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Nonprofit Radio for August 16, 2021: Virtual Events & Design For Non-Designers

My Guests:

Evan Briggs & Gwenn Cagann: Virtual Events

Evan Briggs and Gwenn Cagann share their lessons from 25 virtual galas, which include takeaways for your next hybrid event. They’re both with Wingo NYC.

 

 

 

 

Josh Riman & Mike Yamagata: Design For Non-Designers

Wrapping up our 21NTC coverage, it’s a crash course in good design, covering fundamentals like color, type and hierarchy. Step outside your comfort zone with Josh Riman and Mike Yamagata, both from Great Believer.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:10.74] spk_5:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti

[00:00:13.06] spk_4:
non profit

[00:02:17.44] spk_1:
Radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh and I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of interception if you blocked me up with the idea that you missed this week’s show virtual events. Evan Briggs and Gwen Sagen share their lessons from 25 virtual galas which include takeaways for your next hybrid event. They’re both with wing go N.Y.C. and designed for non designers Wrapping up our 21 NTC coverage. It’s a crash course in good design covering fundamentals like colour type and hierarchy. Step outside your comfort zone with josh, Lyman and Mike Yamagata, both are from great believer. This week’s conversations are from 21 NTC and they wrap up our coverage of the conference and tony state too, sharing really is caring. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C O and by sending blue the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in Blue. Let’s get started. Here is virtual events. Welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 NTC, you know what that is. It’s the 2021 nonprofit technology conference. We’re sponsored at 21 NTC by turn to communications Turn hyphen two dot C o with me now from wingO N.Y.C. our Evan Briggs and Gwen Sagen Evan is digital fundraising and client engagement manager and Gwen is director of special events fundraising. Welcome Evan. Welcome, Gwen.

[00:02:23.64] spk_2:
Thank you. My

[00:02:25.41] spk_1:
pleasure. Uh, why doesn’t one of you? Uh, well, I’ll pick otherwise everybody was so polite. You work together and nobody will talk and then I’ll end up having to pick anyway, So, Gwen, uh, since you’re both from window N.Y.C. why don’t you acquaint us what lingo does.

[00:03:00.44] spk_2:
Thank you. Wingo is a small fundraising communications and design firm. Um, we have and call ourselves a boutique because we’re so small. We’re 12 people and we specialize in working with nonprofit clients, although we do have some corporate clients, but nonprofit clients that work in the social justice sector. Um and that’s probably about 70% of what we do and the remaining 30% or arts and conservancies and we help nonprofits with their individual giving and major donor fundraising and their special events.

[00:03:14.34] spk_1:
All right. And we’re gonna talk about special events. Um are where are each of you in each of you? In N.Y.C.

[00:03:21.94] spk_4:
I am in new york city.

[00:03:23.84] spk_1:
Okay. Where where what

[00:03:25.64] spk_4:
part? Um in Manhattan Health kitchen specifically.

[00:03:28.26] spk_1:
Alright, 9th and 10th of

[00:03:30.39] spk_4:
What? In between 9th and 10th on 49,

[00:03:52.14] spk_1:
Lot of good restaurants. Uh, 9th of from like 43rd and 44th up to like 55th or so, roughly 50, maybe 53. Some a lot Outstanding restaurants all along, 95. I’m envious of your food choices. There’s everything from Afghan. The Zimbabwe is on 9th. I think there was like 10, 12 blocks or so.

[00:03:58.44] spk_4:
Yeah, exactly. And it’s like almost feels like europe now with all the outdoor dining, they’ve completely shut down some streets and it’s just quite lovely.

[00:04:07.40] spk_1:
Right, right, so not ninth that they didn’t close. 9th of though, have they?

[00:04:11.10] spk_4:
Not 9th at but the side streets

[00:04:20.84] spk_1:
that go off of it. Right, right. We need folks need ninth, they have to get to haunt tunnel every day, Lincoln Lincoln, I should say in your neighborhood Lincoln tunnel every day. Gwen all right, so gwen, you’re an outlier, you’re not an N.Y.C. Where are you?

[00:04:24.94] spk_2:
Um I am actually, although I, when I’m in the city, you know pre pandemic in Boerum Hill Brooklyn. Um and right now though I’m writing out the pandemic in Jackson Wyoming, we have a small family place out here and I came out for a week vacation when things went isolated and haven’t left.

[00:04:44.94] spk_1:
Yeah, the week vacation that, that hasn’t ended yet in over

[00:04:47.72] spk_2:
a year in the great outdoors.

[00:04:49.84] spk_1:
Yeah, cool. So your window, your window Wyoming?

[00:04:52.84] spk_2:
Exactly and we have a window India to right now one of our graphic designers is based in India where she was writing about the pandemic and so we’re worldwide.

[00:05:06.84] spk_1:
Okay, that’s strictly N.Y.C. alright, your Boerum Hill. So you live in Boerum Hill. Yeah. Remember the park slope food co op by any chance

[00:05:13.62] spk_2:
know, but a couple of my colleagues are half of us live in Brooklyn and yeah, so I know it’s changed a lot during the pandemic with the work hours and such, but what a great place.

[00:05:57.74] spk_1:
It is a great place and I’m still a member. I live on the beach in north Carolina. I’m still a member of park slope food go up. Uh you know, they suspended the, they suspended the work requirements for the whole year. Now, they’re just slowly getting back into the member work requirement, but it’s optional for several months. And you know, I don’t know when I’ll be back up, but uh I maintain my membership in the go up because before that you could bank your shift, you could do, you could work a bunch of months. Uh you could work a bunch of shifts like in a week or even in a months and have them for subsequent months for many, many months. So I never lived

[00:05:58.31] spk_3:
in a community.

[00:06:27.74] spk_1:
It’s a great, it is great community park slope food co op shout out. I’m gonna be one of the most distant members. I mean north Carolina, you know, it’s not, it’s not easy to get there, but it’s, I keep my membership, it’s still worth it. All right, so we should be talking about your N.Y.C. you’re not your window N.Y.C. topic, you’re 21 ntc topic, which is a virtual events for the masses inclusive and interactive gatherings, Evan, what what is this all about? You’ve got uh you did like window did like 25 virtual galas in 2020. What you’ve got lessons for us.

[00:07:21.34] spk_4:
Yeah, we um, we quickly pivoted to uh throwing virtual events for our clients. A big part of our business, pre pandemic was was in person events, big Gallas and even smaller donors cultivation events and our firm learned quickly how to transform that experience into a virtual experience. Um, and we’ve had great success and continue to have great success um, with the, with the virtual events. Um you know, we create a space virtually on a platform where folks can gather and interact and have a really sort of intimate moment with, with the charity and we’ve found that fundraising has met or exceeded all of our, all of our goals um, for each of our clients and yeah, it’s, it’s something that we think is here to stay and you know,

[00:07:31.69] spk_1:
why is that why are virtual events going to continue when we can return safely to in person events?

[00:07:37.84] spk_4:
Um, I think people just learned that there’s, there’s so much benefit to having a virtual event. Um

[00:07:43.63] spk_1:
you know,

[00:07:44.32] spk_4:
one of the most obvious reasons is that so many people can, can gather

[00:07:47.87] spk_5:
um from

[00:08:17.54] spk_4:
all over the world and you know, the, we suggested to all of our clients that they make these events free to join um and then still offer sponsorships and other ways to donate. One of the big moments that we always have in each of our virtual events is what we call our live ask. So there’s still a moment where, you know, at a typical gala, there’d be a paddle raise or live auction. We’ve adapted that to a virtual moment and you still feel that energy and get to, uh, you know, have a night of successful fundraising with, you know, sometimes up to 1000 people, sometimes more.

[00:08:48.94] spk_1:
Okay, Alright. So remaining remaining relevant virtual events and uh, so I gather you have a bunch of, a bunch of ideas, like some new, I don’t know, maybe their new best practices or tips tools, strategies for successful virtual events. Is that, is that right? You’re gonna share a bunch of what you learned, how we’re going to bring in some, uh, inclusivity as well. Do I have that?

[00:10:17.94] spk_2:
Yeah, I’ll jump in here. I mean, you know, add on to what Evan said, um, that inclusivity by making it open to a broader range of people, not only your major donors that could afford that $500,000 dinner ticket when we were in person, but also everyone staff clients, People that benefit from the work of the non profit organization, really just reinforce all the positive things about your organization’s community. So the major donors feel great because they’re actually getting to interact with, as I said, some of the people that are benefiting from the programs and you know, it hits home in a really different way. You also get to grow your list. So all of those and we’re saying that, you know, somewhere between twice as many and three times as many people register for these events as you would get in the room. So let’s say you had a 400 person gala at Chelsea piers, see the dinner, you could get a, you know, 800 people registered for your event, usually about 70% of those actually tune in that evening. Um those are 300 new people, you know that you can, you know do some research on prospect with them if they come to the event, they now know about your organization, and so you know it’s a great way to grow your list, it’s really hard to grow your list in in real life, it has been traditionally and so that’s when big benefit in addition to this, just community feel and people really getting to know your organization and be interactive with it.

[00:10:27.99] spk_1:
All right, Gwen, let’s stay with you, let’s get into some ideas that you have about producing successful events. What should we start with?

[00:13:46.24] spk_2:
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest things is with virtual events is to be creative, there is no one cookie cutter way to do it for all in our opinion, you know, we do, Evan can talk later about some of the platforms we use if that’s going to be relevant to this conversation, but you know, we have a platform that works, but it’s really flexible for whatever program the client wants to put on and, you know, we highly recommend not just translating, you know, speakers at a podium to the virtual world. We want to make it much more engaging and exciting, fast paced dynamic. Um and so one of the biggest things we like to do is a little bit of what we’re doing today, have your speakers in conversation, and that could be honorees in conversation with someone who would traditionally present them in the world world, but it doesn’t even have to be that formulaic or formatted. It can be um an honoree in conversation with an expert in the field of what, you know, let’s say you’re doing immigration or foster care work, who are those experts in the field, let’s work them in because that’s a big part of what your audience is going to be engaged in hearing from. Obviously if you can get some celebrities, it’s wonderful. Um we do find that we’ve been able to get yeses for more celebrities in the virtual world than we did in the real world. I think part of it is because um even though there’s an event day that we stream on this event, we do pre record most of it, that’s the, you know, behind the scenes real life um reality. Um we primarily do that because we want to ensure a seamless experience. Um and prerecorded can still be totally relevant, totally topical. Um you know, during the heights of the pandemic and the craziness of the previous administration, we did end up when there was some, something crazy in the news, we did end up re recording, say um an executive directors piece, very, very close to the event because something relevant happened that, you know, we don’t want to be tone deaf about. So anyway, pre recording really helps as well. And then it helps again with those high profile people, whether they be on res or donors, um you know, who you want to get speakers or celebrities because um you know, you can do it around their schedule. Um also we just find that some very many of these high profile people who may have had just insane travel schedules, you know, our were more available and certainly, you know, had such a big urge to get back. So that was a big piece of it. Um the other um thing that we highly recommend is to share the record and share the event. You know, use it more than event day. You can either, you know, distribute it via your blast on your website through um, you know, as the full piece, which is great to do, but then also, you know, create some video clips um and share those unsocial and wherever you can for the relevant audiences. Uh and then I guess the last big piece and and maybe this should be a whole section of conversation today is looking to the future and hybrid event. So you know, depending on when you want to fit that and we can talk about that as well.

[00:15:28.54] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They help nonprofits like your nonprofit tell compelling stories and gain attention like attention in the Wall Street Journal, the new york Times, the chronicle of philanthropy and lots of other outlets. You’ve been hearing me name, Turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to virtual events. I love the idea of recognizing that you’re honorees and celebrities are so much more available for a virtual event and pre recording to, to present during the event. Um honorary, honorary timing can be a bet. Yeah, I’d love to be your honoree, but you know, I’m gonna be in new Zealand that week so I, I can’t do it. But you know, you could record from new Zealand or we can record from your home six weeks in advance. You know, it’s very good, very good point. Maybe that’s obvious it’s probably obvious to those of you who are doing events. Uh, I’m a lay person. I’m just, I’m learning this for the, for the 25 minutes or so that were together. So you spend your time studying this. Um, is that all the, the Evan, is that, is that all the strategies be creative pre record, you know, try to leverage celebrities, celebrity availability, honoree availability, share. Repurpose. Uh We could talk maybe about hybrid any any other tips though before we move onto platforms and resources.

[00:16:27.74] spk_4:
Yeah I mean one thing just to add on to the prerecorded tip is you know we do also Sprinkle in um some some live moments and you know and we and we do that strategically so we do reinforce that feeling that this is happening live throughout the event. And then you know we often will have our live moment directly in the middle or in the first half sometimes we’ll open up with a with a live em see that’s another great tip for a virtual event is to to have an EMC who can tie everything together, who’s really energetic um who can end you know can also interact with guests as they’re chatting. Um That really uh we found that the chat is crucial which is um which is why the platform is so so important when producing a virtual event. You know, we uh made a decision not to do our events on our most of our events on zoom because people are you know a little zoomed out and zoomed fatigue.

[00:17:08.54] spk_1:
We’re gonna we’re gonna get we’re gonna get to the platform. Um but the interesting it sounds like you need some you need an M. C. With a little higher higher capacity because all the moments are not gonna be scripted ideally because like suppose there’s a technical glitch, you know you want an EMC who can make fun of it be flexible not get flustered because you know they have to do a little tap dance for for a minute or two while you figure out the back end problem or something. So it sounds like you need a and see a little more uh yeah bring a little more to the game. Yeah that’s

[00:17:45.14] spk_4:
that’s ideal. I mean we you know we’ve also worked with with folks who aren’t professional M. C. S. And part of window service is we are day of support so we on that back end are all on a conference call you know in a headphone in the M. C. S. Ear in case one of these you know glitches happens or we need to communicate something or you know we just had a $75,000 gift. Um So you know really another beautiful thing about ritual events is that they really are you know opportunities for everyone, you don’t have to have a professional EMC does help you know but not required.

[00:18:19.74] spk_1:
It sounds like great fun. I would like if you if you ever if you ever need of an M. C. I would love to do something like that. Uh You seem great. I would love it. I love the flat. I mean I’ve done improv, I’ve done stand up comedy but I’m not trying to give you my resume but it just sounds like fun, it could be great you know, there’s a great energy and you got the producers in your ear, helping, you know, coaching through and, you know, and then you you’re on your wing it for a couple seconds, or like a great gift announcement, Whoa, you know, bring that person up, whatever. All right. Um All right, so what’s the, what’s this cool platform? That’s uh supersedes zoom.

[00:18:28.94] spk_4:
Well, there’s, you know, there’s a number of platforms, The one that we’ve been using primarily is called demio. Um it’s

[00:18:29.69] spk_1:
a

[00:19:07.54] spk_4:
demio demio D E M I O um it’s very intuitive, it’s beautifully designed. You can customize it. The chat function is, you know, very easy to use and fun, you know, it’s not it’s not hidden. You can use emojis, that’s another great thing for this. Um for the chat is the use of emojis or GIFs, um, ways to express an emotion, right? You can also tag people um, so you can speak to them specifically. Um and we’re seeing that, you know, more and more of these platforms are popping up and increasing and that interactivity element more and more, but Demi has been our preferred platform

[00:20:08.74] spk_2:
and the other real important, really important reason. We started with demio and then just Evan and our other team members do a lot of research. Probably weekly on what tuck has changed, you know, should we stick with this or try something else and they keep reinforcing that, this is the right one, but what I was going to say is that there’s a real ease of registration for people, you know, for guests coming to the event and that was really important to us. Well in the beginning zoom was you know, sometimes if you didn’t have the latest app you wouldn’t have the audio or you know it was difficult, I know zoom is really smooth out, but still this is easier than the zoom app, people literally put in their name, their email address, they get a unique link to click on reminders, come to them a day ahead, three hours ahead, 15 minutes ahead, they click in there in and the unique link is nice too, because then you don’t have to worry about someone getting in and zoom bombing or what have you, so you know it really is sort of a great gatekeeper, gatekeeper and really easy to use and then for those producing the event um what we don’t want to forget is that it’s incredibly great for uploading our content, switching between live and pre recorded um going to that live text to pledge moment that have been referenced, so you know, there’s some real advantages to delivering a seamless event as possible.

[00:20:41.84] spk_1:
Gwen, would you just reinforce it please and just spell demio again?

[00:20:45.12] spk_2:
Yeah, I d like dog e m I O demio

[00:20:49.52] spk_1:
alright, thank you, thank you.

[00:21:13.44] spk_4:
And one thing I will, I’m sorry, I will just say is that sometimes what we’ll do is tack on a zoom after party to radio events. So to me is sort of like the main event. This is when you go and you see and you hear and you fundraise and then, um, we, you know, even auto directs people to the zoom afterparty. If that is something that you’re planning, um, where folks can actually get on camera and see each other, we can, you know, do a toast. We’ve done dance parties. Um,

[00:21:55.84] spk_1:
you gotta move on. That’s cool. I love the idea of the after party though. Cool. And after party for virtually all right. Um, you know, we’ve had, I’ve had a bunch of guests from ntc talk about inclusivity. Uh, so I’m gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna pass that part with the three of us. But I would like to talk about communicating with these new supporters, Gwen, that you said, you know, you could end up with hundreds of folks that wouldn’t have attended your, your, your in person event virtually obviously because they can come in from all over the world. Uh, we just have a couple minutes more left. So what’s your advice around engaging folks who are new to your organization? First time was is this terrific demio based event.

[00:23:45.94] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. Well, what we are finding to that many of these new uh, guess, you know, become donors that night they donate in the text to pledge, which is just the first step. And so of course the biggest thing right away is acknowledging and thanking and then, um, which happens right after the event. Every donor to the text to pledge and to the event. You know, anyone who’s, who’s donated any amount, um, pre or at and then post event when we do send out the full event recording, we do give another opportunity to text to pledge. And then, yeah, it’s the thinking. It’s just the ongoing blocking and tackling and cultivation. So, you know, we would add those people to our clients email list. We would include them in our newsletters are ongoing e blast. Um, I will say, you know, we would recommend that the organization screen and rate their new donors like, you know, a traditional, you know, fundraising approach. Let’s take a look at these people owe somebody gave us $1,000 that night. If they give us 1000, there’s probably a lot of capacity there. Let’s do a little more research. And for anyone who’s a real real major donor, um, they should get thanked more personally. So maybe the executive director reaches out after the event and thanks them or you know, has a virtual coffee with them down the road. But you know, just slowly inappropriately. You know, seeing how interested they are in the event and see how you can engage them down the road both as a donor, maybe as a board member, maybe as a volunteer. If your organization has a lot of volunteer opportunities, but you know, just to engage because they came and they got involved.

[00:23:50.14] spk_1:
Can you say a little more going about what to do maybe in the the days following the event that that first, that first follow up opportunity, can you drill down a little more?

