Support for this show is brought to you by our friends at Bloomerang. Bloomerang offers donor management and online fundraising software that helps small to medium nonprofits like First Tee of greater Akron, and nonprofit empowering kids and teens through the game of golf.
After just one year with Bloomerang, they doubled their unique donors, improved donor stewardship and raise more funds to listen to the full interview of First Tee of greater Akron visit bloomerang.com/we are for good, or click the link in our show notes.
Hey, I'm Jon.
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, you've been counting this one down, haven't you?
The days here, I hope everybody is buckled up. And I want to just tone set here for a second before I introduce our incredible guests. Have you ever gone into a discussion thinking you were gonna get one little thing and it just Pandora boxes and you just keep pulling out and pulling back the layers of awesomeness? Because we are diving into a case study today of how Cornell University's foundation and alumni Advancement team completely reimagined their team structure to unleash a radical culture of engagement. And we have such an expert on the podcast. We're so delighted that Ashley bug could be joining us. She's a digital strategist, a designer and a director of marketing operations for alumni affairs and development at Cornell. And the first time I met with her, she said, you know in the office, which everyone knows Jon and I are huge office fans, Andy Bernard, that is not just a caricature, that's actually how our alums are, they are rabid. They are passionate, and we took that passion and we really turned up the volume on it. So I want to thank Corinne Miller, who introduced us to Ashley because Cornell's doing stuff that's different, y'all. And you know, we love a good disrupter. So let me give you a little background about Ashley before we dive into how engagement was just unleashed. Prior to joining the team at Cornell, Ashley spent more than five years at her alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology. And there she led social media strategy for under graduate admissions. But one of the things we love about her is she was one of the first producers and host of higher ed live network and this was podcasting before podcasting was cool. She speaks internationally to nonprofit groups and appears regularly at different conferences, including case con fab events in a CAC and higher ed web. And let me just tell you, friends, Ashley, Bud does not see the walls and what they've done at Cornell is something we're going to dive in today, and I have so much enthusiasm about it. So Ashley, welcome to the podcasts are so glad you're here. Thank you excited to be here. Thank you. I mean, we're We're definitely excited to dive into this case study. But before that, we want to just get to know you a little bit. So kind of tell us about your backstory where you grew up and the journey to how you arrived at Cornell today.
Sure, I grew up in upstate New York, and the lovely town of Saratoga Springs, and that is where I returned in 2014. And I've been working remotely for Cornell since 2014. From Saratoga, so I went to school at RMIT. Around You know, I was there when Facebook launched and around the time that social media hit Luckily, they didn't have Facebook photos during my undergrad. Got I missed that piece, but have a painting degree from amazing or at I went there for their least technical major. And when I graduated, I realized that I didn't want to be a starving artist. And so I had worked in the admissions office, I was a tour guide, I worked there front desk, and I asked the director, if I get into a graduate program, will you essentially sponsor me so that I can afford a graduate degree? And I think it wasn't shortly after that there was a maternity leave and I was hired and was able to stay there get my Master's in communication and media technology. And that was you know, around the time that Facebook was then opening up to the Publix and Twitter launched and we were asking ourselves, would it be creepy if the university was on these social platforms? And yeah, it would. So let's do it. So I kind of built that up at our at. And this was before, I think, you know, there certainly weren't social media roles. But there weren't really even marketing offices in higher ed. So a lot of that was built out of enrollment, especially at a tuition driven place. And then there was an interesting social media strategy job at Cornell, that I landed and spent about eight months in Ithaca, before deciding I really want to be in Saratoga. And luckily, they were very, very forward thinking. And I know we're going to talk about that. Very, very forward thinking at Cornell, and they let me move and work remotely, way back. And and yeah, I think we evolved something from a social media strategy team in 2013. Again, like not many places had a full time social media role existing at their university at that time, or it didn't have one, I was still an admissions counselor doing all the other things. And Cornell I was hired as a social media strategist, but I was there third 1/3, three, and third string,
amazing Cornell,
on this team in the advancement division, and when I was just like, what is happening here? Why do you have three full time people working on social in advancement and not at the, you know, and not centrally at the university? And so it was because they were on to something, they were understood these social networks, and my boss was an anthropologist, and like, really understood communities. And so, yeah, a lot has evolved since then. And I'm really happy where we're at right now. And I'm, like, ready to answer all the questions, and you got to, but you gotta direct me on this one.
