Today's episode is sponsored by feather feather provides digital marketing tools and strategies for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes, including the Humane Society of North Central Florida. Stick around for the break to hear how feather power their $300 digital ad campaign that raised nearly $6,000 In just one day. Hey, I'm John.
And I'm Becky.
And this is the we are for good podcast.
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Hey, Becky, Happy Friday.
Happy Friday, everybody. We're so glad you're here. We're doing something new. Yeah. And
you know, if you know, Becky, personally, she loves Reddit. And I feel like this is something that people on Reddit too all the time, right? It's the hashtag ama asked me anything, right? Anything can come on the table, anything can come up in question. And that's why we wanted to create on a Friday series that we're just going to pop up from time to time when we kind of have space between the bigger series because we want to hear from you. And we want to dive in to the questions that are kind of popping around in your head.
There are a lot of questions that our community asked us. Typically, privately in DM, we get those a lot, whether it's an email, or DMS, and it just feels like it's so good of the group. And if one person's thinking it, we're thinking there's gotta be several other people out there that have that question. And so it's just a time for us to kind of put out there what's on your minds and your hearts. And we're gonna dive into it, give you some playlists, give you some tools. And yeah, I just think, of course, we got a tone set, right, John?
Totally. And it's like, probably our favorite thing about we're for good. It's just this community that is wrapped around this place. And so thank you, as a listener and an active listener, these conversations are already happening in this ecosystem of we're for good. I mean, we see you in the we're for good community.com. These conversations are happening among peers there, we're seeing people reach out through our SpeakPipe, which is our voicemail, and we want to see more of this at SpeakPipe.
Go leave us a SpeakPipe at your voices like give us life, you're actually real humans. So
if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, go to speak pipe.com/, we're for good. And you can leave us a voicemail for future ama episodes like this, but also every month in pro and we're for good pro, we're doing live coaching sessions, both with us and with some of our favorite thought leaders in the space. And they're doing like hands on real time, help you through whatever challenge and we'll spend, you know, 10 or 15 minutes unpacking a problem with somebody and it's really life giving time. So the best really is so these conversations are really happening. Sometimes they're in our DMS and today is about lifting some of those that we've seen over the last couple of weeks, even about nonprofit marketing. This is a topic you know, that we love around here. And it's something that we think about all the time, too. So we love getting these questions. And I want to give us some context to why John and Becky love nonprofit marketing so much. And I guess I'm talking to myself in the third person, which is really awkward also. So what's our story on this be?
I mean, you're so right, we just love nonprofit marketing, because you grew up designer, I'm a writer. And we've just seen the power and our ability to kind of put those two together and thread story through them. And when we see what happens with really great optics, really great messaging and incredible story, you put it together with strategy, and you tell that story ethically, you can build movements, you can raise money, the world is your oyster. And guess what it feels so good. So we're going to break this down for you today.
And you know, it's a topic that we've approached a lot on the podcast. And in fact, we went through an entire basic series, and I want to lift that for you, we'll link it up in the show notes. But we took I want to say 12 weeks and went through all of the different basics. And one day me too. And we got a lot of great feedback about it. But one week, we just talked about nonprofit marketing. And I want to give you just a little synopsis because this is where our mindset is. And this way we'd like to encourage you to think about it. That, you know, we hear a lot of people talk about brands, and you think about it as the logos and the colors and the fonts that you chose, which is nice. And as a designer, I could literally talk to you about that probably all day, you're really missing the entire point of branding, if that's where you stop with that discussion. Because while the optics are great, it really is about the sum of expectations and Seth Godin one of our you know, forefathers of marketing that we look to talks about genius. Yeah, that it's really about this brand is a sum of expectations and feelings perceived by people. So your brand isn't what you say about you. It's what others say about you. And so I liken this to back remember when we were all in offices gathering around the watercooler, which was very pre pandemic like, but it's like what are people saying that at that place about your brand, or about your foundation about your nonprofit? That's really what your brand is. It's the perceptions of people around you. So while we think as marketers, we can control a lot of things. We can only control so much and so this time perception is about controlling the controllables. But also setting up an ecosystem where people fall in love and feel connected and feel seen and feel belonging as part of your brand, because that's the kind of big meaty stuff that really matters. And so all of our answers today are going to be threaded through that kind of as a baseline. And we want to point you back to that episode to go deeper, and just listen to a lot of the curated episodes, because we're going to talk a lot about marketing and point you to a lot of great resources today.
