’t need to be a big deal. But like

[00:19:59.99] spk_0:
what? Give an example of what you’re talking about

[00:20:02.56] spk_1:
text message, right? Like hey, just checking in. We had a, we had a, we had a big day today, you know, we had our, you know, 100 people signed up just wanted you to know, you know, pop them a quick email, we don’t have to like wait rather than waiting for the formal report,

[00:20:16.67] spk_0:
you

[00:20:16.86] spk_1:
know, share the winds as they come in. And even if it’s just, you know, like I’m very attentive to my instincts. Um, you know, your gut, you know, people are like, oh, it’s like, well it actually is millennia

[00:20:28.67] spk_0:
of

[00:20:29.11] spk_1:
information that we all have inside of us. So I’m pretty

[00:20:31.46] spk_0:
attentive anytime

[00:20:32.66] spk_1:
somebody pops on my radar,

[00:20:34.41] spk_0:
follow your instinct. But I’m a huge believer in following your instincts,

[00:20:38.18] spk_1:
right? Like it’s telling you something

[00:20:40.91] spk_0:
anytime

[00:20:45.45] spk_1:
someone just pops on my radar and this is multiple times a day I stop what I’m doing and I pop, it depends on how they like to be communicated with, right? But it could be email. It could be a text, it could be facebook messenger, you know, whatever it’s gonna be. And I just say, hey, you popped on my radar.

[00:20:56.25] spk_0:
Uh, you

[00:20:57.20] spk_1:
know, I’m thinking of

[00:20:59.35] spk_0:
you, you

[00:21:00.20] spk_1:
can do that. You know, in a relationship with your funders and your donors as well. Like I think we’re in a place where a little more humanness is allowable. Um, and actually craved.

[00:21:12.03] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:21:12.32] spk_1:
And also just from an internal communication perspective, there was an article recently based in Harvard Business review based on some research at the University of pennsylvania. And it was about what staff employees are looking for from their managers. And

[00:21:28.32] spk_0:
um, it was

[00:21:31.29] spk_1:
micro understanding. So this is what got me think about micro communication, right? And micro understanding meaning I don’t want you in my business. I don’t want you to be micromanaging me, I want you to understand me. Don’t you understand what happens for me over the course of my

[00:21:44.41] spk_0:
day because

[00:21:51.65] spk_1:
we are remote or hybrid for the most part, um, definitely not going away. Don’t you understand what that means for me and to me,

[00:21:54.76] spk_0:
so that

[00:21:55.14] spk_1:
was a really interesting evolution and and uh and an invitation for leaders to really be thinking what does micro understanding look like? And then my next step with that is and what is micro

[00:22:05.26] spk_0:
communication based

[00:22:06.98] spk_1:
on that? Right?

[00:22:07.97] spk_0:
All more humanness to like

[00:22:09.81] spk_1:
that Humanness,

[00:22:51.74] spk_0:
more humanity. So then um All right, so uh audacious go well, we talked to them about, you know, having audacious goals. Not not that goes back to you know, not playing small and safe and no, and that’s where this yes, our our digression on failure and micro communications came when I said it may not be the right place for you. What I meant was you know, if if leadership is not accommodating at you know, at least accommodating being audacious willingness to fail. Uh you know, then you have to evaluate whether that culture can change and if you’re not sure that it can evaluate whether that culture is the right place for you. That so that that was you know, I’ve

[00:23:02.98] spk_1:
also worked with um you know, leaders who

[00:23:08.55] spk_0:
were they

[00:23:09.18] spk_1:
are genuinely risk averse,

[00:23:10.74] spk_0:
but

[00:23:24.71] spk_1:
that does not, that doesn’t fire them up. It makes it very uncomfortable, right? So I just wanna say on the other side of it, you know, just is it a culture fit for you can be anywhere along that continuum. But I I love the question right? Like is this a fit for me? Right? I feel like so often

[00:23:30.51] spk_0:
we’re

[00:23:31.33] spk_1:
like, you know, when I, when I teach at the university of Washington in the oven school, the public policy and governance, um when I talk to my students and I mainly work with graduate students, so they’re getting their master’s degrees, They’re like rock stars, they’re amazing, they’re just amazing. And they get to the point in the, you know, in their time and they’re interviewing for jobs. And I always say to them, is

[00:23:51.91] spk_0:
when

[00:24:03.67] spk_1:
they’re making you the offer, you you you are in the power position, ask for what you want because it’s like, oh my God, they want me and then you don’t negotiate because you’re like, oh, they, they like me. Oh, and I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You hold all the cards in that

[00:24:09.85] spk_0:
moment.

[00:24:10.69] spk_1:
They don’t want to go through that again. You hold all the cards and it’s sort of similar like,

[00:24:16.40] spk_0:
and we’re seeing this

[00:24:24.37] spk_1:
with quiet quitting and, you know, a lot of other movements. It’s like this openness, like maybe this isn’t what I want. And so there’s a lot of, you know, downsides and tough stuff happening right now obviously,

[00:24:29.74] spk_0:
but I think of

[00:24:51.07] spk_1:
bright, I mean I’m I’m a total optimist by nature. Um so I’m always looking for the silver lining in the bright spots while acknowledging the darkness um is this for me, is this what I want? Is this who I want to be? Is this where I want to be? You know, like there’s just a different and that that’s like authoring your life and I want to, I just want to invite listeners to like, this is your one, this is it, Right?

[00:24:57.13] spk_0:
Uh

[00:24:58.55] spk_1:
and you’re wonderful.

[00:24:59.98] spk_0:
And

[00:25:08.49] spk_1:
so are you offering your life, are you like making it happen for you as opposed to like that? It’s happening to me, stance is demoralizing and again, from a leadership perspective, are you inviting that sense

[00:25:12.76] spk_0:
of,

[00:25:13.71] spk_1:
is this for me? How is this for me? Um and encouraging

[00:25:17.32] spk_0:
that regardless

[00:25:18.75] spk_1:
of your risk tolerance by the way?

[00:26:28.28] spk_0:
Right. Right. I love the idea of making the life that you want, not defaulting into the life that lots of other people have made before you just because you know, and that might be taking a year or two off before, you know, to do, to do volunteer work or to travel and you know, there there are myriad different ways. It involves your personal relationships, your, your professional relationships, your relationship with family. I mean turn this into a therapy session, but intentional about the life that you make for yourself and a significant part of that, although it seems like maybe in declining proportion, but still significant is your work. The work you do. The reason I say that maybe in declining proportion is because since the pandemic, I think work has become less significant to large swaths of, I don’t know about the world. So I’ll just focus on our country. I think work has become less or

[00:26:39.98] spk_1:
at least differently significant. Like the way I’m experiencing it with my clients and you know, friends and colleagues, it’s differently significant, which isn’t good or bad, but it does feel different, right? Like it’s holding different space in people’s lives. And I think part of that is the sense of agency that’s

[00:26:46.61] spk_0:
like maybe it doesn’t

[00:26:47.85] spk_1:
have to look like this. And also by the way, you can honor,

[00:26:51.11] spk_0:
you

[00:26:59.26] spk_1:
could like, you know, I’m a woman. I like there are women who carved the path so that I could do what I want to do and I honor

[00:27:00.05] spk_0:
that while

[00:27:01.57] spk_1:
doing things differently and while doing them on my own terms, like you can hold both of that and I think sometimes it can feel a little like, but this is how insert person who’s important to you or who you respect, did things you can respect and honor that

[00:27:15.20] spk_0:
and do

[00:27:16.59] spk_1:
it your own way.

[00:27:17.36] spk_0:
Yeah, we can hold both these

[00:27:18.73] spk_1:
thoughts. You can hold both

[00:27:29.36] spk_0:
of course. Alright, well I made us digress from uh strict marketing communication. So let’s let’s go a little back. Um true believers. We have you want us to find true believers, help us. What are what are, who are our true believers and or what are they in the abstract And how do we find our

[00:27:59.69] spk_1:
okay, so in the world for marketing, generally speaking, in particular for nonprofits? There are three types of body of people in your audience is okay. And I’m not using these terms in their religious sense, using them sort of neutrally. Okay believers, agnostics and atheists. So believers believe what you believe. If you are on a mission to eradicate extreme global poverty, they’re like, yes to that. If it’s too, you know, spayed and neutered dogs and their yes to that, right? They believe what you believe. Agnostics might believe what you believe.

[00:28:14.55] spk_0:
Um, but

[00:28:15.88] spk_1:
you need to persuade them a little bit, right? Maybe it’s not top of their list or maybe it’s like, how you do it or whatever, but they’re they’re removable, right? You can, you can,

[00:28:23.26] spk_0:
you

[00:28:25.06] spk_1:
know, so you might think of them as like uninitiated believers.

[00:28:28.81] spk_0:
Okay.

[00:28:34.04] spk_1:
But they’re they’re they’re in the middle and then atheists don’t believe what you believe. And um, so one thing that comes up is it feels fantastic to convert an atheist, right? Like any time I do a big public talk and we talk about this, there’s always somebody who never believes, like, yeah, but there was this guy and you know, he was, he was against us. He was again, you know, we really kept working on him and now he’s a, you know, he’s a donor. My question back is that’s great. But what was the opportunity cost of converting one? Atheist versus connecting with 1000

[00:29:01.34] spk_0:
believers

[00:29:02.58] spk_1:
like which one? Which one is advancing your mission more dramatically? I mean, except in the world of politics, I just wanna, that’s the caveat, that’s its own little different things.

[00:29:12.90] spk_0:
Um, it’s

[00:29:14.91] spk_1:
all about connecting with your, with your believers.

[00:31:38.28] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. It’s planned giving accelerator season. I’m giving 50% off the full tuition for the month of january. So all this month, 50% off full tuition. The class starts in early March 1st week of March and will be done by Memorial Day. It’s a three month class. You’ll spend an hour a week with me. Well that may not be the biggest selling point. You’ll spend an hour a week with your, who will become your friends in our zoom meetings always set up as meetings, not webinars. If you know the difference, you’ll know that you can talk to each other. There’s no, there’s no putting questions and comments in a chat box always set up as meetings. These folks will become your friends. They will be similarly situated in small and midsize nonprofits wanting to launch planned giving. All right. This is, this is what we do together. Oh and and I am there too. And I’m teaching and you know, I’ll be guiding you, giving you the resources you need, like sample, um, Uh, donor letters, template letters, um, marketing materials? Uh, a power point for when you talk to your board and that’ll be one of the meetings we have together is acquainting your board with planned giving and perhaps soliciting your board, identifying your top prospects and soliciting them, identifying your tier two prospects and identifying them, etc. All the info is at planned giving accelerator dot com. I hope you’ll be with me, love to have you. And that’s Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for overcome common communications conundrums with Erica Mills Barnhart. Give us some, give us some ideas about how to, how to get, maybe get somebody from agnostic to, uh, to believe her. Those people are those, they work the return on investment. The agnostic community.

