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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. We're 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. Becky powerhouse in the house, I feel so lucky that our community gets to meet this human today because you talk about somebody who we meet who is not only one of the most impressive professionals in the sector, but one of the kindest humans. Great mom, I mean, you are in for a treat today as we talk about marketing as mission. That's
exactly what happened. Because you know, we'd love the intersection of marketing and mission so much that we saw it as a trend that we wanted to talk about how can marketing really fuel but the work we're trying to do, and just let me backtrack just a few months, we're good to go to New York to be part of sales forces unite event. And we get to share space with this individual that we're introducing you today. Let me just tell you, she takes this marketing his mission to a different level, because she sees the world differently from her experience and the way that she kind of approaches and comes out with an open hand for how it can take shape. And through leadership and through the kind of the some some of the Breakthrough Strategies to that are coming into the sector. And so it is a huge honor to introduce Valerie brown to you. She's one of the nonprofit industry advisors at Salesforce and so a little known organization, you may have heard of Salesforce, right Salesforce for nonprofits. Valerie is an award winning marketing and technology leader who brings more than 20 years of experience accelerating fundraising and brand engagement for nonprofits. And now she is doing that work really consulting and championing and cheerleading organizations through her work at Salesforce. But before this, she had this really incredible career in media and entertainment. And I think a lot of this really informs the way she sees kind of a bigger sandbox to play in. And so part of this experience was she went to play a leading role in rebranding NBC Universal's Bravo network cash she launched hit series, one of my favorites, Project Runway, Top Chef and the Real Housewives franchise. And in this role, she also discovered her true passion that was driving organizations to implement corporate social responsibility. And so I love this she gets a really take on this incredible Chief Marketing Officer role at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. And she guided digital transformation. It's there that she helped expand their fundraising opportunities for this incredible organization. She is a proud native New Yorker. She's a mom to Harry, Harry care and wife and just lover of all things film, music, food, television and pop culture. And so it is like a delight to have you in our house today. Welcome Valerie.
Hello, my love. Thank you for getting that pop culture in there. That's my
I was literally thinking you're reading my bio of my favorite things. So we need to have wine and talk about that sometime.
I am so blessed. Another thing I owe sterren for for introducing us to Episode 309 Check it out. She's incredible. She is incredible. I'm so honored to hold space with us today. Thank you.
Well the feeling's mutual. And I just I truly feel like the first time we get to spend time together. We're just like man, kindred spirits here. And we could just geek out all day. And so we're like, we need to formalize this and get and record this conversation. And so it was
love at first zoom call. I was off camera because I was buying luggage for a trip that I was like, relatable in New York. And and I just couldn't believe you know, we I was just I want to burst and burst through my phone and hug you guys. But it was it's great that we've actually met in person in real life.
That's unusual for us.
I mean, I can only treat it's like truly like the impact uprising just lists the people that want to like pour into more good in the world. There's just like this kinship and it just happens when we get to meet people in person and energy just flows. So I shared a little bit of your story, but I would love for you to add some color to that like share a little bit of your growing up and some of the formative experiences that led you into the work you're doing today. Thank
you I love that. You start with the stories about the people behind these organizations. So yeah, my my story is very I Think unique in a lot of ways I was born in the South Bronx, and between for people who know the city kind of in between Yankee Stadium and Fordham Road, my mother gave birth to me at 18 and was not able to, she wasn't in a position to care for me at that age. And my father wasn't around. So my grandmother became my legal guardian. And she gave me a great life. And I'm fortunate to still have her with us. She introduced me to the arts and classic films, and she spent her professional career as a social worker caring for adults, with special needs at a group home, in Chinatown, in New York City and near the World Trade Center. And she modeled the life of service. And I think that's where this purpose of really deciding to commit my career to philanthropy came from growing up in the South Bronx, it was clear to me that my life could have gone another way. I was surrounded by teenage pregnancy food insecurity. My grandmother, she just worked hard to, to put me into the best schools and we always had food on the table. And she gave me a better life. I think that's what we want as parents to bring to our children. But she again, didn't have to take care of me. And I, I think that when you're raised by someone who takes that on, when you're not their responsibility, it, it really holds you for your entire life. She encouraged me to volunteer, and my most powerful experience was volunteering with the Starlight Children's Foundation in New York, Starlight, do you know them? I believe I believe they work nationally, but I was volunteering, you know, in New York City. Their mission is to deliver happiness to hospitalized children, and there's just nothing more grounding. You know, when you're a young person and you you can be you know, I was I was pretty sassy, you know, and that's probably why she encouraged me to volunteer. And it was it was just incredibly grounding. That was my, that was taught for more formal introduction to philanthropy. But I never really knew how to I never knew about the careers in the nonprofit sector. They were not front and center, and never really knew how to get in. But I ended up starting my career in digital research that ended up paying