I think the thing that I love so much about that Seth Godin quote is that it really requires you to listen. And as marketers, we're just used to, it seems to be a very push sort of industry, we push out our messages, but it will never work in a symbiotic fashion unless you pull in other voices. And so go back to that nonprofit marketing episode. It's episode 144, for anyone who's taking notes, and just understand that these are going to be some very basic truths about nonprofit marketing. People matter, optics matter. story matters. Resonance matters, how it affects someone and stays with them. Authenticity matters. And I would even throw in vulnerability as a part of that authenticity. And the last one is your brand matters, those sort of sum, again, if we're talking about the sum of expectations, that's really what we're trying to do here. And I just want to see show of hands. I love saying that it's like my one dead joke, show of hands, who's worked in an organization that has a separate marketing department that is not in the actual nonprofit space? I mean, I think we all have war stories about trying to collaborate with the marketing team. But the reality is, as wonderful as those people are at selling the services of your organization, whether it's a for profit or not for profit, talking about fundraising, development is fundamentally different. And everywhere we go, John, I feel like we have almost our little onboarding with the marketing teams that we work with that talk about, why is this different? Why is this different than sales? Why is this different than trying to just get an impression? We are literally trying to move people through a journey. And that's what we really want to start breaking down today.
Yeah, I think that's such great context to just understand why we're answering things the way that we do, because we do think it's bigger than just tactics. And we're gonna push you to think about that that way too. Because it's easy to get hung up on the tactics of marketing. And so, okay, we've got some really cool questions that have lifted and they've come in all different ways, which I really love, too. And so we want to start with a DM that Becky got, right? Was this on Facebook, or is this
I got this DM on my personal Facebook from someone who saw me post in another nonprofit Facebook group, and had just seen what I had said. And then they came and checked out the podcast, which was so sweet. So I want to give a shout out to Javante at the United Way of Central Louisiana, and he had found us through our workplace giving series that we had done, oh my gosh, it was probably over a year ago, which in our lifetime seems a half a year for a good lifetime away. And one of the things that he was saying is he was new to nonprofit. And he was really curious about a starting place for building your nonprofit marketing. And so I just kind of curated a little playlist for him. And I'm we're going to drop this into the show notes, because there's probably 10 or 11 episodes in here if you're really trying to get started. And the first one that I left, I'll just lift a couple is how to grow an email list. Your email list is one of the greatest sources of currency. I don't know if it's more or less important than website, but I would say they're as equally important. Episode number 20. Jess Campbell literally breaks down how you can start to build it even if you have not an email address today. And she also talks about how to flex it. So that's one. The second one I lifted was a syndication mindset. And for anyone who's drinking, drink your cup of coffee right now, because we talk syndication again. But this is really about taking a really strong piece of content and breaking it apart and using it everywhere. It is such a smart marketing hack John, and I break down how to do this in Episode 68. If you want to go back and look at those and look at those show notes as well. Another one I wanted to lift was a conversation we had with Christina Edwards, who's just a really brilliant social media nonprofit marketer. And she talks about setting goals on social media tracking metrics, finding your unique voice and measuring success. I'm sure there's many of you out there, whose leadership is looking at you and saying, Yeah, but how is social media engagement actually moving the needle to hitting our KPIs? Christina is going to help you with that. That's episode 173. And then the last one I wanted to lift was how to build online campaigns. Caroline Fothergill is one of our favorite marketers such kind human This is episode 183 And she's gonna give you all the key ingredients to not rock not only a year end giving campaign Ain't but how to rock any sort of online giving campaign. So start there. If you're looking for your nonprofit basics, go check out that playlist and give us your feedback if you think we missed any.
Okay, question number two, this one came in through the we're for good community. And if you haven't checked that out, it's seriously like our own private social network. You know, we have live events in there. And there's just good vibes happening all the time, you can ask a question and get immediate response, usually. So we just got this question from Adam Miller, who is one of the most active people in the community, he is on the journey to launching the good game foundation, it's already out there, we're pulling for him. He is mobilizing athletes and championing their work in philanthropy and giving them resources to really grow their impact. And so this mission has been kind of his side hustle for a long time, but he has worked behind the scenes to get it to a place that he's ready to launch. And he reached out with the question. So we just wrapped up some brand identity work with an agency and we'll be looking to roll out our new logo colors, etc. Any resources or advice related to launching a new visual identity online? Okay, I love that. You need to put on your party hat like this is like celebration day. Like I'm glad ringtone setting because we all know this is not the most important thing. But this to us as designer marketers like we love and live for this stuff. So we cannot wait to see this logo. Let's just
forget it. We just said one of our nonprofit marketing troops was that optics matter? Absolutely going, John.
