And Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into neurochoroiditis if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to tell us what’s up this week. Hey Tony, we’re wrapping up our 2025 nonprofit technology conference coverage. First, Your emergency marketing plan. Our panel helps you prepare for and respond to emergencies with your digital marketing and fundraising. They also help you steward your new donors. They are Sarah Allen from BAC USA along with Julia Molinaro and Michelle Chen, both with the Purpose Collective. Then Your more diverse board, board diversity remains a challenge, and Jonathan Mahars Dias wants to support you in diversifying. See the difference between we welcome everyone. And we create this space with you in mind. He’s got recruitment and retention strategies and explains how you can leverage technology. Jonathan is at Equity Warrior Strategies. On Tony’s take 2. Thank you and 10, and Kate and I are together this week. So I’m, she is in the, she’s actually in the Podfather seat because she does most of the talking for this, these, uh, this part that we put together, uh, into the show together. So I’m standing and so I probably, I probably don’t sound so good, but, uh, I’m here, we’re here together, together. Here is your emergency marketing plan. What Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC. This interview is kicking off the 3rd day, Friday, of the conference. We’re at the Baltimore Convention Center, and our coverage of 25 NTC is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. With me now are Sarah Allen, Julia Molinaro, and Michelle Shen. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us pleasure. Uh, Sarah is communications manager at BA BA BAC USA. Julia Molinaro is digital marketing director at the Purpose Collective, and Michelle Shen, digital marketing consultant at the Purpose Collective. All right, welcome. Thanks again. I know I said. You’re very welcome. Glad to talk to you in the morning. We’re talking about, uh, emergency marketing plans. Your session title is one less thing to worry about in a Crisis Prep your emergency marketing plan. Um, let’s start close here. Sarah, why don’t you just give us an overview of the topic you’ve done your session already? Yeah, we were first session of the week. give us an overview. Yeah, so, um, I work at Brack we’re a big international NGO um focused on poverty related programs and recently we ran a big emergency campaign this past summer, um, in response to some really devastating floods in Bangladesh that were some of the worst floods they’ve had in 3. Decades um so we worked really closely with uh the purpose collective Julia and Michelle to kind of launch a really comprehensive marketing plan um work on you know trying to attract new donors and also um kind of convert them steward them and keep them in our world and so our session kind of went through that case study. Um, did a little bit of background on, you know, how you could set up your emergency marketing strategy, and we shared a checklist with all the resources and the processes that we used, um, in order to kind of launch our emergency response. So OK, let’s be sure to email me the link in the show notes. OK. Um, so Sarah, is this a plan that you had prepared in advance? Did you have an emer this is, uh, one less thing to worry about in a crisis. Did you have this set up in advance? Yeah, so, um, a few years back we had, you know, another emergency, um, the Rohingya refugee crisis that impacted our work and, um, brought in a ton of donors, not. You know, kind of on accident we didn’t really do anything but we got this big mention in the New York Times totally broke our donation systems. So in response to that we kind of set up this emergency marketing strategy over the last few years and this past summer was really like the first big test of that checklist and that strategy and so. Um, you know, it was our first time testing it. We’ve kind of been refining it since then and um used it a couple of times since, so, um, we’ve kind of, we’re starting to not perfect it but you know, we’re getting, getting to use it more and kind of refining it over time. OK. Um, Julia, let’s, I’m just kinda going through your, uh, your session description, um, so basically we’re talking about preparing for emergency. So an emergency marketing plan, why don’t you kick us off with what what belongs in your emergency marketing plan. Yeah, so just to to back up a step and frame it, we wanted to bring this session because emergencies are. They’re happening a lot more they’re increasing in frequency but then also intensity so because of climate change, especially and then also political climate, economic disasters, global conflicts, um, we’re seeing a lot more of these crises and they’re more intense and we’re more aware of them, right, because we have our phones, news 24/7, social media, we’re so aware that they’re happening. And so of course it’s a big challenge for nonprofits because there’s 300 million people right now who need humanitarian aid but then also this huge opportunity to connect those people who are finding out about the crisis on social media and the news with an opportunity to do good and so the parts of the marketing plan. We start by preparing um the things you can get done now before any crisis is even on the horizon so thinking about yeah where people are finding you so that’s Google ads Facebook ads, news articles, social media people learn about the crisis exactly yeah where are people learning about that crisis yeah so yeah news, social media, Google ads Facebook ads, what else would you add to that? Yeah I mean yeah advertising I mean billboards, it could be news coverage, it can be partner organizations it can be events it can really be anything for your organization um I think it’s important for every organization to think about their reach, how they’re connecting or how supporters are learning about any emergency that they have going on um and to ensure that they have a presence on each of those in each of those places. OK, right, you wanna, you wanna be where your folks are I mean hopefully you already are. But you wanna I guess reinforce this in your in your emergency plan, right. And when you’re kind of thinking about those channels where folks are, you know what you can kind of do in advance is set up some templates maybe you know you have a really big email list and that’s where most of your gifts come in maybe set up an emergency email template where you could drop in photos you could drop in stats, um, same with ads or maybe you wanna have some emergency graphics that you could adapt on social or other channels. So those are some of the kind of checklist items that we have in that pre-plan section. Um, that you can kind of get started on ahead of time. OK, right, uh, let’s, I don’t want to just keep going, uh, you know, Sarah, Julia, Michelle, Sarah, Julia, Michelle, because that’s the way they’re seated. So I’m gonna go to Michelle. Um, what else? All right, so, uh, once we know what, what platforms, what apps, etc. what, what channels are folks are gonna be in, so those are the ones we’re gonna use in our emergency plan as we’re executing the plan in a, in the midst of a crisis, right? That’s where we’re gonna, you know, that’s where our folks are, that’s where we’re gonna be. And presumably we already, like I said, presumably we already are there. But the crisis are the channels we’re OK now. Yeah, so I think we covered um when when an emergency happens