off. Later, as a marketing leader, I was an account manager at comScore, I had Universal Music Group, as a customer and I went in to do a product demo for the Senior Vice President of Marketing for music group, part of universal, the home of John Coltrane. And John Johnny V. invited me to be the new media coordinator. And I think it was 2009 2001. And that Job was managing the website and doing partnerships. And he hired me in entertainment and into digital marketing when it was all starting. And I'm eternally grateful to him and proud to call him a friend. And a consigliere. I, you know, to have that board of directors and that person, you know, that the people that you can go to, is something I've learned as being essential. Music took a hit from Napster around that time. And I had survived a few layoffs, but it felt like time to move on because what we were doing just felt really limited in digital marketing, you know, in terms of what the industry was ready for, they were kind of still resisting as Tower Records was closing across the street. They were still, you know, resisting what was happening to them. My last meeting was with Apple and seeing the iTunes Store launch. It was July, time, everything, just everything was just changing in front of you know, these folks who had been in the industry for 4050 years, I felt a lot of empathy for that. So I moved over to television side of our business and at the end of 2004 GE, which on NBC merged with universals television and film business and that formed NBC Universal and that's when Bravo began masterclass in building a household name. really grateful for that experience working with Andy, you know, and
she says Andy Cohen, Andy, first name No,
anyone. And he's one of the few people that have my back at that at that network. And I, you know, I hold him very dear. It was a great run. I brought digital marketing to the network. We were doing more in digital marketing and in music at the time, then television TV was doing a lot of PR a lot of great, you know, print advertising and out of home and things like that. But what happened there was that in partnership with my mentor, Jason Klarman, we were able to launch CSR for Bravo and support the organizations like GLAAD and Trevor Project, that support the communities that built that brand, my people And it was incredible to meet, you know, the people driving these organizations. That's where the idea of committing my career to the nonprofit sector started. It was hard to get in, you know, in the end and attain that was incredible. It plays an important role, I think and culture. Film was my first love. I really didn't want to go down that path. I had met, you know, some personalities that didn't really inspire me, and I didn't want to work in my favorite restaurant, you know. But as I turned 30, it ultimately ended up being for me, not where I want to spend the rest of my life. I worked with people as great as Andy and Tim Gunn. But I also work with people as horrible as Harvey Weinstein. You know, these, these are the personalities that you come across there. Some can be very difficult. And at the end of the day, much of the industry for me was a lot of cronyism, and a lot of nepotism, some mediocrity. And, you know, we spend, I think a third of our lives working, I just wanted to go in a different direction.
I mean, I want to emote about so many things that you just talked about, from John Coltrane to the starlight foundation. I mean, we've had Adam Caroni on the podcast, such a great and I actually solicited them for a major gift for our hospital of which they gave, you know, many years ago, a big gaming system. But what I really want to ask you is the name of your grandmother, her name
is Rebecca, thank you. Well, that's my name, girl I was going to name is Rebecca. But I had a
well, I believe very deeply. And we believe in this community that the heroes that really set us on the path to goodness to wellness to vibrancy need to be named. Thank you, Grandma, Rebecca, for what you did to love Valerie, because it's such an interesting journey. And I love this concept of you being an entertainment and media, and what you learned about marketing, I was literally listening to something the other day where this Harvard research study had come out and said that because of the TV show, er, where they had a fictional story about a girl that had human papilloma virus virus, the Foundation found out that it increased awareness in 67% of viewers of what that was, and how to take care of it. And I think that there's just tremendous influence and awareness. And I just think, Valerie that the nonprofit sector is unequivocally lucky to have your brain, your heart and your mindset in it. And so I want to talk to you about, you know, the magnet that really drew you into this sector, because throughout your career, you've been accelerating fundraising, and brand engagements for nonprofits and global brands, I think of 2001. You mentioned, you are truly on the front end of digital marketing and a new media world. Talk about what you've learned throughout your career that can be drawn and our listeners can probably take something away from
Yeah. So what drew me in was the idea that I could take my digital marketing experience, which was becoming so in demand still is today, I could take that experience and help Nonprofits Fundraise and raise money and grow revenue. It's the ultimate validation for me as a marketer, and I've always led my marketing teams to have a very attributable role in fundraising. I want to make the life of my fundraisers easier. It meant a great deal to me and and I felt that I can make an impact, I became a master at leveraging technology to skill growth, and really getting a strong handle on that. And what I loved doing was helping brands differentiate themselves and build an emotional connection, cable television, you know, it is just there's so much competition, how do you stand out we really learned that it probably when we stood out, right? It's still relevant today. But building that emotional connection is what I really love. Sadly, you know, the director roles in nonprofit at the time, where I was I was at that director level was a pay cut. And I looked at the sector and you know, I just couldn't afford it. Living in New York City. I, I found what I thought was the perfect way in, which was crowdfunding. And I accepted a role at a startup called causes, which was an app that was part of Facebook, and it was co founded by Sean Parker, who co founded Napster. And
now in this conversation, what is our life?