So you know, what we would say is that as we kind of think about the rollout, like you've got to think of it as a little bit of a non event event. Because the reality is, is that while I could talk to you all day about your logo, and I could point you to some blogs that people do talk about it all day and probably read it as well. It's kind of a non event for the global community as a whole. And so you want to think about it in a couple ways, can you roll it out in a way that makes people get excited about it. So by threading it together with maybe a really cool program that launched or maybe this really cool impact story celebration, or a big announcement of some kind, where it's not just a logo, we don't want it to be like this built up event. And then it's like, it's just a logo behind the curtain. So that's one kind of core idea. But the other is definitely launched with a strategy like also Don't miss the opportunity, because you don't think it's a big enough deal to make a big deal. Of course, like content is king, right? And storytelling is king. And so it's a great opportunity to storyteller about your purpose and your vision and all the things that are happening. And so, you know, we just came up with the podcasting for good series, you wouldn't think that there would be content there that I'd point you to. But if you go back, we talked about how to launch a podcast in that series. And I really think the playbook we unpack there can be applied to really anything that you're trying to launch. And especially thinking about this brand launch, I would plug it in to the same template we said there. So just in short and brief, that is have a strategy, you know, let's pick an actual launch date and work backwards. So you can really have a date in mind. And use that date to tease it with your audience. You want to mobilize your rabid fans, give them a sneak peek, let them have a peek behind the curtain, maybe at one component of it, get them excited about it. And here's the thing, ask them specifically for help. So let's say you're going to pair your launch with this really great giving back component you're going to, you know, when we launched, we're for good pro, we decided to partner with a couple Haitian based organizations to give $1 for every time that that announcement about we're for good pro was shared on social media over the weekend. And in the end, it was couple 100 Different shares on different platforms, maybe 400. I feel like in the end, it was really amazing. Five, yeah, over 500. So just by sharing with your rabid fans that already believe in you that already like what you're doing, love what you're doing, tell them to share it. And this is what's going to happen and they're going to show up for you on launch day. So giving them enough of a peek behind the curtain so they can support you at launch is going to help you not launch to crickets. And then we've already talked about making the storyline bigger. But that would be the thing, don't just put out a press release about the logo, put it as part of this new logo is better storytelling, this new vision or this new program or this new direction, that is part of the coming out for all of that. So when you roll all of that together, I do think that you have this kind of beautiful storyline, you have an event based out of a non event. And at the end of the day, it all points back to what you're trying to do. So it's good content that can be recycled over and over again. You know, Becky is a big proponent of the visual and voice style guide. She talks about voice dialogue all the time,
I am an evangelist, I want everybody to have a digital voice style guide, it really does make a difference.
You totally should. Because as you write some narrative out what does this logo mean for your mission? How does it connect back to your story, put that in your voice style guide, so you can reference it and you can pull it into things as evergreen content. And so that's really the pro tip is save that content, publish it as a blog, but also like pull it in to as you talk about the logo people start to find it endearing as they understand the meaning behind it. Think about the first time you saw the FedEx logo with that little arrow in the middle. Has anybody seen the arrow in the middle? You
told John pointed this out to me like 10 years ago and my mind was blown. There is it's
been there for like 30 years, folks go look for the FedEx if you haven't seen the arrow, all of a sudden you're gonna be endeared and have kids pointing and smiling in the streets looking at the FedEx logo like that's kind of fistful of motional Hey friends, this episode is presented by virtuous and they just happened to be one of our favorite companies. Let me tell you why. You know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you see and activate donors at every level. And here's the thing, virtuous created a fundraising platform to help you do just that. It's much more than nonprofit CRM. Virtuous is committed to helping charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising, which is simply putting the donor at the center of fundraising, growing giving through personalized donor journeys, and by helping you respond to the needs of every individual. We love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized engagement. Some like virtuous, maybe a fit for your organization. Learn more today and virtuous.org or follow the link in our show notes.
Hey, friends, are you ready to take your digital engagement to the next level, but kind of feel stuck about where to start? Let us introduce you to feather feathers, an amazing tech startup focused on making nonprofit outreach more impactful by connecting you to your audience wherever they are online, from fundraising to program awareness, they've got you covered. And rather than telling you we just wanted to show you for years, the Humane Society of North Central Florida has participated in a local online giving day called the amazing give. It's a competitive landscape for donations. So in 2021, the Humane Society knew they needed to stand out in order to maximize donations for $300 in ad spend their retargeting ads brought 119 visitors to their amazing gift donation page and generated nearly $6,000 in donations in just one day. With feather a small amount of ad spend can go a long way. Learn more about their solutions for nonprofits@feather.co. That's feather without the last e.co. Now let's get back to this amazing conversation.
Okay, I'd love to transition over into telling your story to an external audience while still trying to boost your confidence. I got a really great DM this week from Paige who is the major gift officer at her alma maters Journalism and Broadcasting school and she was talking about you know, I've had some successes, I've had really big wins for the university. But I don't know that I feel as worthy of them were that I made them happen, I'm having a hard time celebrating them because I'm putting too much pressure on myself to find the next gift. And part of this stems from her feeling that she wasn't articulating the college's priorities and messages well enough, and she thinks she's in her own head. And I'm going to tell you guys what I told Paige because if there's anybody out there that's fighting this, I just want to look you in the eye, as I'm looking into the camera and say you are not alone. I have never met a major gift officer in my 20 year career who has not had confidence issues, who doesn't have impostor syndrome, who does not probably have some butterflies before they walk in. I mean, I felt that way even with my favorite donors that I'd known for years that I had been with socially with our families. It is something about the mindset and we cannot overlook how important mindsets are in checking in on ourselves. So here's a couple of things that you can do. To kind of get out of your head. One, please go check out Mallory Erickson, she is the queen of breaking power dynamics, getting out of your own head and raising a ton of money coach. Her power partners formula is really as much about mindsets as it is about how do you activate your courage. So check out Mallory and her power partners formula, we will put that in the show notes. The second thing is check out Julie Ordonez on LinkedIn. She has an amazing core cohort called the courage lab and she gets major gift officers, you know, centered and takes those limiting beliefs and really turns them up into like superpowers. So check that out. She also has a great episode on with us it was episode 88, where she talks about finding the courage to ask for more. And the last thing I want to say just about your messaging toolbox is it's not just your case statement. And I think that's a pitfall that a lot of gift officers fall into the key messaging toolbox. It has a series of strategies and tactics that you can employ. And the first one that I would say that is probably unorthodox is values. What are your values and how does this project this solicitation? This, you know, ask if you're asking somebody to come on as a board or a volunteer, how does it relate back to you as a mission and the things and the ideals that you represent? Certainly you're going to have key stats and there's figures that backup the need, I think your elevator speech, you know, which could be part of your case for support about why this is needed needs to be a minute or less. If you're talking to someone, I think personal stories of people who've been impacted, and any sort of information or story that you can get back from the community that cert that you're serving is going to be really helpful. What are people saying? Are you grabbing testimonials? Are you grabbing their questions? Are they sharing success stories? Are they sharing heartbreak, all of that configures into this beautiful mosaic of the picture you are trying to paint for the person you are hoping to engage, engage. And then the last thing with your messaging toolbox is make sure that your messages are configured for the medium in which they're delivered. And what I mean by that is a case for support. We spend so much time and money on these they look like coffee table books, at times, who reads them, maybe some people do. But take little snippets of that, put it in your social media, it's got to be short. If you're doing a video, do a quick little one minute video about your messaging and what you want to pull in, pull in some other voices. How do you take these really great messages, get them into sound bite form and socialize them because that is really what messaging is about. And I'm here to tell you that if you socialize your messages, they will build your confidence because you understand you're getting the voice of the people in there that you're actually serving. And so I think there's a great symbiotic process there. Please check out Julie Ordonez, Mallory, Erickson, and John and I also have a little episode we did on growth mindset that I'm gonna put in the show notes as well. That