[00:31:50.77] spk_1:
Yeah. You know, for the most part, you have to be doing both. So, so a lot of marketing those optimization, right? So it’s for whom are we optimizing? Um, and in general,

[00:31:52.86] spk_0:
if you’re

[00:31:53.42] spk_1:
optimizing well, like with your messaging, right? So, so you have a message and it really speaks to the hopes Dreams, wants needs

[00:32:00.22] spk_0:
of

[00:32:01.22] spk_1:
your believers. That’s gonna be enough to like get your agnostics interest is going to perk up their ears for your believers. They’re like woo. And you’re off to the races for your agnostics. Um,

[00:32:13.34] spk_0:
it’s gonna take

[00:32:14.01] spk_1:
just a little more conversation,

[00:32:15.80] spk_0:
right?

[00:32:16.70] spk_1:
And so, you know, questions are your friend,

[00:32:20.07] spk_0:
like

[00:32:32.25] spk_1:
we default into this. Like if I tell them everything out of the gate, then maybe I’ll hit on something and that is interesting to them and you end up just like, right? And I always say when you tell someone everything, they remember nothing and that comes from like a worried place actually, right? So again, like that you’re gonna hear a theme which is

[00:32:38.05] spk_0:
like you’re

[00:32:39.37] spk_1:
the authority

[00:32:40.86] spk_0:
in

[00:32:41.13] spk_1:
what your organization does show up as the authority ask questions, right? Because the answers to the question, that’s how you’re gonna get that, then you know what they’re interested in and you can feel a little scary at first to do this. If again, if it’s not we’re used to doing or that’s not the culture, um,

[00:32:58.53] spk_0:
get

[00:32:58.82] spk_1:
them, you know, ask questions, just find out

[00:33:00.99] spk_0:
what, what

[00:33:02.42] spk_1:
is it about, what you do specifically? So it’s like there’s a level of specificity and understanding agnostics that you need to move them might refer to it as an engagement cycle. From knowing the organization to understanding the organization, to engaging

[00:33:17.89] spk_0:
believers

[00:33:18.63] spk_1:
move along that cycle real quickly.

[00:33:20.35] spk_0:
You need

[00:33:21.07] spk_1:
to spend more time that zone of understanding and helping them understand what you do with agnostics.

[00:33:27.72] spk_0:
Is this all consistent with uh Simon Sinek, his his core belief that people don’t buy what you what won’t buy, what you don’t buy what you do, they buy, why you do

[00:33:41.92] spk_1:
it

[00:33:46.23] spk_0:
consistent? Okay, okay, so say a little more about the engagement cycle now, you can’t shortchange non profit listeners with like a 12th drive by of the engagement cycle.

[00:34:15.73] spk_1:
I mean marketing and messaging is like very fundamentally all about moving folks around this engagement cycle. And it actually doesn’t matter if you’re like buying toothpaste or you’re trying to get, you know, a new donor. It’s like everyone has to go from knowing to understanding to engaging. And I got, I got specific about this because what can happen, this is unique to nonprofits is because we care so deeply and passionately about what we’re doing. There’s kind of this like to know me is to love me, to know me is to engage, why wouldn’t

[00:34:24.05] spk_0:
you Right?

[00:34:25.73] spk_1:
And then you skip over

[00:34:28.43] spk_0:
the

[00:34:38.12] spk_1:
understand phase and, and that’s really a miss and it’s a miss because like let’s take the events I pick on events a lot. Um, events are a classic example of moving someone from knowing to engaging right? Like I care about something I invite you tony and some other folks to sit at my table at, you know, the lunch and the dinner you come because you know me, maybe you care maybe you don’t and then there’s an

[00:34:53.45] spk_0:
ask rightfully.

[00:34:54.84] spk_1:
So, you know, we should ask for the support.

[00:34:58.51] spk_0:
But if

[00:34:58.93] spk_1:
you go from no to engage that

[00:35:00.39] spk_0:
quickly and

[00:35:08.97] spk_1:
you don’t plan and this is what I see again and again and again with nonprofits is there isn’t a plan for, okay, how am I going to go back to tony and

[00:35:09.71] spk_0:
sort of,

[00:35:10.38] spk_1:
you know, back up the caboose like understanding what what you tony care about as it relates to my organization.

[00:35:15.74] spk_0:
The important follow up

[00:35:22.23] spk_1:
the important what Yes, very intentional follow up. Um, and this is where you know, like retention comes into play, but it’s really interesting. Like you know, you say these things just like, why wouldn’t you do that? That’s weird. Why are you saying that out loud? Of course you would do that. It’s, it’s stunning how often it doesn’t happen. And it is this like really fabulous.

[00:35:38.80] spk_0:
Well tony

[00:35:39.55] spk_1:
Gave money of course he loves what we do and we lump, you know, then we lump you in with somebody who’s given to the organization for five

[00:35:45.40] spk_0:
years now.

[00:35:49.29] spk_1:
Your current donor, not everybody does this. I’m sure listeners, I’m sure there’s some of you like, no, no, we nailed it on the follow up. Like, you know, that’s not so I’m, I’m painting a wide with wide

[00:35:58.73] spk_0:
broad

[00:36:05.49] spk_1:
brush strokes here. But I have seen this so often. Um, and it’s heartbreaking because then you don’t, you know, maybe you don’t come back to the event the next year. You haven’t been nurtured and then your one time donor and that’s super

[00:36:12.46] spk_0:
expensive. That

[00:36:13.86] spk_1:
is low R. O I

[00:36:15.74] spk_0:
I

[00:36:15.97] spk_1:
want the highest return on investment possible.

[00:36:23.45] spk_0:
I’m guessing you’re a big believer in segmentation. Yes, I believe segmentation,

[00:36:26.43] spk_1:
but but not over segmenting.

[00:36:29.46] spk_0:
I

[00:36:29.89] spk_1:
feel like given some of the databases that we

[00:36:32.20] spk_0:
have,

[00:36:36.46] spk_1:
you can almost use it as a stalling tactic like well we’re not ready to like send out our appeals because we haven’t you know, segmented enough. So I just like it’s

[00:36:44.03] spk_0:
it’s a

[00:36:52.28] spk_1:
bit of an art. There’s an art to the segmentation in addition to the science. So yes. I’m a fan of segmenting. Um and not crossing the line into over segmentation as sort of a stalling tactic to doing the work.

[00:36:59.11] spk_0:
All right. I’m not I’m not clear on this. I mean anything. Yeah, I agree. I mean anything can be overdone and used as a used as an excuse uh as an excuse for immobility. What what what is what what’s over segmentation? Like what’s

[00:37:15.61] spk_1:
your database rather than sending out the appeal?

[00:37:17.85] spk_0:
Oh okay.

[00:37:20.95] spk_1:
Yeah.

[00:37:22.33] spk_0:
And and segmenting we want to segment right by interest. Maybe if we know someone is interested in the spay neuter program then then those are the those are the touch points. Those are the data points. Those are the stories we’re gonna share with them. Not the uh not the adoption, not the adoption and rescue program.

[00:38:06.00] spk_1:
Yeah exactly. Like what are what are their interests? And so you know any organization will know in advance. Like here’s kind of our top three top three things we do. Top three ways that we services, we offer our ways that we go about um taking care of animals. Um So you start there again offering, right? So yes you want the information and you know your organization best. So start there and then you can put people in the file folders as it were.

[00:38:20.57] spk_0:
And you’re gonna find out what their interests are, not only by their giving, but by asking the questions that you were talking about earlier. You know, what, what moves you about our work? What brought you to us? What do you love? And

[00:38:21.93] spk_1:
how do you like to be communicated with?

[00:38:24.28] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:38:32.28] spk_1:
we have like a pretty strong email default setting now, I would say. Um, not everybody loves

[00:38:34.26] spk_0:
that. You

[00:38:46.37] spk_1:
know, I’m seeing, I have clients who are having great success with kind of not, not not doing email. That’s always gonna be a part of what you’re doing. But taking the time to like, actually, you know, back to snail mail. Um, you know, really working direct mail. I feel like direct mail is like having to come back.

[00:38:54.25] spk_0:
Yeah. It’s always strong. I think it’s always so

[00:38:57.88] spk_1:
much stronger than people. Whenever I like show the stats on direct mail, they’re like, what?

[00:39:01.91] spk_0:
Especially when you’re writing to people who love you already. Your mail is not their junk mail, they’re giving to you. They’re supporting you. They’re spending either their time or their money with you. They’re gonna open your letters.

[00:39:24.27] spk_1:
Yeah. I spent a lot of time talking about delight with my clients. How can you delight them? And it’s, it’s just, I mean, it’s a delightful conversation to talk about delight a lot of the work, You know that that nonprofits do is it’s heavy, it’s hard. Um

[00:39:36.19] spk_0:
And so delight

[00:39:36.92] spk_1:
can feel a little antithetical uh trivializing the work. And so I’m not trying to, you know, don’t trivialize the work and don’t trivialize what you’re sharing. Um But can you can you create delight in

[00:39:50.65] spk_0:
how

[00:39:51.08] spk_1:
it is delivered in some form or fashion? I think delight is a gift um in this day and age and it activates people’s particular activating system, which is opens, opens them up to whatever comes next. It

[00:40:03.25] spk_0:
also sounds like fun, right? You can be willing to have fun. Don’t be afraid to have fun. Right?

[00:40:08.60] spk_1:
Yes.

[00:40:10.03] spk_0:
Fun. Yeah.

[00:40:11.83] spk_1:
Yeah. I mean listeners can’t see it, but I do have a string

[00:40:14.33] spk_0:
of holiday

[00:40:15.77] spk_1:
lights around my neck.