He, he founded causes, he co founded Napster. And, you know, he was first Facebook first president. I think a lot of people saw the social network, and he relocated me to San Francisco. I was very curious about tech. Ultimately, the startup culture wasn't for me, but it was a great way to get thrown into working with 1000s And of nonprofits, I met my husband there, I met a lot of great close friends there. It was the first time I was working in a company where everyone was paid really well. And that energy kind of stayed with me. As later on, I would go into the nonprofit sector, and I met a lot of leaders that I ended up working for. But I would say that I've found a real place of belonging in the art. And it makes sense, you know, from a content perspective and working with artists, and television as well. And in music. I met several Conan, who was leading Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at the time, she is a true visionary in understanding the measurable impacts that are in creativity have on individual and community health. And I'm happy to say that it was a woman that made me a CMO. And, you know, we did a lot of things to attract funders like MacKenzie Scott and Jack Dorsey. Tambora understood why you need a CMO. And I think that's, you know, the commercial sector clearly understands that she understood why marketing must have a seat at the table and be in the room where the decisions happen, you know, the role that marketing plays in achieving your mission, I built trust with her. And I think with all of our staff, by relaunching our website, when I started, and including the entire team in that process, there was always a fear that there are too many cooks in the kitchen and you know, doing things by committee can take time, but some of the best ideas that we had came from our curators. So a lot of what I've also learned is just being inclusive in the process of kind of resetting technology, and just doing discovery and taking time. You know, every annual report for us was a data hunt. And another thing that, you know, I've learned is that, you know, data is number one for marketers today. That's what really drove me to Salesforce. And the idea of breaking down the silos that exist, my dream was to have an integrated platform, you know, when you need a flexible architecture with that to plug in tools that every department, you know, is looking to have to meet their individual needs. And I wanted to get us to a stronger place of operational efficiency, I was tired of being told I couldn't do something. When data isn't integrated, anyone that knows me knows that I just didn't know is the last thing that I want to hear. And I just want to no limits to what my team could deliver.
I love this part of your story. One because I love the Yerba Buena Center. I mean, that's where the iPhone was revealed. For the first time in Steve Jobs, pocket. I mean, it just like, it's such a epicenter of culture at that part of San Francisco too. And so I love that your journey led you there. And then it was such an evolved experience with marketing. And I mean, you talked about the CMO function. So for someone listening that doesn't know that's the chief marketing officer. And there's not enough of those in our space, you know, really, but I want to talk about this revolving door, because a lot of the marketing functions at nonprofits gets tacked on to people. You know, I think that's the reality for a lot of organizations. And certainly, that leads to just turnover and leads leads to not having one person that's consistent over a period of time. And so I want to talk about that challenge, and why it's really important that we fix that with kind of some of your experience.