Well, I'm so excited. I mean, yeah, that you're here that your journey, as a fellow Art major over here, I'm just like this pumping at you coming in and seeing the world differently. And that adding to the story, I think of you being a really integral person to come in at this right time. So I want to ask you to paint a picture for us. I mean, this is your news kind of intended, unintended. But like take us back to the pandemic, because we want to hear the whole story of how y'all kind of reimagine the way that teams are interfacing. And just this engagement that was unleashed during a time when most nonprofits were sitting around scratching their head of like, what do I do almost feeling more stuck than empowered in the moment? So take us back and kind of set the tone for this whole thing.
Yeah, we were really well positioned for digital and working remotely, because I had already been doing that
since 2014. Like, can we say you are being a trailblazer in showing that it can be done for so long?
Yeah, it can be done was working really well. I'm not sure how many staff we there were maybe a couple others, by the time 2020 came around that we're working remotely. But now half of my team is distributed everywhere. So we're really well positioned to like, you know, we didn't have to build much it was already there. It was like your words, we unleashed it. And but even prior to that, we were onto something. We had a new Alumni Affairs strategic plan that charged us with streamlining communication. People are getting lots of communications from all different places. And even with an advancement, there were three different teams, there was the team I was on, which was this digital group. We had, we still had social. We had grabbed the web team. But we weren't doing email. So we weren't really doing all of the digital things. We were doing a lot of live streaming, we were running crowdfunding and Cornell Giving Day and had quite a cool portfolio. Then there was a brand and communications team, which was doing a lot all the signature communications to alumni and then all of the strategic communications issues management work. And then there was another marketing team, oh my gosh, an annual giving, doing all the annual giving solicitations. And so with this Alumni Affairs strategic plan, to streamline communication to alumni, we worked on merging those three teams. And so that was a big deal. And those three teams were consolidated into one mega team is what we call ourselves. Um, and mega team formed in January of 2020. So we thought we're gonna have like, we're gonna be so thoughtful about this, we're gonna step lightly get everyone into their roles get real comfy with each other. We worked on Cornell Giving Day that year on March 12.
Yes, the day before
why it was, it's now known as Black Thursday, because that was the day the stock market crashed. So really good timing. And actually, we raised $7 million that day, wow. I think 11,000 donors, something wild like that. And, you know, what we had thought would take us another four years to accomplish, we cut through so much. Because we had to so much out of necessity. And I think I remember trying to describe the feeling in summer of 2020. It was like, we had flown into the future and crash landed, like we like made that four year jump. But then like, it was pretty messy. Where we landed, but merging those teams was you know, that was really part of not just streamlining communication. And, like, like, one way to think about it is there's one person overseeing the calendar, right, there's like, now we have some traffic control, but also consolidating the creative. And now the same designers and writers who are designing pieces for homecoming, are designing the annual giving solicitations and writing in the same voice. And that really changed I think, the way we can tell stories, the way that we can engage people first and then help them understand why getting more involved. Makes sense. So we have a much clearer path. When you have the same team working on on all of those different, they're different, you know, they're different tactics or different strategies. There's different rooms and reasons for why we're doing all the kinds of work that we're doing. But it consolidated the voice, which was really needed to happen.
It's so brilliant. And I have Corinne in my head. And I remember her saying, We assembled this dream team. And we broke down the silos of annual giving, and marketing and donor relations and digital, and we merged them. And rather than having, you know, these independent, different entities, that are kind of tripping over each other, she said, you know, we put somebody who works specifically on email, somebody who's on donor journeys, and somebody's on web development. Here's the storyteller. Here's the Crowdfunder. And she said, we stay in our lane, but then we merge into the journey. And I just think this is so fascinating. And I would love for you to kind of break down the three buckets. I love the way you talked about them with me. I mean, you have three verticals that play in one is brand. One is brain, and one is brawn. And so I want you to break down those three and tell us what who falls into each of those. And again, how they merge into that journey, because it's fascinating.