that’s a little bit unpredictable but we know organizations are going to face are going to face crisis um so while the the when we may not know that exact moment, um we do know that it’s going to happen and we can plan ahead based on some of these templates or um preparing some content uh that’s ready to go or easy to. Um, prepare once that emergency does strike, um, the where, uh, where we’re connecting with our audience hopefully we have a presence here already and we’re just prepared for, um. Using assets when that emergency does happen um and to make our audience as aware as possible I would say the last piece of this is like what? what are you sharing with that audience um hopefully you’re keeping your audience as informed as possible about the situation unfolding with whatever crisis you’re responding to. Um, it’s really important to be, uh, accurate in what you’re sharing, um, telling stories that you have permission to tell, um, emergencies in nature are hectic, they’re stressful, um, they’re unfolding really quickly and for the folks or you know whoever is experiencing that emergency it’s a really challenging time and we wanna make sure that we’re not contriving or exaggerating an emergency but in fact. We’re um sharing an accurate uh depiction of what’s happening uh because likely your supporters are um they’re coming to you for information you might be their first touch point in what’s happening in any specific area uh so it’s it’s crucial that it’s as accurate as possible and it’s yeah with permission uh to share all of these stories and all of these updates from from that emergency responding to. And I think the second half of what is um how you’re following up with your supporters so once they have taken action, once they’ve made a donation, once they’ve joined in to support uh in responding to this emergency um how are you stewarding them? How are you following up? How are you keeping them informed um we’re gonna we’re gonna get to that because we don’t wanna just raise it as a question we’re gonna get answers because I don’t want you holding out on nonprofit radio. So we’re gonna, but thank you. I’m, I’m sorry, Michelle, um, for ticking off things and we’re gonna go into more detail. Um, I want to ask, turn to you, Julia about permission. So Michelle mentioned, you know, what do you have permission to share? How are you, how do you get permission? Sarah said, you have some, hopefully you have some elements prepared. I mean, that’s hard too though. You don’t know where a flood’s gonna happen. You don’t know. I mean, it could be Bangladesh, it could be Cambodia, you know, so I don’t, maybe we’ll come back to that. How do you know what to have in advance? But what about permission? How do you get this permission that Michelle’s referring to in the midst of a crisis? Yeah, so permission from people whose stories you’re telling. Yeah, so it’s really tricky, of course, because it’s this vulnerable situations and we don’t wanna exploit people who are in a really tough um situation so a lot of the times we’ll rely on like an organization staff. On the ground staff members who already set up um like in Brack’s example in Bangladesh and they were experiencing this crisis but you had a presence in Bangladesh, yeah, we’re actually headquartered in Bangladesh um and yeah it’s kind of an interesting flipping the typical model upside down. So here in the US I’m at Brock USA we’re kind of the 501c3 affiliate, but we are much smaller and mostly fundraising and. Um, advocacy and communications, so headquartered in Bangladesh in Dhaka, yeah, and then we have a presence kind of all over the country as well as 13 other countries around South Asia and Africa. OK, so then Julia, I guess the permission wasn’t too hard to get. Right, if it’s a staff member, they are often likely to give you permission and it’s a really they can still share it. The organization is if it makes sense for them to respond to that emergency um sharing even sharing photos a photo can tell a story so if you don’t have those um direct connection set up and. You don’t want to go up to someone who just lost their home in a flood and ask them to be sharing in those vulnerable moments so but um yeah maybe they’re OK with the photo or um when you don’t when you’re not feeling good about sharing um people’s faces and names you can take photos of the situation and um tell the stories through the updates graphics I mean can you get permission. that might be there like yeah we’ve done that before done kind of like the Getty images or things like that but um also you know a big challenge we have is maybe the staff that we have there they are, you know, front line humanitarian workers they’re not coms people their priority isn’t getting stories or photos and so we found a couple like creative ways to work around that, um, and kind of asked our. Our staff to even just send us like grainy phone photos of like the scenery or phone photos of people you know delivering some aid even if participants aren’t in it and that kind of helps us you know not have to get that participant permission not have to get these more elaborate stories um and then right at the beginning of the crisis when you’re first fundraising that kind of content can still be really useful you know we can turn it into a lot of different things um we have some of these ideas in our you know emergency. marketing plan resources but you know we did like 10 striking photos of the Bangladesh flood emergency as a blog and then we packaged it as a gift and put it on social media and sent it as an email and it was all really like photos of scenery, not so much necessarily photos of participants and you could just see kind of the devastating impact of the floods on homes and infrastructure and that was really effective even though we didn’t really have that ability to necessarily collect really nice stories at the get go. Um, I think that’s one way you can kind of get around that challenge. OK, OK, um, what else, what else, what else belongs in, well, no, Sarah, you had your chance. So, uh, Julia, Michelle, what else belongs in our emergency marketing plan before we get to the follow up and stewardship that Michelle mentioned? What else should be in here? What, what should we be thinking about in advance? Think you can be in advanced thinking about how you’re gonna make a really compelling ask so after you’ve captured people’s attention they found out about this emergency news all those places we talked about you have a a very short window of an opportunity to convince them to give to your organization to to respond, to take action. And so the way we think about making that ask is in three components you need to be building that sense of urgency and the fact that it’s a crisis is building a lot of urgency for you as long as you’re sharing information and updates and then um create some empathy in your reader and so that is that storytelling piece even through photos um getting people to get that emotional component of I care about this I care that people are experiencing this I wanna help. And then um the third point that is crucial in making your fundraising ask is having one clear call to action and it needs to be super specific, super simple, easy to understand we’re not asking people to do one of 5 actions we’re just asking them to do one thing, donate, and here’s how and here’s why. Yeah, exactly right, and that landing page it should be written at a. 6th to 8th grade reading level so it’s a 6th grader can understand what you’re