So LinkedIn put out a really great report that I've only found, I think, because of LinkedIn, and it's called the 2022 marketing jobs report, and I was happy to see this show up in my feet in noted that. So, wow, the nonprofit sector is the third largest employer. You know, it noted that 62% of professionals are considering a job change in 2021. And one in four, we're actively looking among the LinkedIn numbers that were, you know, identified 31% change jobs between 2020 and 2021, with social media and digital marketing being the most in demand roles, right? So we know this, that's no surprise. There are a number of studies that show that, you know, losing an employee can cost 1.5 to two times a salary. I don't think that we slow down enough to really feel that number. But what we feel is the time spent hiring, onboarding, training ramp up time to get to that peak productivity. You know, for our listeners, raise your hand if you've had an open position on your team for more than three months, six months a year, right. I felt the pain of that directly. Pretty much in every position. I've had leading marketing for nonprofit marketers are aware of what they can command in the commercial sector and when we don't compete in salary and benefits and flexibility. I think that's the three right now. I fear that we'll lose the great marketers, to the commercial sector for me, you know, it was a difficult decision to leave. But the burnout was really the real reason you would think, you know, in a move from nonprofit to tech that the, you know, the, it's salary, but it really was burnout. And the burnout would happen every time I lost a member of my team, you know, we're in the Bay Area, it's so unexpected that you might lose a market or to one of the tech companies, I think we lost two people on our staff one and marketing one and programs to Pinterest, you know, I'm, I'm genuinely happy to see people, you know, advance their careers and be able to lift their salary in one of the most expensive cities in the world. But when we started losing people, that nonprofit, just had it, you know, I was, I was really upset that we couldn't compete, you know, within our own industry. And, you know, at the end of the day, that burnout, there are so many things that I think are unique to the sector that cause that burnout, our fear of changing systems, our dependency on email, and like the idea of getting through an email, getting through your inbox, do you know in a day would would just stress me out, and there were just so many things that started to pile up for my specific reason. And leading, you know, I think marketers who know what they can make in the commercial sector who need to, and you know, are evolving their lives and want to really be aligned with a company that that is going to offer benefits and flexibility that meets the needs that they have in their lives, I just think that we, we have to do better. And I fear that we're going to lose the the best and the brightest talent,
I agree with you. I think it's one of the great tragedies of our sector, because those human beings are there who want to come into our missions, who want to leverage their skills and abilities for good for the things that we're passionate about. But those three components that you talked about are such anchors, that are dragging us down in the sector and not allowing us to reach our full potential. And I think it's important to name it and claim it. And we really want to empower nonprofit organizations to think of themselves as these new media companies. So I would love to get your take on what they could learn from your experiences in the for profit sector, and just this entire impression of the marketing is mission trend. And then I'm going to add a twofer on there and say, talk to us about some of the Rockstar organizations that come to mind when that really could bring this trend to life for our listeners.
Yes. And that's the fun part. I'm I'm so blessed to have this 10,000 foot view of and working with so many organizations and so much great work is happening. So you know, first of all, as a trained brand marketer marketing is mission is the gospel. And I know I responded really fast on LinkedIn, I was so excited. Thank you for lifting deer enthusiast friend this priority. I've shared it with everyone I know, you know, that's doing this work. In terms of what I'm seeing, you know, it's never been more challenging time. We know that the generosity crisis, the idea that we've lost 20 million homes in the US we're seeing rapid declines globally. You know, in the ability people support philanthropy. I was so I just got through the generosity crisis co authored by Nathan Chappell, who has just been who's just been such a guiding light for me. And I really admire his career in the sector, pick up your copy of the book,
and put it on the show notes. It's
awesome. Marketing in the we're for good community.