Yeah, so that's mega team, right? Brains, brand, and brawn. And I'll just start with brand, because that's all of the stuff that I don't want to do.
The stuff Jon does want to do. So that's great.
It's they're actually not doing they don't have creative. I've got that. So you maybe maybe I'll change your mind. Maybe you want to be over in the brawn with me. But the brand is really reputation. It's really from like, as a marketer, all of the stuff that's not measurable. All the stuff that when it hits your inbox like that, when a new project hits your inbox, as the head of that brand vertical, everything else has to stop, because it's a new priority. So whether it's a new, exciting initiative, or, you know, crisis, and if you're this if you're the person who is responsible for everyday communication, and you're responsible for issues management, you're in constant conflict with your priorities
are what happens when writing, something comes up. Yeah, everything else stops,
right. Separating that is so important. And I really like the measure, being able to have a goal that's measurable. And so many times what the brand team is working on is not that clear. So brand is working. Like I said, they do quite a bit of storytelling, but different than a marketer's lens who like really has an end goal. So in partnership with them there are continuing to turn out great stories about what's happening. And we're leveraging those, the brains are, I would say, probably your traditional annual giving director who is responsible for or accountable for donors, a donor number. And for us, we're accountable for all of the gifts that come in under $1,000. So they're really thinking about, you know, what levers are we you know, what levers do we need to drive on acquisition, retention, they're the ones setting the goals, and then handing it over to my team, which is the largest team out of these three. And that's why we're the brawn, we're the muscle. We're more often referred to as the factory. Because we're creating, and we're shipping and receiving. So my team, the marketing operations group, we have people who manage our audience. So audience management, their data scientists is really the skill set for that group.
That is amazing. And how many of those do you have? I want to make sure people hear this?
Okay. This is when they get mad, though.
But I think it's important to know why it's why you have so many because and how has it affected your outcomes?
It's important to when people ask me, you know, where what's the next, you know, team member I should hire, I usually am saying either data or email. Those are the two that I've grown recently those those groups. So there are three full time people in data rolls, a lead and two data coordinators. And you have these people already, these are the people who are pulling lists, to know whether to get a direct mail piece out or get an email out, or they're or they're looking at who after either helping with the reporting and or things to after something's gotten out there helping us close that loop. How did the thing perform, who showed up? This data team happened in 2020, when we were looking at all of our positions, and re evaluating them across the division and a functional review. And where many places we're looking at maybe just reimagining, we were one of the few places that were able to grow, because the opportunity was so clear. So we added two, we had one person who was originally hired to do social listening, I happened to be a data scientist. And then we added two more roles. And they joined in 21. And then we've got a creative group. I still have some an associate director who is really a holdover for innovation. And I think that's also really important. Because every year something comes up something new comes up, that's exciting a new technology or a new way to apply technology to a strategy that you didn't plan for. But you don't want to miss out. And so that person's work plan is is Flexi flexible enough to to be able to jump on opportunities. And then in the creatives, like that creative kind of core, graphic designer, digital content producer, writers, to writers, then I'm missing what is probably the shipping and receiving end. And that's where we have people dedicated to individual channels. This is a recurring lifts, we have someone overseeing the multi channel calendar, that's kind of your air traffic control. Someone doing project management, because we keep scaling we keep. We keep serving other units within Alumni Affairs within development and the colleges and units at Cornell. So project management is huge. And we keep creating more and more robots for project management. But someone dedicated to email, someone dedicated to text messaging, someone dedicated to social media, someone dedicated to direct mail, and their jobs have to really know their publishers to really know their channel to really know what you know, what's the strategy of getting this in front of someone in a way that the message will be received. And then I mentioned growing, growing data and growing email, in that same functional review, we were able to secure three additional full time employees for email. Wow.
I mean, big what, what a robust team, you know, and I think we probably should have started by asking what the results because before someone is like hold on, I wish I had all those resources. I do want to give space for you to talk about what a yells results look like. Good. I mean, how, how does that reflect it? And kind of what are your metrics that you're chasing?