asking of them and it uses a lot of you focused language. It’s talking directly to your reader. It’s not saying we’re doing this, we’re responding, we’re helping. It’s you have the power to help. You can make a difference. You have a place in this response. Michelle I could have asked Sarah, but she had a lot of a lot of mic so I’m trying to spread these things out um um. So Brack had to create the landing page on on the fly, right in the in the midst of the crisis because it’s a landing page devoted to the Bangladesh flood, right? So you gotta, I don’t know, is that what the purpose collective come through or? Yeah, I mean you can’t you? Yeah, I think what you’re saying is that there is a lot of things that you have to get through during an emergency. There’s this long checklist of things that you need to work through and whether it’s the direct team or the purpose collective team, I think we all take a part in tackling all of these things to to get live and to uh present to supporters that may be coming into our website or seeing our ads or whatever it might be. Um, yeah, I mean it’s urgent and I mean this this checklist gets as detailed as like set your budget in advance, you know, if you know you’re going to run ads during a time of emergency, that’s something you can do early on. You can get approval for um ad budget that your organization might want to spend because the last thing you want during an emergency is contacting uh. to make sure that a certain amount of spend is approved so you can start running these ads we go to accounts payable, you know they’re not gonna approve. OK. So all these things you’re talking about are the resources that one of you will send me for our listeners. OK, OK this is good this is good detail. Yeah, so, uh, alright, let’s go back to you Sarah then uh what other what other assets have to be created on the fly landing page. Yeah, I mean it’s really thinking about like every single channel and then what can you do there so home page on the website maybe a pop up or conversion design on you know all the other pages on the site um thinking about yeah. Sorry, conversion design would be like either a pop up or you know some sort of bar that’s at the top or bottom of the page um that kind of overlays on top of your normal web page that will have you know some sort of message and link so it’ll have you know a call to action to go to the donate page or going to go to the landing page for the emergency so that you know setting that up on your site. Um, thinking about, you know, your actual donate platform, making sure you have then a donate form set up it’s connected to your, um, you know, CRM platform, whatever that may be, um, and then also, you know, looking at all of your social media channels that we like to do is, uh, change our bios and links on all of the platform. And even our header images for the platforms that do have a header image uh notifying people about the emergency so when you look at our page it’s clearly you know kind of branded for that emergency and then doing one post that’s sort of like the master post maybe on each channel that has a really compelling graphic. Showing the emergency and really clearly just tell supporters how they could support and get to the landing page um usually we try to pin those posts on whatever channels we can so those are some of the areas setting up an email template for an appeal um maybe if your organization has like a media officer. Um, you can work with them to be sending out pitches or alerting journalists, um, that you’re working, so there’s lots of different areas you can work. You said you said Brat got very good coverage in the New York Times for your, for your response that yeah we did this was a few years back, um, a different emergency, but it’s definitely can be really impactful and so you know this time we were trying to work with journalists and. Send out just updates, you know, here’s what Brack is doing here’s our landing page a lot of things places like CNN and others will often publish lists that are, you know, how to help if the emergency does get enough media pick up and so you can reach out to those places and try to get your organization listed as, you know, a way people can help so there’s lots of channels you could work and it all kind of comes. That’s why the checklist, it’s helpful to have that checklist we’ll share the checklist. OK, alright, let’s move on now after, you know, this is, this is the very unfortunate part of disasters that press moves on, the world’s attention moves on and the people are suffering for years, you know, recovering for years and, um, but we, we, so you do move away from an emergency phase. I don’t know. So how long did you stay? I, I guess I’m, I’m going to Sarah again. Uh, how long, how long did you make Bangladesh, the flood a focus of, let’s say just the home page. Let’s just use that as a, as a proxy. How long did that I think. Maybe you know 2 months or so when the most urgent immediate needs um and the timing of it was, you know, as we were shifting into the year-end fundraising season this happened in August, so maybe 2 months later as we were starting to shift into the year-end fundraising season. We took that down but we were continuing to, you know, even last month we posted a new update, you know, 6 months on here’s what’s happening here’s what we accomplished, and here’s, you know, the people that still need long term support so we’re still trying to make sure we get it out there and for people who did support um that they know that we’re still thinking about it um and I I guess. In in during the crisis, I mean you’re assuring people that can you say 100% of your donation goes to Bangladesh relief can you say that? Yeah, so I think that’s something that you need to kind of negotiate with your organization in advance as well and it’s definitely important to have that kind of like go no go to even know can you start fundraising um is your organization responding to the emergency? Um, for us we were able to do, you know, directly grant all of that money straight to the Bangladesh Relief Fund, so we had it restricted like that, but depending on your organization, um, you might choose to do it differently. OK, so let’s go after now, Michelle, you brought up the, uh, stewardship. now presumably we’ve got thousands. donors, uh, new to the organization, um, how do we start to keep them engaged in a in a journey I guess your your CEO, I know, likes to, I’m gonna say the same thing. She’s coming. 9:45. So she’s right after you all. You, you are overexposed. You got 5 don’t you have 4 members are there to be right now it’s just 30, so it’s 100%. We’re so lucky. Is the purpose, but in any case, um, so yeah, um I use her name synonymous with email. I was trying to say Patty by email. That’s her middle name. Um, Patty talks about the email journey. I know we’ve, she and I have talked about that previous NTC, uh, but so you don’t have to take the email journey path, Michelle, but, um, in fact, I think it’s kind of, it’s overplayed. I think it’s tired. I think it’s no, it’s not. It’s still important. Um, what, uh. What do we do to keep these folks engaged? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think you have this flood of new donors you want to um thank them first and foremost for their support when you um had a specific need uh they showed up and I think gratitude is the first message that you want to share as soon as possible um we talked about yeah this this. journey, but the the the first part of this journey is um making sure that they feel appreciated. They feel seen that you’ve acknowledged their, their gift and their contribution and assuming it’s that’s gonna be I think a receipt can be instant and automatic that is. Yeah, how they’re set up and I think within 24 hours um you can send a thank you email either either immediately within the first hour or instantly sometimes if it’s immediate, it gets mixed with that donation receipt so you may want to give it a little bit more space um but a a thank you email um from the organization someone at the organization. Um, even better if it’s a plain textile email it looks like it was really personalized um for the supporter, almost like someone opened up a Gmail, uh, email, and composed it themselves. Exactly. Um, I think that that first part is just making sure that someone feels seen and that they support has not gone gone unnoticed. 24 hours, right, but you’re, you’re caution, you know, maybe not immediately because, well, then it also kind of defeats the, the urgent, you know, like I, I personally composed it, you know, it comes within 2 minutes. OK. 24 hours looks uh looks personally composed, doesn’t have graphic elements. It’s just a sincere. I don’t know who did it come from, it was from our director of communications I believe the first email, yeah, and to make it even more convincing, we’ll put a filter or we recommend putting a filter that it only sends Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Because if somebody, if the way that they donated on a Friday night and it’s a little bit unconvincing if they get a personalized email on Saturday at 10 p.m. so that filter in trying to make this. OK so it’s a good first step and then we recommend um following up pretty consistently after that first email so maybe a story of impact from the emergency responding to maybe an update again we talked about. Um, a lot of these supporters, maybe their first touch point in, uh, what’s happening and unfolding in this emergency is you, so being able to share um a pretty robust update or just like a firsthand experience from a team member or what you’re seeing. Um, it’s happening, um, that’s a great message to to send, um, for Brack, uh, they also use this as an opportunity to learn more about the supporter, um, so understanding how the supporter found out about Brack through this emergency, so was it news coverage, um, was it, was it one of the ads that they were running? Was it uh through a partner organization? And this was done through a survey, uh, creating a survey and saying, you know, how did you learn about Brock during this time, um, and also in that survey was an opportunity to, uh, share more areas of work, um, that that Brack covers so the the the different programmatic areas, um, of the organization asking supporters, you know, which of these are of interest to you, um, and I think that’s a gentle uh but clear way to um. To open, open that supporter up to kind of the breadth of Brack’s work. And uh Julia, what kind of open rates do we see for these um maybe not the, the very first one that’s probably near 100% I would think OK, but as the, as the journey continues, I don’t know, are the open rates declining, you know, like the second is. We tend to see overall you see a slight decline from emails if there’s 5 emails, emails 1 to 5, you’ll see that start to come down a little bit towards the end because people are most excited right when they make their donation and the day after they’re still pretty fired up about you and this cause and. And it’s as we move on with our lives a little bit that tends to fade, but they’re still almost about double the open rates that you can expect from a typical email solicitation or newsletter so it’s between 30 and 50% is typically what we see from these email welcome journey emails. Um, uh, Sarah, something else occurred to me. What, when do you start? and I’m going back in the emergency now, uh, when do you start to ask for donations? Is it, is it with your very first messaging about the crisis, uh, if, if you want to rush rush immediate support, or do you delay a few hours or how do you manage that. It really depends on your situation, but for us, you know, we are the US arm the headquarters is in Bangladesh and so it’s really up to the headquarters and you know the country where whatever emergency might be happening to make the call um you know a that they’re actually responding and B that they need outside funds you know from. The US or whatever other countries that we’re fundraising in so sometimes it takes a little bit of time to actually get that approval and so you know if you’re in that situation where you can’t immediately start fundraising what we like to do is start still at least sharing some updates and posts you know on our social channels or other channels saying you know. Such and such emergency is happening. um, our thoughts are really with our participants and our staff at this time who are impacted, you know, so sharing some things that might not be a fundraising ask but still putting it top of mind for people so that they know, you know, we’re aware of what’s going on, um, we’re there and we’re we’re a source of information for you and you know to kind of stay tuned for, you know, the next steps OK thank you alright um alright so going back to after now, Michelle let’s. Follow up on um something that on what on our journey um you had made the point that uh you’re you’re doing some simple surveying like how did you hear about the crisis first from us what what channel, um, what, what, and then later in the journey, what parts of our work, you know, is most are most interesting to you? I want to make the point that when you’re surveying, you need to be preserving the responses and then using the information, right? If somebody says. That uh the Middle East is actually more important to me than than Central Asia, but I, I gave to the Central Asian crisis, but in Bangladesh, but I’m actually more interested in the Middle East. You need to honor that going forward, right? Totally, yeah, we don’t want to ask any survey questions that aren’t going to be used at all or just kind of resting there, um, that wouldn’t be helpful for the organization, nor would it be a good use of your supporters time to to fill something out that it’s actually counterproductive I guess they may remember. I checked the Middle East, you know, why do I get, why do I keep getting these Asians Central and South Asia, uh, appeals, you know, and information. OK, so, um, yes, you need for me and I, I do plan to giving fundraising that comes up a lot with birthdays. People like to ask. I see a lot of organizations like to ask for birthdays, but and then and they save it in their CRM then they don’t do anything with it. They’re not sending birthday, birthday reminders or even month of or certainly day of, you know, they just preserve it’s like, OK, now we know they’re. and their age we can and to what end so when you survey the data to favor to the right yeah absolutely and you know it’s an opportunity to to build a stronger relationship, even asking communication preferences and things like that um that’s all a way that hopefully builds a really like a long term relationship with their supporters if you honor that data that you’re you’re receiving. That’s a good point. Um, what, what else? So we, we kind of talked about the, the 5 emails and, uh, well, let’s space them out a little bit again, Patty and I did talk about this, I think probably 2 NTCs. She has definite like uh frames for the for the journey. Can you remind us? Yeah, so you can have. Emails as you want in this journey we often see them being between 3 and 5 emails in length from that first gratitude email all the way to the last and our general recommendation is to send them all within 2 to 4 weeks of when that initial trigger or when that initial action took place. um like Julia said, we don’t want to wait until too far after that donation in this case. Um, because folks are, you know, uh, not losing interest, but their initial enthusiasm for the cause that they support, we really want to maximize that, that time frame as much as possible. OK, OK, um, we can still spend some more time before, uh, Patty is scheduled and then we’ll have to of course cut it short immediately her time is precious. I don’t wanna, I don’t want to delay her a second more than necessary. No, we’re fine, uh, because we started early, so we still have some more time. What else? Uh, maybe some questions that came from, about some of the questions that came from your session? Any, uh, interesting memorable, provocative questions you want to share? Um, someone asked about, so the last email of the journey we typically include another donation ask and so you had mentioned Tony earlier the need for long term support because people care a lot when the disaster happens but it can take years and years to fully recover um and so we like to include that last that last email in the welcome series is often an ask for them. Become monthly donors and and it it starts with a lot of gratitude. It’s a month ago you made this really generous donation you fueled recovery efforts and it’s gonna take a long time for this community to rebuild. Will you donate just $5 or $10 a month to fuel this ongoing recovery efforts and so we really and that is also a plain text email so it feels really personal and um. A lot still a lot of gratitude in that ask, um, recognizing that they gave a month ago and somebody had asked about what the conversion rate is of that email and to be honest it’s it’s a big ask to a monthly donation so it is not that high, but we still really recommend including it because it’s super valuable to get a monthly donor who might stay with you for years and years um and. Maybe this is too, I, I like detail though. I, I, I hope listeners do too. I think they do. They, they’ve been listening for a while. Um, I hope they do. When, when you, so obviously there’s a link or QR maybe to to get to the to the donation page. Does that donation page does that page from that email asking for sustaining sustain or giving, does that still give the option of making it a one time gift or go to a landing page that’s only prohibit only permits monthly. Still giving them the option to one time donate, but it’s. Defaulting to monthly, so it helps encourage. OK. Yeah, we had one good question that was around, you know how many of these people actually stick around because we know that emergency donors, uh, you know, they’re. More likely to give one time they’re less likely to you know keep a long term relationship with you and your organization um so I think it’s a really valid question definitely we saw you know I mean it’s still early but with our past emergencies that we’ve done we’ve seen you know much less much lower retention rates so I think that’s why obviously the welcome journey is important. Um, but also continuing to kind of feed those people a little bit of a tailored diet, you should, you know, have them segmented in your email system and be sending them maybe throughout the year and season, uh, you know, a couple of months after the emergency we sent them more Bangladesh focused stories, more climate change focused stories, um, things that we thought might. Be a little bit more interesting to them as a past donor of these slots in Bangladesh rather than kind of sending them you know a story on financial inclusion from Rwanda that we might be sending to other members of our broader list um so I think that really helped us we saw actually quite a few people convert to become unrestricted donors during the year end season who had only ever given. You know, as one time emergency donors, so I think it’s something that, you know, to your point they’ve kind of showed you this interest in this one area and maybe if you also have survey data you could kind of incorporate that you want to kind of continue to feed them that and slowly introduce them to your other work rather than just letting them do this really nice welcome journey and then dumping them on your regular list where they’re just gonna get everything. OK. Any anything more about uh the the stewardship, you know, the what it what you said it’s very low. Folks joining, I don’t know, so a year later, what do you do you know what the percentage of initial donors from the Bangladesh flooded with you. Well, it hasn’t been a full year. It’s been a, you know, it was last August, so I think this year end season will be really interesting to see. We’ve already seen a lot of them convert since then. Um, especially during the year end season, um, make a second gift, um, either unrestricted or maybe a follow-up gift to the floods. So this coming year it’s really gonna be interesting to see how much they stick around, um, for, you know, the next season. So that’s something we’ll definitely be tracking encouraging so far. You know there’s other other emergencies in the past where we’ve not done quite as comprehensive of a response or comprehensive of, you know, follow up and stewardship after where we see the vast majority of people, you know, never make a gift again, um, especially an unrestricted gift so you all need to start sponsoring this show. I want to talk to Patty Breach about that. Uh, I’m tired of doing this free, uh, free, free promotion. You all know what’s going on, um, all right, we can still spend some more time together, um. Any other questions that Michelle go ahead Julia. I somebody asked you, Michelle afterwards about uh what an emergency would look like for them because they were uh a nonprofit that responded to legal changes and I just want to note that for listeners maybe they are not in a place where they’re set up to respond to natural disasters like we’ve been talking about. But crisis fundraising still applies and we encourage listeners to think about what their emergency that is real and they’re in a position to respond to could be, so maybe it’s a pandemic and they’re in a place to be giving healthcare providers resources or maybe they’re an animal shelter and they can save fluffy from the. Shelter or um yeah, maybe they’re a legal organization and can take some actions. So we are talking about natural disasters but the same rules apply to any emergency that your organization might be in a position to respond to. Yeah, I like comparing it to almost. A like a SWOT analysis uh if folks have done that before like strength, weaknesses, opportunities threats for an organization if you kind of zoom in on the threats for your organization, I that’s almost like the preliminary prep for what you can anticipate like what could happen to your organization that you need to respond to and how would you message that to an external audience? How would you share that more broadly and bring folks into the fold so that they’re able to. Um, join your organization and responding to that. Um, so yeah, if we’re looking at it like before the disaster happens, before the emergency happens, before the crisis happens, um, what