We are for books is launching with that book. And so come join us Oh, free and open to everybody. Thank
you. Gotcha. So, you know, for me, there's two there's two pieces to to really realizing marketing as mission. First is brand identity. We've talked about this, you know, for me, it goes back to Simon cynics incredible TED Talk. It was so transformative for me when I saw that years ago starting with why why you exist. The idea that people buy, what don't buy what you do they buy why you do it. If you haven't seen it, Simon si ne K, it is so profound. I'm happy to say that I'm hearing more nonprofit marketing leaders prioritize this work. I just launched a community for nonprofit marketing leaders, then I'm calling the CMO collective I've been trying to do this. For years I needed that therapy I needed. I really wanted to reach out and just just to learn from to not have to reinvent the wheel and you know someone was working on a website relaunch like how do we? How do we learn from each other? And we met for the first time yesterday and this came up for everyone in our conversation. I was so happy to hear that people are in the middle of this process. They're they're just completed the process is really, really magically here. Okay, we know this is a priority. And the morning leaders are out front and they're hiring for this and structuring around it. You know, it's something that the private sector invest heavily in brand awareness, tracking, identity development, investing in research. Research helped us build a brand at Bravo, that is still relevant almost 20 years later from when we did that work. You know, they're not private sector has been all over this. But I think this is an easy opportunity for us to show the private sector What's up profits, who is better positioned to build emotional connection right with people, you know, I think we can show Nike how to, you know, how to, you know, a thing or, you know, my favorite Nike being my favorite brand. You know, there are, I think it can be intimidating to start this work. You know, some nonprofits have one person doing marketing and fundraising, you know, so I think that you can start really scrappy with this, you can track brand awareness. With your Google ads, Google has done an incredible job at providing nonprofits at scale with access to free advertising, you can create Google ad campaigns, using their brand awareness and reach goal, you can work with organizations, as sophisticated as you have to do extensive market research, but it shows that year over a year, dial that marketing is moving when you're at least tracking your awareness. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think that if you can do anything, it's about spending time really revisiting that brand promise, you know, what can your supporters expect from you? You know, what would the world look like if your organization didn't exist, and, you know, allow your marketing team to lead a quick and scrappy process around this, I'm doing this work with the farmland project right now. And was proud to join our board and love farming, you know, and thank you for having the team on. You know, it's, there's just something so powerful about having everyone together, and we had the entire staff provide feedback on what they think this should be. And again, you know, it takes a bit more time. But when you get everyone's voice, they want to participate. They want to put their ideas. And so the one thing you can do, it could cost nothing is to just workshop around what is my brand provenance. And that second piece for me is marketing infrastructure. It is so key. You know, it was great to hear Eric Ressler recently, you know, talk about the digital hub, right. And, you know, that, to me speaks platform, you know, innovation is constant, it's not slowing down. It was a game changer for me in my career, when I started to think about technology, specifically software solutions, and not tools. And, you know, for me, right now, these point solutions, they're creating the data silos, these these tools that do one or two things that might be a social media scheduler, it might solve a couple of problems. But every department when every department has their own tool, it's not connected, marketing, side of cleanout, up marketing doesn't have the ability to know all the touch points that one individual might have with your organization. So for me, the data piece, it's why we have to really invest in advancing our marketing infrastructure. And I just think that if you've been using the same tool for five or 10 years, you're missing out on understanding what advancements might have been made to strengthen your mission. So spending that time to educate yourself. You know, if you've got salespeople calling, you use it as an opportunity to learn. And, you know, when I would be in leadership meetings, and here, you know, this frustration, this challenge, I was always the person that could offer a solution, because I knew what existed, I knew what tools were out there. And that's how I got in the C suite. And that's one of the things that have made me a leader, and yeah, the rock stars, let's get the rock stars
Hey, before you transition, because I just, I just keep seeing this theme. And what you're sharing today, is the idea of listening, and you're like such a good listener. And you spend time getting that qualitative data of people like pouring into this, but then you're letting the data actually speak to you. I mean, we lift the set all the time that so many organizations collected, but very few are actually making decisions based upon it. And that's holding us back, you know, it's holding us back to some of the ease that could come with this, too. So it's just kind of all syncing up in my brain. Thank you
for saying ease
and the synchronicity. You know, ease is important, we're going to talk about that but it's, it's really about this working smarter and not harder and making the data work for you and talk to you and it really does help friends because it helps you speaking with one voice and it really aligns back to that brand and for those that are trying to get into the group. grants, I'm just going to drop something into the shownotes. We had Chris Barlow that comes on to talk about, if you're just getting into Google Grants and how to find new donors with it, it's episode 146. We'll drop it into the show notes. But yes, want to kick this back to you, Valerie, because we want to know about these rock stars.