[00:40:16.75] spk_0:
I was thinking about saying it right this minute to yeah, got christmas lights multicolor.

[00:40:21.22] spk_1:
I mean it’s been an intense year.

[00:40:24.21] spk_0:
It’s a necklace necklace of

[00:40:25.80] spk_1:
christmas.

[00:40:26.68] spk_0:
The old, the old style big bulb type, not the

[00:40:30.09] spk_1:
right. Yeah. There’s nothing, there’s nothing sophisticated about these lights

[00:40:35.05] spk_0:
there.

[00:40:39.10] spk_1:
Dr Seuss lights. And I put it on this morning cause I’m, you know, I’m talking with you and I like have a lot of stuff and I’m like let’s have a lot of fun

[00:40:56.85] spk_0:
please please do? Alright, we still have more time together. E. M. B. Erica Mills Barnhart. What else, what else would you like to talk about marketing doing it differently. Thinking differently that we haven’t talked about yet.

[00:41:23.14] spk_1:
You know, one of the things I, this is not a unique to me type of thing, but I really invite listeners to think about what they can let go of to do less. What I consistently see is organizations doing too many things. Um and often the reason for that is far more like fear of missing out often, often to double down that this comes from board members. So if you’re a board member listening, you may have a fabulous idea for marketing, Thank you very much for that. And

[00:41:32.87] spk_0:
go

[00:42:05.73] spk_1:
back to the klaxon method, what does success look like? Who’s our target audience? So does your idea, which is a, how is that really going to resonate with the target market? This is why working the method is so important. Part of it. It grew out of like I wanted a way for to kind of mitigate positional authority negatively impacting marketing outcomes, right? Because if you’re a staff member it can be tough to say no right, It really can be. And so then you end up with kind of a bloated number of marketing activities that you’re doing. Um so it’s early in the year, like the work I’m gonna be doing with clients and I am hosting monthly free Ask me Anything sessions starting in january 2023 So you’re listening and you’re curious, come to come to an A. M. A. Right? Like what can I take off my plate? I’ve been doing this so long that it’s, and I’m right, I’m objective. So I can be like, don’t do that.

[00:42:25.49] spk_0:
Take that. Where can we learn about the go to

[00:42:35.03] spk_1:
Klaxon dash communication dot com, backslash newsletter sign up because it’s for newsletter subscribers. That’s how you’re going to find out about like get the zoom link and all

[00:42:39.53] spk_0:
that. You say dash. I say hyphen hyphen. Okay. You don’t mind hyphen.

[00:42:43.99] spk_1:
Maybe that’s an east coast west coast thing.

[00:42:50.91] spk_0:
Maybe it is Klaxon dash Klaxon hyphen. You say you would say dot com though, right? You wouldn’t say that period

[00:42:55.32] spk_1:
correct. I just think about that. Yeah. Dot com. Dot org.

[00:43:01.43] spk_0:
It’s your company. Use dash. I just, I don’t know. I learned hyphen maybe in law school. Maybe I learned hyphen in law school. I don’t know.

[00:43:07.86] spk_1:
Oh, 100% seems lawyer lawyerly.

[00:43:11.04] spk_0:
It sounds like it’s

[00:43:11.94] spk_1:
very technically accurate,

[00:43:13.49] spk_0:
right? Like aiding and abetting it’s, you know, you have to duplicate the words in case you didn’t get it with aiding. Like I gotta, I gotta double down with abetting. Yeah.

[00:43:29.28] spk_1:
So that’s one thing I would say and part of it is like I just want to, I give all your listeners and all non profit people? Just a permission slip to do less.

[00:43:30.40] spk_0:
What kinds of things, what kinds of things we do less of?

[00:43:37.36] spk_1:
Don’t be on so many social media channels, knock it off. You don’t need to be on all of them unless you are a very, very large organization, which as we all know listeners. So there aren’t that many nonprofits that are big enough to support

[00:43:46.64] spk_0:
the very big right University of Washington is not listening to us

[00:43:50.29] spk_1:
go dogs. But no, they’re not

[00:44:05.61] spk_0:
Erica is in Seattle Seattle Washington. Um, well we just talked, well, my guests just last week, I talked about what’s going on twitter amy sample ward and you know, for the new year, whether whether you want twitter maybe, you know, her advice was just evaluated objectively.

[00:44:12.81] spk_1:
I literally tony Just had this conversation with my client yesterday. One of them was

[00:44:16.92] spk_0:
a good time to think, take a step back,

[00:44:20.96] spk_1:
take a step back. But,

[00:44:21.75] spk_0:
and, and

[00:44:23.22] spk_1:
you know that, that I don’t, I mean I haven’t listened yet what Amy said, but I do and believe everything Amy says by the way, she’s brilliant.

[00:44:30.47] spk_0:
She’s on, she’s on all the time. You know, Amy sample

[00:44:32.58] spk_1:
ward. Yeah,

[00:44:33.78] spk_0:
she’s a regular. She’s my, our technology and social media contributor on the show.

[00:44:39.47] spk_1:
Yeah, way back when I worked for an organization called End Power. So we put technology into the hands of nonprofits and so we

[00:44:46.10] spk_0:
started

[00:44:55.61] spk_1:
crossing paths then. So we’ve orbited for a long time. Um, it’s a values decision to a certain extent. Right? So just with that twitter piece, she spoke to this?

[00:44:57.62] spk_0:
Here’s the like, yeah,

[00:44:59.42] spk_1:
are, are, are are people there? So who’s your target audience? If so Okay, that’s that’s one piece of equation but also like how does this align with our values as an organization? So that that’s really twitter is really a twofold choice whereas the rest of them

[00:45:11.82] spk_0:
um you

[00:45:13.18] spk_1:
know, linkedin facebook, I would,

[00:45:15.95] spk_0:
what

[00:45:17.75] spk_1:
I generally say is beyond one.

[00:45:21.37] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:45:22.83] spk_1:
Beyond one. Be fully on one be the organization where if you’re on linkedin and you, you know, you’ve got the algorithm going for you. People are like, Oh my God, it’s you know, it’s so and so again insert the name of your organization like that. It’s your omnipresent.

[00:45:38.34] spk_0:
I

[00:45:41.71] spk_1:
Would rather have the clients be omnipresent on one channel Then sort of, you know, not even blinking onto the radar of the 17 different social media. I mean there’s a hit parade of five basically, but I’d rather have you beyond present on one once you have that nail.

[00:45:53.03] spk_0:
I had

[00:45:53.33] spk_1:
Another, you know, some organizations can do to it’s fine, but even at two. oftentimes I see

[00:46:00.19] spk_0:
diminishing diminishing

[00:46:01.63] spk_1:
returns for clients.

[00:46:02.77] spk_0:
I

[00:46:07.65] spk_1:
mean I run a communication firm right here on Lincoln period full stop.

[00:46:12.03] spk_0:
What what’s well at Erica mills barn, is that not?

[00:46:16.03] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, that was my choice to sort of be the face of

[00:46:19.37] spk_0:
um

[00:46:20.22] spk_1:
so that’s our

[00:46:21.38] spk_0:
the company. Okay, so the company is strictly on linkedin,

[00:46:24.59] spk_1:
yep. Gotcha.

[00:46:25.67] spk_0:
Okay. Klaxon, yep. Alright permission to do less

[00:46:30.32] spk_1:
permission to do less permission to less because you’re going to do it better and you’re gonna feel like

[00:46:36.56] spk_0:
just you’re going to

[00:47:10.03] spk_1:
feel the energy of it. And I actually, because I do have, you know, people call it street, but actually it’s quantum physics um and metaphysics, which is like, if you’re on, I’m gonna make this up, right? If you’re on five channels right now where you’re doing five or six things, I want you to write each of them on a piece of paper. I want you to go what who, how make a strategic informed choice about which you’re gonna keep and the ones that you’re gonna release, you’re gonna go burn the scrap of paper. It is so gratifying and there’s something energetically about that. I mean, one of the things that I talked about a lot is the energetic of language in general, right? So words, we hear words matter, Words matter because they actually are matter.

[00:47:21.88] spk_0:
Um

[00:47:22.19] spk_1:
So they abide by all of the universal laws of physics and thermodynamics, just like anything else. So, the words themselves have energy.

[00:47:30.61] spk_0:
Every

[00:47:31.39] spk_1:
word has its own energy, the way you deliver it can shift the energy right? Um and so as you’re like, that’s why just releasing and having to change form is really an important part of the process. Plus it’s

[00:47:43.26] spk_0:
fun theme

[00:47:46.41] spk_1:
of the day, it’s fun, but I mean, you know, be safe about your burning and I’m not like suggesting

[00:47:50.73] spk_0:
you may not be

[00:47:52.11] spk_1:
safe and have fun with burning things, but

[00:47:55.30] spk_0:
um,

[00:47:56.13] spk_1:
it really helps because otherwise there’s going to be this niggle that’s like, oh, but we still have that like profile up so maybe we should be doing something or yeah, just release that for yourself. Political,

[00:48:06.52] spk_0:
you deserve it.

[00:48:08.10] spk_1:
But every single person listening deserves to do what they’re doing in a way that feels amazing to them.

[00:48:15.15] spk_0:
Alright, that’s empowering. That’s

[00:48:16.80] spk_1:
empowering.

[00:48:18.90] spk_0:
So words follow the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

[00:48:27.09] spk_1:
Their energy. They’re literally

[00:48:27.78] spk_0:
energy, right?

[00:48:29.10] spk_1:
Because they’re matter

[00:48:43.79] spk_0:
words are matter. Well paper that words could be written on his matter, but aren’t the words ephemeral and why

[00:48:44.04] spk_1:
would they be?

[00:48:55.19] spk_0:
Because they’re vocalized. Yeah. So they don’t they, they vaporize after they’ve been articulated

[00:48:56.50] spk_1:
tony Has anybody said ever said anything to you that hurt your feelings?

[00:49:00.03] spk_0:
Sure.

[00:49:02.43] spk_1:
Did that feeling vaporized as soon as the words left their mouth?

[00:49:10.40] spk_0:
No, Yeah, we’re

[00:49:13.77] spk_1:
trained to think of them as ephemeral and they are not their energy.