are those potentials exactly, exactly. We will be sending you those freebies. is also in addition to that checklist, we have an email welcome journey template so you can use that and tailor it to your emergency. OK, why don’t you just take out a little. Motivating because you’re here you know you have a have a plan in place uh just remind you of that. Yeah, for sure I mean I think the results end up speaking for themselves, you know, past emergencies we responded to. Maybe we got a lot of interest at first but we couldn’t retain those folks and you know we’re seeing such a stronger response this time around with an emergency that got you know a lot less media coverage and left so I think it’s really valuable it’s a really valuable opportunity to generate new leads and and connect new people with your mission who might be interested in supporting more broadly so. Um, even though it can be a big time investment to respond to an emergency and fundraise around an emergency, um, it’s definitely worth the investment and I think having partners like Purpose that can, you know, jump in, um, when it’s a really busy time to help was really invaluable and just having that plan set up in advance. And prepping everything in advance so um even if you know you can kind of squeeze in a little bit of prep here and there over the next few months, um, you’ll be that much more ready for when an emergency inevitably probably will affect your organization. thank you. That’s Sarah Allen, communications manager at BACSA. We also heard from Julia Molinaro and Michelle Shen both at the Purpose Collective, Julia digital marketing director and Michelle digital marketing consultant. All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you so much and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2025 nonprofitology conference where we’re sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony’s take too. Thank you, Kate. Sitting in my seat, uh, I have to stand now, I guess, uh, uh kneel, uh, it’s like I’m proposing cause we’re together. So we’re we’re at the same desk. Uh, she’s in my seat, and here I am kneeling next to her. Thank you, Nan. We’re wrapping up our coverage of the 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference, year after year. This is our 11th year with N10 bringing nonprofit Radio to the nonprofit technology conference, wherever it is throughout the country. As you know, last year, uh, well this year, earlier this year, it was, um, it was Baltimore. I’m grateful that. N10 recognizes the value that nonprofit radio brings. Uh, so I appreciate the partnership. You know, they understand that we’re expanding the reach of their Speakers, their, their session speakers by playing their interviews on the show with our 13,000 plus listeners each week, so that expands every speaker’s audience who, who sits down for an interview with me. And, and I appreciate the value that N0 brings because they give us a great space, visibility for the show in front of uh uh uh a conference of 2, 2500 people. So we appreciate the value that each of us brings. To the partnership. And uh there’s, there’s value in working with people who see your value, and including year after year. So, my thanks to CEO Amy Sample Ward, who we all know very well. And the entire team at uh at N10 for partnering with us. Year after year, I’m looking forward to 26 NTC which is Oh gosh, I forgot where it is. Well, I’ll be there. Uh, well, the show will be there wherever, wherever the heck it is. I just can’t remember where it is right now. Thank you, Anton. Very grateful. That is Tony’s take too. Kate, swinging the mic back to you. I just want to say I’m not forcing him to kneel on the floor. He offered up his Podfather chair and I was like, Oh, it is such an honor to be in the podfather space. In person We’ve got boo but loads more time. Here is your more diverse board. I Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. This interview actually, uh, closes out our 25 NTC coverage. We’ve been sponsored during the conference by Heller Consulting Technology Services for nonprofits. With me now is Jonathan Maharza. He’s founder and chief strategist at Equity Warrior Strategies. Jonathan, welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks for having me, Tony. You’ve been listening for many years, yeah, when I first, I think, uh, in graduate school many years ago was finding like spaces, I think 2015 and resources for uh nonprofit professionals and this was popped up and I remember listening. Very often of just all the great speakers that you had on the content just process how to continue my leadership growth in this field. Thank you so much. I’m so glad we’ve been with you for 2015, 10 years that’s outstanding. I’m glad. I create the podcast and people who are nonprofits. Oh. I’m glad that’s happening for you. Awesome, yeah, definitely many episodes over the years where you send it to clients or colleagues to give them ideas like, hey, go listen to this. This will help you process what’s going on with your organization at the moment right now. So thank you again, so honored to be here. I’m glad it’s a that’s what that’s that’s my goal. Alright, we’re talking about, uh, diversity on the board. Your session topic is why your board is not diverse and how to recruit in equitable ways. Uh, share a 30,000 ft view of, of your session first. Sure, so we board diversity is probably the number one issue that many boards face over time like the composition of the board, you know, board source regularly does research reminding themselves that board diversity is the issue and We wanted to really uh go full forward and let people know what the true issue is and it’s about really personal change mindsets so people um are really struggling with this topic and advancing with this because of their own mindset that might have related to how they should go about it too. So we take that approach and help them think about like changing their own personal mindset and then using anti-oppressive leadership framework on how to actually recruit more equitably. What, um, what’s the best way to to begin? Is it, should we, should we start with the changing of the personal mindsets of the, when we’re talking about personal mindset, we mean of board members, board members and leaders. OK, can we start there on the personal level I think so because, um, well, we have a great meme that we show in the presentation where you know a speaker asked this group of. Crowd and it’s like who wants change and everyone raises their hand and then the bottom says who wants to change and no one raises their hand too and it’s a great reminder that you were mentioning this tough topic of that too yet what are we doing internally to reshape our biases, think about how to approach this differently or change our mind, you know, shift our thinking to like why don’t people have diverse backgrounds. Why can’t we find them to why don’t they want to find us, you know, and kind of creating spaces on the board that intentionally uh welcomes people in mind. Um, that’s borne out in something you say in your session description that uh there’s a difference between we welcome everyone and we created this space with you in mind. Yeah, so, and we’re seeing that too. There’s a lot of great good intention people and they’re like, we love everyone, we’re so welcoming and I welcome those. I’m so grateful for those spaces. However, you know, there’s a difference when You’re saying that and you haven’t done the work intentionally to think