So this is, you know, I get paid to spend time with these incredible leaders, I'm truly blessed. So I want to recognize Be The Match, I've gotten the chance to know their marketing leader over the past year and a half. And they're also known as the National Marrow Donor Program. Their mission is to democratize cell therapy and save lives. So that team gets to wake up every day, knowing that they save lives, I'm truly blessed to have had a bird's eye view it really understanding what they're doing. So they take on registering donors matching, facilitating the collection of stem cells, they're doing so much they have an incredibly robust practice around research to improve outcomes, and, you know, their focus a big focus for them as improving their marketing infrastructure to unify right, as you were just mentioning, that, that experience across numerous audiences. And, you know, number one, for me, what really stands out for me, among all the great work, all the great things that they're doing, is providing beneficiaries with the tools to become advocates, right? So you experience this life changing? Moment? What do I do now? Like, how do I, how do I, you know, make more people aware that they should be donors like that, that cycle is really powerful this is this could never be batch and blast, and imagine what it can unlock. Right? And so they're doing so much work, you know, the other rockstars that stand out for me, are the organizations that have a filmmaker on staff, like you are million times ahead of the curve, if you've got videography, you know, someone actually invest in storytelling, and I, I'm gonna say full time, I'm gonna say not consulting, because what we don't think about his documentation. You know, documentation is proof. And we're not all in a position where we can leverage, you know, Charity Water, and, you know, God knows, I love that Scott Harrison episode, you know, the idea that they were able to leverage Google Earth at their inception. So it's powerful, but you know, we all don't have a mission, right? That, you know, that can equate to that, but we can leverage video at scale, that is something that we can all leverage. And documentation has proved for donors want to see you executing against the mission, and, you know, your marketing teams, you know, I have never met a marketing team that wasn't frustrated with not having enough visual assets in photography. So, you know, I spent several $1,000, on photography and my last position, and it made my team it gave them a lot of relief to have, we've got to put visuals everywhere, you know, and God help us if we have to resort to stock photography, you know, it's ridiculous. So no. No, so Charity Water, you know, they're, they're the gold standard, you know, they've come up, you know, on the podcast, and, you know, I have a creative director on staff, you know, shout out to Tyler, he's flying. You know, he was a flew Zimbabwe, I think last year lesson was connected to him. He's on the ground, he's filming. He is a storyteller, his voice is coming through in their emails. This is a first person account, I'm here. This is what your impact is delivering. I mean, this is marketing as mission when I met FarmLink. And, you know, this is a leadership decision when I met the team. And my first meeting was with the marketing team. And here's Omen, you know, he's a filmmaker, he's, he's got, you know, films and film festivals. He has documented the first two years of the organization and, you know, can tell the first hand account of this group of friends, these college students who got together and said, Wait, so on one side, we are wasting billions of pounds of food. And on the other side, we have almost 40 million people who don't know where their next meal is coming from. How do we close this gap? Like they have, they have it documented, they have it documented, delivering food, they haven't documented all the work that they're doing. And it's been really powerful for me to work directly with their organization. I just joined the board at the end of last year. And, you know, I knew I was in good company when I heard that they had made this investment. So I think those are the rockstars the ones that are really doubling down on documentation and photography, videography, and those who are really focusing on the marketing infrastructure.
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And I just think of like Charity Water, I think of the adventure project that some of these exactly organizations took off because they had a video. And they story told, and I mean, even your example with Be The Match. They didn't think about how do we just blast these messages, they thought about how do we build community and create a ripple, because it's one thing for the organization to say it but when you have and I'm putting air quotes up a grateful patient, you know, in that can manifest or a rabid fan. However, in your organization, if you can give them the tools, then you're giving them the keys to the kingdom to interpret what the mission is. And so I just love this conversation, I feel very exposed to the fact that as a marketer, I never feel like I have enough tools or assets. And I always want more. And John has really done an amazing job of teaching me about the power of authentic photography and human beings, because that's real. And we understand that there are missions out there domestic violence and trafficking who cannot use those images. And God bless you for how creative you are. But it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of busyness to be in the marketing. And I want to juxtapose that with rest. Because you are one of these people, Valerie, who understands the value of rest. And this is our final 2023 trend this year is how do we normalize rest. And I would love to get your take on this in terms of what are some best practice examples. Maybe data that you have seen that make the case for how we retain staff give us some of those nuggets in anything. Maybe we can learn from the private sector who's figured this out?