[00:49:17.70] spk_0:
Hmm

[00:49:18.83] spk_1:
Yeah, that blows people’s minds most the time. Your listeners are like, oh my God, they’re talking about, what are they talking about now? So let me get concrete about this. I mean, I love talking about it

[00:49:28.88] spk_0:
at

[00:49:29.08] spk_1:
this level, but I want to make this practical for listeners. Um, this, so when I’m creating like identity statements, mission vision values purpose. Um, we look at and there’s a tool were to fire dot

[00:49:40.23] spk_0:
com, you can

[00:49:44.81] spk_1:
go there, you can put in any word you want. Um, and it is a massive database powers is we pulled every single word of 2503 nonprofit websites. This allowed us to generalize to the entire sector at a 95% confidence interval for any of my fellow geeks out there. That’s what, that’s the bar that you want. Right? So you can go there, put in any word you want and it’s going to tell you it’s going to give you a red, orange or

[00:50:05.36] spk_0:
green.

[00:50:06.76] spk_1:
Red means this is, this word is used a lot by nonprofits a lot. So you, you, it’s not gonna, people are gonna notice it.

[00:50:14.84] spk_0:
Impact, impact

[00:50:17.30] spk_1:
is up there. I’ll tell you, I always joke that provide is the lamest verb ever. Verbs are very

[00:50:22.37] spk_0:
important. It’s

[00:50:24.02] spk_1:
The 4th most used

[00:50:24.92] spk_0:
verb by

[00:50:25.98] spk_1:
nonprofit. So what that means is no one’s going to notice that

[00:50:28.60] spk_0:
verb

[00:50:29.61] spk_1:
and verbs represent the change that you’re committed to creating the world world

[00:50:33.83] spk_0:
and so you

[00:50:34.36] spk_1:
want a verb that’s like, oh,

[00:50:35.86] spk_0:
okay, interesting.

[00:51:21.37] spk_1:
Okay. Um, so there’s always a better verb can provide so you can put that in and, and, and the green ones so you can get some, you know, synergy is still green. It’s not saying like definitely use it. It is giving you feedback about the extent to which somebody is probably going to notice the word or not. So, so in language we have function words and content words, function words are like the and but like our brains don’t register those because our brains can’t register everything right? Like our subconscious mind is processing 11 million bits of information per second. And that’s condensed into like 40 ish pieces of information for our conscious mind. So our brains are very efficient because they have to be and so for a messaging perspective, you

[00:51:24.35] spk_0:
Know, your your your light bulb necklaces overloading my my my conscious and subconscious processing like 20 million bits a second because I got I got these lights. It’s a good thing you didn’t put them. I asked her to put them on flashing and she said no, give me a headache. It’s a good thing. You didn’t do that. I’m sorry, go ahead. I’m sorry.

[00:52:02.28] spk_1:
Yeah. So that’s why, you know, when we’re creating and again, this is the most important set of statements that you’re ever gonna write as an organization. So it’s worth the investment to do it well. And you’re looking for like that combination of like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And like, oh that would interest me. I’m not used to seeing that quite in that context. You know, that’s the art. That’s why like after 20 years of working with organizations writing those. I never get tired of that. That’s just

[00:52:12.03] spk_0:
fun. You like to read fiction.

[00:52:14.56] spk_1:
Yeah, I read

[00:52:55.90] spk_0:
fiction fiction much more than non more southern nonfiction use of use of language word word choice. You know, it sometimes it stops me. I don’t read I don’t read that much fiction actually. But when I do you know someone’s word choices. Oh man she wrote she wrote that he threaded them through the narrow pathway, not that he led them or or took them, he threaded them through the narrow pathway that happens to be part of a book that it stays with me. See words words, words follow the laws of physics and thermodynamics. I told you that you thought they were ephemeral her, you know this is Joyce. Uh

[00:52:59.39] spk_1:
it is one of those things that can we just pause on this for a second.

[00:53:01.75] spk_0:
Like every

[00:53:03.01] spk_1:
time when I first talked about that with somebody shared their like wait my range is hurt and then you’re like,

[00:53:08.62] spk_0:
oh that makes a lot of sense. Like

[00:53:10.60] spk_1:
once you see it you see it. Yeah,

[00:53:12.28] spk_0:
well you grounded it well and you know, hurtful, hurtful words and also

[00:53:16.03] spk_1:
start to go there positive

[00:53:17.05] spk_0:
positive words.

[00:53:18.10] spk_1:
Yeah, like sorry,

[00:53:21.84] spk_0:
thoughtful, thoughtful words could get me going for a month. I can think about, oh she she took the show to her board and it led to a discussion which led to an action and you know, I could go on six months on that. So yeah, okay.

[00:53:33.03] spk_1:
Either way words are on a continuum just like all energetic things are on a continuum. But yeah, but they but they do either have a negative or positive charge. So

[00:53:43.26] spk_0:
is that your background? You have a degree in physics sciences? No, my

[00:53:47.72] spk_1:
dad was a professor

[00:53:50.29] spk_0:
of

[00:54:06.08] spk_1:
engineering. I artfully um didn’t do any, I didn’t do chemistry. I didn’t do physics. I like avoided everything in that realm. But later I really started seeing like it’s um

[00:54:07.13] spk_0:
how

[00:54:08.27] spk_1:
relevant is everything in life. So I sort of did more self study, but I do just I do run things past my dad. Like when I landed on that, I think I think words abide by all the so I sent my dad a note and he said, let me think about that for a little bit. He came back and he said, yes,

[00:54:24.36] spk_0:
you’re right.

[00:54:27.76] spk_1:
So I press your test all of these things because I do not have a background in it

[00:54:43.60] spk_0:
on your dad’s responses. Classic engineer. Let me think. Let me think about the problem. I think about the question. You think about the question and the solution and the answer. All right. But you sound like me. Like I took physics for poets in college. No,

[00:54:44.82] spk_1:
my daughter is a senior, so she’s applying to colleges and graduate.

[00:54:50.34] spk_0:
My

[00:54:50.95] spk_1:
daughter is a senior

[00:54:52.51] spk_0:
in

[00:54:53.10] spk_1:
high school. And so the other day, she said, mom didn’t you you like majored in french and political science, didn’t you? As an undergrad?

[00:55:00.38] spk_0:
And I was like, yeah,

[00:55:03.40] spk_1:
she’s like why? It’s like, I don’t know, you know, I’ve done fine, so, but she is very much, you know, she wants to be a neuroscientist and she’s very,

[00:55:11.53] spk_0:
she follows her grandfather sciences strictly rooted in the sciences Alright. Yeah. Where did your dad teach, Where did your dad teach?

[00:55:19.02] spk_1:
University of british Columbia?

[00:55:21.74] spk_0:
You

[00:55:23.22] spk_1:
will notice like a little weirdness to have

[00:55:25.79] spk_0:
A little further north in Seattle, right, you’re from Vancouver, two

[00:55:35.33] spk_1:
Hours north of here, you hit the border about 45 minutes past that you get to Vancouver, that’s why I still say a couple of things weird like my mom and passed and I’ve been places

[00:55:39.43] spk_0:
because that’s where I was born. Your mom being right, why don’t you leave us with some inspiration, Erica Mills,

[00:55:46.04] spk_1:
tony Come

[00:55:48.64] spk_0:
on, take us out with, take us out with good marketing inspiration, you’re loaded with it. What do you come in? Come on, this is a walk in the park for you.

[00:56:46.73] spk_1:
I’m going to double down on some of the things I said, I really, I mean I’m kind of on a bender about do less, be kinder to yourself by doing less, really want that. I want that for every listener, I want it for their teams. I want for their families, I want for everybody. We’ve just gone through so much tough stuff. Um one of the questions that I love playing with that, I always play with with my, especially my my leadership, you know my leaders who I do coaching with is like how can you make it easy, Like oftentimes we make things harder than they need to be, I am notoriously fabulous and making things really complicated. Um and a couple years ago I just started asking like how can I make this easy? What’s the easiest way to do this and easy in the sense of easy? Maybe it’s for you, how do you make it easier for you, for your team, for the organization, right? Like just without losing or negating or minimizing the importance of the work

[00:56:50.13] spk_0:
that that

[00:56:50.77] spk_1:
that you know, listeners are doing, there’s almost always a way to just make it a little easier and let me tell you there’s always a way to make your marketing easier. Always, always, always. I mean it’s why I have, like listeners have heard some of the methods and the frameworks that I use, that’s why I’m such a fan of creating them and mine are all super

[00:57:08.60] spk_0:
simple.

[00:57:10.18] spk_1:
And the reason for that is because I want to make it easier. Like I want to free up that energetic space

[00:57:17.64] spk_0:
for

[00:57:18.03] spk_1:
you to be focusing on the substance of what you’re doing on the way in which you’re changing the world. Um You know, marketing communication isn’t rocket science, it’s actually pretty darn straightforward. Um and so let’s let’s make that as easy as possible.

[00:57:32.35] spk_0:
We also doubled down on have more fun, have

[00:57:35.50] spk_1:
more fun. I mean by the way that’s giving myself a permission slip. Um it’s you know, it’s easy, like if especially I love the work I do. I mean I truly it it lights me up. Ha

[00:57:46.81] spk_0:
um ha

[00:57:48.50] spk_1:
ha because okay I do have light bulbs around my neck. Um

[00:57:54.63] spk_0:
but this

[00:58:04.60] spk_1:
work can it can be heavy and getting, you know, the stakes feel high. I have some really high profile clients um you know, I need to get it right with them and for them. Um and I think that it can be we can forget to have fun,

[00:58:10.11] spk_0:
you

[00:58:10.32] spk_1:
know, we can forget to have fun. So like fun.

[00:58:12.62] spk_0:
Don’t forget

[00:58:13.35] spk_1:
Spaciousness. I always like come up with three words for the year.

[00:58:18.59] spk_0:
That’s

[00:58:19.07] spk_1:
pretty fun if listeners don’t do that. That’s a beautiful way to set the stage for the year ahead for yourself.

[00:58:23.54] spk_0:
You have three words for 2023?

[00:58:25.47] spk_1:
I do.