[00:24:12.64] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. We highly recommend a post event. He blessed the exact day after or you know, if for some reason you did an extra day um, within within a couple of days of the event to thank everyone for coming, share the full event, recording with your list. Anyone who both signed up to come but didn’t tune in and are your list of who didn’t sign up to come because now you can see it right? People are busy and while we are experiencing an increased number of people joining these events, there’s obviously a lot of people that just can’t on a given day. So you know, that post event d blast is really important. And again, to give one more opportunity to give to the event and support the work and then sending those, thank you an acknowledgement letters that actually are, you know, the official tax letter that people can use in their, in their tax taxes, um, with any donations that have been made. And then just, you know, I’m going um, can be staying in touch with donors. Um, you know, we recommend that, um, that people use e blast, you know, at least you know, monthly, um, and social posts to stay in touch with donors and then ideally maybe a quarterly newsletter. And then if it’s appropriate, if you can segment your list enough, even some special donor communications a couple of times a year to those most major donors that are a little more inside re

[00:25:26.15] spk_1:
okay. Okay.

[00:25:27.94] spk_2:
And when we can get back into it cultivation events, you know, we love having, you know, pre pandemic and we’ve actually got a couple tentatively scheduled for the fall. You know, that would be outdoor. You know, like a person who has a building with a rooftop, you know, invite, you know, a small group of people to gather and hear from the executive director of the program. People about what’s new and what’s been going on with the organization. We feel like there’s a lot of pent up demand for that.

[00:26:02.14] spk_1:
Don’t feel the events don’t feel the events. All right. Evan. We just have a minute or so left. So why don’t you just leave us with some last minute motivation,

[00:26:39.84] spk_4:
um, motivation for virtual events. I would say do one, do one, do one. There’s, you know, the world is really your oyster. Um, start with developing a run of show that is less than one hour. That’s, that’s the time that we, um, recommend. And just think about the story that you want to tell and then the folks that you want to tell it. Um and you can, you can produce a virtual event on any budget um and you know, do it within three months even less. Um it’s something that you won’t regret and it will live in perpetuity.

[00:26:58.84] spk_1:
All right in perpetuity. Well nothing is better than that. That’s Evan Briggs client and digital fundraising and client engagement manager at window. N.Y.C. along with Gwen, Socgen, Director of special events fundraising also at wingo, N.Y.C. Evan and Gwen, thank you very much.

[00:27:07.77] spk_2:
Thank you. Thank you so much. tony pleasure all you about EMC

[00:30:35.54] spk_1:
Yeah, wait, let me get to my art show for our audience. Thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 Ntc were sponsored by turn to communicate, we should be sponsored by window with all these shout outs but we’re not. We’re sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C o. It’s time for Tony’s take two sharing really is caring who can you share? non profit radio with may I make a suggestion Ceos Executive directors board members, non profit radio has proven to be valuable for these folks, I hear the feedback from them in this way it sparks conversations, it stimulates thinking, it broadens perspective, gives you something to think about. Maybe even and to talk about and then maybe even act on in your non profit so these conversations these thoughts often start at the leadership level so that’s why I’m saying ceo Executive director board member uh, I think last week’s Show is a perfect example of that. The performance improvement. Talking about the 360 assessments, 3 60 feedback ideal for leadership to think about as a method of performance improvement for for a team. Um, this week’s show, this week’s show more of an example of something that someone in leadership would share with the folks on their team that it’s appropriate for. So virtual events. Um uh, goes to the folks who are thinking about working on, not just thinking about, but who work on events. The design for non designers. If that applies in someone’s organization then they’re likely to pass it on that you know, every every shop can’t afford a design, a designer or design team certainly or even necessarily freelance consulting to help with design as you will hear my guests josh and mike say so in that case it’s leadership passing on segments, conversations that are appropriate to the folks that they’re right for. So C E O s executive directors, board members, they are terrific listeners. They get value from nonprofit radio do you know someone in one of those positions that you can share? non profit radio with, I’d be grateful if you do please sharing is caring, thanks very much for sharing. non profit video That is Tony’s take two now it’s time for designed for non designers welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 21 Ntc the 2021 nonprofit technology conference were sponsored at 21. Ntc by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C O. With me. Now our josh, Lyman and Mike, Yamagata, they’re both from Great Believer. Josh is founder and president. Mike is art director. Welcome josh. Mike Welcome from Great Believer.

[00:30:38.84] spk_0:
Thank you. Thanks tony

[00:30:40.17] spk_1:
My pleasure. And josh welcome back to a nonprofit radio

[00:30:43.74] spk_3:
Happy to be back to timer.

[00:30:53.14] spk_1:
Yes, we’re talking about the design designed. Your session was designed tips for the non designer. I’m actually gonna start with you mike as the designer as the art director, we can actually do this. We can, we can instill some some degree of design in people in like less than half an hour.

[00:31:05.44] spk_0:
We can. It is possible. Yes. Uh, there’s just some fundamentals and you just have to know it and where you go.

[00:31:22.04] spk_1:
All right, we’ll see where we go. Right. My extent of my design is symmetry. That’s all I know. That’s all I can do. If you go to my yard outside my yard, it’s symmetric. Uh, if you look at my, I don’t know, you look at my furniture, it’s symmetric. Um, when I draw something, it’s a house with a roof and there’s a window on each side of the house, so straight symmetry.

[00:31:33.81] spk_3:
No chimney.

[00:31:34.99] spk_1:
Maybe you could help me? Part of me was that josh?

[00:31:38.03] spk_3:
I said no chimney on that house.

[00:32:00.34] spk_1:
No, because that would be a said, well, I have to put it right in the middle. Usually a chimney is off the side so that would mess up place metric get all right. Um, All right. So let’s go to the non designer josh. I mean, you’re not, you’re the, you’re the chief of this, uh, uh, design company, but you’re not necessarily a designer. You you feel confident to that we can do this.

[00:32:27.94] spk_3:
I do. I’m the ultimate non designer because I started the design agency and I have no design expertise or experience or clout of any sort or kind. Um, mike is nodding and it’s very true. And this session is for people who work at nonprofits who did not intend in starting about non profit to do design work. Maybe they’re Occam’s associate or they work in the marketing department. And suddenly one day someone says, hey designed this flyer design the social media graphic and they’re like, I don’t really know where to start, but our our session is about how those people actually can be designers and they can learn some pretty straightforward basic fundamentals to improve their design and to improve it. Starting today after they listen to this session.

[00:33:08.54] spk_1:
Absolutely. We’re gonna take a day to give some thought to the session to the podcast and then uh, start, start the day after, start the day after you listen. And of course, you know its design tips for the non designer. It’s not great design for the non designer. So, you know, this is not like those ads, those early Photoshop adds years ago, I’m dating myself but you know, take a Photoshop course and you’ll be a great designer. We’re not we’re not advocating that Photoshop even still exist. Mike, is

[00:33:12.22] spk_0:
this still a thing? Okay.

[00:33:16.74] spk_1:
All right. So, um let’s start with some fundamentals. I feel like we should start with the art director. What are some design fundamentals

[00:33:52.14] spk_0:
of course? Um first one, I talk a lot about graphic design in general. It’s all about visual communication, Right? So that’s the whole point. So you want to create strong uh design which equals strong communication, getting your message and ideas across effectively and clearly. And you need a few things to make that happen. And a few of the things that we talked about our session were four design fundamentals. Those are color typography, white space and hierarchy. So those are four of the building blocks. You know, there are more, we thought we’d start with those and I can talk a little bit about them if you want me to or

[00:33:59.64] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a little it’s a little about each one. Yeah, just like we’re gonna

[00:35:14.54] spk_0:
build on these. Yeah, exactly. We’re building the building blocks. So color used to draw attention, communicate emotions, ideas, meetings without any text at all. So colour is a really powerful tool. Um typography, it’s just the style or appearance of text. You use typography to establish strong visual order. Also known as hierarchy. Readability. Accessibility. Especially for the visually impaired, you want to have strong typography and it balances out the overall tone of the design. Then there is white space which doesn’t mean white space, it means negative space. Right? So the space between the elements, you actually want to use white space as a design element. It helps with readability, prioritising content. Um kind of leading your eye from A to B. And then hierarchy is actually a visual technique where you’re putting all those three fundamentals together to create visual order. So it helps the user go from A. To B to Z. And it navigates you through everything. So hierarchy is kind of like um once you get all these three fundamental together you put those pieces together and then you get hierarchy. So those are the four fundamentals.

[00:35:34.54] spk_1:
I feel like I get I get I I see bad hierarchy uh like all the times you see a piece you don’t know where to read how to read it or you know or how to say the word that they made up or something? You know, there’s not enough visual clues to guide me through this new word or the peace generally like do I read up here or is this more important on the side or you know?

[00:35:39.74] spk_0:
Okay. Exactly. And that’s actually called cognitive overload, where your eyes don’t know where to

[00:35:44.92] spk_1:
look. It takes

[00:35:45.87] spk_0:
so much in, you know you only have so many seconds to retain it and then poof, it’s gone. So then you lose it, you know? So that’s the answer. So

[00:35:58.54] spk_1:
uh so now josh, how do we apply these fundamentals to our blank screen that were expected to come up with? Should we, should we design a sample piece? Should we be working with a, should we talk about a hypothetical piece or should we not do that? How do we, how do we apply? What what might just explain?

[00:36:12.63] spk_3:
Mm That’s good. That’s the ultimate question. I think it kind of depends what level of a designer you are. If you’re someone who’s already done some design work for your non profit, you’ve made a flyer, made a postcard, made a social media graphic. You can kind of look back at the design work you’ve already done through the new lens of colors. You know, Am I using too many colours typography? Is there a nice contrast here between the Fonz? I’m using um white space. Is this work? I’m doing too crowded. Is there no room to breathe and that all ladders up the hierarchy? Like mike was saying. So I think if you’ve done some work, it’s kind of time to do a little audit and look back at what you’ve done. I’m sure you’ve gotten better over the years, but there’s still probably room for improvement to communicate your message even more clearly.

[00:37:18.73] spk_1:
Let’s talk about some of the colors. What what some of the colors mean to me, red is anger or you know, but I’m the symmetric guy, so don’t pay no attention to what I say. I’m just, I’m just a lackluster host here. Um, say say either one of you, uh say something about some some basic colors and what they evoke.

[00:38:16.42] spk_0:
Sure, absolutely. I mean colors it’s tricky, right, because colors red represents danger. Stop. You know, it’s a cultural thing. So it’s, it gets tricky there. What we’re trying to focus on more is um, sometimes designers use formulas, so they use complementary colors which colors are opposite of each other on the color wheel or analogous colors, which colors are that are paired next to each other on the color wheel. Uh one of the really nice tips we like to say is use monochromatic colors. So what does that mean? That just means using one color, but changing the value or saturation, so light to dark or the intensity of that color. And before you know it, you can use one color and spread that into four or five different colours. Uh, so if you’re looking at, you have your own brand guidelines, let’s say you only have a certain amount of colors or you can really get a lot of mileage out of using one color. So those are a couple of things we’d like to use. But yeah, color can definitely use to draw the attention to bullseye into an area to lead each other areas. But we like to start with the basics. So yeah, those those formulas really help people.

[00:38:28.42] spk_1:
Let’s start with some or talk about some of those brand guidelines as you just mentioned it. And that was, that was part of your, your session. What are these?

[00:38:37.92] spk_3:
I can take that one.

[00:38:40.92] spk_1:
it’s your non, you know, non designer. So you need to jump in whenever you can talk about something.

[00:38:45.01] spk_3:
I know a bit over here. Probably

[00:38:57.22] spk_1:
resented by everybody at the agency. Right? You have no guy even Why is this guy leading us? All right. I’m trying to cause dissension and great believer. All right Brain guidelines please.

[00:40:30.11] spk_3:
So every organization needs to have brand guidelines. The brand guidelines need to explain what’s your logo and what are different lockups of that logo? Is there a horizontal version? Is there a vertical version? It needs to describe your fonts, You know, what are the funds in your logo? What are your headline fonts? What your body copy fonts? And what colors do you have in your palate? What’s your primary color palette? Is their secondary color palette? Brand guidelines should also show dues and don’t for your logo. So for example, don’t change the font and the logo. Don’t stretch it. Don’t put it behind a different colored background. Don’t change the colors, things like that. So even if a non profit does not have brand guidelines, they should make them. We actually did a poll during our session, we asked all the attendees if your organization has brand guidelines and about, Let’s see about 85, said they do have brand guidelines, which is great. Um, and if they don’t, we said you should just go make some and you can make them literally in a Microsoft-word document where you just type out here are colors. Here are fonts, here’s how our logo works and then build on it over the years and make it a more expansive document. But it’s really important to have to make sure there’s consistent communication. So if the non designer at a nonprofit starts to utilize, let’s say another colour like Mike was saying, maybe you’re gonna explore a monochromatic color, a different hue of color in your main palette that should then go into your brand guidelines. So other people that pick up on your work, let’s say an external design agency uses those same colors and things feel cohesive. So we’re big believers in brand guidelines for consistency but also knowing that they can evolve over time as your brand

[00:41:11.01] spk_0:
evolves. Likewise. Yeah. And I’ll also like to say that brand guidelines, you know, they’re, you’re mentioning, how do you start, you know, how do you start designing something blank piece of paper? What can you do? Well, you really should look at your brand guidelines in there. There should be also samples of, you know what a poster’s should look like, what should a page and website look like. So these are all guys to help any designer pick that brand guy lines up and start to use it because it’s all about building and strengthening your brand recognition. And the first step is building that brand guideline and then following all of those elements and using them consistent.

[00:42:23.10] spk_1:
It’s time for a break, send in blue. It’s the all in one digital marketing platform that has tools to build end to end digital campaigns that look professional that you can afford and that keep you organized. It’s all about digital campaign marketing, most marketing software enterprise level made for big companies with the big company. Price tag, sending Blue is priced for nonprofits. It’s an easy to use marketing platform that walks you through the steps of building a campaign to try out sending blue and get the free month. Go to the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in blue. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for design for non designers. You have some software resources that are simple enough that people can use them but fancy enough that they can do the do the do at least some basic, some basic design like color topography, et cetera. Where should we, what can we start with? What is what’s the first resource that you like mike.

[00:42:38.40] spk_0:
Oh for me, my bread and butter was would always be creative cloud, which is Photoshop still a thing illustrator in design. Um, but also utilizing newer apps like sketch or sigma, which is more about web design. Digital focus materials josh can talk to more about that

[00:42:53.60] spk_1:
spell sigma pleases ph

[00:42:55.54] spk_0:
f uh f I G F

[00:42:57.66] spk_1:
a thick. Okay,

[00:42:59.15] spk_0:
big and a fig

[00:43:00.13] spk_1:
leaf. Okay. Uh,

[00:44:33.59] spk_3:
and I can, I can pick up on that because the tools that mike mentioned are for people who are designer designers and who are more advanced, they can use the creative cloud programs to design things from scratch. They can use figure sketch to design websites from scratch a tool that we love. And we actually use ourselves and also encourage our nonprofit friends to use those non designers is Canada and Canada is probably a very popular program at lots of non profits because first of all it’s free for most nonprofits to use. But it’s also very user friendly in terms of developing templates. So developing a template for a postcard or a flyer or business cards, something like that. It has a really nice web based kind of drag and drop interface that still lets you make things that are customized and fun and branded. So we think Canada is a really nice starting point because you can really do anything in there are session. We actually asked all the attendees, you know, what kind of design work do you find yourself doing most often? And social media was number one, but people said they do web, they do email, they do print. Um there’s so much you can do within Canada to create something that’s beautiful and still fits within your brand guidelines and your brand architecture. So we were big fans of Canada and something else. Speaking of email, male chimp, constant contact platforms like that, make it pretty easy to develop a blast templates that you can apply your colors to apply. Not maybe not your direct funds, but a font that resembles your font to make things still feel nice and feel cohesive and feel engaging. So we like those tools specifically for email blasts, but recommend can refer a lot of other design endeavors.

[00:44:54.59] spk_1:
Cool. Okay, even I’ve heard of Canada, I think it’s I think that’s pretty, pretty widely known, but I’m glad, you know, a little more detail. Um and you mentioned. So like Canada you can do the postcard template. So those those templates that you do could be part of your brand guidelines. Here’s our here’s our template for an announcing event. Here’s our template for whatever campaign postcard, etcetera. Okay,

[00:45:17.09] spk_3:
Yeah. And camp gives you these kind of starter templates. So it can say, you know, postcard four by six inches. So it gives you the the real estate to work with and then you can actually design the peace within it. So you’re not kind of crawling in the dark. It gives you a nice starting point. Okay.

[00:45:18.49] spk_1:
All right. I’m glad to see, I’m trainable. I’m glad to know that. I’m glad to learn that there’s there’s hope beyond symmetry. All right. Um, but we still got a good amount of time together mike. What what else? Any other, any other resources?

[00:46:03.28] spk_0:
George resources for color. Uh Good one is coolers dot C O C O L O R S dot C. O. What they do is you can start to pick and choose and make your own palette and create different color combinations. What you can also do is lock in certain colors. So let’s say in your brad guidelines, you have a blue or red and a green. You can punch those colors in, lock it and then just start to play and create different palettes around it. So I think that’s a really good resource to use for

[00:46:05.49] spk_1:
colours, coolers,

[00:46:07.03] spk_0:
spellers. Sorry?

[00:46:28.88] spk_1:
Yes, coolers. You said it coolers dot C. O. Right. Yeah, that’s yeah. Okay. Okay. Um um, say a little more about the sweet that you both mentioned. The that includes, um, Photoshop. Uh, what was the suite of, It sounds like a suite of three in design, Photoshop and illustrator, illustrator, illustrator. Yeah. What is that expensive for? For folks?

[00:47:09.28] spk_0:
It can be it’s a subscription based type deal. Now, before you could just buy it outright and then I get free updates, but now it’s a subscription based, so yeah, you’d have to pay monthly for it. Uh To me it’s it’s worth it because that’s what I use every day. Uh interesting what josh says if it’s feasible to have a whole team to use it um because I need to get multiple accounts for it. But yeah, illustrators mostly used for icon vector work, it’s actually drawing things out and making vectors out of it so you can scale it. Photoshop is used to retouch photos um and in design is mainly for printed pieces like brochures, laying those out books, magazines, china reports.

[00:47:16.78] spk_3:
Yeah, I’ll just say, you know, cost around 100 a little under $100 per license. So per per person to access these programs as well as others, a little under $100. And one thing might mention

[00:47:30.34] spk_1:
Like $100 per month per person.

[00:47:32.47] spk_3:
Exactly, roughly. Okay. Yeah. And this is still for like the kind of design or design or someone who’s a little more adept and skilled and has more experience in the design space to use programs like these that can really unleash their skills. And one thing mike said that I think worth mentioning, especially since tony you mention Photoshop before is a lot of non profits tend to use Photoshop for creating templates for let’s say for a postcard for a social media post. And we actually don’t recommend that Photoshop is really a photo editing tool and if you’re going to make simple templates, we definitely recommend Canada it’s a lighter weight, easier to use. Program Photoshop, it gets a little complicated files get big and like maybe you could talk a little more about Photoshop is not the right fit for that. We try to restrict Photoshop to photo editing, which is really

[00:48:31.97] spk_0:
its core purpose. You can get very in depth with Photoshop, but it’s not really needed. If all you’re making is a template for something. It’s a lot of times. Professional people retouch photos, video, all of those things. So yeah, completely not needed. Okay, canvas, canvas, canvas.