Yeah. And let's frame it in the context of the campaign that Cornell is in right now, we publicly launched our campaign, comprehensive campaign in 21. So we've been working behind the scenes since 2019. On this, and we, you know, I don't know if anyone, everyone knows what happens when a university is going through a comprehensive campaign. But it's really meant to take you from the level that you're at, which Cornell was kind of cruising at $500 million a year,
which would blow a lot of mine cleared. Yeah. What are you still listening,
right. And when you, the reason you do a campaign is because you want to step it up. And you want to be able to operate at a higher level. And in order to do that, you have to invest, you have to inject new strategies, it means new tools, it means more staff, and you have to do it really big investment, to get yourself to that next level to cruise that like a new altitude. So the campaign that we're in, the plan is to raise $5 billion and engage 200,000, Cornell alumni, of which I have maybe contact information for 270,000. So it's almost everybody.
That's ambitious,
engage everybody, and increase the fundraising to a point where maybe we're cruising at six or 700 million a year. So that's the reason that's a reason you see the investment, and you see the extra effort. And yeah, and it's it's all about scale, right? You know, so in order to put up numbers like that, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of a lot of individualized campaigns, and we're running, we're running a lot of different programs, too. So the email program is a huge one, because it's our number one converter of like, a lot of things, a lot of engagement work and a lot of the fundraising work.
And I want to dive into that, because this is the part that I think will blow everyone's mind, at least that it blew my mind. And I think that there's a scarcity issue and nonprofit with blasting emails. And and I remember when Jon and I were launching and going through our employee giving campaign, we like tried to disrupt our culture. Whereas they might give us one email slot a week to go out. We were like, no, we want one every day. And I feel like in some days, we sent more than one for three weeks. But the tone of them ratcheted up engagement, like nothing I've ever seen before. And I had this stat from Corinne, and I'm sure it's much higher. She told me when I talked to her first that you sent 39 million emails one year. And I want you to talk about the pace of your engagement. And I want to talk about what you're sending, and, and how you're targeting it, and what is the strategy and then I want you to talk about the response.
So 2020, again, huge opportunity to turn it up to try something else. When our other engagement outlets shut down. Online was worth that. And so we use that as an opportunity to get everybody in line on the same communication calendar, we decided that we were going to send two emails a week to everybody, no segmentation, everybody's getting two emails a week. One was gonna go out on Tuesday, and the other was gonna go out on Thursday. And then other segmented emails could happen on other days. But the rest of the university knew that all alumni were getting something on Tuesday and Thursday, and maybe back off on those days. So every Tuesday since then, this since April of 2020. We have sent a newsletter on Tuesday, and a single call to action email on Thursday. And there's no reason to stop now. And we experimented a bit with what the content was going to be. But we found every single week that our digital download that we put in, there was the top clicked thing. It wasn't a story. It wasn't an online event. It wasn't you know, some of these other things we were used to we were coming up with anything that we thought people might need, mostly for entertainment, I would say yeah, and during the pandemic, you know, you need something to print out and keep you busy at home right or you need some thing some Other kinds of digital experience. And those were the things that were most popular. So we kept, we kept producing. And we built up this whole collection of digital downloads that anyone can see on our alumni site. There's quite a collection there.
And I want to give some color to it. I mean, we're talking about pumpkin stencils, coloring sheets, Zoom backgrounds, puzzles of images of Cornell that your kids can do in the background. And I don't even know if you've said this. But you have an app developer on your team. And I just think you're so far ahead of the game. And I know there's people sitting out there going well, yeah, it's Cornell. They're Ivy League, they have all the resources in the world. But I have to say, your leadership buy in, goes, you've told me goes all the way up to the president because they see engagement in this way as being a pivotal driver to fundraising and you haven't even unpacked what you're raising now annually, which is a shocking, shocking number. Yeah. Last
year, the division raised $923 million.
Remember, when we had a billion dollar campaign, Jon at Oklahoma State University for seven years? Wanted me year? So yeah, that's yeah, incredible.