[00:58:27.14] spk_0:
Well no no we’re gonna wrap it up,

[00:58:31.87] spk_1:
we’re gonna leave people like wondering you can reach out

[00:58:35.17] spk_0:
Right? You have to reach Erica Yes. If you want the three words, what are the three words for 2023

[00:58:39.79] spk_1:
spaciousness, vitality and play,

[00:58:58.65] spk_0:
spaciousness, vitality and play. Alright, spacious while we talk to permission to permission to do less permission to have fun. Play play and vitality Yeah.

[00:59:00.32] spk_1:
tony And I’m gonna ask what yours are, I’m gonna I’m gonna email you in a couple of weeks.

[00:59:31.24] spk_0:
Okay because we’re recording in december. So I don’t have mine yet but we’ll we’ll go we’ll go out with yours spaciousness, vitality and play BMB. Erica Mills Barnhart, communication expert, speaker author coach. You’ll find her at Erica Mills barn and her company at klaxon hyphen or dash communication dot com. Erica Thank you very much. Real pleasure so

[00:59:33.23] spk_1:
much for having me. tony I really appreciate it. It’s been great

[01:00:11.41] spk_0:
next week the 2023 fundraising outlook report from one cause if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for November 28, 2022: Thought Leadership & Content Strategy

 

Peter Panepento & Antionette KerrThought Leadership
Peter Panapento and Antionette Kerr co-authored the book, “Modern Media Relations for Nonprofits.” They share their insights on how to build relationships with journalists so you get heard as the thought leader you are. Plus, other media strategies, like crisis communications. This was part of our coverage of the 2020 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

 

 

 

 

Valerie Johnson & Katie GreenContent Strategy
Now that you’re an established thought leader, you need to produce multichannel content that’s relevant. Also engaging, actionable, user friendly and SEO friendly. Also from 20NTC, Valerie Johnson from Pathways to Housing PA and Katie Green with The Trevor Project show you how.

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:38.49] 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 of your favorite abdominal podcast. I hope you enjoyed your thanksgiving. I hope you enjoyed the company of family friends, time for yourself as well. Lots of lots of good thanksgiving holiday wishes, I hope you enjoyed very much and I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of epidermal Asus below psA if you gave me the blistering news that you missed this week’s show. Thought leadership, Peter Pan a pinto and Antoinette car co authored the book modern media relations for nonprofits. They share their insights on how to build relationships with journalists so you get heard as the thought leader you are plus other media strategies like crisis communications. This was part of our coverage of the 2020 non profit technology conference and content strategy. Now that you’re an established thought leader, you need to produce multi channel content that’s relevant, also engaging actionable user friendly and S. E. O friendly. Also from 20 N. T. C. Valerie johnson from pathways to housing P A. And Katie Green with the Trevor project. Show you how Antonis take two. I’m still wishing you well. We are sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O here is thought leadership with me now are Peter pan a pinto and Antoinette car. Peter is philanthropic practice leader at turn two communications, Antoinette is part of the leadership team of women advance and ceo of bold and bright media. They are the co authors of the book Modern media relations for nonprofits. Peter Antoinette welcome. Yes. I’m glad we could work this out among the three of us. Thank you. And uh, it’s good to know that you reach well and safe in your respective locations. Okay.

[00:02:39.44] spk_1:
Thank you. Yes.

[00:02:51.33] spk_0:
Okay. I, yes, I see. No one within six ft of you. That’s good. Even though you are home, we’re talking about thought leadership and media. Let’s, uh, let’s start with you Internet. We can, we can use our leverage thought leadership and use the media to, uh, to influence those who are engaged with us, our constituents and even influence policy.

[00:04:02.66] spk_2:
So the media needs experts and non profits are on the ground there doing the work and they are the perfect folks to be experts in this conversation um, in particular and emergency Peter non talks about earlier about crisis communications and in a lot of situations the media scrambling looking for experts. If you have established yourself as a thought leader, which is what you should aspire to do. I know that turn to does the work in helping people to kind of establish themselves with the thought leader in this conversation. But right now we need people with good information and who can provide great stories for example and nonprofits can do that and they can do that work. And that’s why the thought leadership conversations important. Most nonprofits don’t see themselves needing to do that. It’s not the first thing we think about, we think about fundraising, right? Um, but not necessarily media friend raising. And so now is the time that you want to have those relationships and be considered as a thought leader.

[00:04:18.59] spk_0:
Because when there’s news that relates to your mission, um, your call is more likely to be taken, your email is more likely be answered. If there’s that pre existing relationship you mentioned. But if if everybody in the sector is calling all the, all the media blindly, then it’s just sort of a crapshoot whether they answer you or not or

[00:05:38.32] spk_2:
if you think about the media needing like, you know, going to a crisis example, like the media needing a source or an expert And they don’t want to quote the same person that’s, you know, something that I’ve learned from my media background and training. I’ve been working as a journalist since 1995. And you know, one thing that my editors say, you know, don’t quote the same person, don’t quote the same organization. So in a crisis people will call big box non profit sometimes. Um, and they’ll just see them as being the experts for a conversation. And that’s why establishing yourself as a thought leader is so important. So someone can say, you know, I’m a unique voice about this. We have an example in our book modern media relations where um, someone who an organization that worked with Children and families involved in domestic violence became very important in the conversation when a professional athlete in in Georgia was convicted of family violence and all of a sudden that person was called upon to be on radio shows and talk shows and they became a thought leader. But they done the work to position themselves as an expert. And so I know Peter you, I know you have some examples as well, but we just kind of dived in there and and didn’t talk about the whole broad concept about leadership.

[00:06:04.05] spk_0:
Well, all right, well, um peter, I was gonna ask you, how do we start to build these relationships? Um you wanna do you want to back up what thought leadership is?

[00:08:02.93] spk_1:
Sure, I’ll start with thought leadership defined and that and that’s really um the process of establishing one’s expertise in a in a specific area and and and doing it in a way where they are recognized beyond their own organization, in their own kind of immediate networks, as a, as an expert as a thought leader. Somebody who is driving the conversation and really really helping people better understand a key issue or a topic. So for a nonprofit or a foundation, a thought leader might be your ceo um who or executive director, somebody who um is at the front lines uh and and kind of is in a in a position where they um not only have expertise but they have some authority and being able to talk with some gravitas about a topic, um but um in order to kind of establish your credentials there um and get recognized, you have to do some legwork beyond just having that expertise. You have to be um you have to be comfortable talking about that topic. You have to um you have to spend some time kind of building the relationships and the and the and the the larger credibility that you are, somebody who has something interesting to say and the expertise to back it up. Um and the more you do that, and you can do that not just through the media, but through your own channels and through speaking at conferences and and all kinds of other things. Um the more you do that, the more you kind of become uh somebody who is recognized and is called upon to weigh in on important topics or or when news events call for it or in a situation like what, where we are now with with the covid 19 response, Somebody who can kind of come in and bring a voice of reason and perspective to what’s going on around us.

[00:08:31.98] spk_0:
So you have to lay the groundwork there, there has to be some fundamentals and you have to have your gravitas and you you need to appear bona fide and be bona fide not just appear, you have to be bona fide on the topic that you’re that you’re an expert in the mission of, of your, your nonprofit. How do you then start to when you have that groundwork? How do you then start to build relationships when there isn’t really a need for you to be talking about the subject?

[00:09:39.59] spk_1:
Sure, there are a lot of ways to do that one is that you, um, you start to build some personal relationships with media who are covering these topics. And you can do that either through, you know, somebody on your communications team that helps you, or you can kind of do it yourself, but you can, you can start to show up in, in their coverage of stories by, um, by um, positioning yourself and, and building relationships with individual reporters. Maybe even when they don’t need you by having an informational coffee or call so that they can get to know you and know what you stand for. Um, you can do it by your through your own writing and, and public speaking and making those things available and accessible to the media. Um, and you can, you can do it through your own channels to a lot of nonprofits have blogs, they have, uh, they have their own podcasts. They have different ways where they’re positioning their internal experts externally so that they’re kind of talking about and establishing their credentials around around a subject. And

[00:09:41.01] spk_0:
that’s your, that’s your owned media, right. That’s your own media versus earned media?

[00:10:12.00] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. And, and the value of that, is that the more you’re, you’re kind of demonstrating through your own media channels, your expertise, you’re not only building um some greater relationships and and credibility with your donors and the folks who are already kind of in your network, but you start to show up when people are doing searches or when people are on social media and seeing stories and articles that are passed around, if they may see something you’ve written or talked about, shared in another network, and it it sparks a light for them that you’re somebody worth going back to when they need, um when they need some, you know, somebody like you to weigh in on something.

[00:10:52.96] spk_0:
Okay, peter, I know you and Antoinette are both former journalists. Uh, so I’m gonna jump over to Antoinette for what Antoinette, what what what do these outreach, I guess, calls and emails to journalists to try to build the relationship. Uh what what do they what do they look like? What would you suggest people are saying to, to try to get the attention um to build the relationship, not, not when I’m looking to be quoted because there’s a breaking news, but to build the relationship.

[00:12:33.00] spk_2:
So, full disclosure. I’m a current journalist. Um so, yes, so I I still work for publications right now. Um and so people contact me on twitter and social media, which is a new thing. We talk about press releases. I’m a big fan of press releases, um yes, just full disclosure about that. But I still like for people to pitch me on social media, direct messages through twitter. If I’m using my company profile, it’s safe for nonprofits to contact me and say, hey, I have a story. I noticed that you’re interested in this concept, it’s always great when people know what I’m interested in. Like when they’re like, I noticed that you publish a lot of stories like right now I’m working on a story, a series of stories about missing and murdered indigenous women. And so when people see, oh, I notice you’re publishing stories about this and they pitch me on a direct message or um through facebook messenger even and say, hey, would you consider this the story and here’s the angle. Um or have you thought about, you know, I’ve had other people reach out and say I noticed you’re publishing these types of stories about, you know, missing and murdered indigenous women. Have you considered other stories about violence against women and it’s always a really great connection for me. So I think just kind of knowing what the journalist is interested in is really important, kind of, understanding their angle. Sorry, y’all, um understanding their angle and just flowing from there and saying, you know, here’s how we fit into this conversation is always a wonderful

[00:12:46.00] spk_0:
um so outreach by any of the social channels is fine too, you talk about twitter and direct message facebook, those are all

[00:12:56.47] spk_2:
yes and people tagging me like I feel like if a journalist is using their profile in a way that is professional then you’re safe to contact them and them in that way.