[00:48:58.87] spk_1:
Alright. Um All right. We still got some time, uh, techniques. You know, how to how to visualize, you know, like what goes on in this designer brain of yours. Like what what are you thinking about while you’re creating something? What does give you a little peek? That’s like that’s why I always sucked at math and science. I never knew what was going on in their mind. Like you show me how to do it. But what are you thinking about? How do you conceive

[00:49:57.57] spk_0:
of it? Yeah, it’s I’ll give you another peak. Um It’s it’s it’s keeping these fundamentals in check. But then also looking at the world around you, looking at type around you, looking at colors around you, look at how other people are doing it. You know, create mood boards for yourself? Look at other anything that gives you visual stimulation. Go for it. And it’ll kind of help the board. What’s the mood board. So, mood board is something that helps get all of your thoughts Home together distilled onto one board. So that’s photography style color type. You know, you start to combine certain things that you find work well together and then when you then you can step back and you see it as a whole, we call that a mood board. So that helps you visualize um creating systems or identities for for branding and design in general. So it’s kind of like one of the first steps you do in your inspiration process. Okay. But yeah, some of some

[00:49:59.78] spk_1:
other quick tips. Yeah,

[00:50:54.36] spk_0:
yeah, sure. We talked about color, but maybe we can talk a little about type type and white space. Um I think for everything we’re gonna talk about, you really want to keep things simple even for, you know, designers, we’ve been designing for years, keeping it simple is always the best way to go. So in terms of typography, maybe just pick one typeface and use contrast. So different weights, different sizes, but just keep that one, you know, font and you just kind of use that throughout your piece, you know, white space? Just making sure we call a reductive design after you design something, start taking things away, just take things away and see how that looks. Does it feel cleaner. Does it feel more legible or did you lose something, you know, did you lose some of that? Um and for hierarchy, you know, we use all these different devices in terms, But one thing we always try to keep in mind is, you know, the point is to have the user be able to navigate from wherever you want from the start to finish. So you want to really create strong visual hierarchy. So using type, using colors, Using that white space to your advantage, not giving too much clutter, not using too many colours, not using too much type, not using too many shapes. So just keep it really simple. I think that’s that’s really the best tip we can give.

[00:51:22.76] spk_1:
Do people read bold, heavier, bigger fonts first and then smaller funds after. Right? All right, so that’s that’s again, I’m just learning, I’m trainable. So that’s a visual cue, you can absolutely look to your first, then look here that we want you to read this other thing

[00:51:51.16] spk_0:
that’s the smallest. Yeah. Use it to your advantage. Use uh boldness, the size, hit it with a color, get people drawn into that and then pair it with something that’s calmer. Media sans serif. Uh, font sensors, meaning, you know, these two types serif and sans serif. One has a little extra additions to the ends of the letters. Sensory

[00:51:57.96] spk_1:
culebra is a sans serif and times new

[00:52:11.45] spk_0:
times roman is a is a serif. Yeah. You know, so, you know, just using using those things to your advantage. Yeah. Doesn’t matter. Go big. Um go big, go bold draw you in. Um, and then, you know, use type and then use all these other elements to avenge.

[00:52:48.75] spk_3:
Yeah. Just to add on to what mike was saying. I think the most important thing or a really important takeaway is to definitely use restraint when it comes to the number of colors you use the number of funds you use it. So often the case that we’re working on a project where are non profit partner will say we need to do this much in this small space and we say we can’t so we need to start to figure out what can be removed and still get your message across or do we need this to be a two page piece instead of a one page piece. So I think the big take away should be that sometimes you need either more space to get across your message or you need to take pieces out to do so in a way that sticks and gets people to take action.

[00:53:16.45] spk_1:
Okay. And Mike mentioned reductive design white space. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s soothing. It’s calming. You know, what about, you know, I assume this is valid practices to share the peace with other people? Absolutely. Are they reading it right? Does it upset

[00:53:19.71] spk_0:
them, et cetera, yep. What was it was like a B testing where you give two designs to samples? The same user base and then they, you know, then we can see which ones they gravitate more towards which one is more effective.

[00:53:50.85] spk_1:
A B of course, for for a broader audience. I was thinking just within your team. No, that’s absolutely what does this look like? You know, talk me through your as you’re looking at it. What are you thinking, things like that? All right. Um, All right. So there’s, there’s hope, there’s hope for the non designer. You’re not gonna get a fine arts course, you’re not gonna get a fine arts degree in in 25 minutes. Not profit radio but there’s there’s, there’s basic, there’s basics. Alright, Alright, we’re gonna leave it there sound all right,

[00:54:03.34] spk_3:
Sounds good.

[00:54:12.54] spk_1:
Okay there, josh, Lyman founder and president at Great Believer and Mike Yamagata, art Director at Great Believer. Thank you very much. Thanks guys.

[00:54:14.11] spk_3:
Thanks tony

[00:55:07.24] spk_1:
each of you and thanks to you listener for being with non profit radio coverage of 21 Ntc where were sponsored by we should be sponsored by Great believer with all the shout out. I’m giving you a great believer, uh, their design expertise, you know, But no, we are, we’re grateful to be sponsored by turn to communications turn hyphen two dot C o next week. It’s an archive show. I will pick a winner. Trust me if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c O and by sending blue, the only all in one digital marketing platform empowering non profits to grow. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in Blue,

[00:55:23.44] spk_5:
our creative producer is clear. Amirov shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Mhm. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out

[00:55:42.34] spk_0:
and be great. Yeah.