Yeah, you know, the, I hate to say it the great resignation. Right? Yeah, I think it was 47 million people that quit their jobs and 2020 that the labor Bureau Labor Statistics reported. It said it changed everything. And you know, if the nonprofit sector is the third largest employer in the US, you know, what's our reputation? Do more with less? So, you know, it's, it's it's a really difficult time to be an industry that's known for, you know, long hours, and not having the best wages and having limited resources and standard benefits I could go on, right? You know, we have to shift that. When we lose people, what I've experienced firsthand is the interruption in what we could be doing an interruption in the mission, the staff were more, we lose institutional knowledge. Sometimes we lose documentation, it's a business risk. I really leaned into that after we had to layoff staff, the way we see it when our doors were closed. And, you know, people leaving creates a domino effect. So we've got to have kind of a task force around this. Every trend report will show that retention is a priority. at Salesforce, our nonprofit Trends report showed that retaining staff ranked only number two, you know, behind fundraising as a top priority number one, fundraising, number two retaining staff, it makes a lot of sense. Now, but what are we doing about it? You know, for me, when it comes to keeping talent, people want to work for companies that align with their values. I think that's why show us your leave took off. And I love that you, you know, has highlighted that as well. You know, your benefits speak to your values. And I think if we lean into this, as a sector, we'll be able to do more. You know, I'm proud of what Salesforce offers. You know, the tech industry. Nonprofits can't compete with the tech industry. It doesn't line out but we can do better. I was really happy to see in again on my LinkedIn feed. The Philadelphia Inquirer, interviewed Habitat for Humanity out of Philadelphia, you know, they have a staff of 63 He, and they're offering four weeks off for employees who've been with the organization for over five years, for Friday's off for humanity for everyone, right and closing between Christmas and New Year's now, this is controversial, and we know what, because of those I'm here for my answer is automation. You know, and you know, I, we may not be able to take that entire, you know, 10 days or whatever it is off, but, but we can do better. You know, their CEO, said, You know, we can have the boldest most audacious mission and strategic plan. But if we don't have the talent, to turn the lights on, nothing happens. And I hold that really dear. Because talent is always number one. For me, I got really good at hiring, because I had to because marketing is a team sport. And I think leading a mission is a team sport. And the private sector has figured this out in our private sector, particularly tuck had to get really aggressive at parks, I think a little obscene sometimes. You know, but they realized that they had to compete for talent. And I think nonprofits will have to lean into this more to attract the best and the brightest. They have a lot of talks a lot about this another great TED Talk. And what's what's really sad to me is I've spoken to a lot of women in the nonprofit sector recently whose organizations don't offer any leave any maternity leave. And we also need paternity leave, right? You know, it, we need the ability to step back and raise a family. So you know, I think with a healthy culture, our staff can become more advocates. But when you when you also create benefits that prioritize wellness, you'll retain more stuff that it's just I believe that to be a fact. And you know, we've got to make bold moves to reward employees, you know, a number of things that I really recommend, you know, is kind of stepping back and thinking about how we can start to one reward our top performers, having a process having performance reviews that allow us to set individual goals, know who our top performers are, consider a performance bonus, you know, giving people that time to have time off, but also motivating and upskilling them and, you know, doing the things that you know, we know, makes people feel seen and heard. But really prioritizing this is going to I think speak to our values and incentivize more folks to stay long term. And we need folks to spend a few years you know, in our, in our nonprofits to think to scale our missions and the revolving door, particularly in marketing has been a huge concern of mine, it was one of the things that stressed me out the most losing staff and having a reset, and not being able to push our mission forward enough.
I want to add one thing really quickly on performance bonuses, because I think what you said is really smart, open your mind and understand the performance bonuses don't just have to be with frontline fundraisers, I have to tell you that when I was a marketing director at a foundation, I got a performance bonus. Just like the development team, and I had very intense metrics that I was supposed to meet. And Dang it, it was a 15% on my salary. Bonus performance bonus. Did
you feel right? How did that make you
feel? I'm going to tell you this, thank you for asking that. I was 26 years old, and to have that amount of money coming to me at the time and I was paid well, it made me feel so valued and so loyal. I felt like my boss had my back. And I went above and beyond. And so I see this performance bonus culture in our sector. And I think why are we limiting it just to the frontline fundraisers when we want the data to move in a certain way, or we want prospect research or donor relations. So thank you for saying that. I just want to cast a wide net for the whole team.