about how are you uh restructuring uh your board so like the power is distributed equitably so like the new folks coming on don’t feel just like tokens, they actually have a voice on the board or you’re thinking about your meeting structures and agendas to actually make it engaging and fulfilling for people to be a part of it. Um, or you’re just like looking outside traditional spaces of what you’ve done so it challenges the mindset of like who actually is gonna be great on your board and we’re not just going for the folks that have access to wealth or access to um certain connections or just our own bias and perception of what an ideal board member is. Um, just to, uh, alert listeners, that you may hear some, uh, cacophony behind us. Uh, 25 NTC is coming down around us. There’s carts of, uh, furniture being wheeled away. Uh, they’re not gonna take out our electrical drop until, uh, until we finish with Jonathan, but, uh, there’s a little noise in the background, uh, as the, the, uh, the commons, it’s called the commons, this open area where that we we have our studio in. Uh, gets taken down around us, but that’s OK. Nonprofit radio perseveres doesn’t make a difference to us doesn’t make a difference to you, right? You don’t, no, not at all distracted might be distracted by a lackluster host but not by the furniture being that’s that’s what’s bringing me in and I’m just focusing in on it excellent, thank you. All right, so as a longtime listener, you know I’m, I’m digging into the details. So how do we start to, what what do we need to do. Maybe on on for ourselves and maybe what does the organization need to do to help change the personal, the personal mindset, not the organizational culture yet but what can the organization and the people do to change the personal mindsets on the board and the C-suite. Uh, my colleague Chrissy who couldn’t make it, uh, she has developed a personal change mindset framework, uh, literally labeled change, and it’s, uh, an acronym that kinda helps think about the process of going about internal change. So first is the confrontation to, you know, really. Acknowledge that you need to do things differently, you know, not all of us wake up and say, oh, we need to change our mindset tomorrow, you know, like we have to face that confrontation of what that looks like too, then we have to handle the feedback, bring awareness of the issue, do internal negotiations. Uh, going identify ways of going forward and then enact what we’re doing. So, um, we have, she has a great framework that we use to kind of just help walk people through to like process the initial like confrontation of like maybe I need to change and then processing the steps to go forward so that uh the change is inactable too, you know I see often where people are like oh I need to change and they jump forward to a solution and haven’t sat with the process. Uh, and understanding of their background of what’s happening or done the awareness building of like what they truly are are are are building on to sometimes we think we need to change and we’re, uh, changing, you know, the band-aid but not the true issue at hand, so really making sure that process. Includes uh tackling and addressing the true either bias or potential area of oppression or past experience that someone has that shaped you so that you are best prepared to then go about and use some tools to kind of recruit in more equitable ways. was that um was that uh or a strategy was that a resource that you could you email me the link, um, of course, yeah, um, bragging about Chrissy because she developed it has a great graphic called and literally it’s a process of personal change, um, and it uses, you know, change as an acronym to kind of spell out the steps on that tube, so happy to share that. OK, yeah, yeah, of course I’ll put you um. Alright, so that will help us with the, with the personal mindset, my personal mindset change. Um, how about the, uh, sort of the Like the board culture. So now, now if we’ve done our personal work, we’re now a board of, I don’t know, it could be anything from 4 to 25, um, how do we start to make this, uh, at the board at the board and organizational level? Yeah, um, so I use an anti-oppressive leadership framework to help us first identify where some of those issues might impact. our board and our organization so this comes from uh how we uh and I pose a series of questions that help us think about the various different ways. So I think about learning, I think about how your community talks about you, I think about how your board is structured, I think about just the personal relationships and dynamics that you have and then I think about how we personally, you know, show up and think about ourselves too. So usually those are ways to kind of help identify to say oh what is. Uh, the true, like where are we struggling in some areas and then what might an intervention be for that too? So do we need better training for the board because I don’t know any. There’s lots of great board resources out there, but not every board member comes in fully trained on what’s going on or understanding so that or is it uh being better prepared to be an ambassador for the organization so they’re going out to the community and understanding how the community talks about the organization or do we need to restructure or update our bylaws or uh rethink our strategies um or just improve relationship building. And you know, help people strengthen how they can better connect with individuals. Unfortunately we’ve seen a decline in people’s interpersonal relationship skills over the last several years of just being able to talk to someone about anything, yeah, in that way too as well and you know, um, any conflict comes up, you know, you might be risk avoidant or you might ignore it or it might be, you know, traumatic and you not want to address it. So how are we. Potentially, you know, embracing the diversity that comes in but supporting them to actually have the conversations, learn how, and structure some procedures in some way. So, uh, yeah, I’m happy to share that framework too because then it goes into identifying each of those different five domains and how you can think about, uh, some better strategies to develop your board to attract and retain the the the people representing your community you want to be on the board, yeah, OK. Um, let’s talk through the recruitment and, and we can probably get the retention strategies too, but you know, how are you, you know, part of your session topic is how to recruit in equitable ways. What what’s your advice there? Yeah, um, first, uh, empowering and activating your current board to be ambassadors, um, and not just saying, hey, go find people like really taking some time and some intentionality to say, OK, what are the strengths, passions, and connections of our current board members and how do we want to see that. Uh, be able to connect with new people too as well, so you know, understanding all that too and then using a board matrix and understanding the gaps on your board and then connecting board members to empower them to find the network connect in that way, build on that. Um, I also really think organizations should be really intentional about their community partnerships too, like if you’re doing referrals or. Uh, sharing shared resources with other nonprofits too. How are you connecting in the network is then expanding what that might look like for yourself to, uh, you know, broaden and expand your base to, um, in that way, um, and then