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Oh, hi, hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into a habit ood if you told me the dull idea that you missed today’s, show your website redesign it’s your step by step guide to a web site makeover let’s include gaining stakeholder support, managing contractors and using data to drive better engagement. Our panel from the non-profit technology conference is orin levine with international centre for journalists. Lisa gets off with gizmo creative factory and emily paterson, founder of be measure and over marketing it drives amy sample ward bananas let’s talk through her issues she’s, a social media contributor and the ceo of n ten non-profit technology network i told you to, i’m wagging my finger, responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing capital p well, you see piela is guiding you beyond the numbers. Weather cps dot com bye tello’s durney credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s on by text to give amglobal donations made easy text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine here is your website, redesigned from non-profit technology conference. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. We’re hosted by the non-profit technology network, coming to you from new orleans in the convention center. This interview, like all our eighteen ntcdinosaur views, is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donor-centric software for non-profits, i guess now are orin levine, lisa gets off and emily patterson, or in his director of innovation at the international centre for journalists. Lisa is founder and creative director at gizmo creative factory, and emily patterson is founder. Be measured that’s b e like the insect welcome buy-in. Your seminar topic is gourmet taste on a pizza budget. Tackling a website, we design for small non-profits, and i noticed that in your session description, use the word small three times. That’s perfect for non-profit radio because our twelve thousand listeners are in small and midsize non-profits. So i don’t have to admonish you or remind you even taylor, your comments too small and midsize or no, i don’t, because it’s, you’re right, it’s in your dna, it’s in the dna of your workshop topic, anyway, get carried away. Personal. Okay. What what are the challenges? Let’s, start down there with emily on the far end? What are the challenges with website redesign? Hyre? Definitely, i compare website redesigns, teo doing laundry, at least at my house. Okay, that it’s something where it feels like you put all this work into it, and then when you’re done well, there’s a whole new basket of laundry, and you need to start all over again. Yes, it’s, a project that it could take over here and then it’s. You know, another year passes by and it’s, time to start redesigning your website all over again, because technology and trends change so frequently, something you have constantly have to keep up with. What do you part of what you described way? Have you done your workshop yet, or it’s coming? No it’s tomorrow at one thirty and that’s a preparation for you? Okay, she’s like a batting range, putting, putting green. I don’t know too much. I don’t be doing sports analogies that that was a mistake i don’t anything about. I don’t know anything about either of those sports, football or tennis, so okay, what do you need? What do you need to have in place? Could we start with you? Lisa, can you could you adjust that one? What do you need to let in place? But think about before you embark on hiring someone to do it or doing it in house? What do you need to think about? You really have to think about weirder site is now and if it’s working for you and if you comptel, if it’s working for you, since we generally have analytics, but also are you getting the results that you want out of it? Are your constituents getting what they need out of it all of that kind of thing? And then it’s just improving upon what you have if its content or design usability, all of those things, okay? Or you want to add wear at the pre stage now, exactly. And this is in some ways where the small comes in, because one of things your back of your mind is, is what resource is do you have realistically to approach the project, which will probably be less resource is than you would love to have? Especially if you know you’re looking at other websites and say, oh, i’d love to have a website like name your large corporation here and because you’re not small non-profit you can’t. And in addition to the questions, lisa was passing one of the question, in fact, you need to ask is, you know, why do i have a website at all? You know, it’s really gets down to what am i doing? I’m murcott what’s the purpose why do i want people to visit me in the web but who’s coming to visit? What do i want them to do when they get there? And by being really careful about asking those questions that helps you match what you could do there to the limited budget you’re going toe? How do you overcome this stick of the orange? How do you overcome not knowing what could do? It is not your site is not doing it now, but it could, but but you don’t know. What it could do because you’re not already exploiting that. How do you feel that gap, that knowledge gap? Well, it’s ah, sort of a balance between what what it’s already doing, what it could do and what you wanted to do. And a lot of what we talked about in our own organization was trying to distill down of all of our laundry list or went backto the laundry analogy, a laundry list, emily’s basket wish list of all the things you wanted to do or could do or might do an ideal world. It’s really important to try to focus down on a few very, very critical things that you want the website to do. Focus your efforts there that both helps focus the minds of the people who are responsible for the website and then focusing your budget on a realistic set of goals you can achieve. So you might brainstorm and then and then and then focus exactly two realities. Okay, okay. See about something else you pledged to cover in your workshop. Hold your feet to the fire. Think about who to hire. Whether you need is who wants to take this one first? Whether. Whether you need expertise, we don’t necessarily have to go in line. One, two, three, three, two, one, which i don’t i don’t like that, but we can now for now anyway. There’s soup for now, but i’ll bring it up if we keep up with us whether whether you should a lot of small orcs probably do need help, right, then we’re gonna need some technical help. This website project definitely on dh speaking as a designer and developer, generally i come in when they don’t have those resource is on staff, or if those people are overwhelmed and speaking to lauren’s point, sometimes you can brainstorm with those people and find out exactly new things that you may not be aware of ways that you can integrate databases better, etcetera on improving communication. So, you know, so much of it is just what you’re re sources are and what you’re willing to put forth. So you’re often in the role of having tio make the expectations fit the budget. Yes, we can’t do that yet. I know you would love to, but if you want to do these other things that you said were playing top three priorities. And we can’t do this. You can’t have six priorities. Yeah, i’m a big believer in phase development, so if you could do it in six months, then we’ll do it in six months when it’s more feasible. Okay, how do you, uh, how do you message that reduction down, too of reality when it when you’re talking to the ceo executive director? Oh, gosh, i mean, i basically put it the exact same way that we can do this in six months. We can still make it happen with the budget that you have, but if you want to put more towards that, then of course, we could make plenty of things happening now, so okay, so bring it down. Arika money. Yes. Way to spread it out. You can have it, but it’s gonna take longer. Okay? In fact, one of the things we talked about in the session is sort of tricks. I learned i was emily start going out orders don’t get going out at one point, i want i want to head over to emily because she’s really the expert on how to manage to ceo seo, i’d better let her speak for that. I’m not going sequence. I don’t want you to continue, okay? My my one question is that one of the now now a great host, it’s time for a break, pursuing their newest paper is pursuing e-giving outlook it’s a roundup of all the fund-raising data that you need, they took the latest fund-raising reports boiled them down to the essentials into a concise content paper, plus there’s a video archive of the weapon, or that they did around this whole subject. It’s, an ensemble piece, paper and webinar both on the listener landing page. Tony dahna slash pursuant capital p for please now, back to your website redesign say something talk emily yeah, it was like they had a message to you, ceo message manage expectations about the top level uh, so i think one of the things that people don’t realize, especially at the top level around website redesigns is just yeah, how much, how much work and how much? And thus time and money is involved, and i think having teo yeah, message and set expectations around that is a big challenge buy-in vices that i’ve worked and now in a zoo independent consultant, my point of contact is typically, you know, you’re marketing director or your communications person who have, who handles all of communications and all of fund-raising so kind of a mid level person and being able to work with them to help them set expectations with there with their boss around the web website, because i think a lot of a lot of executive directors, you know, they’re a little bit detached from the project and, you know, they’re looking online, and they’re seeing all of this awesome stuff that other organizations or, you know, even for-profit companies are able to dio and they don’t realize, you know how much time and money needs to go into that. I’m going to pick up on on emily’s point, that becoming the position of being the non-profit that’s working with cos, you know, we were designing the web site, and one of the things we try to make sure of is we knew internally in our own organization who who is responsible to make the final decision so that, you know, family’s talking the communications director, she needs to know that when the communications director says we’re not going to do this, then hearst boss is not going to come down two weeks later and say, well, actually, we are let’s keep that anyway, because that’s, how you lied to basically blowing your budget and changing your plans. So it’s, very important as an organization is a nonprofit taking on the project to be clear in advance. Who are the decision makers? Who are the real stakeholders, who is going to make the decisions and who needs to stay out of the way? That’s perfect. So who should be let’s? Go to you family? Who should be part of this design team? I mean, i think having one clear a person who is ultimately one person is in charge. Yes, having been in the position where three people are making the decision, you know that doesn’t really work. So ultimately one person has to have the final say. So we are we are not doing this, but i think lots of people should be involved and be able to have their input because you will otherwise get in this situation. Where oranges years, months later i don’t know. How’d we get this? Yes or no? You roll that definitely derail your project. If all of a sudden you had someone pop up and say hey, what happened? Teo x y z i thought we were doing this, and then as a consultant to be the person who says, oh, sorry, that’s not in the budget, i think it’s so we need to think through in the beginning stages, who are the stakeholders? So but with the web, but at our website affects everybody. Lisa, how do we decide whose we can’t have too many people in the process? I already said that how do we decide who should be part of this process and who should be sidelined? A big part of that for me is design theory. Tio it’s basically starting off with talking to all of the people who are going to be using the site. So if it’s one person from the board, one person from the staff, one actual end user, et cetera, and they don’t necessarily have to be people who are involved in the decision making part of it. But fighting out how they actually use the site and how they would like to use the site and how it all fits into the overall organization makes a huge difference in the end result and how successful it is, okay or anything you want to add to this? Yeah. And that’s another reason why inside the organisation it helps to have somebody you can sort of manage some of those relationships internally in some ways be a bridge between the organization and the external party. I in some ways fulfill that role in my organization. I’m not responsible for the site, partially because i have experiences a web product manager, i’m ableto some ways mediate, i suppose, between some of the internal forces intentions and our external external vendors, and that makes life easier for them because they have fewer people to talk to, and we’re clear decision making it makes life easier for us and that we’re able to resolve some of our issues ideally before we start having to pay for it’s going to more detail on this, managing the contractors or contractor whatever that is doing the process. Emily, you’ve got something you want. I was going to say that i think having your communications director or someone at that level lead the project is a good call because they’re in a role where they khun both understand more closely, like the technical side of what we’ll need to go into this because they’re close enough. To the project, where they might be in a role where they’re updating the website. But then there also. Removed a little bit from it and more into the business side of things where they can understand the bigger picture and the business decisions and the important role that stakeholders play. Where i think if you put the website in the i t department and have that management come from that side, they might spend more time kind of focused on how is everything working exactly and ignore the business side of war on the into the code? Okay, okay, let’s, let’s talk more about managing the contract with doing this project for us out. How do you? How do you like to be managed? I don’t like to be managed, but well, essentially the biggest thing is always communication on both ends of it and setting expectations. Some people love to talk only via email, some are i need to get on the phone with you to make you understand this and it’s an inter generational thing, it’s just it’s. Everybody certainly has different feelings on that bye, setting up expectations of how often we’re going to talk, how we’re going to talk, how we’re going to be managing all of these assets, all of these things that makes things so much easier down the line, and you don’t have developers who disappear or gaps in knowledge where well, we have no idea where we’re hosted right now, which is a huge deal, because so many people don’t really know all their passwords and everything. So let’s, let’s move to something else that you were are going to cover tomorrow. Use of data, you said data tio dr better flew and better engagement. Who’s the everybody plays family, right? Emily, you’re got two thumbs pointing to you. Yes. Yeah. That’s. The data portion of it is really my specialty. Okay, so we’re going to talk a little bit about what the stakeholder they wrote to me in for the stakeholder section because i had had this other presentation that oren saw where it was about using data to kind of manage people’s personalities, but definitely needed to manage personnel. That was that was different. There was somewhere else. Yeah. Is that another? Another kind of interested? Okay, about how you can take the day that you collect and then use it. Tio appears the different sort of questions and issues that pop with your different stakeholders, but definitely before you embark on your redesigned some suggestions about, you know what sorts of data people should look at, a lot of it depends on what sorts of issues pop up with your various people who are involved. I really kind of feel like there’s kind of three basic types of issues that it will happen, you know, there’s the sort of person who doesn’t you might have it from your executive director or from another person, your organization, they don’t necessarily want to spend any money, so helping to make the case that we need to make this investment and we need to invest in better technology, you can use your your google analytics user testing surveys a variety of different things to get a good picture of what’s going on with your audience because who’s using your website is not necessarily reflecting the needs of the person using your website isn’t reflecting. You know the needs of the people in your audience, they’re not in your office, they’re not the same. Okay, what else about data? I’m so you also get the person who is has all the fun ideas, maybe, you know, reads a lot of things. Online about the latest trends, and we need to have this widget and that widget and helping them get a good perspective on, you know, what’s really going on with our users where we really having problems with our site right now that definitely need to be fixed in the in the redesign, you can use google analytics things like back-up they have a funnel feature to see you. Nowhere in your process is people you’re losing people dropping out, leaving your side, and then i love surveys and user testing as a way to hear from riel people how frustrating it is for them to use certain functions on your website. So who would you send those surveys to? Is that that cut across all your constituents metoo donors, board members, people who are engaged, engaged with your programs, receiving your service is all those people get survey like that? It depends. I’ve done ones on the website, which i think are nice. Google has ah, very low cost pop up sort of survey you may have seen them before that you can answer a couple questions, and then there’s typically kind of an open end response, which is a great source for people’s france. Ok, things are kind of questions. Do we ask? You can certainly ask about user rolls if you want. If it’s important for you and your your website to understand who’s used what constituency you would word it this way, but what constituency they fit into. We’re delivering services, etcetera. Okay. What? What else do you want to find out? That’s? Fine, but you could totally keep it super simple. And just as something like, you know, what brings you to the site today? Are you satisfied with your experience? If not, you know what recommendations do you have for us? Those three questions? I think we’ll get you a good picture of what’s going on. I mean, i’ve had guests on who say the best survey is, like, five fewer questions. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay, so short is not problematic. It all it’s preferred? Yeah, especially if you you know, you’re kind of you’re popping up at them. They’re coming to your sight because they’re trying to do something else. So you want to keep the survey short because you’re kind of interrupting their experience? What else can wait? Talk about around this? You’re going, you’re going to feel ninety minutes tomorrow. Well, let me add another more point about data again. I’m coming at this from persuaded emily. So i thought the data when emily stop, okay or you can talk about data. Whenever we took a breath, i thought that was the end of the day that i could talk for days about data e talking about okay, just the one small point i wanted to make again back to managing expectations, it’s away to also manage expectations your stakeholders had about people who are wedded to. We’ve always had this section on the website i love this information is valuable and it’s useful to be able to go to analytic state and say twenty, people visited this page in the last five years. We don’t need it. Okay? Spell, myth it’s also a legacy pages that people are tied to strongly, but nobody else cares it’s also testing out processes to like, how long does it take someone to actually make a donation or to find the volunteer form or something like that? Does it take to long for them to get there and they get tired of it? And they just leave, or does the executive director have an idea that they love this particular feature, but no one’s clicking on it or they wantto accident actually everyone’s clicking on it. And we don’t know that unless we actually get true user data, so it helps it. A lot of scenarios are based in reality. You know, the numbers no like yeah. All right. Uh, okay, so we still have you just took it five or six minutes together. What else can we talk about on this topic website? Redesigned. You promised a step by step guide. We missed any step. Well, there’s, plenty of stuff. Cemetery. Alright, so name some names, something we haven’t talked about it content auditing of your current site. So actually, i’m going to cut you off there, like three or four sessions ago, we talked about content, name another one and another step way of linking on it that we haven’t talked a lot of sessions, police about post launch care and the whole yeah, because to me kind of the laundry analogy to but to me, a website is a living, breathing thing. And just because you’re done with it, because it launched does not mean that it is done. You need to keep feeding that for google to pay attention to and for your users to pay attention to. You also need to be aware of the ongoing costs of maintaining the site and keeping it secure. Ilsen and already you have a laundry. Now you wanna bring laundry and maybe a lot of what you want. I’m thinking more about sort of laundry all of a sudden, you know, chris created out of no where in your hamper, because what happens is part of the consequence. If you’ve been really successful, i think in managing expectations and limiting the scope of your redesign and coming up with a very clean site, that means there are going to be items that fell off the must have list that are now on the might have list or nice to have list, but after launch that’s an opportunity to sort of incrementally add in some of the things you may have wanted to do earlier as budget becomes available. That’s part of what lisa was saying about it’s, an ongoing project not only maintenance but ongoing improvement i remember, but i used to work at a large non-profit before people with sort of a background in your television program, you would say that keep iooking cleanse the website done, and i think least i mentioned at the beginning of our talk it’s never done that’s an ongoing lisa, do you see? Oh, our emily also commonalities around things that people want but don’t really need or, you know, durney generalities about things that they say is a top priority, but really it’s, not any any generalizations you could make around that. How about home paint sliders? I was just thinking that way, but everybody loves big sliders, right? No one clicks on them. They really don’t know. They don’t stop it to go back. So many guys attract many home page sliders. Yes, they get teo slide too, i think. Yeah, they and then they go to what they really want. Okay, i think people, maybe this is at least as different impressions. But i think there’s just too much emphasis and too many politics around the home page and what goes on on the home page because most sites people are coming in sideways, you get a lot of people coming in. From search, especially if your sight is well designed and has, you know, all the ceo best practices. People will come in to your bog post or to your content pages, and they’ll never see your home page. And so in projects i’ve been involved with, the home page gets very political and can stall things. Okay, that’s, old thinking that everybody’s coming directly to our our main, our main domain. And everybody wants a piece of it. Yes, there’s a lot of fighting about. Okay, so you are generalizing about okay, george, as i was going to bring this up before, but yeah. There’s a lot of oh, you know, my department needs to go on the home page. This is very important. Very important to this organization. All right, all right. What else could we were going to flush out? A little bit more? Got another couple minutes left. What one thing is, i was going to advise i came up with a bunch of sort of tips and tricks. If you’re inside the organizations that have ways too, to keep your stakeholders, i was going to use the word under control. But that’s a bit of a loaded term, but back to the prioritization, you know, prioritization is really critical, you know, making those choices about what you want to do and there’s been lots of cases in several projects i’ve worked on when you know your stakeholders might have a long list of things they want to do. And as somebody who’s running a project it’s really important to learn how to say pick one really focuses the mind i sway for, you’re not going to need that. That sort of thing to really help helps sort of focus the issue. Everybody gets one right, you could. You could name as many as you like, but you’re gonna get one priority. Okay, okay, yeah buy-in talking to clients. I used to say to people, you know, we can do this, you know, or we could do this and that response, wass, what can we do both. So i have learned to rephrase it and say, here are three options, pick one, okay. We asked what you, uh so what do you love about the work that you do? You know, organizations i work within cos they’re so wide ranging that it always amazes me what you can learn, what you can pick up and all of the commonalities of them too, you know, there there’s so many things that they’re all trying to get across, even if they’re a tiny little organization. So it’s, um, and making a difference with it with the actual and product from what they can about you are what you love about this work. I think what’s really interesting about the work is one year’s going setting off on a website redesign you think you’re doing a technology project, and it almost inevitably ends up being a management project because i think we’ve alluded to it before that the company’s your organization’s website is really related to how it’s organised how the organization works and you end up sometimes having more conversations about how the organization works and how we’re running on what our strategies then, about technology, about the actual some introspection. Okay, emily, i’m gonna give you ten or fifteen seconds. What do you like? What you love about this work your work about the work that i d’oh. I mean, i like that it’s always changing. I specialize in data stuff and it’s a field that’s constantly evolving. So i like that aspect of being able teo, keep up on it and always be just like our websites. Yeah, conley evolving. Always changing. Never finished. All right, they’re orin levine, director of innovation at the international centre for journalists. Lisa lisa it’s. A guess off. Yeah. Sounder and creative. Director of gizmo creative factory and emily paterson, founder of be measured. Thanks so much for being with us. I think this interview like all of them here it eighteen ntc sponsored by network for good, easy to use dorner management and fund-raising software for non-profits. Thanks so much for being with non-profit video coverage of the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference. We need to take a break. Wagner. Cps for pete’s sake, talk to you. Eat huge tomb. You know the man. You heard him on our four hundred show. Did he sound high pressure to you? Of course not. He sounded like the gentleman that he is gentlemanly and professional. Check out the farm of course. Got to do your due diligence. Do your research weinger cps dot com then pick up the phone. Talk to you, wagner, cpas dot com then moved to real life now tony steak too it’s finger wagging time. I want you to plan ahead so that you make time don’t just look for it try to find it. You make time for yourself yourself over labor day weekend time alone, its restorative you heard last week steve rio talk about thie the benefits throughout your day of of mindfulness and presence, and even maybe ah meditation for a couple of minutes. I mean, they do virtual meditations of bright webb, he said, every day for five minutes, take time for yourself. Make time for yourself over labor day weekend, even if even if part of it is a nap. It’s restorative, you’re in e-giving profession you give you give, you have to be a little selfish and take make that time for yourself wagging my finger and there’s a little bit more on that in the video at tony martignetti dot com what a pleasure to have amy sample ward back. She is our social media contributor. Ceo of intend the non-profit technology network her most recent court third book, social change, anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement she’s at amy, sample board, dot or ge and at amy rs ward. Welcome back, amy. I think having me back, it’s always a pleasure. You’re always you’re always welcome back. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Should be a surprise to you. We always work well, i hope that you’ll let me know if i get cut from the roster will stop taking your calls. Know that we’ll have to wait on the phone. I’ll call in with a different say. I have a question to make up a different name. All right. Um, we’re talking about over marketing over marketing. This is a, uh, a bothersome thing for you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, i think it’s probably bothersome to everyone. That’s. Why it’s not successful? Yeah, it’s. In the long run, it annoys people and they turn off. Okay, i think that’s true. You know, maybe we’ll look att cem symptoms of over marketing so that you can do some self assessment. I think it’s it’s, probably one of these things is much easier to see in other people which may be coming totally right. I think it’s definitely hard to self diagnose your organization as an over marketer and instead very easy to look at other communications, other websites, what have you and feel like? Oh my gosh. You know and just to be clear, when i say over market and maybe this is a point of clarification between the two of us, i am curious how you define it. But for me, over marketing is when you market everything equally instead of choosing as an organization what your priorities are. Okay, so it seems very scattershot the marketing then from that those kinds of organizations very scattershot, everything is equally urgent. Everything is equal, equally impactful. Everything is, you know equally the thing that you want people to do right, then yeah. Okay, interesting might might my sense of it is it’s it’s i’m more looking at the frequency you know, if i get too many emails too many if i see your twitter you know, blowing up my twitter stream you know, i see i see too much from you it’s it’s too much it well in however, you define the time but e i’m seeing too much, um, well, and i think that that frequency piece could is, you know, one of the ways that over marketing manifest, because you could also say that it, um, you know, separate from frequency, it could just be type it could be that you are just like your web site is, you can’t even navigate it because every single thing has to have its own space on your home page that’s the call to action and whatever, you know, there’s different ways that it might manifest, but frequency certainly is a big one. Ok? And christie’s bleed over. I mean, you know, if your if your website has everything is an equally high priority, then that’s the trouble you were, you know, that’s, the trouble that you’re that bothers you the most is that every everything is urgent going on and everything has a page, every page is called action. You know, his first came to me as an idea because someone sent me an email with i printed it. It’s literally the the email signature is a half a page and i did not printed in eighteen point five i put it in twelve point fund. A very reasonable size. I’m this person’s email signature is a half takes up a half a page, right? I’m sure that the emails they’re sending two people are, you know, a very reasonable, like hi, tony, and then a couple sentences and thanks so much. And yet their signature is three times that. Yeah, yeah. Or more. It’s, you know, there’s itt’s. Well, i gave it away. It’s a he you know, it’s it’s it’s filled up with i mean there’s like zoho linked in you are el there’s a well there’s there’s web sites. There’s a you are elves, but then they’re not linked. And then separately there’s www the length number one w w was like number two and number three and there’s the mailing address and there’s. Ah, fax number off a twenty eighteen a fax number on then there’s and then there’s some congratulate, you know, self promotion stuff about anniversaries. How long he’s been in different lines of business and it’s it’s a half a page. So that’s what? Put this on my radar? You know, i guess i’ve subconsciously i’ve probably been thinking noticed it certainly, but tio got into my consciousness and i asked you about it and you said, whoa drives me crazy. So so here we are here we are. I’m just commiserating in the things that drives, but it’s for a good purpose, we’re helping where i’m not complained, my larry david, i’m not i’m not complaining, i’m helping, but, you know, what’s so interesting to me about that, like, the starting place where this conversation is that so many organizations, i don’t think, ever think about the signature line of there down both from the perspective that that, uh, i mean, that’s, you know, hundreds if you count all of your different staff, hundreds of messages a day to community members that could be reinforcing your organization’s brand or voice or mission having a standard, you know, signature block for everyone in your staff that, you know, great, everybody has the right information there, we probably don’t need to list our fax machine, you know, for all of those things because i see so many times where you know, one person, one organization writes at one way another person you can’t they don’t have a signature block, all you see is like, thanks, amy and me, but who? Are you, you know, co-branded spectrum that’s a missed place for just reinforcing the brand of the organization, but so few organizations know that you’re their signature block is kind of a passive called toe action space. Um, and at intend, we test that and we have a we use our goal for non-profits account, and that allows us if anyone listening uses the google suite for your organizations, you have, you know, females, you know, you could just administer as an organization what everyone’s you could add, like a call to action at the bottom of of the signature, and you don’t have to worry that some staff forgot to put it in, like, you could just administer that, and it is immediately in place for all of your emails, and we change that regularly, but we also track that and, you know, there are people that click on that signature link where we’re promoting that and you see and actually click through and register. So it is a place to call people to action. It is not necessarily a place to successfully call them toe action with eighteen different things that you’re saying, you know, it needs to just be one and have it be something that’s actually relevant to why you’re emailing people vs maybe, you know, links all of these different awards and promotions. You actually test different signatures. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Eminently doable. Eminently testable. You know us, we test everything. Okay. That’s, you technology network? Yes. Bonem all right. So let’s, let’s encourage some self assessment. We just have about a minute or so before before taking the first break. Um, i thought of i thought of some symptoms that you might that that that maybe hitting you in the face if you’re if your engagement numbers are declining, if you’re if you’re of actual follower numbers or connections, if that’s, you know, if people are dropping off that way, so i thought of either one of those, you know, people might still be following you, but they’re not engaging that’s, that’s bad or they might just stop following you or being connected. No thing can in fact, tonight, adam a nuance to those numbers. Certainly it’s healthy to have people stop following you on twitter or toe unsubscribes miree male because it means people are reading it and it no longer, you know the priority in their life, it’s not the topic that they care about it’s. Fine, you don’t need to feel bad of someone on subscribe to the newsletter but that’s the point you’re making tony is that if you are getting in ten people unsubscribes sections one new person subscribing then your ratio is a little off you want tohave, you know more people continuing to subscribe. Then you have a fall back off. Thank you for refining my point. Thank you. I mean, i mean that generally we gotta take a break. Take a break. Tell us enough with the talis moughniyah. Lt’s you’ve heard them. You’ve heard them from charities that referred companies for credit card processing and, of course, those charities air getting that revenue each month that long tail you’ve heard the talis moughniyah, lt’s from companies who are using tello’s for credit card processing. I bet you could use more revenue. Tell us long stream of revenue. You know how this works? You refer cos they take on tell owes you the non-profit get fifty percent of the revenue from those fees. Watch the video at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us now. Back to amy sample board. Thank you for that indulgence. Yes. All right. So, indeed, big numbers, you know, that’s bad and unsustainable. You know, you’ve got your tenant followers a day and one new follower, your that’s that’s, not sustainable. Um, let’s. See, um, if you i thought you know how about reading your own stuff reading your own to spend a little time romping through your own, you know, your own twitter stream your own instagram, facebook, these things boring you your own website, have you read? Have you read the last a couple of weeks of content on your website? A few if you have something that’s regularly updated that that often does it bore you? I would say that’s a bad somebody i think what’s interesting about that suggestion and that so many people we’ll overlook is that we, of course i have read all of it listed it, right? So the idea that we would go back and look at it feels like some time wasted because, of course we wrote those tweets. Are we, you know, posted those pictures? Never, but the value in what you’re suggesting is not look at any of those. Single post it’s look your feed without looking at your whole timeline or whatever, right? Like, just look at for twitter, profile and all the content in order that’s been posted or your instagram profile or your website, because that’s where you can really start to see from your followers perspective or your community’s perspective. Whoa, you know, this is this is what it felt like, or this is what it sounded like. I think that’s something we don’t do often enough it’s organizations because we don’t feel like we need to, because we’ve already reviewed all that content when we posted it individually. Yeah, we wrote it ourselves see, this is this is why you’re an author, co author of two books, and i’ve never written a book because you you put a finer point on it. No, i’m the shallow guy, i got this idea and then you refine it, give it depth and meaning and eso like on the comic book writer, and you’re the you’re the writer of books that actually get published by, you know, by well known publishing companies. Yeah, but i haven’t even done one of those yet. Yeah, ok. Er and you just and i’ve been thinking about it, and you just heard it. And you you put you put, you add depth and, uh, greater meaning to it. So thank you. What a team. You know, good teamwork. Yeah, work. If i didn’t have this show, you could because, you know, i don’t think you need me to get started, but i need you to add the depth and the color enough beating myself up. Okay. Um, no. I’m having fun doing it. So what are you? Nobody. Nobody listens to this show anyway, so nobody here’s the nobody here is the self loathing. Oh, that’s not true. Thousands of people listening. Yes. Don’t remind everybody said you have more in your list in this moment. Don’t remind me more of my list more my list. What of these of these things? I have more. I have things on my list. I can add, um, i have one more staff complaints if the staff, if the staff is feeling that their content is you know, however, they describe stale o r, you know, repetitive. You want to pay a lot of attention to that because they’re the ones producing the content. So if staff or if you’re hearing from staff, i think that’s a bad sign, what do you what do you have totally eye? You know, now i feel obligated to add depth and color all of your suggestions, but the piece that i would add there is i feel like it’s, not just staff saying that it’s repetitive, but the conversations that you might over here amongst your staff that are kind of like a warning sign warning flag that you’re maybe doing over marketing is when people are saying, you know, i’m marketing this in someone else’s say, no, the postcards you know, went out yesterday for this someone else, eh? Zoho on twitter were saying that you have people, you know, you’re cross team isn’t talking about the same thing, then you’re probably doing, you know, equal parts promotion of five different things at once and that just naturally not going to be a successful your community members can’t take in five different request to do something that are different and actually do them all for you. Very bad sign if there’s conflicting messages across your across your team, i thought it was this i thought this was the priority, right? Okay, what else? What else do you have on your symptom symptom list? Well, i don’t have as many symptoms. I have a list that’s, more like things that you khun d’oh. Okay, um, yeah, okay, we could switch over there. I’m game for some guests. I would say you’re not a baby, we can talk about a few things underneath is i really liked the idea for organizations, you know, of course, we all know that we should have, like, a content calendar and marketing plan and all of these things. But the reality is i’m going toe just operate within reality that we don’t have those things or we have them and they’re not updated or or or whatever. So instead of saying, oh, just go finish off that editorial calendar that you should have instead of that recommendation, i’d say just pick a team. It could be every month it could be based on certain weeks that, you know, we’re leading up to events, whatever. And having a team i think, really helps people across the organization, you know, in whichever team there in know that they can still talk about their team. Or their program or their service. But do it in a way that still aligned and advancing whatever over our james focus organizationally needs to be the priority. So it maybe we can use in ten for an example. Course i could speak to that, so we might say, ok, this month’s needs to be focused on the ntc, but we still have membership campaigns that happened, we still have course promotions that need to happen, you know, where there’s still all this other work, but we don’t need to be saying register for the nbc become a member. Sign up for this course that’s happening next week, you know, apply for this program because that’s not going that’s, where we get into the half a page email signature, you know, someone said saint arthur, steam is auntie si lets people say culwell instead of just talking about membership, i’ll talk about how members engaged at the ntc instead of just talking about, of course, next week, i’ll say this course has a similar topic at the mtc, and this is a way for you to continue your learning. You know, it just gives people more oven umbrella that they can talk about their programs while still staying. Kind of on message. Okay, yeah. I can i can i can toss out one for recommendation, and that is to put yourself on your own lists, make sure that you are seeding yourself so that you’re seeing the feed, the posts, hearing the podcast, whatever it is the same way, same frequency as everybody else. Yeah, and then had a way to do that. It’s not just getting your own organizations emails, because to your point, there are lots of different channels were using in ten does this and i’ve talked to a number of our other organizations who do this, too, whether you use black, which is kind of an internal messaging tool, or you have an internet or whatever tool you’re using for kind of internal content and conversation. Most of those tools there’s probably a way where you can have your organization’s account, your twitter account, instagram show up in there and that way you have essentially, you know, one channel in slack or whatever you used that just is showing all of your tweets, so not only can you see when a tweet has gone out, but what it was about, and then you can very easily scroll through and say oh, my gosh, way! Look at what we have been saying or what we haven’t been saying or whatever on dh you don’t have to say, okay, now everyone on staff has to create a twitter account and go follow the organization and check it every day. You can just pull it into a central system so everyone can see it. I see. Excellent. Okay, okay. She’s, the co author times two. Amazing. All right, let’s, take another break. Okay, let me take a break text to give you’ll get more revenue because text to give makes e-giving easy for your donors. If your donors can send a text message, they could make a donation to u not only simple also affordable and secure the way to get more info and to claim your special listener offer you text npr two, four, four, four, nine nine nine couldn’t be any simpler. Npr. Four, four, four, nine, nine, nine we’ve got about six more minutes for over marketing with amy um, we run really medicine, okay? Please go ahead. So this suggestion is coming from a place where at and ten, we have definitely seen return on the work, but also in recognition that if you’re if you’re organization is suffering from over marketing, you’re already putting in the time to do a bunch of work so let’s just move that work to something else, and that is the idea of promo, okay, it’s, not just for your big annual fundraiser or, you know, once a year event for anything programs for things that are year round, even creating again, you’re already doing this work because you’re already over marketing, so instead of putting it all out as an organization, all the work you did to come up with those tweets or those block post or whatever put them into, you know, a a shared document or a wiki or google doc or whatever, and instead of sharing them on your own feed, share them with community members that can that are interested in that that maybe participate in that program before whatever that they want to be out in the community scene is talking about your work and promoting it and it’s still getting out there. People are still hearing about your programs, but you aren’t saying okay, well, our twitter feed today is going to have to cover all ten of these topics you say today we’re covering this topic, but we know that we’ve supported community members and they have access to these promo kits. Tio help us spread the word excellent using yes using your most dedicated constituents, friends, followers sort of a back channel way of getting them to help you promote board members boardmember could be idea for that, right? Okay, are for sure, all right, i’m going to get one out because i know you’re going to say it, i’m gonna get out first, okay? If you feel you’re over marketing on promoting your own work, share the work of others instead. So the obvious, you know, sharing on facebook, facebook shares, they’re so they’re so rare. Now facebook shares please share other people’s content obviously twitter, the re tweets on twitter or you go or spend that time going out and finding, you know, curating the content of others and sharing that because, you know, it’s relevant to your community. I know you’re going to say that yes, well and i think something to remember to when when you’re thinking about content and mixing it up so that it isn’t just you talking. About the thing that you want people to do over and over, another place where you could look to content in addition to sharing, of course, you know that i’m always going to say, share other people’s work and rise up the community is just as you are doing, too be the one that reminds your community that they can take a break, that they can have fun, that the world is really hard, it feels right now, and so much is going on, and we’re always asking our community to take action to support us, whether it’s fund-raising or advocacy or local actions. But maybe you are also building community and building trust with them by being the voice that says, you know, we hope that you take a saturday off and just be with your family or go to the zoo her, you know, go for a hike and and you aren’t always calling them toe action that you’re also treating them as full people that need to take a break and be healthy too. Yeah, that space space critical. We had steve rio on last week talking a lot about that he’s. Interesting do you know, do you know steve rio, bright webb? I don’t know. And i know i heard he’s, based in vancouver. Andi has twenty five employees. Maybe that includes contractors, but they’re all over north america. Very interesting. Okay. Um, they do. They have. They have virtual meditations. You probably heard me or not. Uh, not not mandatory optional, but they do a forty five minute virtual meditation every day a couple times a week. Sorry. Three times, three times a week? Um, yeah, i think yeah. Mindfulness, you know, presence. Oh, and, you know, there’s there’s research that shows that that that helps you be be more efficient in your in your workday. Um, every sample would really have, like, two minutes left. Um, you have another. You wantto recommend something else. If you feel you’re over marketing, do you have another recommendation? While the other piece that i was going to suggest is kind of the office that and that is just in case there are listeners who are, like, no, our problem is that we never marketed anything we never, you know, actually promote ourselves because it’s all you know, maybe they’re your web site is is just kind of content, because your programs or your round and you don’t feel like you have timely things, so if somehow you are on the opposite end of the conversation and feel like you need more help finding ways teo to market, i would say, just look through whether that’s, your social media accounts, your website, whatever and look for those empty spaces places that i think organizations could really take advantages putting in in their twitter bio or their instagram bio, or whatever that you know, a girl that shows up right there and the short kind of narrative box you have to write something, put what feels more like a timely kind of a call to action or reference a campaign that you’re running or whatever that is, and put a girl in there that doesn’t just go to your home page, same with your email signature. Look for those empty spaces where you can make it feel more timely instead of just the permanent kind of here’s our home page here’s, what we do here is our mission statement she’s amy sample ward she’s the author i’m not you’ll find her at, you’ll find her and amy sample ward. Dot or go! And also you should be following the woman for god’s sake, twitter is so much wisdom coming follow-up for god’s sake that’s the end of it just for pizza. Just follow at amy rs ward. Thank you, amy. Thank you, tony. My pleasure always next week. Maria semple returns with real estate for prospect research. If you missed any part of today’s show i deceit, you find it on tony martignetti dot com. We are sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing wagner, cps, guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com by telus credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four, four nine nine, nine a creative producers clam meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternative network to get you thinking. E-giving cubine you’re listening to the talking alternative network, are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? 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Nonprofit Radio for August 26, 2016: Design On A Budget & Communications Mythbusters