Yeah. And the engagement, it went way up, you know, and what once we started, I think, the leadership buy in was not necessarily buy in to try something new, because we'd been trying new things ahead of our industry. For a while. It was legitimizing these digital interactions as engagements, that people who we decided we, you know, bait and people ask, how'd you just how'd you pick five emails, how'd you pick what you know, your calculation is here, it's really based on our gut. But we decided, if you are opening and clicking on five or more unique emails from us, you're paying attention. You know, think about the other brands that you subscribe to that you let into your inbox. And that threshold of engagement, that was kind of our gut. So we started counting people who took this level of effort to open and click on things, as our, you know, as much of an engagement as someone who showed up as at an event in person. They're paying attention to Cornell, they're, they're engaged with us. And we also started cascading that to the website. For the first time, we were counting people who were engaging in our web content as people who were engaged with the university. And so that, I think, is it's legitimizing these interactions that, you know, prior, no one would ever really thought to you to think of those people. And for a lot of them, it's the only way that they're connected with the university.
I love that you said that, to me, that is like it was humble the way you presented it, but it was mic drop, that for those of us that Despit careers and nonprofit, we know how ridiculous that would seem to try to get somebody to believe that that level of engagement of opening an email is meaningful enough, but I believe it like in just the brands I engage with, it does mean something and those that are paying attention to that, obviously, y'all at scale are living proof of what this means and showing up with value to those people through the digital downloads, or whatever it may be, is the long game is this ultimate long game of engaging people at every level, it threads, all the values that we talked about on the podcast, and y'all are doing it? So just here for this? I mean, so I want you to take us into some of these old thinking items that may have been sunset, you know, whenever y'all leaned into digital engagement, talk us through how you handle those things as they come back into focus now.
Yeah, so we spent a few years not having any other place to engage people, but online. And now where where we have events coming back into the fold, and we have those more traditional kind of engagement opportunities coming coming back online. coming online, coming back in real life, I think we're we're still trying to understand what the balance of what people want is, and they still want the online engagement, you know, it's a kind of the easiest thing that they can do is to engage with us online. And it doesn't mean that we have to host an online event. It just means that we have to be connected with them. And I think N and have one big annual event that we had people come out to for years and years and years or even a reunion that they would come out to every five years. Sure. That's like a nice moment in time, but it's very different than connecting with them twice a week or more. Yeah, in an email in an email campaign. and see that. And so I think their relationship is much deeper, because we think about it that way. And I'd love to share a little bit about how we come to, you know, creating some of those downloads and like engagement, that how do we come up with the suite of digital content, because I think the mindset of how we create this stuff is it's tells a lot of the story. And so Quarterly, we get a really big 10 group. And I already explained that I have a big team to operationalize things. But we will reach out to people across the division and across the university, and ask them to join a brainstorming session with us every quarter. And it starts with a mindset exercise that I walk people through. That is a little bit of time travel, I asked them to travel three months ahead in time and try to get ourselves in the mindset of where we're going to be in the summer, or in the fall, or in the winter. And then everybody gets a little bit of a long time to think about that. And then we go out into breakout groups. And they're randomized. They're led by content leaders. So someone is in a messaging breakout group, someone is in a visual content breakout group, someone is in a digital kind of experience, breakout group. And another group is thinking about storytelling. They all go out, come up with ideas, and then we all come back and share. But the framing and that like mindset exercise at the beginning puts them in the audience shoes in the future. And the conversations are just so rich. And the things that we're thinking about are what do people need from us during that time, and that's where we get into delivering value. That's where we come up with ideas and create, have, it's winter. Now, we know most of our alumni are still in North America and in the Northeast. And you know, what could we deliver that would be fun and engaging during the winter time. And yes, we have an app developer on our team who we thought like, Oh, that would be a good time to release a new game, new online game for people to play. I love this. Yeah, probably at home, you know, a little bit more, you know, you're inside and you're spending, you're doing a little bit more screen time in the winter than maybe in the summer.