Awesome, awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
I love that you lead into this because I just read about this on LinkedIn, because I was riffing on that. We always talk about donor retention in our sector, and we don't talk about retaining our people and growing people, you know, through our organizations to seeing the stars and pouring into them and growing into their leadership. You know, so I love that you led us into this. Okay, Val, your experience speaks for itself. You know, you've gotten to be witness to some really, really interesting experiences in your life. I wonder if you take us back to a moment in philanthropy, one that just stopped you in your tracks and made you you know, realized, man, this is what this is all about. Oh, it's
hard to narrow down. So one of the things that really drives me is corporate social responsibility. CSR. I really believe that corporations must invest in the communities that they operate in. While I was at the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco, there is a I worked on a program called Youth of the Year. And it's a national program that runs out of Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the club's most clubs participate on a regional level. And it's a leadership development program, where the kids participate in activities that advance their public speaking and leadership skills. And it culminates in San Francisco, we would culminate the the sort of completion of that program into a gala that would bring out San Francisco's mighty businesses, great organizations like the Golden State Warriors, who do exceptional work in the community, I cannot express enough how much that foundation does in the community stuff, all the incredible, the champions, I'm going to call them champions, they, they are out there doing work. And these companies show up every year for this event, and you what what happens is as you watch 10 youth give a speech about their lives, and how the club has impacted them. And one goes on to kind of a regional and then a national competition. And it's so powerful, because you get to see these kids become better public speakers than us in five months. And I watched that transformation happen. My dream was to kind of document it and you know, to see that transformation before now, or what happens at the event is that they give these speeches and you, you get to see them tell their story. And on one side, you know, these youth have come so far, they've overcome challenges, this puts them on a path of changing their lives. When you learn these kinds of skills, you're going down a completely different direction in your life, in companies like Charles Schwab, and shout out to Carrie Schwab, they've supported this event every year or you know, I looked recently and we're back, you know, supporting it. And no one leaves the event with a dry eye. You see, these kids just tell the most powerful stories. And this program changes the course, for young people, people like me who were not given the easiest shot at life. And it's just such a great event. So that definitely stands out. And I encourage any Bay Area organization and any organization nationally that really wants to invest in this kind of work. You can learn more about it at kids. club.org is the website for the Boys and Girls Clubs in San Francisco. It's incredible event I'm I was blessed to be able to organize that event. During my time there.
Are we surprised that Valerie gave her whole story platform to the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. Yes, go check it out. That is such an powerful organization dollar. You know, we end all of our conversations with a one good thing and I'm wondering, what would you impart to the community today could be a mantra, quote, life hack? What's your one good thing?
Yeah, I love this. I love this question. You know, I mine would probably fall into the area of a good habit. It can be overwhelming working in a nonprofit. And as we were just saying, you know, I never felt like my job was done. At the end of the day. What I did in my last role really helped me get through it was I really hyper prioritize, and every day I just said, Alright, this is the one thing I want to get done. And what it did was it really helped me mentally feel like I was moving the dial during the week. And you know, you're in meetings, there are distractions, email, all these things are coming out at you. But every day I would just really hyper prioritize and have that top priority. And that really helped me feel like I was moving the dial week to week. So I think just giving yourself the grace to know that there's a lot going on, but at least setting that top top top priority. Every day really helped me move through the week and feel like I was making progress.
I love that I love when they can be tied back to this these habits that play the long game and really stack up over time. So okay, though, I've just loved this conversation. I love your journey and that you're pouring into so many incredible organizations now how can our friends listening connect with you and to the cool work that you're doing through Salesforce for nonprofits.
So thank you and thank you thank you all I doing this podcast is a commitment to the community. So first of all, thank you for putting your heart and soul into creating our joy space. I could not be more impressed with everything that you're doing. So yes, feel free to connect Don't be shy. Being on means being willing to connect with this community. LinkedIn is great honestly. I think if you Google Valerie brown Salesforce or just look for me there's there's a few out there but I think that's a great way to find me. I also created a profile on we're for good community so dive in. I think you can find me there Right.
Search engine easy peasy. Yeah, so
find me there. And if you leave market In a nonprofit, you want to connect with peers, for inspiration for therapy, reach out and mention the podcast. And, you know, we'd love to talk to you about, we're keeping it relatively small. But we'd love to, you know, invite any marketers who just want to be inspired and enlightened, to connect, you know, don't be shy. This community means a great deal to me. And again, it has been just such a pleasure getting to know you all shout out to Julie because I'm all about the behind the scenes action. And what it takes to to really make all this magic happen. So John, Becky, honestly, it's my my absolute privilege.
adore you. Anytime anyone, like Shouts out to Julie like that is like complimenting our dog or our child. It's like it will get you everywhere in life. So thank you for seeing the little guy. Thank you for talking about what matters how to take care of ourselves. Please connect with Valerie. She is a wealth of information, and just so knowledgeable and wise and it'll feel like a warm hug, I can assure you when you're in her presence. So thank you for teaching us today. love talking about this topic and love hanging with you.
Thank you, my friend.
Thank you. Love you both. Thanks so much.
Hey, friends. Thanks so much for being here. Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics. Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free. And you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at we are for good.com backslash Hello. One more thing If you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom