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Oliver Seldman, Leah Kopperman, & Jessica Teal: Design On A Budget

Oliver Seldman, Leah Kopperman & Jessica Teal at 16NTC

Component based design will help you whether you’re working with a consultant or designing internally. Our panel talks through the process, from site map to comps. They are Oliver Seldman with Advomatic, Leah Kopperman at The Jewish Education Project and Jessica Teal of Teal Media. (Recorded at 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

 

 

Melissa Ryan, Kari Birdseye & Burt Edwards: Communications Mythbusters

Melissa Ryan, Kari Birdseye & Burt Edwards at 16NTC

What advice is truly useful and what has overstayed its welcome? Our panel from NTC will help you separate myth from reality in video; thank you’s; mobile; virality; press relations; and more. Advice comes from Melissa Ryan at Trilogy Interactive, Kari Birdseye at WildAid, and Burt Edwards with InterAction.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host with the breaking cracking fourteen year old voice. Did you hear that? But i’m still glad you’re with me. I’d go into a wreath is, um, if you irritated me by missing today’s show design on a budget component based design will help you whether you’re working with a consultant or designing in house, our panel talks through the process from site map to camps they are oliver seldman with advomatic leah kopperman at the jewish education project and jessica teal of teal media. This was recorded at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference and communications mythbusters. What advice is truly useful and what has overstayed its welcome, our panel also from ntcdinosaur will help you separate myth from reality in video thank you’s, mobile virality press relations and mohr the advice comes from melissa ryan at trilogy interactive, carrie birdseye at wild aid and burt edwards with interaction on tony’s take two don’t be in the woods on planned e-giving we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant. Dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers, we be spelling dot com here’s, our first panel from ntcdinosaur with design on a budget welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference. This interview is also a part of ntc conversations wrapping up our coverage on day two. We’re in san jose, california, at the san jose convention center and with me are oliver seldman, leah kopperman and jessica teal. We’ll meet them very shortly. Talk about their topic design on a budget first, i have to do the obligatory swag swag mentioned shoutout for this for this interview, which is from m d they do wordpress droop elin sales force. You see it’s a pen that’s also a very, very sturdy suction cup holder for the pen. And we have a what we call this our ever know bourelly also there bobblehead what troll now it’s, a combination bubblehead troll doll with very thin thinning orange and white hair. I implore you, if you’re only on the audio feed, please go to real tony martignetti dot com. You can turn it off after the first one minute twenty seconds and you’ll get the benefit of this, but you won’t get the benefit of our panel. Yeah, please stay for that, you’re sure. But if you only want to see the bobblehead troll doll, you could turn it off after one twenty. All right, so we’re gonna add this to the day two swag collection. Not too elegantly. I’m gonna add it. Thie bubblehead troll dollars now horizontal. Okay, design on a budget. Let’s, meet our panel. Oliver seldman is technical lead for advomatic llc. Leah kopperman in the center is analytics and digital director for the jewish education project. Jessica teal is teal media. She is co founder, founder, co founder and ceo. Executive director. Yeah. Everything all right. Hr as well. Right. Welcome. Welcome to non-profit radio. Thank you. All right. Design on a budget. Jessica let’s. Start with the teal media. Sure. We do not have to spend a lot of money. Tohave elegant, meaningful, impactful design. I would say that it’s more of a wise use of your money in terms of design. Buy-in all right, so how did i what did i miss state then what do you mean, it’s? More about how you approach the design. Our entire panel was about a new approach to design, which is component based design. Kind of trying to stop the old way of doing things which was static individual pages and kind of stopped that way of thinking and move to more of a component based approach. A component being little chunks of information that can be grouped together. On a page and then you bring in the individual components to form your website experience. Okay, all right, so we’re talking about website design the worst okay website design little little chunks of of content, and these can be repurposed and maneuvered. And okay, leah, help me understand more about this. This component based design absolutely three of you have been thinking about this for months leading up to a ninety minute presentation, and i’m only in my first three minutes and twenty seconds. So bring me along and it could be, i think, a little abstract toe understand at first. But in the more traditional design process, you get sort of to a phase where the designer has designed out on paper, using photo shop or some other design tool. What the website is going to look like a right and then that goes to the developer, and they build that and there’s this long period of time between the design that you saw and then the build out and what you get, and they always look different, because print design and web design are not the same thing. And so when something’s just designed in print and then you see it on the web, there’s always ah, hold up where you get the delivery herbal and your stakeholders see it and say, that doesn’t look like that looked, and we don’t see what we expected to see. And so you get sort of surprised and held up, and lots of little things need to be fixed before you can move forward in the component based design process. You get it. You do get some pages concept of what it’s gonna look like. But instead of having this long lag period between the getting the design and building the design, what you get is a design that’s like the overall mood and look of the site, and then it actually starts to get built in html in prototyping, using that look and feel, and then the the deliver ball comes to you, that is, say, just a form and you get the form and you get that tow look like you wanted and it’s being delivered to in html, so it looks like it’s really going toe look instead of what it looked like on paper, and if you don’t like something about the form, that doesn’t mean you can’t keep moving forward with what does the header of the page look like? What does the men you look like? What did the button look like? What does the you know? The subheading text look like verses. This page is no good. This doesn’t. This page doesn’t look like what i was expecting. So you build all these individual components? Each one is a small delivery ble. You can get them to look like you want them to look. And then the beauty is when they all get put together they can be re combined and like almost infinite ways. And so the content people who are working with it don’t have to think about so much like oh, should this be green here? Should this be blue? Here it is mohr that they can just okay, i need a video block here. I need a header here. I need a sub header here. I need a text block and you can. They could just take all those blocks and put it on the page and put the content and they want and they don’t have to worry about making sure it’s going to be formatted correctly. Okay? Okay, oliver, are the three of you anarchists in the design world? Why are you causing trouble? I don’t think it’s causing trouble i mean, we we’ve we’ve used this approach for for big budget projects as well, i mean, it’s not it’s, not just about trying to disrupt something or to get things cheaper. The the the ideas here are beneficial, even on very large projects. One of the main pieces of this puzzle is building this component library, which which s so it’s, the entire style guide of the site and all of the components exist in a living library. So as you go through and make new additions or changes, you’re maintaining this consistent, readily available and reference oppcoll library of your styles and your components, and so you can always make sure that even i mean from the beginning, but also through the life cycle of the project that they’re all they all remain consistent with one another. A change you make six months down the road doesn’t break some other component. It allows you, teo, maintain a consistency and, you know, kind of build up your site and in fact, the functionality around on building. Pages like thinking of these components as like lego building blocks where you build the key essential pieces, but in a way that they all fit together gives sight builders and content creators quite a bit of flexibility when the time comes to build a page, because they can grab this component and grab that component, and they actually can put together completely different looking pages by combining the different components. So part of the way that we save money is you can limit the layouts, but but then the content creators can actually customize their their page builds on a page by page basis. So, you know, you design a layout that can accommodate a sidebar and a bunch of different chunks of content stacked on one another, and then they kind of piece it together, like pulling components from here and there and your lego metaphor? Yeah, all right, all right, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts the podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really? All the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna so we’re here to learn this component design process, okay, now i’m a non designer, the only non designer on the panel, i presume i’m not. I’m not way have only on one representative. Lee is the only thing she’s the outlier not made alright, i mean, just sorry, jessica, not me, all right dahna where should we start with my our instruction? Well, the two of you have already learned it, even though so my instruction in this of this new process where we where do we begin? Sure, you need to start with some careful planning on that would be, of course, perhaps the client sitting down with the consultant working through all of the various content chunks on the website to determine what that inventory of possible components might be, and kind of doing a lot of preplanning within your own internal teams just to figure out what you’re going to need what’s going to be my key functionality? What? What are going to be my key features? And then working with your your way web design and development partner through the first delivery bubble, which is a site map, which is an organizational diagram of how that site is organized that will show page hierarchy how maybe pages might link together. We also start to get a sense of where can we? We reuse page templates and similar layouts and kind of nail that down everything’s going to be organic throughout this process were constantly learning as we go, but once we kind of feel pretty solid about that site map, then we go into what’s called the wireframe ing process, so think of wireframes those blueprints, they’ll be black and white line drawings that show how a page is laid out, approximately where the content little blocks will go, where the components will go. And as we begin to plan out, those page templates will also be able to see repeating patterns and places where we khun re use these little chunks or components of information, by the way. Jessica it’s very good that you explain what a wireframe is because okay, on tony martignetti non-profit radio, we have george in jail. Oh, didn’t even i didn’t have time to put you in your excellent work. You just walked past the jail. Well, even even notice notice you’re walking past a penitentiary, i mean the purpose of our discussion as well to we wanted to make sure we helped to find some of these. Concert. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. From wireframe leo, do you want to take it from wireframe? Sure. So once you get past the wireframe phase, which again is sort of abstract, you get a concept of what the site might look like, how things are going to fit together on various like what the pieces are, but it’s black and white it’s like it’s, like name or a skeleton it’s. Almost like thinking of like, a napkin sketch, right? I mean it’s a little more developed than a napkin sketch. But it’s really? Just like what? This could potentially look like that the that there’s going to be a hero across the top, that there will be the block column on the side. There was a video here, o o c i just got in georgia jargon. Jorgen, what the heck is a hero? Ah, the hero is you’ll see this on a lot of sites. It’s ah, large image across the top. That is a very visually striking. And that creates ah, sort of tone for the page. Often they also will rotate images, but there there will be maybe text across it. It’s it’s tries to sort of set the whole feeling of the page through a through some type of image. A photograph. Okay, okay. All right. Good. So, yes, you’ll know the location of the hero, but you won’t know what the hero is going to be. Not at all. Not at all. It will just be like it’ll say hero that, you know, okay. And and then there will be a a block that’s like black, and it’ll have a little youtube play button in it, and they will say video like, you’ll know that that’s where the video is going to live. But you have no idea what it’s gonna look like. Okay, so you get those you agree how that’s gonna work on and then you move on to the next phase, which is where you get style tiles. And that is where you get a sort of conceptual idea of what the look and feel of the site is going to be. Think of it, sort of like what you might get with an interior designer when you they come to your home. And they have, like, fabric swatches and, like a little piece of, you know, like a photo of ah, wall sconce and, you know, so bored, yeah, mood board and you ah, so you get a few different ones of those for different directions you might take without them having to build out a whole kant visual concept, right? So you get you picked the one that fits you best, or you work with one of them to get it to fit you best, and and then you can move on to the actual designing dahna keep a jj comprehensive design like, like the photo shop type of design, you do do a little bit of that because you do need to have some deliverable to take to your stakeholders and say, okay, this is the direction that we’re going in, but will be, but you’re not goingto take them a design for every single page on the site, you don’t do a comprehensive design for every page on this every primary patient. Exactly, yeah, and pages that require either heavy branding or heavy visuals. So think of your want photo shop cops for like, your home page or a major issue landing pages, but you might not need a full come for like your blogged page, which really is just a list of information that looks is repetitive in a list format that has a photo and a headline in some paragraph text. You don’t need to do a full comp and photo shop for that because you could just drag those components over the headline style, the paragraph style, the photo style in the link. Okay, okay on and then so then you’re now you’re getting feedback from you’re you’re your your client, the whoever’s in charge of this project and in this scenario, i’m the client in charge of the project right there working on the design for me. Yeah. Oliver, what? What was your role? This? I thought you weren’t you’re not a designer. I’m ah technical lead. So i’m just i’m doing the development building. Oh, you’re building here, just your building, just building building design. Eso just just point out a couple things. So in terms of like the title of this session the budget element of it on the benefit of the style guide i’m sorry the style tiles is thatyou khun uk rather than focusing on redesign coming up a five or six different designs or three or three designs for the site, you can actually do in the in the same prices. One design you khun do multiple style tiles so that you can be really thinking about and talking about what, what the site is supposed to feel like and look like with many options on a on a much deeper budget. All right, so just so we’re sort of breaking this all down in tow, component pieces are it was called the component based design problem, so you’re so instead of us having to conceptualize and approve or disapprove an entire pages and maybe an entire site that may not be quite right, but yeah, big, big pieces, yeah, we could take a little pieces and say, you know, i don’t really like this hero, you know, you should wear a quick study, i don’t like that here or there don’t really belong there, but we can talk about other things that are cool, like the donation, the format of donation, the button and the forms and landing pages, etcetera. Okay, yeah. Breaking into chunks, in fact, measurable chunks. During the dirt at the next phase, after these, you know, these these delivery bals are are approved is to actually start building out the prototypes of these components right component, which can actually happen quite apart from the back and development, quite apart from all the other phases of the project. These these things can all because they’re modular, they can all be happening in conjunction with one another. And, you know, to to your point, one of the major benefits is that you can actually start delivering versions of these prototypes, the donation button, the hero, whatever way, before someone would ever expect to see a page and so you can really get the client can really feel empowered to affect the overall process of the site and also just gets incremental reassurance things you’re moving. Oh, i’ve approved the donate button. That’s cool. We got it covered, right? I proved the donation form that things are moving along very nicely. Verses got this project is never going anywhere. Well, i get his designs that i can’t stand or then that two months go by or three months go by and then you just kind of get handed. The whole thing, and then you’re that’s when, like the worry begins or you you encounter stakeholders who didn’t quite get something from a piece of paper before now seeing it in real life for the first time, whereas in this in this process there, seeing it in real life from the very incrementally and when they see it in that older way for the first time it’s already completely built, and then you have to spend mohr labor ongoing and rebuilding stuff that and when your prototyping it in html you, khun, do a lot more of the build, and not have to rebuild on a bigger scale later on. So that’s, another money saver what’s the genesis of a component based design. Who created it? Was it one of the three of you? You know, it wasn’t e i thought that maybe you, jessica, there was not. I don’t know the genesis of it, though i have a feeling it may be developed out of the agile design and development process. Julie again, we’re programming pieces and right i know about and, you know, taking the approach of let’s create a minimum viable product first of the bare bones that will get you there and meet the criteria that you need for launch. And then as we grow and expand, tested yet learned and pivot and testing exactly and so component recent brain process, yeah, it’s a good match for that, because you’re constantly building on things as you’re learning and it’s better to do that in little chunks versus big pieces. Okay, i think they’re also like multiple many facets of this approach each kind of coming from different disciplines for example, the notion of ah, like a living style guide, it has been ah, semi recent, but ah increasingly adopted technique for managing the look of your site on dso, you know, fitting components into that is just a kind of natural, natural progression. You know, the sum of these things like that we’ve been talking about wireframes and page comes and site maps are have been part of the development. It’s not those elements are nothing new, it’s just the kind of way that we’re combining them for this purpose, that is, that is but it’s tze more of an evolution than somebody coming up with a new thing. Yeah, that’s very good, actually on evolution and i oh, i think lee, amid an awesome point on the panel yesterday in terms of just having an organizational change on don’t know, flee if you wanted to mention talk about it seems to have been retweeted a few times, so i guess people liked the analogy. I was saying that there’s this older organizational mindset, that building a website is like a one time investment like you’re investing in a piece of furniture, like a file cabinet, and really, the mindset needs to change because websites air living and breathing things that need to change along with the organization. So you should really think of your website as more like a program than like a file cabinet. Okay, yeah, this process really allows that flexibility you you end up with, you’re not you’re not locked into something because a new component can be added whenever you have a whole language of a visual language. So it’s very easy to change or add things when the time comes it actually, the process is about kind of thinking about howto refine or no hone the essence of what you need so that you can grow and pivot and change it without without issue major just rocked out are their opponents to this process. Naysayers who prefer toe prefer to do it the old traditional way of designing a website. I mean, i can i can imagine that there might be a client for whom the suspension of disbelief for talking about what is a component and seeing how you know a style tile will lead to a design on dh feels that unless they see everything on every page finalized a visual of it, that they’re unwilling to you, check off the approval checkbox, and that for that, for that person, it may be difficult, or for someone who doesn’t have ah, internal technical advocate s o that there they don’t have anybody on their end advocating for ah process like this, it might be difficult for them to buy into it. Ladies, have you seen objections to this or or heard them yourselves? I wouldn’t i’m sorry, i wouldn’t quite call it objections like oliver was saying, i think there’s a certain level of discomfort with an unfamiliar process and that in the past when people that the folks who are, you know the stakeholders working on. This site rebuild, they’ve been through a site build before, and it’s followed the old process and so that’s what they are used to and changing the process so much feels it’s there’s a i think a fear of making small decisions on signing off on this is the site map. This is the wireframe because there’s a fear that once you approve that wireframe you’re completely stuck with what it’s gonna look like because in the old universe, once you approve what a layout was going to look like, that was the layout you were getting. And in this universe, when you approve something, you still have this flexibility of these components, that you’re going to be able to move around and using different ways. But until you get to the place where it’s more concrete, i think that that that that hesitancy and discomfort with this new process continues to play out. So i think it move some of the anxiety of the project to the front end of the development cycle and as you go through it, that there’s less and less anxiety and by the time you get to the final design people are comfortable with it, and what they get is what they’re expecting to get. Yeah, jessica working with it the whole time, right? Jessica has till media had clients objective, this method of web site design. Like leah said, there hasn’t been objections it’s just been we’ve had to spend extra time educating folks about the process and making them feel comfortable as they go along. So, yeah, i don’t think that there’s any strong opposition it’s just hard with zsystems because the last one wasn’t like this, right? Right, right. Okay, wei have just like, another minute or two together. What do you want to leave people with that we haven’t talked about yet, leo. You’re leaning into the micro? Yeah, there’s one thing that i didn’t talk that none of us talked about that i do want to talk about that’s, another real money saver for the project. The the way that we’re doing this design process is actually with two separate scopes of work. So the first is this design phase where we’ve been talking about getting through to style tiles and during that process, the technical lead oliver is is listening in and participating and understanding what we want. The site to be able to do technically and making a list of all the functional requirements for the site and we have a set budget and we’ll get a scope of work at the end of this cycle that respects that set budget and tells us with this budget we can get these components built on dh this khun b on the maybe we’ll get to it list and this khun b on the you we can do this in the future, but it’s not going to fit within this budget. And so you get a really good prioritization of what really matters and you build like jessica said, the minimum viable product now at least, and you have a sight that you can launch and then you can continue toe add functionality to it once it’s already live? Yeah, that that concept takes into account the world of development, being in perfect and hard to estimate, and you don’t always know how long something takes to build when when the time comes and so it accounts for prioritizing what’s most important on dh then, you know, finding a range of what to accommodate and about as they were. Saying finding a kind of minimal point where we can say this is done, it works the way basically needed tio and then kind of continuing to add to it and okay, how about we leave it there? Thank you. All right. Thank inky advocates are advocates for the component based design process. All right. And they are oliver seldman technical lead. It advomatic llc. Leah kopperman analytics and digital director for the jewish education project, and jessica teal of teal media. And you are with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc teen the nineteen nineteen. The twenty sixteen technical women i’m losing. It was our last last time technology conference. I need to take this in chunks component it’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur the non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Thanks. Pleasure. Communications mythbusters coming up first, pursuing you know them. You know, these people that you have fund-raising tools for small and midsize shops. I beseech you, i implore you even check them out. You need to raise more money. I know you do. Pursuant has tools to help you. Ideal for our listeners in small. And midsize or eggs? I can’t say it any simpler pursuant dot com and we be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising this is not your mother’s spelling bee. They incorporate concerts, dancing, comedy and fund-raising and is a spelling bee. 