And Becky has been known to play Sudoku on some of these calls, right? Yeah, if
I'm on a meeting call, and it's die, and I'm dying on the vine, I mean, gin or hearts are coming up or something. So yes,
yeah. This month, we're rolling out core nurdle, which is version of Word all internet in there acts the same way. Wordle what but they're all Cornell words. Amazing. So super fun, right? In this, you know, we did a brainstorm for spring content. And I can tell you that the themes for the spring are about rejuvenation renewal. You know, rebirth kind of themes, everything coming back to life and Cornellians feel that springtime, so deeply, because the winters are so hard. If there's anything that they can rally around, it's how cold and snowy and brutal the winters are, and how amazing that first week of warm weather is. And it, it might only be 50 degrees, but like you're out like sunning on the slope. And so, so the kind of stuff that we're, we're working on for spring it takes it takes on all of that kind of that kind of theme. And again, thinking about what do people need? Well, and what time like what kind of times are we in, like folks are starting to travel again? What does it mean to travel and travel in a responsible way and in a sustainable way? And so we're working on Fingerlakes tour guide, you know, we're creating like, a Finger Lakes travel guide for people who want to get back into the region and do it in a sustainable way. So yeah, it's it's thinking it's getting ourselves in the mindset of what people need, which is really not I think we're most communications offices or marketing offices are it's what the institution needs, or does the institution need, what do we need to tell people to do? What are we going to ask them to do? How are we going to get them to show up instead of Well, everyone needs something and how to instead how do we insert the university into that conversation? How do we meet them really, like really meet them where they are, and sneak our way kind of into the conversation because otherwise, your alma mater is a very tiny like insignificant part of your everyday life. And so so many of the things come back to seasonality or holidays, or just kind of universal things that we know everyone is going through.
And my hat's off to you. I mean, Ashley, you and your team and your, you think differently, you operate differently. And you're not in these silos. I think too often we think about like even content curation. It's like, oh, that's the writer. That's, that's the person that needs to write. But the fact that you went to the University family, and saw them as an integral, you know, driver, an influencer of your community, and partnered and CO built with them, it creates such a more homogenous, like, from a communication standpoint, I'm like, you're all speaking with one voice. You're lifting various things, we're not talking about giving, all the time we're pulling in, it just feels like a family voice coming through, which really relates to me what you're saying about the brand, of what Cornell is, and I just think this model of, of being open, being curious is so interesting. But I want to make this really relatable to the person who's listening right now, on the other end, you know, how can organizations adopt some of these mindsets or tools? And I have two questions, I want you to break down. One, where would they start? And what are those pitfalls they need to avoid? And the second one is, how do you get executive buy in that this is worthy of not only investment of money, but time of looking at our staffing structures differently. So I would love for those two firs how to get started and pitfalls to avoid and how to get that executive buy in.
I think the brainstorming exercise is not super scary, because not everything that comes out of a brainstorm needs to happen. It's a conversation, all ideas are good, you know, there's going to be bad ideas. And the great part about inviting anyone to brainstorm is that they they see how things get started, they see the little seed that will eventually be whatever we create months later, and they understand where it came from. So they understand where it came from. And they might really feel like they were part of creating it. And so that helps with buy in the time. It also might help them think about if they're if they're also content creators in another part of the university, it might help them think on the same wavelength, and start creating things in the same themes and message and tone and all of that. So that is super helpful. And then I invite leadership to those to see what it looks like, for them be part of it, they might be quiet, or they might be really noisy, depending on the personality. But it's an it's a equal enough and more equitable enough space that when you're in a brainstorming session, everyone kind of gets get space to talk. So I find that really helpful. From a buying standpoint. I also think when it comes to what I've been most successful with in getting new team members is making a really good business case, you know, not saying, Do not say, I can't do this, because I don't have enough people. It's never that it's never the coming from a place of weakness. It's always coming from a place of being visionary. They respond much better when you present something as exciting and like an opportunity. Rather than I'm so crushed, we're doing like we're underperforming, because we don't have that that doesn't work. So demonstrating the business case, also, for me has been asking people to track their time, which is not something that higher ED staff members are used to doing. And it can be really uncomfortable at first to ask a staff member to say, we'll use a time tracking device and then report back to me how much time something took. But it's not to make sure that they're working 35 hours a week. It's they really shouldn't be like you got to do other things at your desk or you know, away from your desk. It's if one email communication equals X number of hours to produce and we need to produce this money then you have a formula of how many heads you need. Right? And it's really hard to argue with math. And so we did that for the email team. We looked at how long it took to produce stuff and how many pieces of roles we were using. You know, this admin was spending this much time doing email committee occasion and this person over here had this percentage their job. And if we were to just instead take that off of their plate and put it into full time positions, what would we need? And we would need three full time people. And so making a really good business case and framing it in a way that feels like, Oh, we're grabbing on to an opportunity here, and there will be a return on your investment. That's what speaks to leadership. It's not the it's not that I'm so strapped, I'm so burnt out, I can't do it all. And that is I like people feel that way. It's true. Those are real feelings. Like I have those feelings, too. But you can't that's not the way to get the leadership. I am. Yeah.