[00:13:11.60] spk_0:
Okay. Yeah, yeah peter anything you want to add to? Yeah, I think

[00:14:13.09] spk_1:
that I think is dead on about making sure though that when you do that, you are, you are, you’re you’re not coming with something that’s off the reporters beat or off of um what’s what, what you know, is um what they cover uh or the type of story they cover within that beat. Um you could spend a lot of effort reaching out to every journalist you see on twitter about your specific cause, but if they don’t cover your cause um you know, it doesn’t relate to what they what they do, then they’re probably either going to ignore you or or start to block you because you’re, you’re, you’re kind of almost spamming them. So um it’s it’s important to be targeted with who you reach out to as well and and make sure that you understand that journalists and their work before you before you do your outreach and come at them with a pitch that they don’t necessarily want. So yes, I think it’s really important to to do a bit of that homework up front um and respect that journalist time and if you do that and if you come at them with something that is actually on, on their beat and is of interest to them. Um, then I think you have a much greater chance of getting their attention and getting them to want to follow up with you and and help further, um, the relationship beyond that initial pitch

[00:14:32.47] spk_0:
and

[00:15:31.85] spk_2:
Tony, can I share a pet peeve like to Pet peeves actually is, um, if I write about a non profit and they don’t share the story on their own social, it’s just, it’s heartbreaking for me. Um, a lot of times I have to fight for these stories to appear and I have to fight with an editor to say, this is why this is newsworthy. This needs to be here. And then the nonprofit really doesn’t share the story. And I think, well, you know, I don’t write for my own, you know, just for it not to be shared. Um, and then the other thing is I love when nonprofits support stories that aren’t related to their particular story. So I’ll start noticing like one thing, um, Kentucky non profit Network, for example, before they ever shared or were involved in anything that I was involved in, they started sharing things or liking things that I would publish as a reporter and I didn’t know anything about them, but I thought that was interesting. So that when they pitch something, then you’re more likely to notice it as a, as a reporter, you’re more likely to notice because you feel like they’re really genuinely interested in the conversation, even if it doesn’t apply to them, you’re still interested

[00:15:51.29] spk_0:
Internet. Where are you writing now?

[00:15:58.07] spk_2:
I am writing, working on a piece for Guardian. I am for the Guardian. I am writing for Women Advance, which we have our own network. And then I write for Halifax Media group publications. So I’m on the regional circuit, doing all the fun things.

[00:16:13.38] spk_0:
Halifax is nova Scotia.

[00:16:22.99] spk_2:
No, Halifax is a media group in the United States. They own a series of their own regional newspapers across the country. So

[00:16:28.59] spk_0:
let’s talk a little about crisis management. You wanna, can you get us started with how you might approach crisis communications Antoinette.

[00:16:38.11] spk_2:
I thought that was Peter’s question. I’m just kidding.

[00:16:40.29] spk_0:
No,

[00:16:41.31] spk_2:
I’m just kidding. Um, crisis communications, I think actually Peter is a really great person to talk about this. My crisis communications conversation really has shifted with what we’re going through. So I don’t want to make it so unique to our current situation. Um, so I’ll let Peter start and then Peter, I can back you up on it if that’s

[00:18:50.46] spk_1:
okay. Yeah. So, um, with crisis communications, it’s really important to not wait until the actual you’re actually in a crisis to put your plan together. It’s really important to, to have a protocol that you’ve set up when you’re not in the middle of a crisis of possible to really kind of put together uh some protocols for not only what you’re going to say, but who’s going to say it and how you’re going to communicate during that situation. So um what does that protocol look like one? Is that you um upfront, you designate who your spokesperson or spokespeople are going to be ahead of time um and you spend some time ahead of that coaching them up in terms of what some of the key messages for your organization are, regardless of what the crisis might be. Some things that you would broadly want to try to reinforce and kind of a mood and a tone that you’re gonna want to take with what you’re talking about. Um do that 1st 2nd, is that you would really want to have a system in place for how you activate that for how you activate your crisis plan and your crisis communications. So that essentially means that you want to um you want to make sure that you know, kind of who who needs to sign off on what you’re going to talk about, who you’re gonna be involving in your decisions on whether you need to put out a statement um who how you’re going to communicate in what different channels, the more you can make those decisions ahead of time and have your structure in place, the better equipped you are to actually respond during a crisis situation and be able to get a quick and accurate and positive message out um in in in a situation and often crises are not their crisis because they’re not expected, but you can be planning ahead so that you you are able to react quickly and authoritatively during that situation. Um

[00:19:07.87] spk_0:
you’re you’re compounding the crisis if you’re not prepared.

[00:19:12.53] spk_1:
Absolutely,

[00:19:13.33] spk_0:
You’re scrambling to figure out who’s in charge, who has to approve messages, where should messages go? All, all which are peripheral to the to the substance of the problem.

[00:20:12.02] spk_1:
Absolutely. And in today’s world, where crisis can really mushroom not only in the media, but on social media, the longer you’re allowing time to pass before you’re getting out there with with your statement and your response to it, the worst the worst the situation gets for you. So you really need to position yourselves uh to be able to respond quickly to respond clearly and to respond accurately. Um and and it’s important to note that, you know, that planning ahead of time is really critical, but what you say in the situation is also critical to um you do want to make sure that you communicate truthfully. That doesn’t necessarily mean that um uh you uh u um reveal

[00:20:14.17] spk_0:
everything,

[00:20:14.72] spk_1:
reveal everything

[00:20:15.67] spk_0:
exactly

[00:20:18.45] spk_1:
do uh that you do reveal is accurate. It’s not gonna come back to bite you later. It’s not going to mislead people

[00:20:31.86] spk_0:
talking about complicating the complicating the crisis if you’re lying or misleading, it comes back. I mean, people investigate things get found out.

[00:20:36.17] spk_1:
Absolutely. And I, and I, and I was

[00:20:38.82] spk_0:
technically expanded your problem.

[00:21:42.71] spk_1:
Absolutely. And and you’d be surprised how, how many times when I was a journalist that people, if they had just come clean and and kind of got the truth out there right away, they may have taken a short term hit, but their lives would have got on fine after that. But the more you try to obfuscate or or lie about the situation, or or try to to spin it in a way where you’re, you’re kind of hiding the truth that the worse your situation is going to get. So be be in a position to be as transparent and clear and accurate as possible. Um, with that first statement, uh, knowing that in some cases you might have to say, you know, we don’t know. Um, but we’ll follow up when we do know, because sometimes a crisis situation is one in which speaking of, of when we’re in now, we don’t know all of the, all of the different twists and turns the covid 19 situation is going to take. Um, so, but but rather than trying to speculate, um or or or in some cases, as we’ve seen, some, some public figures do try to spin this one way or another, rather than just saying, here’s the situation here are concerns, Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know. Um, it compounds the situation and in some cases it can be dangerous to

[00:22:01.82] spk_0:
people internet, You wanna, you wanna back up a little bit? I

[00:22:38.74] spk_2:
Did. So the, I think the statement, um, I love how people are putting forward these COVID-19 statements and I think we need to have more statements like that. I mean these statements are demanding and people feel like that. But I’m like we could do more of that. We could have statements as nonprofits on issues on public issues, public concerns, things that are um, emerging and urgent for people. I think about in the eastern part of north Carolina because tony I know you’re in, in my home state. I am

[00:22:40.58] spk_0:
in eastern north Carolina.

[00:23:26.54] spk_2:
Happy to have you here. And when we have um, hurricanes, when we have issues like that, if non profits would put out statements like they have with Covid 19 if they felt like they needed to say here’s where we are, here’s what we do here. Here’s, here’s what we have to offer before during after and just update them. You know, I feel like this crisis has brought forward a level of communication and and help people to see the necessary level of communication that we need to have. But we don’t have that all the time is non profits and people are looking for that. So I feel like in the eastern part of north Carolina where we had, um, you know, 100 year, hurricanes within three months of each other that we didn’t think would happen. You know what if people, what if people make covid statements like that? I mean, what if people and so I’m just gonna start calling the covid statements peter that I don’t have a better term for. But what if we felt like we needed to make these types of statements when there’s an emergency,

[00:23:51.92] spk_0:
um, Antoinette, I’m gonna ask you to wrap up with something that you said, which is contrary to a lot of what I hear. Uh, you said that you’re a big fan of press releases.

[00:24:02.00] spk_2:
Could

[00:24:03.26] spk_0:
you take us out with your rationale for why? You’re a big fan of them. I’ve heard that they’re pretty much obsolete

[00:24:10.20] spk_2:
from a journalist. I

[00:24:12.51] spk_0:
don’t know from a commentator. I

[00:24:14.37] spk_2:
don’t want to write that.

[00:24:17.47] spk_0:
I

[00:24:27.93] spk_2:
believe that. I believe that. Um, so yes, because I’ve been reading press releases for a long time and I feel like the who, what, when, where and how gets me past that part of it, then I can ask you all the interesting questions. So if you can give me that in a way that I can cut and paste and I will not butcher someone’s name, like tony

[00:24:43.54] spk_0:
It

[00:24:55.22] spk_2:
might be, it might be a challenge. So I can, we can get all of that out of the way. But a good press release gets me excited as a journalist. It brings me into the conversation and if you aren’t excited about your press release. I can probably tell on the other end. So I had a good press release. All

[00:25:15.51] spk_0:
right, thank you. We’re gonna leave it there. That’s contrary advice. Which which I love hearing. All right. That’s uh that’s Antoinette car part of the leadership team of women advance and ceo of bold and bright media and also Peter Pan a pinto, philanthropic practice leader at turn two communications and they are co authors of the book modern media relations for nonprofits, Antoinette Peter, thank you very much for sharing. Thanks so much. Thanks for

[00:25:28.62] spk_1:
having us. tony

[00:27:19.59] spk_0:
pleasure. Stay safe. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 N. T. C. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Well, as you heard lots of ideas about the relationships, the relationships that will help you be the thought leader that you want to be. That you ought to be relationships leading to thought leadership. Turn to communications. They’ll help you do it. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. It’s time for Tony’s take two. I am still thinking about you and wishing you well. I hope you had recovery time over Thanksgiving. If you’re in giving Tuesday, I hope you’ll be happy with your results or you are happy depending when you listened. If you are, if you did congratulations, celebrate what you achieved. Take that victory lap you deserve it. If you’re not so happy, keep your head up, you know that you did the best that you could, don’t let it drag you down. You have other successes that are gonna be coming and you’ll be celebrating those. So don’t let a disappointment drag you down going forward. You have all my good wishes for your year end fundraising this week and continuing That is Tony’s take two here is content strategy, which by the way, we have boo koo, but loads of time left for Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 N T C. That’s the 2020 nonprofit technology conference. My guests now are Katie Green and Valerie johnson, Katie is Digital Giving Manager for the Trevor Project. And Valerie johnson is director of institutional advancement at pathways to housing P A Katie and Valerie welcome.