as a formal fundraiser too, I think a lot of folks might overlook some of their donor data unless the donor is. You know, a high level one too like there could be a lot of. Uh, I, I, I, I don’t like the term mid-level, but like people who haven’t give at the high high level who haven’t had the opportunity to be invited into your organization yet that might have some of those characteristics you’ve already been engaged with too that you might be able to cultivate engage and help drive that engagement too so that might be, you know, um, some other ways. And kind of thinking about that too is sometimes they overlook the people already connected in your area too like how often have you looked at really the demographics of the people who following you on social media or who’s attended your events or who’s given to your annual campaign too and look at some of those folks and say they already know about you, how can you potentially either. Uh, tap them for future or be very clear on the type of people you’re looking for with that network too and help expand and empower them to kind of uh be ambassadors for you. These are great tactics you’re packed with in a in a very dense, uh, excellent, you know, listeners are gonna have to go back and like rewind, but that’s fine. There’s value there to hear it another time because there’s so much, um. Uh, leveraging tech, your, your session description says that using technology for equitable board recruitment. Yeah, um, I think in a bunch of more people can probably talk about accessibility engagement about tech a little bit better than me at this conference, but, um, we, you know, learning all the great ways that we’ve seen technology be able to utilize for better effective engagement, better effective um recruitment or organization or empowerment of folks too. Um, as well, like, for example, um, I think a lot of board meetings need to be redesigned of how they’re really structured in that way because I, the boards I’m working with what they really want their meetings to walk away with is better community building, better, uh, uh, information and better opportunities for the important generative discussions in that way too. Um, and if you have even more than 5 people sometimes and only have 15 minutes on the topic too as well, how are you gonna effectively gauge? So can you use a tool like Mentimeter or or Zoom to collect thoughts from everyone. In the limited time too so everyone still feels there a chance to be heard in that way, um, or share, uh, kind of that information in that sense. So stuff like that, um, I also think like uh being creative with uh sharing resources with your board on what makes sense, so if it’s your board port. Like using your website for board portals to organize to give autonomy for the board members to have access to the information or if it’s a Google Drive or Dropbox folder in that way, um, or you know using project management tools with your board, uh, cause they’re all volunteers so however they. Yeah unless they’re pretty organized themselves too, they might need, you know, support from the staff or the leadership on continuing their task too. So are we setting up like a SANA project board so that each board member is assigned what they’re supposed to do, it’s reminded and it kinda ensures some of that accountability that might be missing from just saying oh happening in between meetings in that sense. You mentioned one. that came up in another panel. It’s M E N T I M E N T I M E T E R. Yeah. Yeah. What do you, what, what can you do with that? Um it’s mostly a presentation um platform. I actually we use it in our session too, so like live presentations, people can feedback, you do polls and what that looks like, but you can set up meeting agendas in that way, especially if it’s virtual. Even in person too, I’ve used it in personal where you know you might pose a question to the board and you know a few board members might be the ones really eager to talk so they do that too but uh a couple of ones might need a little bit more time processing so they’ll they could pause a little bit and then share their answer after too as well or or they don’t want to speak up too so you can collect even live feedback. Um, during the time too, so people can build on that, um, or I’ve seen too is like using a tool to do like a ranking poll. So if you’re posing a decision for your board and say, hey, how much do you agree with this decision right now? Like this is what we’re voting on too on a scale of 1 to 5, you know, do that and and then vote 2 and then you can say, hey, who voted 3 right now? Can you share your perspective in that way too so people get a sense to, you know, hear from. Uh, different ones, so, um, just thinking about like ways to reimagine how you can better inform your board, empower them with the information that they need to make decisions and then lead into discussions to have effective decision making that’s a little bit more inclusive and reducing the dynamics of just a few people making that area. OK, um, what else did you cover in your session that that we haven’t covered here? Uh, that’s a good question. Um, I, we always share, uh, and we’ve done this session a few times. We’ve always shared like some trends or best practices, but I think knowing the NTC audience, everyone is pretty on board with some of this. So we shared a handful of resource, a research resource to just prove and remind ourselves too about how. Uh, there’s studies that show board diversity leads to better organizational performance. There’s, uh, studies that show that DEI, even with the political climate is still more popular and still centered recently, like, uh, a university in Wisconsin I believe earlier this year just did a study saying DEI is still favored, most people are doing it as well, um, or even kind of helping with um. Sharing some state resources too on like uh attorney generals or legal guidances and reminding people like hey this is still important, this is still. Legal embracing really positive for your organization so um and I don’t think any of our attendees or the folks here like question that too however we realize the part of change is we’re getting other people on board, so giving other folks to um a sense to uh be able to uh change our you know minds or or spark that confrontation for them too. nonprofit that you can have the 5, yeah, and then we’ll share the data. OK, 3 things you’re promising now. Yeah, of course. listener, so don’t let yourself down. Oh no, no, not at all. You don’t let your peers down. I wear many hats and one is social worker and giving resources like a key part of my identity. So like I have to bring that up to make sure. OK. You OK? Yeah, great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. That’s Jonathan. Founder and chief strategist at Equity Warrior Strategies, thank you very much again. Yeah, thanks for having me and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC. Uh, the hall just got quiet, like, uh, it’s still coming down, but there is a lull in the cacophony right now. But no matter, we’re wrapping up our coverage. Thank you for being with us, and we have been sponsored here at 25 NTC. By Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Next week, storytelling with an award-winning crime fiction author. If you missed any part of this week’s show, Swing that mic over here. I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Being like possessive with the mic, just share. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.