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It’s just a matter of when live love to our live listeners from asia and now recently europe has been checking in and of course, the domestic live love goes out as well for those listening right now, which is later than now when i’m talking it’s it’s now, then for those listening now, then later, then now my love to you and the podcast pleasantries. Who knows when you’re listening it’s so much easier to do podcast pleasantries couldn’t have to explain the difference between live and now and then and later the pleasantries go out to the over ten thousand podcast listeners and i am an affiliate am and fm affiliate listeners affections to you let your station know that you’re hearing non-profit radio please affections to our many am and fm affiliate listeners. Here is our next panel from auntie cia, and this is communications mythbusters welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference in san jose, california. This interview is also part of a t c conversations with the convention center in san jose. My guests now are melissa ryan carry birdseye and burt edwards. We’re going to meet them. Very shortly. First have to highlight our rust and ten ntcdinosaur swag item of the of the interview. And this is from jmt consulting. Very nice green your earbuds in a case. Very nice jmt consulting. We had that to our swag pile for today. Would have had a bigger pile. But from yesterday, when it got stolen overnight, who knows? Who knows what happened? It was a good and ten scarf there. There. I mean, i’ve already said the scarf gots carved. All right, let’s, meet let’s. Meet the panel. Melissa ryan. Is it right here? Melissa ryan? Yes, of course. Is director of client services at trilogy interactive she’s seated closest to me. Carrie bird’s eye is us campaigner for wild aid. And burt edwards is director of media and web strategy at interaction. And there seminar topic is communications mythbusters. Best practices versus bad advice. Let’s. Start in the middle. Okay. Um, carrie? Yes? What? What are the why are there so many misconceptions and so much popular wisdom out there about marketing communications? How does that how do these things perpetuate? I think that people like to make money off of telling other people what to dio and so there’s a lot of people in a cottage industry trying to make basically what’s good manners, being a real person and being true to your communications, they they put out, you know, a lot of misinformation around, you know, something that need need not be a difficulty as they make it sound auras? Yeah, right. I’d come stated. Yeah, all right, all right, bert you’re nodding a lot. I am that all right? I’m sorry, bert. I didn’t have your makeup start again. Please. Yeah, actually, this is how the panel first came about our other mythbuster, colin delaney, who is actually in a panel. It was a discussion that he and i were having about what we were hearing he’s now on the consultant side, i work for an ngo called interaction, and we were just talking about some things that we were hearing, and it was like, i don’t know if that really shakes out and that was kind of idea as far as like, putting together a panel of miss busters and to try to get the audience and engaged in a conversation. How are you, melissa? You want teo to? Yeah, i mean i think it’s often like a game of telephone, right? Like you read a case study and you tell me about it and you get very excited. I’m very excited about it. Without seeing the case study, i tell car e about it. And then what it ends up to me is, you know, i hear from a client or a potential client or another consultant. Well, i hear the on ly time that’s where sending an email is thursday at nine. P m s o i actually i approach it with the best of intentions. But i try to think of it it’s like a game of telephone. Okay, okay. And i’m sorry. I mispronouncing names it. Khari khari nufer i answer to both. Well, well, which would you prefer if your name you have a choice. Carry. Oh, i’m so sorry. Oh, she pronounce you mispronounce it it’s my fault. Don’t apologize if you believe this it’s. Unbelievable. All right, i think it’s pretty the way you say it. Curry is pretty. Sounds very exotic. Alright, but carrie ok. All right. I got lucky. I should have asked. Okay, let’s. See? So should we just start with a bunch of myths around communications. Uh, i don’t know. Thank you. Notes have to go out within twenty four hours. Is that a legitimate one? Because you have you have some of the legitimate right? Some or not, thank you. Notes for gift should go out within twenty four hours. True or false myth or myth or fact, i would say that spots is long as the sentiment is genuine. Okay? And and an authentic i mean a canned response that comes out really quick. And it looks like it can response. I don’t think that that really, really get you much with anyone. Okay. You rather seymour? Genuine sincerity. Maybe it’s. Thirty six hours or forty eight hours, but not a week. A week is too long. Is that a myth or fact? I mean, you want to get them the thank you note where they still remember having made the donation the world fuzzy feeling my hat is off to everyone who can get the thank you note out within twenty four hours. But i think it’s a nice toe have not a mustache. Ok. How about the week, though? That seems to me now my voice is cracking, although like a fourteen year old a week. Seems like, you know, you didn’t really care that much. Um, i wrong is a week. Can you burn? Let me challenge you. Can i can? Is it possible to have a really sincere message? A week after the donation? It leaves my office the week after the donation so it might not get to the person till eight, nine, ten days, depending out far away. They are. Is my outside the bounds of propriety in thanking donors. Yeah, i would say that. That’s a bit that’s. A bit long. Okay. Okay. So we could say somewhere between a day in a week. All right, but the panel doesn’t feel it has to be twenty four hours. Okay, it’s. A good goal, right? I mean, it’s, something to strive for. Well, if you’re doing online donations, you should be able to get the thank you out very shortly afterwards, because so much of that is automated, that sort of unless you want to sincere that’s. Too sincere. I mean, automation can certainly personalized. But if you want to sincere, maybe a hand written note. Last panel was talking about handwritten notes. How was that small organization? Yeah, or a very big gift, right? Okay, all right, um, all right, so i threw out the first one, greece, to slide a little bit. Now, now, it’s your turn, let’s, start, throw out some conventional wisdom and let’s beat it up. Yeah, so we had one myth that came up when we chatted previously, and that was the concept that online videos only work for cats or kardashians. Oh, yeah, now people believe that i mean, i think, alright, carrie, what, you’re laughing the hardest. Why is this wrong? Cat or kardashian never hurts, but you don’t need them. Sure, i think thoughtful, authentic, engaging material targeted to your specific audiences, always gonna work okay, can we? Ah, can we say that production value is less important than sincerity? I think that’s bearing out to be more true, i think we went through a trend where everything people wanted very highly produced content, and i feel like we’re sort of moving away from that online. Yeah, okay, sincerity trumps ok, we’re going through these rapidly, so well, i see big jugs of chocolate milk is that somebody was talking about? Yes. Yeah. Looks like they’re setting up a snack because the time is about to eighteen now, uh, snack is good. So you may hear something. My voice cracked against it. So you may hear some food setting food preparation. I mean, we’re in a convention center, you know, it’s gonna happen. But there are these big urns of chocolate milk, man. I mean, who doesn’t love chocolate? Look, once in a while, at least i do. Okay, big. We’re talking gallant multi gallon earns some giant. Yeah, yeah. It’s clear. You can see through. All right. Sorry for the aggression. Alright, more myths let’s do over here. But, melissa, what do you mean? One of this? That i i used to believe fervently. And now, through testing, i know is no longer the case. Is that email has to come from a person to get the highest response rate s o you know, from melissa ryan at x environmental organization rather than just the name x environmental organization or even in some cases you don’t even need the brand you can say in the action is the centre what you’re going to do, so save the polar bears as the sender? This one, this one broke my heart because i used to believe that people very much they wanted personal communication in email and they wanted to feel like they had a relationship with the person who was asking them for money. But it makes sense when you look at what retailers like amazon or doing. Jeff bezos doesn’t email you about persons or shoes that you should buy. You get that email from amazon on and i have found in in testing with with my clients and in my work that that generally, unless your surrogate issue no barack obama or kim kardashian, since we’re using that name often times the brand of the organisation is more powerful than any individual staffer. Okay, excellent, very concise let’s not use the let’s not use came anymore. Really non-profit radio was above that. So cats or fine or some other name, i don’t mind people, but i don’t mind people, but not the kardashians. Okay, what else? Uh, carol, you wanna take one in the middle? Sure, i was brought on to this panel because i’m a former journalist and been in the non-profit world for about a decade now. And one myth that i always hear is journalism is dead, and i think that that is not true. There’s for-profit journalism that is driven by ratings and often goes for the lowest common denominator. But there’s also some really great journalism going on. That mainly online outlets like center for investigative journalism, our center for there’s. Quite a few of them that are really doing a great job. And hiring seasoned professionals. Or the really smart kids out of out of college, to take their time to be thoughtful and do riel reporting. And not just what is going to sell, you know, get the most ratings on tv or or still the most newspapers. So the other thing that we were talking about is our news, our newspapers, debt. And so we were talking a little about communications. Career is also not just communications within non-profits but if you if if communications is your profession right. Ok, newspapers. Are they dead? I just want to say that if i i feel guilty reading a newspaper outside of my home the new york times on a sunday in your own private home is one one thing. But when i really get looks on the ferry, if i have an old fashioned newspaper, so, you know, in a very is this that you’re taking what is this? I take discriminatory fremery take it where i take the ferry across the bay. I work in san francisco and i live thirty miles east, so i have ah, almost on our ride across. So because this is such a tech tech heavy area it’s pretty young analyze the paper it’s pretty, you know, an online community and so on. So they look down on paper, they dio i have to read my newspaper under myself. Do it proudly, proudly right in front of their faces put it, put it between their face and the and their phone is that they’re reading. You just dropped the paper right in there, right in between. All right, all right. Newspapers are not dead. Journalism’s, not dead. What else we got? Well, let’s, try to keep stick to non-profits okay, odds are you know, you might have a lot of communications professionals in your in your audience, but in our listeners probably don’t have, you know, a big portion. So? So we have a lot of little bit. Well, we have a little. Well, a lot of a lot of these journalistic outfits are non-profit are non-profits okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. Good. Another minute came up in discussions was the question that all that matters for web design is mobile. All that matters no way she ought to be multi-channel mean mobile is not unimportant. Certainly. But it’s not it’s, not the end old it’s, not everything, is it? I think this is one where there was some debate. Actually, among among the panelists, i’ve been toe add presentations by tech companies who are pretty openly saying that they are on ly designing for mobile at this point, because most of the usage is more and more of the usage is coming in on mobile instead of dusk up on mobile, we’re speaking more broadly than just the phone were also speaking the tablet on dh you have, you know, large loss to the country for whom mobile is their primary point of access for the internet. So i am going to step out on a limb and say, i think that’s true, you do think it’s true, ideo kari what’s your opinion, it depends on who you’re trying to reach so multi-channel multi platforms, i mean that if you have an older demographic that you’re one of fund-raising from you have to you have to meet them where they are, and that probably is still in there their desktop, okay? And you’re doing policy advocacy from and, you know, i mean, you definitely will have constituencies, whether they be in the hill or some policymakers that will definitely be looking at things on there regular laptop and the crystal be checking their mobile devices as well, but you can’t, nor the stop can’t ignore desktop, right, well and funders to like, if you want to. Reach out, latto, you know. Large foundations, they’re still in a in an office. They’re not always doing the reading and the research on, you know, on their phone, yeah, it’s an interesting example. We were working to redesign it’s, a tool that we have in our website that specifically for hill education and for what kind of education. So it’s tio educate members, the hill on a hill. And so one of the new members of our policy team, he had just come off the hill. And he said, you know, we really need pgs, because when i would take things to my member if there’s going to be effective tool, i need a nice print off because they want to see things in print, which was interesting because we haven’t been thinking that way at all right. Prince of washington. Okay, your your comrades carry, they could ride the subway with you more, more, more paper, the better get some of the recruits. Yes, oh, silicon valley needs to meet washington, d c and beat each other up. Yes, all right. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Dahna all right, we got more minutes. We got plenty of time together. What? What other myths are out there? Anybody? Melissa, you suggested a myth lately, i can suggest another one. Another myth i have is about crowdfunding. People think that if you build a web page, the money will just come in on one of the biggest misconceptions that i see about crowdfunding. Is that it’s not you. Put up a web page, and money comes in there’s actually, a lot of communications work and offline outreach and work that goes into a crowdfunding campaign. So for non-profits that air considering doing it, which i think it’s a good tool, you really have to think of it. Not just azan. Internet tool, not just as a fundraising tool. It is a combination of all your best assets to your goal. I love that you mentioned off line there’s a lot of back channel work that goes into, you know, it’s been several days that we have a donation. Could you please help us out? You you know, you. I mean, this is a targeted either phone call or e mail you’ve been loyal. We noticed you haven’t given to. This campaign could you help boost us? We’re in a molise. Where? In the doldrums here. Exactly. And i would like that goes on. Yeah. And i would say if you don’t know who your first twenty thunders, are that air goingto get onto your the site and donate your you’re not ready to do a crowdfunding campaign yet nobody wants to give to that xero level that and when the bar is that there is no bar is just an empty shell. Where the borrower toby it’s. Very hard to get the first people. You’ve got to recruit them back. Channel. Yeah, that is a common mistake. Anything else about you want to add carrier bird around just around crowdfunding? Anything more about that? That miss? Well, i think we’re good and they will come. Myth. Well, this was related. I think this was melissa’s myth. And that was that. What? You? What you say is what people will hear. What you say is what people will hear. That sametz at least that’s what i wrote down in my notes. Well, it’s, no. Does it sound familiar to you? No. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, i mean, it sounds like reality versus perception or your message vs? Yeah, that, yes, the intention of your message versus how it’s received. Well, i think we can agree that that’s not always the same, right. I mean, if it’s not even carefully crafted, buy a communications professionals sometimes leads the misunderstanding, i mean, this is also a great argument for testing messages. Very good. Alright on email on social, then your coms channels. Okay, okay, it wasn’t that one of our myths that small organizations can’t test or don’t test. Yes, well, may be that they don’t test is a fact, i don’t know, but that they can’t. That sounds like a deep myth, right? Absolutely, i don’t know. Is there an e mail provider that doesn’t provide that doesn’t offer those simple ist a b testing, and i mean, can’t we just do it on our own, even if we don’t have? Ah une male vendor. Well, you certainly could look at open rates. I mean, and that will give you mean that will be a least give you a primitive way of doing a be testing. Okay, i mean, i also think it’s ah it’s, a value proposition and it’s a capacity. I think it makes sense for everyone to develop a culture of testing, but whether it makes sense for your organization to test subject lines every time or run multiple tests, if you’re dealing with a list size of a couple of thousand people and that’s maybe get a net you fifty extra dollars, there might be a more valuable way and spending your time maybe it’s, actually just pushing up the draft of another email. S o i think it’s it’s always good to be thinking about testing and things you contest, but that time that you spend setting up a test is time. You’re not spending doing something else, so i think that’s worth weighing when you’re thinking about testing, all right? We got time for another couple of myths. What else we got? Birds got the phone. You you got the device, you know, check out the list. Okay. Well, when the myth that came up it was after the brainstorm was on curiously here, uh, former journalist and as you’re a journalist, is the question of what he should ever seldman podcast don’t know from journalists. Well, thank you, that’s. Very thoughtful. You sound like a journalist. Oh, thank you. I take that as a compliment. I admire journalist, but yeah, i don’t know, but you don’t. Okay. Well, the question was, do you ever say because there is the professionalism that you should never say? No comment to a journalist? I really never say no comment to a journalist. All right, what is that? Is that fact or fiction? We busted busting that myth. Carry going? You’re the former journalist. I know a lot of people that that live by that mantra. But i do think that there’s other ways of meaning. No comment and not saying it as in well, we’re not the best people to talk to on that subject, but but we can definitely put you in touch with people that could give you a statement on that. So it’s pivoting instead of no comment. Ok, but you gotta know, i learned a really good phrase from a coms director i work with, which was i cannot be a good source for you. Let me refer you to someone who can, which i think is a little friendlier than no comment and keeps the conversation going. Okay, okay, you know what? If we’re in a crisis situation, i mean, you’re, you’re, uh, you know, we’re talking worst case now. You’re the organization’s reputation is on the line for some reason, you’re in the headlines and it’s not a good it’s, not a good headline, and you’re the i mean, you’re really the only source because it’s, your organization is talking to and you’re the ceo of the communications director and you mistakenly picked up the phone because you had read the headline yet, i guess. Now what do you do? You can’t you can’t you can’t give it to somebody else, you’re the you’re the person. Well, you you say, i need to get right back to you, and then you come up with a a good response, especially if it’s about it’s, about your organization on when you’re not under pressure against the right, but you always have, you know, at least fifteen, thirty minutes unless they’re completely on deadline right now to take to get your statement, right? Okay, you know, i think you never want to take a press call cold. I mean, even if they’re on a tight deadline, just like, can i get back to you in five to ten minutes? Me? Because people are on the go on dh. Just give yourself five. Minutes. I kind of think through what you want to say. Okay? Never taken. Never take it cold. That sounds like good advice. All right, we got room for one more who’s. Got another one. Now we’re going to burn because he’s got the phone. But, ladies, you have you are you thinking of something? Go ahead. I mean, one more, i think is the idea that something has to go viral to be successful. This when i feel like if you’re in communications and urine digital, you fight against all the time. And to me, the most important thing is that the audience that you are talking to seize it not everything has to get ten million views to be successful. Okay, your message could still be heard. Depends who’s hearing it, right? I mean, and who? You want to hear it, who you need to hear it. And what the goals of that communication are too mean. If you have a specific goal in a specific audience that’s going to help you reach that goal. It’s successful if you if you move the needle on with that with that communication and even if only reached one hundred fifty people exactly. Or that the decision maker and everybody around them. Okay, lots of nods. All right, this was fun, you know? Alright, i like this a light one, but we got a lot out. We covered at least ten of these things. At least ten myths, all right? And the panel has been seeded closest to me. Melissa ryan, director of client services at trilogy interactive. And karen birdseye, us campaigner for wild aid. And burt edwards, director of media and web strategy at interaction. And this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference. Thank you for being with us next week. It’ll be september and it’ll be a good show. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. Our creative producers claire meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez on our music is by scott stein thank you, scotty be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? 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Nonprofit Radio for February 13, 2015: Design Strategy & Digital Strategy