[00:27:44.11] spk_3:
It’s

[00:28:07.84] spk_0:
a pleasure. Good to good to talk to both of you and glad to know that you’re each safe and and well in in Brooklyn and uh, suburban philadelphia. Glad you’re with us. Your NtC workshop was content strategy for donor engagement From tactics to testing, let’s start with you, Katie, what what do you feel was the need for the session. What are nonprofits not getting doing so well, they could be doing a lot better.

[00:28:57.87] spk_3:
Yeah. So we have this session this morning at the same time as we originally had planned, which is great. We were able to give it virtually. And I think what a lot of donor content strategy is missing is simply structure. I think a lot of people don’t know where to start and they’re intimidated by it and we Valerie and I provide it’s some real life examples on how you can achieve a donor content strategy that does get you closer to your revenue goals. However, the tone of the presentation changed a little bit given how the world has come to be our new reality. So we did talk a little bit about the crisis and what it means for fundraising and what it means for content strategy under a tight timeline, knowing that things are changing at a really rapid pace. So really just structure and storytelling are the things that we talked about in this morning’s presentation, which will be available for viewing later, we’re gonna have a recording available for those who weren’t able to make it. But yeah, that’s what we focus on.

[00:29:27.47] spk_0:
Let’s start with part of the a good strategy is using personas, user personas. Can you kick us off with that Valerie? How do you, how do you start to identify what persona looks like and what’s their value?

[00:29:54.36] spk_4:
Absolutely. So, a persona is really like a profile or a character sketch of someone that you need to connect with um and understanding their motivations and goals. So it’s a way of segmenting your audience. And rather than sending all of your messaging out into the ether, trying to tailor that messaging to a specific demographic or a specific group of people. So for pathways to housing P. A. We’re actually still developing what our personas look like. We have an idea of what it looks like, but we want to dig some more into the research and analytic side of things to see who exactly is supporting us right now and what um ties they have in common to help us build those profiles. I think Katie might be a little bit further ahead of us in developing this persona. So I’m gonna toss it over to her.

[00:31:18.60] spk_3:
Yeah. So uh user personas are something I’ve been doing throughout my career. I worked in an agency before I came to the Trevor project. So I was able to get a lot of industry knowledge on how we create user personas and user journeys. But what we did, when we started looking at our end of year campaign for last year at the Trevor project, we made sure we carved out some time to conduct a little bit of an audit of what our donors were looking like, Where were they coming from? What could we track? What could we track? We found out we had a lot more questions than we did answers. So in order to get user personas, something that’s really important is tracking and understanding where people are coming from and where their first and last last clicks are. So because of our ability to use google analytics and source code tracking protocol. We did get a lot of tracking during end of year that will improve what our users like going into future campaigns. But now we’re gonna be able to better tell what is actually inspiring people to give. What is the moment where they’re actually clicking that donate button. What is the first thing they’re seeing that starting their relationship with the trouble project? So that’s what we’ve been doing.

[00:31:45.74] spk_0:
What are the pieces of a persona? How granular do you get? What is it where they live to what they read or what what you give us some like depth of this thing.

[00:33:34.60] spk_3:
Absolutely. So the main important piece of a persona is to know what their needs are. So you can have a persona that’s as general as this is a donor. They need to know how to give that’s a persona. But what you’d like to do is get a little bit deeper in being able to tell what the values of that persona are. What’s what’s the name? What’s the age? What’s the key characteristics? What are the opportunities really? You know, I like to create fake names and really go into it. You stock imagery so that you can try to connect with who this person might be? You’re really giving a face to a name and a value to a person and you want to look at what donors are looking like. So for example, for the Trevor project, we have a lot of one time, first time donors and we have a lot of people who come in, they give their first gift and I’m trying to find where they’re dropping off. Right. What is causing that? So I maybe create a persona that is a one time user that’s not really convinced they want to give again a one time donor. Um, they may be young. They may be, um, like within our demographic, which is under 25 of the youth that we serve with our crisis services and suicide prevention services. Um, so you can get as granular as making and they, and an age and the demographic and the location and what devices they’re using. I think that’s a big one. Is this person usually on their mobile? Are they usually on desktop? What channels do they typically like to look at twitter? You can get as granular email. Are they just looking at your website? So you know, it should get as detailed as you can, but I would encourage people to get really creative with it. If the more details you’re able to get is just a, just a more clear picture of a donor that you’re looking to target. Just make sure it’s someone you actually want to target and not someone you’re gonna be, uh, that wouldn’t actually be coming to you? Like maybe Bill Gates isn’t going to be coming to, uh, a nonprofit website to donate. Um, but you can look at what those specific donors might look like that are more realistic for your campaign.

[00:33:56.12] spk_0:
Okay. Right. You’re, you’re basically on what’s realistic, not what your aspiration is.

[00:34:22.36] spk_3:
Yeah. To a degree, I mean, I think you can be aspirational aspirational in some facets of what you’re doing. I think it has to be somewhat grounded in in, you know, a realistic approach. We do get asked. I get aspirational myself when I’m creating donor personas. When you know, I am looking for major gifts, I am looking for people who are willing to process of 15,000 dollar credit card charge. And there are people out there that that do that. So when I do my donor personas, they may not be the number one target of my campaign, but I do want to consider what those people are interested in as well so that I can personalize content for them to the best of my ability.

[00:34:53.03] spk_4:
Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind is diversifying your donor base. So in looking at who’s giving two pathways to housing right now, they’re mostly middle aged, college educated white women who prefer facebook and giving on a desktop, um, which is fine. And that’s definitely one category of people that you would want to be supporting you. But philadelphia is an incredibly diverse city. So if those are the only people that were getting to with our messaging, then we really need to think about diversifying our strategies to build new donor profiles for people who don’t all look the

[00:35:36.72] spk_0:
same? Okay. And then once you have a bunch of personas and profile? I mean, it sounds like you could have 10 or 12 really different ones, different, um yeah, different characteristics of people, different types of people that come to you. And, and like you said, Katie, even people who leave, you know, you want to capture them back. So, so once you have these Valerie, then you’re trying to communicate to them. But how do you how do you turn your communications into targets to to these personas?

[00:35:46.68] spk_4:
So you really want to think about building content specifically for that persona? So you might be doing a campaign um that you want to hit a couple of different

[00:35:56.37] spk_3:
personas

[00:36:07.97] spk_4:
with, but you’re gonna tailor that campaign specifically to each persona and deliver the message to a specific segment of that campaign. So if you’re gonna do a mail campaign, um, you want to think about how you’re putting together that letter and what you’re writing into the letter and how you’re addressing the donors for each of the different segments for each of the different personas that you’ve put together to really help craft a message and to inspire them specifically to donate.

[00:36:32.48] spk_0:
Okay, right, like Katie, like you were saying, you know, yeah, you know what’s important to them. Um, but that stuff is, this is very uh amorphous to try to, you know, it’s not just what do they give and how much do they give? And what time of year do they give, You know, what’s important to them? What do they value? This? Is this is difficult stuff to suss out.

[00:37:10.42] spk_4:
Yeah. One thing our co presenter said this morning, Marcus was that donors are smart and they’re savvy and with the advent of the internet and all of the various channels that you can communicate with people now, they know what they want and they know what they want to hear from you. And if they’re not hearing from you what they want, they’re gonna go find someone else who’s going to provide that information and communicate to them the way they want to be communicated with. So fundraising and marketing for nonprofits right now looks very different than it did maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, um, and, and donors know what they want now.

[00:37:24.54] spk_0:
Okay, so it’s worth, you’re trying to suss out all this amorphous information as as best you can. Okay. Um, Katie, is there anything more you want to say about personas before we move on to being multi channel?

[00:37:36.13] spk_3:
Let’s go on to multi channel.

[00:37:40.11] spk_0:
Alright, Alright. Anything I don’t want to leave anything important.

[00:37:44.66] spk_3:
Okay. I think we’ve covered the main point.

[00:37:47.19] spk_0:
Okay. What’s, what’s, what’s important about? Well, I think we all know why to be multi channel, but how to coordinate those messages? What what’s your, what’s your thinking there?

[00:39:21.81] spk_3:
Yeah, I can jump in here. So I think what people often don’t do is they don’t coordinate messages cross channel at the right time. That’s what I’ve been seeing a lot with just by industry research. I mean, I’m always looking at what everybody is doing in the space because I want to be part of the best. Uh but they say being what I’ve heard at multiple conferences is that there’s a rule of seven. Right. So as a non donor, let’s say, I’m scrolling through facebook, I need to see an ask seven times before I’m actually likely to give. So if you’re seeing that ask seven times on facebook, that means it’s seven posts. That’s kind of a lot. And that’s gonna have to be spaced out through a certain amount of days, weeks, months even. So if you’re just increasing all the channels that you’re presenting that message on. So let’s say I’m seeing it on facebook, I’m seeing it in my email. I’m seeing it on my instagram. I’m getting a paid ad for it because I liked it on facebook. That’s gonna shorten the window of which I see seven points of that call to action. So I’m gonna be more likely to give if I’m seeing it in a wider spectrum on the digital space than I am in just one channel. So making sure that you’re saying similar things, but that are custom to what the channel is providing, Like social media has like paid ads have a certain amount of characters you can use. So, um, making sure it’s optimized for what channel you’re using, but still with the common thread is really important for increasing your conversion rate.