was so good be okay, let's round out today with one last question. Coming from our we're for good pro live coaching event. Monique Parker, she is an amazing human being let me just say, we're so thankful you're in this community. She's also on a founding journey for a nonprofit that's going to bridge the gap between grassroots nonprofits. And these corporate giving strategies that we talk about all the time on the podcast, it's called Little bit of good. So definitely reach out to Monique find her in that community. She's doing great things. But she asked a question. She said if you're just starting and you're in the pre launch stage, what do you build your social strategy around for social media? If you don't have work to show yet, and you're trying to build a community? I love this question. Because love it, we were there like this was us when we started, we're for good. And so let me tell you a couple things that come to mind that everybody can apply. First is, you know, think about your values, we talk about values all the time. But in your founding journey, that's one of the first things you're going to line out to, as you write out your values, really think about how you can storytel those on an ongoing basis. I mean, for us, people, if you listen to the podcast very long, you're gonna hear us threading our eight core values all the time, it starts with everyone matters, ends with communities, everything, those turn into storylines for us. And so in the beginning, I would use a method that I think was coined by Jenna Kutcher, who is really incredible on Instagram, from strategy standpoint, and just how she's kind of built her entrepreneurial empire, so to speak. But she teaches a J K five method. And the idea is one of the five kinds of things you want to be known for on the social channel. And Instagram has a lot more social than maybe LinkedIn, where it may be a little bit skewed more professional than social. But think about the five core topics you want to lift at all times. And a couple of those may be a couple of your core key values. One of it may be your personal story. One of it may be the type of organizations you work with, or maybe it's the impact. If those are your five, think about a calendar, and how can you really talk about those things and ongoing basis. It really builds a content calendar, as you think about what are the five kind of categories that you want to talk around. It allows you to really think more strategically, if you can really plan a lot of content in advance. And a lot of the experts that have come on the show teach the same thing, that you really have to have marketing pointing to something that's strategically aligned, where it's probably wasting your time and your community's time. So how can you kind of connect all those dots through the filter of these five things you want to talk about? And that is kind of an immediate playbook that you can put into action right away?
Okay, I gotta jump in here too, because I loved this question as well. And I think it's so applicable, whether you're starting a nonprofit, or whether you're trying to continue the story of your nonprofit, or whether you're just building your own thought leadership, and I want to dive into thought leadership, because I think that that is a really key component. If you're trying to onboard a new organization. I mean, certainly you're trying to acquire, you know, eyeballs, visitors, friends, followers, whatever it is people who are ambassadors and advocates of the thing that you are working to put into the world. So I would say as a tactic, start with mapping out what are some thought leadership, you know, posts that you want to put together, maybe they're blogs, maybe they're just resharing of articles that you're sending, who are the thought leaders you're following go follow a couple of them. If you want to get ideas in your industry, do that research, find them via hashtags. And I would just say start and start talking and tag people. That is such an easy way to get people into the conversation is by pulling them in through tags. And so I would also say this just a little pro tip, we love LinkedIn, it's probably our most favorite social media platform. And it is having a moment here in social media. And we're really watching it with a lot of interests, because the content sticks around for so long. So if you do not have a LinkedIn profile for your organization, you need to go immediately and set one up. I've been in this position before where I've been trying to talk about some of my favorite nonprofits on LinkedIn. And I can't tag them because they're not there. So this is an easy way, Monique, for you to really expand your thought leadership is to tag your nonprofit in whatever those posts are. And as people start to become your friend on LinkedIn, you know, you can start to invite them through your organization to come over like your organization's LinkedIn page. And all of a sudden, you'll see values threaded in there. To John's point, you're going to see the story of the nonprofit as it's emerging. And I think any sort of when people are always like looking for an underdog to cheer for, put some of that underdog narrative out there. What did you What are you proud of that you succeeded in doing this week? Did you recruit a new board member? That could be amazing tag that board member in there? You know, did you get a great partnership, I know we just saw that Monique and our friend Jamie Barsoum, over gifting brands just came together for a great partnership after meeting in the community, put that into your LinkedIn into your thought leadership, share it and just start that socialization. You got this Monique, we are rooting for you.
I think you drop such a great pro tip about LinkedIn right there that if you're connected to the company profile, and I realize we're talking about organizations, what's called a company profile on LinkedIn, each month, you get like 100 credits that you can invite people to your page. So if you're not doing that you're leaving visibility off the table or on the table. What's the word for that? And if it's the power of consistency, we talk about this all the time, it feels like a small thing. But if you're trying to build something that that swells and grows over time, it is about the one off. Okay, this has been so fun. We're looking forward to more ama Fridays. So don't forget SpeakPipe we said this at the beginning but speakpipe.com/ We're for good. You can leave us a voice memo day. Morning night, what's on your mind and we will put it into cycle to answer on one of these Future Friday episodes.
We've got you guys we're rooting for you all the time. Come find us in the community. And thanks for listening.
So glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Today's episode was brought to you by our good friends at auth zero. Without zero your nonprofit can do more with a login box. Greet prospects and rabid fans of your mission with authenticity simply make it easier for your team to manage data. There's so much about zero login experience can do visit auth zero.org For more info.
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