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Matthew ScharpnickDesign Strategy

Matthew Scharpnick has thoughts on what good design is, why it’s important and how to achieve it. What is design strategy and why the heck is Charity Water talked about so much? Matthew is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Elefint Designs.

 

 

 

Amy Sample WardDigital Strategy

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Highlights of the 2015 Digital Integration & Outlook Report, released this week. We’ll look at trends in staffing, strategy, engagement and more. Amy Sample Ward is our social media contributor and CEO of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host it’s the valentine’s edition happy valentine’s day! I’m going to shout out np valentine’s throughout the show and here is the first one roses are red, sunshine is warm, mayor love go on forever like a nine, ninety form look, i love that one that’s jesse anna, born eamon in suwannee, tennessee and she’s at rhymes with messy on twitter at rhymes with messy love it we have a listener of the week oh my goodness! They are incredible fans of non-profit radio why? W c of monterey county, california eliminating racism, empowering women they love the show today they just tweeted, how do we love non-profit radio and tony m let us count the ways and they’re all listening today. Each of them is listening today. Sam, should i do it? I got the list. Who? Who cares what sam says? It’s, my show. I’ll do whatever the hell i want. Shut up, sam. What do you see? A monterey county, of course. The administration staff germaine patricia chelsea. Hello, chelsea. Fabiola! Danielle! Leon! Ella! Danielle! No! One was daniel danielle rosa, cheryl hello, cheryl mccormick, molly sikora. Emanuel got to get the clinical supervisors rosa and lose have tohave the pre licensed therapists in there brenda leigh, anne marie, tsa, enrique, carmen, ana, christina marie, tsa, maria elizabeth and mary ann. And, of course, where would wide wch monterey be without the domestic violence advocates? They’d be nowhere. Diana, angie, maria, ludmila, lucinda, rachel and of course, can’t forget marissa robe lace the y w c a of monterey county, our listener of the week congratulations! Thank you so so much for loving non-profit radio i’m glad you’re all with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of triskaidekaphobia if i came to learn that you missed today’s show it’s d s day that’s not domination and submission it’s designed strategy and digital strategy design strategy. Matthew scharpnick has thoughts on what good design is, why it’s important and how to achieve it? What is designed strategy and why is charity water talked about so much? Matthew is co founder and chief strategy officer of elephant designs digital strategy highlights of the twenty fifteen digital integration and outlook report released just yesterday it’s cutting edge we’re gonna look at trends in staffing, strategy, engagement and more, amy sample ward is our social media contributor and ceo of inten, the non-profit technology network between the guests on tony’s take to have mohr and p valentine’s and my latest standup comedy gig responsive by generosity siri’s they host multi charity five k runs and walks very glad that master scharpnick matthew scharpnick can be with me today. He’s, a design strategist and researcher, as well as user experience and information designer he’s, co founder and chief strategy officer of elephant designs. He runs the design blawg redesigning good for the chronicle of philanthropy, and he has written for stanford social innovation review dot net magazine and others on twitter he’s at mat sharp a ch aarp and his company is at elefant designs dot com that’s e l e f i n t matthew scharpnick welcome to the show. Hey, tony, thanks for having me. My pleasure. I’m glad you’re with us. Why is designed? Oh, thank you. Why is designed so important, matthew, i think this side is important for a lot of reasons. I think it might be important to think about what design is when we answer. That question, you know, a lot of people when they think of design think of visual design, and that is certainly a critical, important part of a lot of things, and we can talk about that. But design, in a broader sense, could be thought of as just the intentional act of creating things and really understanding how everyone’s going to consume that product or service, and putting a lot of intentionality and effort and energy into crafting that experience for people. So i think with that broader definition, it’s really the ability to create things that are going to work really well for different audience. And so what we do specifically at elephant is look at how design can play out across a number of different things that non-profit organizations and ngos and other good causes they’re trying to do so there’s things like service design, which can be actually crafting the processes and services that people use, whether it could be a branding, which is something that i think a lot of organizations and the social sector are now really paying a lot more attention to basic information design obviously went designed so it’s a broad category and you specifically say, you know, doing this with intentionality and effort, so we’re talking about more than a new logo or a new tagline or new colors on the website? Yeah, that’s, right? I think you know, those are all the deliverables. Yeah, those are small pieces, right? Exactly. And so it’s not uncommon that people come to our design studio and they’re thinking directly about the deliverables. So maybe they wanted info graphic or maybe they want a logo, and what we always encouraged people to do is to take a step back and that’s what we call ourselves the strategic design studio because our approach to things it’s really to say okay, well, let’s, look at, you know, what is the goal of this? Why do we want an intro graphic? Maybe an infographic isn’t actually the best way for us to achieve the goal that we’re trying to achieve, or even if it is let’s really think critically about who these audiences are, what we need to create them. And how would you describe this is this is very ethereal stuff, and this is, you know, it’s, a highly skilled profession, i know, but you know you’re you’re best shot. How would you describe good design? Um, i think good design is designed that is effective designed that really delights people that helps people understand what the goals are behind that designed without having to pay a lot of effort into it. So where i see designed being this amazing compliment strategy is probably a lot of listeners, if they’ve been involved in any kind of consulting project, would have seen the deliver bowl at the end of that as some kind of long report. I know when i was a director of marketing for non-profit we often have fund-raising consultant, consultant, different people that would come in, and they would deliver something like that, and it was really great information. These were experts that really knew what they were talking about, but i think the unfortunate side that i saw was that very few people would ever access this information. They might deliver a report that the ceo and i were the only ones who saw it, and it would be something that i would maybe review a couple of times a year, and what i realized was that when you took the strategic insights and you bake them into a design, then people just get it? So i think, really effective design and you’re right, it it isn’t a serial question we could we could probably spend a lot of time just exploring that one question, but i think on a high level, if you just get what an organization is about, what it’s trying to do, what values are without really having to think about it too much, then they’ve probably done a good job of crafting their brand and creating really quality design, and you should be able to get that from just your your first moments. Looking at their sight? Yeah, i mean, i think you know again website is a very common touchpoint most people you know, when you hear about an organization of any kind, the station very likely to hop onto their website, and so that’s obviously one of the most important pieces tow any organizations brand but a brand extends obviously much more than just its website and there’s other visual deliverables know there’s collateral materials there’s alone, though there’s all these other things that people touch, but a brand is really this summation of feelings that people have about an organization. So it’s your website talks about how you’re a very caring organization and that when people go to interact with your staff, they find them to be a little bit of luke or they don’t give them very good service. Then you’re telling two contradictory stories and eventually that starts to fall apart. So i think one of the things where, you know, someone might just be going into it thinking, oh, brand, we need to design our logo on our website, but when you start to expand these questions of what your values are and looking at all the different places where people interact with your organization, it really opens up the opportunity for organizations to think about this in a broader way, and you obviously want to build a brand that’s very authentic to who you are is an organization because if you’re trying to make claims that don’t really resonate with the experience that people having out world and eventually it’s gonna fall apart on you know who you are and what your work is, what your mission is, we’re going, we’re going to go out for a break a couple seconds, we come back, of course, matthew scharpnick and i’m going to keep talking about this, including, bring in your mission and how do boardmember sze sometimes get in the way of good design? Stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We’re watching the hashtag non-profit radio of course in the studio give local america hope you joined in said you were going to be joining us. I hope you’re with us. Oh my gosh, live listener love falls church, virginia salinas, california or we know who that is. That’s the y w c a of monterey county. Glad you’re with us. Congratulations again, locust grove, virginia i’m a nominee. Wisconsin, bellevue, washington love it up in the pacific northwest and all the way down here to hicksville, new york on long island. Lots more live listener loved to come. Lots more here’s, another mp valentine that i love. My database was pierced by cupid’s love dark you caught my eye when you wealth screened my heart heimans that’s fabulous that is ah, we did it there at we did it. And why? See on twitter love that we’ll screen to my heart matthew let’s let’s talk about mission and and design is that is that’s the place to start o r now? Yeah, sure. Okay. Thanks. Yes, s so how do we how do we how do we? Convey our mission through good design in this i think this is what we’re talking about strategic design strategy and strategic design. Yeah, for sure. Um, i think there’s a few components to you, no one is obviously met judy, so a lot of the work we’re doing with people is crafting a really clear and concise message elearning before, for example, designing somebody’s website will almost always be involved in writing the copy on the home page and a few of the other key pages and there’s, just ways that design plays into your messaging. So if you’re showing something visually, perhaps with a picture or even just feelings and values that you’re trying to communicate, then that doesn’t always have to be communicated through text as well. Your copy so a classic example that i probably used way too much, but i think they do an amazing job of it that everyone’s familiar with his apple. You know you don’t have on apple’s website, and they have to tell you again and again about you know, how they care about design and how they build really quality products that delight people. They will mention things like that for. Sure in there, copy, but it’s also just built into everything that they do and all you know you’ll see billboard ads that apple does and it’s just a picture of the newest vote. There’s actually absolutely no messaging it’s pretty remarkable that you’ve been able to build a brand where all you have to do is show a picture of your product at a certain angle, and we’ve all seen how successful they’ve been by really integrating design and i think and a lot of ways, steve jobs was ahead of his time and now, and he unfortunately doesn’t even get to see this there now by far the largest company by market capitalization, and i think you’re starting to see more and more companies who are getting this the private sector and indefinitely this is moving over into the social sector where really crafting powerful variances for your customers is important more than anything else. And there’s actually a big pushed back by a lot of larger companies now towards focusing on shareholder value and there’s a lot of people out there marc benioff just wrote a piece on it he’s obviously doing a lot of work with his foundation of how we really need to focus on the individual, and so i think we can sometimes fall into the same trap two in the social sector, i’m getting a little bit off track here, but of course, your mission at the end of the day is teo reach out to the clients that you’re trying to serve and to create a better world but there’s a lot of pressures, you’re also running an organisation that requires donors to fund that organization, have the resources you need to do your job, so a lot of attention gets put on that. And so i think one of the things that we stumbled into and elephant was multiple audiences coming from two very different directions and having to understand your mission that way, you typically see in an organization that it has a board of directors which usually in most cases, lives a little bit a little bit different lifestyle comes from a different place than the clients that you’re trying to serve. Both of those might be different from the staff so it’s just understanding that your organization is really serving multiple types of people and making sure that you’re accomplishing not and communicating that all the time, something that i think design is a great reminder of and the process of designing great exploration you led us into that exactly led us into that process a little bit. This is so really it’s fascinating to me. You’re you’re starting with an organization’s mission and that may be, you know, expressed in seventy five hundred words, and then what’s the what’s, the creative process too translate that into identity on on websites, facebook pages, collateral materials and all that stuff you mentioned help us help us see into that your mind that that process? Yeah, sure, i think for us, it’s really depends on the project and the resources were dedicating to it. If we’re doing something that’s small for us, maybe one of the simplest projects will work on it like a static prince, one page piece or even an infographic or something like that. And on every project, even on those kind of simpler, smaller projects will do something with a strategy and branding document that’s our peace that we send out to our clients have him fill out and it asked questions like, why does your organization exists what was missing from the world, the new guy’s felt this organization had to be created woman that need that you were trying to fill its rhythm, and then we go into things like who you’re different audiences, and we have people rank them, and we have people talk about what are the specific things you want to do with each of those audiences? So it’s really an exploration of where they’re trying to go with all of those things? And once we get that information back from them, then we start thinking about okay, what are the messages that are going to resonate with these people, what’s going on in their life that matters to them? And how is this organization an important part of their life? And then that that sort of in between today that leaves us with things like interaction design, so on print piece that might be sketching things out, she kind of see where pieces go before you worry too much about the polish of visual design, but if you’re looking at things like a website, obviously user experience design is its own field and latto complexities to it, but understanding how. People move through side understanding the hierarchy of information what’s most important, trying to create experiences that are going to leave different types of people, that information, you know, some people are gonna want to watch a video that’s going to be the first thing they go toe on site. Other people will never watch a video just because they don’t like interacting with websites in that way. So we kind of look at all that stuff, and then it eventually moved into visual design, and when we’re looking at larger project, maybe it’s renaming an organization or maybe an organisation is trying to be the leader in their space about changing the way an entire population thinks about a particular issue, then we’ll often go out and well meet with many, many constituents of that organization, so we might spend a day or multiple days meeting with staff with clients, with partner organizations with a wide variety of people and understanding what their current perception of the organization is, what the ideal organization would look like to them and it’s very interesting, because you often find that there’s contradictions, or you find that there’s a lot of overlap that everybody’s seeing. And you kind of learn where you need to put your energy after that. As you do, these redesign projects, buy-in boardmember sze can sometimes be an obstacle. And you have an article in the chronicle of philanthropy from just last month. On this subject, you, uh, you’re concerned that redesign projects get cem. Participation from people aren’t really qualified. Tio teo comment to the degree they do. Yeah, this is something that we’ve seen, and i hope that, you know, the board members out there don’t don’t feel unappreciated and feel like they’re getting picked on for this and it’s certainly not that way and there’s a lot of great board members who are contributing so much to organizations, but for some reason, what we’ve seen a number of times is that i think because design doesn’t always feel as technical, and i think this is changing as people see how sophisticated design is becoming and hope coming so much, you know, more widespread, i think people views on this air changing, but i think, you know, people have designed opinions that they make every day they have, they’re different some people want this color shoe or that colored clothing or this color car, or they liked the design of this house or not this house. And so as people who have subjective opinions, i think sometimes we feel that, you know, yeah, i i weigh on on on on this logo just like i would weigh in on which car i want to buy, and maybe they don’t always realize that there’s a lot of thought. That goes into that, and so some of the things i was touching on in that article was that we’ve seen processes get derailed at the end, where we’ve put a lot of time and energy working with an organization, they’ve had a team from the beginning, we’ve really gone through this process that we just described of understanding the goals and the audiences, and then toward the end of that time, someone might jump in and just thrown opinion out there that they don’t like a particular color or style without really understanding where we’re trying to go. And, you know, there’s a lot of other psychological factors in there, too, and i don’t know we have a lot of time to get into all of them, but some things just like, you know, people, sometimes i feel like they want something new, and then when it actually comes time to get something new, they’re a little worried what they’re going to lose because there’s a lot of equity and history and what in their existing brand, no fear is like that, and you have an interesting analogy that you wouldn’t find this level of interference if it was. A financial consultant and financial advisor and a ah ah financial plan was being presented to the board. Yeah, i think that’s, right? And i think that something like finances seem very technical and tender, not get the same issue. Hopefully, hopefully, this is changing. I don’t. Do you believe it is? Do you see this? Changing that design is getting more respect and for the art and science that it is? Absolutely. When we started our company just about five years ago, our conversations were always having to convince the social sector organizations why design was so important and show them how the private sector is using it. Why it matters. And we rarely have to have that conversation anymore. We see that people just get that designed the critical part of the successful organization. And what what can we suggest that could help overcome the the obstacles of last minute changes in criticisms, et cetera from the board? Well, they approached that we usually take is we try to create a framework, especially on larger design projects on smaller ones. You sometimes don’t get this much. But when you’re doing something like renaming an organization or changing its logo things that are i feel very foundational people are very attached to it. We like to create a framework where we say here’s our goals and here’s what we’re trying to do in any designs could go through that. So if someone suggests the change, we should say, okay, well, let us know how that change is going to help us achieve our goals, and sometimes that will help that person articulate why they’re change is important, and everyone else will get to see why they should listen to them, and other times the person will say, well, you know what? This was actually just an opinion of mine, and i can’t really just buy-in might say, well, maybe maybe we don’t need to make that change that, and it gives them a little better way to have that conversation. And if that person had been involved early in the process, their opinion could have been assimilated in yeah, exactly. And that’s, one of the things we say in the article, you know, if you can figure out who our decision makers who are going to be weighing in who have the power to derail something if they’re not involved certainly try to involve that as early as possible, so their concerns could be built into the process that address, if we have a limited budget, which a lot of non-profits do, how can we prioritised what, what, where we should spend our money in in design? Durney yeah, i get this question a lot on dh it’s either that question or more one which is, you know, with our limited budget where’s, the best place we can go to for design, and i think, you know, there’s always going to be certain things like you get what you pay for, and i think there’s other areas where you can cut some corners and still have a pretty good job, so there’s product tie solutions that are out there, so when we have organizations that come to us and their budget is nowhere near what we tend to work with, we point them towards something like a a template for a sight like square space where they’ve got pre built websites for somebody and that’s something it’s not going to be incredibly unique, you can’t do everything you want with it, but if you’re just starting out, if i not be the best idea to invest your entire budget into building the most beautiful worksite ever as much as we like doing that work and wanted to see that that’s not necessarily where you need to go. And i think in terms of prioritizing which kind of designed, it goes back to strategy for me, it’s understanding, you know, where are the points that really matter for some organization? If going after their clients rarely involves any kind of digital interaction, and they get most of their money from a single foundation that they apply for through a grant or they get it through high net worth individuals that they go and talk to in person, then they probably don’t need to be spending all of their money on the website when they really is not responsible for them to do that, but they don’t have the funds. So i think, it’s just understanding, you know, just asking those questions about what really matters. Where do people get that information? And then that will hopefully guide them to make those choices is obviously a little bit hard to answer general question like that specifically, but i think, you know there’s a lot of ways to think about that. You gave it your best shot. It was admirable on dh valuable. We just have a couple of minutes left about a minute and a half or so you have a theory about why charity water is gets so much attention is talked about so much. Yeah, it’s really funny almost every non-profit conference to go to our design is mentioned, they’re brought up. I think they’ve made design of priority from day one and they’ve really invested in it, and all of their materials was really beautiful and they just create really great work. And unfortunately, and this is, you know, one of the things we try to address every day the social sector has been a little bit behind some other things were maybe there’s more resource is there may be people have understood the importance of design a little bit earlier, you know, i think when people look for really great examples of design, charity water is one of the ones that they are able to find that consistently does a good job. Matthew, just about a minute we have left would you tell me what it is? That you love about the work that you do. Yeah, i mean, great to do work where you feel like you’re making a difference in the world, and i think we have a skill our team does that so many organizations need and it’s just a great environment to get to be around people every day who are doing this kind of work, and then for us internally to get to be around people who want to put their energy and disporting these kind of organizations and it’s great to see that that’s what people have chosen to investor energy mathos scharpnick you’ll find him on twitter at mat sharp s ch aarp and the company is elephant e l e f i nt designs matthew. Thank you so, so much. Thank you. My pleasure. Have you, tony, take two and amy sample ward on design strategy are next. First generosity siri’s you know them? They talk about well, i talk about them. They host multi charity five k runs and walks. That means if you’re small, shop isn’t going to get enough runners. Tau host your own event because you can’t have twenty, twenty five people on ghost. Ah ah! Run around that you work with generosity, siri’s. And they bring a bunch of small and midsize shops together, and then you have three hundred fifty or four hundred runners and walkers and you have a great event. You have fun, yeah fund-raising you have community small shops coming together, i’ve hosted a couple of their rmc together, i should say a couple of their runs and i’m doing another one that’s coming up in brooklyn in a month or so, and besides brooklyn, they have one coming up in northern new jersey and also miami, florida talk to dave lin. You know, i like to pick up the phone and talk to people. Pick up the phone. He’s the c e o tell him you’re from non-profit radio seven one eight five o six. Nine triple seven yes, they have a beautifully strategically designed website. Also, of course generosity. Siri’s dot com. I did a stand up comedy gig last month in new york city. Your basic stories of unrequited to seventh grade love and revenge and dating and law school. The video is at tony martignetti dot com couple more np valentine’s that i saw this morning from past guest professor brian mittendorf at binghamton university. In upstate new york, which is not far from our affiliate, geneva community radio on seneca lake, brian writes, dear valentine with you, i always have donorsearch vise dh fun. All right, professor mittendorf that’s like that’s like a b plus or so it’s. Probably only a b but there’s a lot of subjectivity in greeting. So go for the b plus i saw one from suzanne perry the very instant that i saw you. My heart. Oh, sorry. The very instant that i saw you. Did my heart want to do a randomized controlled trial to show our love would be effective? The’s mp valentine’s are the brainchild of the chronicle of philanthropy. They are at philanthropy on twitter. Of course, lots of people know that, and i think amy sample word is going to share a couple of mp valentine’s. Also, that is tony’s take two for friday, thirteenth of february sixth show of this year. Amy sample ward you know her she’s with us often because she’s, our social media contributor, and she’s also the ceo of intend the non-profit technology network, our most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement. Her blob is amy sample, war dot or ge, and on twitter she’s at amy r s ward the arm’s for rene welcome back, amy sample ward, thank you for having me happy friday the thirteenth thank you. Happy friday to you and happy valentine’s day. You don’t want to get a shot of valentine’s day is also oregon’s birthday is it really organs birthday? Oh, how cool, then why don’t you give a special shout out to our new affiliate? Km jozy down in salem and kaiser awesome! I am so excited about that. I’m going to send them on twitter, valentine actually very thoughtful because you’re in portland and they’re in there and down in the mid willamette valley. How far is that from you? Well, lam it lam it. Oh, thank you very much. You corrected me on oregon years ago. I know now. It’s, oregon. We’ll lam it there in the mid well, willamette valley. How far is that from you in in portland, portland’s? Kind of the top of the willamette corridor. So the kind of the next three hour drive south. Okay, they’re in the mid well amit corridor talking like an oregonian. We’re going to do my best anyway, you have this little report that you intend was involved with on on digital strategy. Once you acquaint us with this twenty fifteen digital integration and outlook report, sure. So this just launch publicly yesterday. Twenty fifteen digital outlook report and folks can download it from the web for free. We partnered with care too, and h j c and it was a bit of a balding conversation is all research projects are. But the original impetus was trying to figure out as this conversation even the conversation with matt, the first half of the show around digital strategies and multi-channel campaigns and all those things, they really they really require people from all across an organization. Often they tackle all different channels there. Normally, you know, a big strategy and lots of tactics to get there. And we wanted to figure out what that looked like in practice in organizations. What is it? What does it mean to staff and train your staff for that kind of approach? So from there we created this survey, like i said would care to an h j c looking at staffing, looking at what? Those strategies. Are but then also, you know, what are your challenge is to doing this well, or to prioritizing this kind of, you know approach. And there are some things that i thought, you know, i totally would have bet on those being the answers, and they came out that way. And there are other things that i was surprised by. So it’s it’s, a pretty interesting report will, of course, have ah, webinar and other opportunities to discuss the report, but excited to share it first. Here. Thank you very much. Cool. Um, what was the was the report proofread? Yes, it was ok. Well, by about six people. Two times. Okay, well, that’s, you have edit well, there’s a there’s. A spelling mistake on page twenty three. I feel obliged to point that out, even though so even though we have a flawed report here. Well, i guess you and i will still spend time talking about it. But check page twenty three year okay, what’s the spelling mistake. Oh, you want the exact let’s? See it’s? Ah, the word constraints is misspelled in the graphic. I’m sorry. We’ll continue anyway. Well, i like it, okay, i don’t think that i don’t think it impacts the overarching messages of the report, but i don’t know. I feel compelled to point that out. Let’s. See you. Staffing is staffing is very interesting. What the positions that people had, who filled out the survey, meaning they’re the ones who were involved in the digital work of the organization. Yeah, i mean, i think that first, you know, at inten, we always talk about how technology in the most general sense is used by every person in the organization, right? Every every team, every individual has certain tools that they need to do their job, and we want technology training and recognition, you know, to be all the way across an organization on something that i thought was interesting about this is we do see, you know, different departments and different teams responding that they’re managing in this work, but that seventy percent were what what normally i would consider to be a leadership level staff percent on executive director or a director manager, you know, of a team seventy percent of the folks who are responsible for this work are that leadership level, which i think reinforces that it’s not about the tactical decisions of what do we post on facebook, but really trying to bring that hyre strategic perspective and, you know, kind of umbrella plan geever says getting deep in the weeds of of twitter, facebook or email marketing, so i thought that was a really positive sign, okay? And it’s ah, cuts across lots of different fields are positions. I guess directors and managers and and and specialists is actually just kind of small. It’s like only eleven. Roughly eleven percent specializing? Yeah, and consultants is the smallest, just under four percent. Yes, yes. Interesting. All right, yeah. I think that’s definitely been a shift it’s something that i saw, you know, maybe ten, fifteen years ago, as the kind of traditional department was an outsourced consultant roll. Someone would come in and make sure the servers were running and the website was up and that kind of thing. And over time, of course, organizations recognized how much work there was in that, and it made those official staff rolls. And now we’re seeing that with more of the digital strategy worked as well, that that may be used to be handed off to an outside consultant. And now we’re realizing that we’re doing it every day, and it needs to be part of staff. I saw that a lot of organizations that i participated or under a million dollars in in operating budget, thirty seven percent. You are up to two million dollars. So yeah, i mean most. I mean, many organizations are under five hundred thousand? I mean, just in the us. At least this report went to canadian organizations and tio us organizations. But that kind of distribution of the sector is that of course, most are smaller, right? And i wantto make make sure people understand that this is not, you know, done by large organizations. In fact, the you know, the like, the five million to ten million dollars category is only is even under twelve percent. So yep. Okay, what else did you see that it’s interesting in this in the report? Well, one thing that is just it touch a little bit more on the staffing piece that there’s. Um, well, we’ll kind of touch on this later too, but there’s a note about someone being completely focused, someone that’s, a dedicated staff person managing the digital strategy for the organisation versus that maybe being a distributed role depending on what the campaign is are, you know what work needs to be done? And the correlation there is that the more total staff you have an organization, the hyre the probability that there is a dedicated person for digital strategy, which i think way could’ve all you know made that logical step so less than a quarter’s twenty four percent of organizations that have ten, staff, people or fewer have a dedicated person managing the digital strategy, but when you go to that next kind of braque and eleven eleven staff to fifty staff, a little bit more of a medium sized organization, that twenty four percent jumps up to fifty eight percent and, you know, going over fifty staff, it goes up even higher. Andi, i offer that up as a reminder that, you know, a lot of organizations don’t have a dedicated person managing digital strategy, which we could talk about challenges about later, but i think at least it and ten, i hear that a lot people saying, well, we don’t have someone that, you know, it’s their job to manage this, so we can’t be expected to do it. Well, i think a lot of organizations are in that boat where they don’t have a staff person managing the digital strategy, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a digital strategy. It just means that it needs maybe to be a more collaborative process to manage. Okay. Excellent. Is this an annual report? Uh this is the first time we’ve done it, but we do hope to do it at the beginning of each year going forward so we can try and see if there’s trends especially around, you know, emerging channels that people may be focused on for the year. Okay, seems like a pretty serious undertaking do annually. Okay. Yeah, well, and ten is a serious organization e on and i think there’s e i mean it’s. Why we do many of our reports every year. Because even if it’s not the same exact respondents and of course wait tried leah’s clears, we can that this is a snapshot. It’s not a scientific reports, of course, based on who responds each year. But there is there is value in being able to ask the same questions publicly year over year and see how responses change. You asked a bunch of questions about what, what organization is going to be focusing on in twenty fifteen and lots of lots of visual answers? Yeah, i thought it was, um i thought there were some answers here that were surprising and some here that we’re not surprising at all. So we asked folks, what content? Types or channels, they may be increasing their focus on or keeping the same focus or decreasing focus on and the top three that it counts. You know, if you count increasing, or at least stay in the same with focus are, you know, in the ninety five percent or hyre range are all rich media. So their videos, their images and their infographics, which i think i mean again, i know that those are really compelling content types and, you know, people really love to be able to share that kind of content, but i was surprised that it was, you know, ninety five percent or hyre that people were going to maintain or increase their focus on those and tio emphasize something that matthew made clear and that you have made clear many, many times before you embark on something like this, you need to have your strategy in place. Why are you? Why are you in? Why do you want to do an infographic? What right? I mean, what what can we do with video that we’re not? We’re not currently doing and how does it how does it serve our constituents? Exactly? And what? What is that video going to do for you, i mean a video in and of itself isn’t reason to create one. So video images infographics, even though those air the three highest as faras maintainer increase our focus on the peace is right behind that include email marketing, blog’s guest articles on your ah, you know website or blogged etcetera. So i think those pieces serve as the kind of channel or or reinforcement for those three top piece is the videos and images and infographics so that you’re creating that rich super share a ble content, right. Everybody wants to share that info graphic on facebook or or whatever, and you’re going to be sharing embedding those in email marketing in your blog’s in guest articles that you’re, you know, posting on other people’s websites. So i thought that made sense that those followed right behind. I have to go away for a couple minutes. When we come back, amy and i are going to keep talking about the twenty fifteen digital integration and outlook report. Be with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz we will update that drop because jan eggers hasn’t been with blackbaud for a long, long time, but when she was, she was obviously a non-profit radio fan and i interviewed her let’s, go abroad with live listener love seoul, south korea anya haserot beijing, china is with us ni hao and mishima japan konnichi wa bringing it back to the u s falls church, virginia, locust grove, virginia, new york, new york woodbridge, new jersey. Thank you, woodbridge, devon, pennsylvania, potomac, marilyn st louis, missouri couple in south san francisco, california more than one thank you let’s cruise s new mexico welcome! I’ve listened to you last cruises that was but that’s that’s, one of our listeners of the weak and i’m sorry, i can’t remember which one which one of our live listeners from las cruzes tweet me and i’ll shut you out! Use the hashtag non-profit radio, honolulu, hawaii, ellicott city, maryland, los angeles, california and we have a bunch of masked us listeners also, i don’t know if that’s intentional or unintentional. I watched the movie screening citizenfour last night about the edward snowden story so it could be unintentional masking that’s a very good film. By the way, citizenfour? Any sample ward? You’re still with us, right? Even though i’m chattering away? Of course i am. I’m i was actually thinking of citizen for when you announced that there are a number of folks masking and call listening into the show on dh then you set it. We’re having a brunch, a brain melt. Ah, exactly. And so have you seen citizen for i have. Yeah. You know, i have a very poignant story about that. The scanning the screening i went to last night was that here in new york city, the i f c and by much independent channel’s studio or something down on sixth have and it was with edward snow. We had edward snowden in bye bye video and also allow laura poitras, the director of the film, and glenn greenwald. The journalist obviously was working so closely with glen, and it was all hosted by david carr, the new york times media media journalists. And then he went to the new york times office last night after this live panel and he died. I saw it on. I saw i got i got an alert. Yeah, he died right after. He died in the new york times office. It’s incredible. Oh, my god. Yeah, yeah. David carr c a r r xero obituary in the times today, right after he hosted this, he went back to the office, and then he was found there last last night. Like the nine o’clock tonight. I know it was really it was really chilling. Oh, my. I was so sorry, andi. I saw him at his last live appearance hosting this panel around the citizen for on and how was that panel? So david was there in person, but other people were on skype for only only on ly. Edward snowden was remote. Glenn greenwald and laura poitras. She’s a director. The film. They were both live with him. It we roll in the theater at the i f c center. Yeah, it was very, very good. How is the discussion? Oh, excellent. You know, people are concerned about asking laura and glenn about their their own feelings about being back in the u s and their reluctance to come back. Uh, after all this broke, this all broke around. It was june twenty thirteen that’s with the three of them. Poitras. Greenwald. And snowden had a week in hong kong, which is when the story’s first came out. They first met him. Face-to-face. Right. Then, june twenty third, june thirteen. So they were talking about what was it like to come back to the us after that? What she has planned. There’s, another film planned about other whistle blowers. That’s, the films she was working on when this one broke, and she she put citizenfour ahead of it. Yeah, really. It’s it’s ah, it’s, really very good. And who? The thing last night, i just couldn’t get over when i woke up this morning and saw the obituary. Um, yeah, that’s, just incredible. Let’s, let’s talk about some of the other things where people are focusing in twenty fifteen also ranked high were case studies, twitter chats and marketing automation. What what does that one mean? Marketing automation? Oh, well, it can mean, you know, different things. Oh, of course, every organization brings its own understanding that definition to automation, but i’ll share some examples from antenna, so they’re rooted, at least in reality, that i can talk about. And for us, marketing automation means ah, focus on or a lot of trust in data that we can use to welcome new people to the community, to encourage communication to encourage, you know, joining or renewing all of those pieces. So when i say trusting and relying on data, i mean that we have set up our systems so that say, tony, you come to the website and you decide to sign up for one of our webinars are online education programs and it’s the first time you’ve ever come to intend so we see in the database here’s this new contact tony martignetti and we also see that the way you came in, the way you became a new contact is by registering for an event. So that kicks you in essentially to an automated marketing kind of system. So instead of getting eso se damn your host for the show, sam also come wait. Hold on comes in because he joined an online community group. Hold on, hold on. Tony martignetti is the host of the show. Sam sam is our producer, our line producer. Sorry, producer recording. Martignetti is the host. What? I don’t believe it buy-in i mean that he’s physically your host. You are teo that’s. What? You are you sure? Okay. So? So you and sam come down on the same day, entered the database the same day, but but tony’s record says you came for educational program and sam’s records says he came for a community group. So you each start getting messages that are you? No one is right away. Message one is about a week later. One is after that etcetera that are tailored on that entry point. So, tony, your follow-up message is going to say, you know, oh, my gosh, we know that you’re here to learn. And here are more ways that you can keep learning with an ten whereas sam’s isn’t goingto make that assumption because he didn’t sign up for an educational program instead, his is going to say, oh, wow, you’re here to meet people and network and find a community. Here are more ways you can do that on dh towards the end of that series. Of course, you can start broadening what you’re showcasing, you know? Hey, if if you want to do something more than learned tony here, all different things we have and sam here, if you want to do more than join a community group, here are other ways that you can get involved, but that way staff are not storming through the database every single day. Okay, who’s, a new education contact who’s, a new newsletter contact but the system is set up with those messages crafted dynamically to just go out on their own. All right, amy, unfortunately have to leave it there. The the full report is the twenty fifteen digital integration and outlook report our social media manager, susan chavez tweeted out where you can find the report and there’s obviously a lot more there and final message just because something is a strategic focus area for other non-profits doesn’t mean it’s right? For you, you’ve got to think about the strategy and how whether it really makes sense for you. Amy sabat what? I’m going to see you. It non-profit technology conference. I can’t wait. I know people should goto n ten dot or ge go to the non-profit technology conference ntcdinosaur b on the science fair floor, interviewing lots and lots of the speakers from that conference at that conference and i will see you there, amy next week. Gene takagi are legal contributor returns. Very smart guy. Why w c a monterey county our listeners of the week thank you so, so much. If you missed anything on today’s show finding at tony martignetti dotcom are creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer. Sam is the line producer of the show, not the host shows social media’s by susan chavez. Susan chavez dot com on our music is by scott stein. I hope you’ll be with me next week for big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.