[00:40:05.59] spk_0:
Okay, now it’s a little clear to me why I see so many ads for the uh, pickpocket proof slacks. I see them across all kinds of different channels. I’m not, I’m hardly on facebook anymore. But um, I, I see them when I go to websites and I’m reading articles and because one time, I don’t know, I, I swear it was like three years ago I was browsing through these like CIA approved slacks with 14 pockets and it’s all supposed to be pickpocket proof for something and you know, they $200 slacks or whatever, they’re, you know, but

[00:40:08.62] spk_3:
I’ve

[00:40:09.74] spk_0:
seen ever since. Yeah. And I don’t know. I’m not even sure that if I bought them, the ads would stop, maybe

[00:40:16.43] spk_4:
it’s

[00:40:17.57] spk_0:
sophisticated enough. No, it’s not right. That would be right. Because now your brother needs to pay or whatever. All right,

[00:40:23.00] spk_3:
Valerie,

[00:40:24.15] spk_0:
anything you wanna, you wanna explain about multi channel and how, how important it is to reinforce and be consistent.

[00:41:16.62] spk_4:
I think the biggest thing for me is if you’re starting from scratch and you’re really trying to develop content and put it in the right places. Um, you really want to be thinking about who your audience is on those channels. So for, linkedin, the messaging that you’re putting out is gonna look a lot different than what you’re putting out on facebook. Most people use facebook recreationally and they use linkedin for professional relationships. So the type of information that someone is seeking on linkedin or more likely to respond to on linkedin is a lot different than what they’re more likely to look for or respond to on facebook. Um so for us, we make sure all of our job listings go up on linkedin and all of our industry specific information that goes up on linkedin, um just to kind of show our expertise in the area. But when we’re posting to facebook, we’re talking more directly to people that we know are supporters of us and want to do tangible things to support us. So the messaging is different, even though the information is really the same.

[00:41:31.44] spk_0:
Okay, okay, again, you’re consistent but consistent, but but different. Maybe different format even. Um Okay.

[00:41:39.99] spk_4:
Yeah.

[00:41:52.00] spk_0:
Um I mean, there’s there’s other format, you know, content papers, white papers. Um Again, depending for the right, you know, for the right channel research, um, do either of you use um, media, uh, working in working through thought leadership in developing thought leadership in media media relationships either of

[00:42:30.91] spk_4:
you. Yeah, so there’s a local media outlet here in philadelphia called generosity and they are focused on nonprofits and social enterprises and people who are making positive impact in philadelphia. So they’re super open to having folks guest post um, or write op EDS for them. So we’ve utilized that outlet a couple of times. Um, actually just last week, um, our ceo over wrote an article about the opportunity for kindness in the era of coronavirus. So it’s something that she actually wrote to communicate to our staff members and let them know what our stance on, you know, moving forward was going to be. And we thought it was something that would be beneficial, not just to our staff but to be at large. So we passed it along to them. They posted it as an op ed and that gave us um, a little bit more bang for our buck for things that we had already

[00:42:58.94] spk_0:
written. Um, Katie, are you doing much with earned media?

[00:43:03.08] spk_3:
I am not the Trevor project is, but Katie Green is not doing that. Okay, handled that.

[00:43:10.85] spk_0:
Okay. Um, let’s talk about some, some analytics. I mean, how do we know whether we’re being successful? Uh, and where we need to, where we need to tweak or pivot Katie, can you, can you get us started?

[00:44:29.28] spk_3:
Absolutely. So analytics is very hard for a lot of nonprofits because it’s such a scientific based skill set. And you know, that’s something that when I first came onto the Trevor project, is that the first thing I implemented was our source coding protocol. It’s so important to know where people are coming from that you can actually optimize, but we a B tested and continue to A B test absolutely everything. We do it through our website, we do it through email, we do it through our paid social and to see how things work. I think really we just test absolutely everything things you think you know you don’t and that’s what I keep learning through testing is what you think works today, won’t work tomorrow and we retest everything. A time of day test for example isn’t gonna for ascend for email, isn’t gonna be the same after daylight savings. It’s not gonna be the same as the seasons change and particularly not the same now that everybody is stuck at home. So you know they’re testing and optimizing really what you know is working. It just requires retesting re optimizing and testing literally.

[00:44:35.20] spk_0:
Could you, could you give some more examples besides time of day, what are examples of things you test?

[00:45:24.47] spk_3:
Oh absolutely. So on our website we tested, we have a little um call out box with questions on our donate form. We tested the placement of that. Is it better to have it right up next to the form underneath directly on top. So the first thing people see um we test there, we test what photos we use a lot does a photo of somebody looking sad versus somebody looking more celebratory and happy. Um we test a lot of pride imagery because we serve LGBTQ youth. We wanna see if Pride imagery actually helps get our word out there. Um We test our colors a lot because our our brand color is orange which is can be very cautionary but we see you thing oh it’s your brand color. Of course everybody’s gonna always respond to it. But that’s not really the case. Like sometimes things like our blues and purples and greens when it comes to see ta buttons. Um Gosh, I mean I can tell you every test we’ve ever run. Thunder tests um using graphics versus photos on the website. Uh you know the size, the width, the height of our light boxes, the width of our donation forms the amount of buttons we have. It just the list goes on and

[00:45:51.24] spk_0:
on.

[00:45:53.35] spk_3:
I

[00:46:13.51] spk_0:
heard one that just made me think of just one small example of what riffing off what you just said was testing the text inside a button instead of just donate or like uh review or something. You know, be more be more explicit about what the what the action is you’re asking for instead of just a single word. A little little more descriptive. Yeah

[00:46:32.93] spk_3:
testing C. T. A. Is is something that we do a lot just to give people some ideas. I think one that can be really helpful when it comes to fundraising is seeing how your donors react to the word give and the word support and the word donate. So so it’s all the same thing. We’re asking you to support our mission to give to us and to donate. But those three words have very different feelings when you’re reading them on your screen. So that’s one of the biggest tests we ran. Um, but yeah, I wouldn’t recommend always testing the C. T. A. When you have a new one especially,

[00:47:09.95] spk_0:
was it, was it act blue that or or change dot org? I think maybe it’s change dot org started calling it chip in. Could you chip in? Okay. Okay. Um, um, so Valerie, can you talk us through some metrics? You’re the director of institutional advancement? What what numbers do you look for to decide how you’re doing?

[00:48:23.15] spk_4:
Uh, we look at a lot of things. So we’re looking at the click through rates on our emails and on our post actually reading to the bottom and clicking the links that we’re providing. Um, we’re looking at how many people are interacting with things that were posting on social media and whether they are enjoying it or not based on how many people are interacting with it. Um, we do a lot of surveys to do, so, talking to our donors directly and asking them what kinds of things they want to see what kinds of things they don’t want to see. Um, I know Katie is doing a lot more with metrics than we are. So, um, this is my friendly reminder to smaller nonprofits where there’s just one person trying to do all of this. you don’t have to recreate the wheel. Um, so you can look at an organization like the Trevor project that does have the staff who can look at all of these things and do all of these testing and all of the metrics and see what’s working best and they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So you can look at what they’re doing and then borrow it. Um, so for an organization like me that has a smaller staff, um, we’re doing a little bit on our own, but we’re also looking a lot at what other nonprofits are doing and assuming that they’re taking the time to test things and we’re kind of, you know, copying what they’re doing because it’s obviously successful for them.

[00:48:36.00] spk_0:
How do you learn from them? Do you just create a build a relationship and then ask what, what kind of metrics do you look at

[00:48:54.20] spk_4:
sometimes? And sometimes it’s as simple as going to the Trevor project, websites donate page and seeing where they place things and what they name their buttons and what giving levels they’re putting up there. Um, because you know, you’re never gonna be exactly the same as another organization. So you definitely want to take a look at who you’re using as an example and use someone who’s doing similar work or in a similar location to you. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can learn through testing and after that you’re just gonna have to dive in and do something. So if you don’t have time for the testing, you can do a quick search of what everybody in your industry is doing and kind of take it from there instead,

[00:49:20.34] spk_0:
Katie, uh, since everybody’s stealing from the Trevor project, what, uh, what I assume you knew Valerie was doing this.

[00:49:28.27] spk_3:
I didn’t, but it’s, it’s such a compliment.

[00:49:31.09] spk_0:
It’s

[00:49:32.63] spk_4:
because you do a great job. That’s why we’re looking at

[00:49:35.06] spk_3:
you. Oh gosh,

[00:49:36.48] spk_0:
what do you want to add about metrics?

[00:49:59.95] spk_3:
Um, I think I just wanna reiterate Valerie’s point that there are so many nonprofits where one person is doing this. Um I’m the only person on the digital giving team. I’m the first person they’ve ever hired to do Digital giving. Um I’m still a team member of one, but you know, I do have the support of a very large marketing team that helps me with creating all of the tests that we do and anyone can tweet me email me whatever if like any nonprofit ever wants to connect. I’m always an open resource. But uh, metrics are increasingly uh important, just critical to donors, content strategy. So

[00:50:21.55] spk_0:
since you’re offering yourself as a resource, do you want to share your email and or your twitter, you don’t have to give your email if you don’t want to.

[00:50:28.72] spk_3:
Yeah, maybe twitter is probably the best way to reach me because I’m trying, I’m trying to learn how to tweet more as a digital person. I feel like I need to, that it’s at Katie Sue Green like one word, so it’s K A T I E S U E G R E N K T. Still green green, just like the color. Okay,

[00:50:51.53] spk_0:
Okay, thank you. Um it’s a Valerie, you wanna uh wanna wrap us up some some parting thoughts about uh content strategy.

[00:51:18.42] spk_4:
Sure. Um since I am kind of representing the smaller organization here, I just want to remind everybody that you’re doing everything that you can and it’s everything that you’re doing is important. So don’t try to do everything at once, really pick one thing to focus on and get to a point where you’re doing that well and comfortably before you try to add more um listening to a podcast like this or going to a presentation, like the one that we did this morning is overwhelming in the number of things that you could be doing and it makes you feel like you’re not doing enough, but you are. And just tackling those small hills one at a time is much much easier than trying to climb the mountain.

[00:52:42.29] spk_0:
That’s very gracious, very gracious advice. Thank you. Thanks very much. Um that was Valerie johnson, that is Valerie johnson director of institutional advancement at pathways to housing P A. And with her is Katie Green Digital Giving Manager for Trevor Project. Thank you very much for sharing each of you. Thanks so much And thank you for being with Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTCC in two weeks. Trafton Heckman with his book, Take Heart Take Action next week, I’m working on it. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at 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 Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, 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 B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.