I mean, I respond to that really strongly. Because I agree that always opportunity to me is something that I want to move towards, and not feel like you're just trying to run away from something, but really trying to move towards something that makes a lot of sense. I connect with what you're saying with that. So, okay, you know, we love to talk about philanthropy on this podcast, I know you get to be witness to so much. And through your journey, I'm sure it's connected. Can you take us back to a time in your life, when philanthropies kind of hit your gut punch? And you're like, Man, this is this is why I do what I do.
I think the most exciting project every year is our Giving Day project. And it's it's not that we have a huge one. And we do. It's not it's really, really honestly not about the number of dollars that come in. It's about the number of people that show up on that day. And I as a digital person, I'm always trying to visualize, like, what would it look like if all those people actually showed up in person, how many people really care. And I think also on a given day, it's so concentrated in like one moment in time, versus, you know, over a whole year. It's like 15,000 people showed up today, and, and showed up for anything that they cared about. Those ones get me every single year, I'm blown away with the like, they like they're here, they showed up. And I think about them as like, they're like out the door, they're right here with us. So they are it's like the vastness of the community is always, always something that really, really gets me,
I agree with you so much. And I just commend you and the team for the way that you're approaching all of this. I mean, when we were chatting, you know, you were talking about, you know, all these alumni groups historically have just been organized regionally, right. But the digital experience is different now. And you have completely broken down the silos, and you've subscribed to this innovation framework. And I just think you're reaping you know, the incredible results. And I mean, I want to reflect back, you're working with people who are giving under $1,000. And yet it's fueling a movement, up to a billion dollar a year. And I understand major gifts are in there. And we'll we gotta assume corporate giving and playing gifts are all in there too. But you've awakened a base. You know, I love when you tell me that. During the pandemic, you crank the volume up, and you gave away free stuff. And that was such a key to engagement. And I just think that there is something in here that someone can take away from this conversation. So we end all of our podcasts with a one good thing. So tell us what yours would be? Is it a mantra life hack? What would you give to the community?
I think we talked about this when we chatted earlier. There's a really interesting innovation mindset that was given to me when I came to Cornell. And it works really well. And so I think more people should know about it. And that is that you have to carve out space for innovation, you can not put it on your well oiled machine, if you already have something that's working for you. If you've got a team, if you've got an annual giving team where you have an alumni engagement team, or you have a membership program that's already working for you and you want to grow and you want to do something different. Maybe you want to work on retention, you want to work on acquisition, you don't mess with the well oiled machine, you have to carve out space, whether that's a different person, whether that's an agency, whether that's a consultant or you, you convince leadership that you're going to have a different full time person carved out to figure out that new thing. And then it's also that person's responsibility or that team's responsibility to figure out how to incorporate it back in the well oiled machine. And so, so many times I think I hear from colleagues who are tasked with standing up a Giving Day or standing up a crowdfunding project are standing up a new email program on top of what they're already doing, and it's not not as effective as if you were to just carve out a little innovation To group or dedicate some separate time to doing that, and giving the space to work through the kinks and think about how how it really is supposed to integrate into the overall organization and into the well oiled machine that you already have going.
I'm choosing you to trying stuff that says coffee. Okay, Ashley. So I mean, people listening are going to just really appreciate the work that y'all are doing really leading edge. How can folks connect with you? You're awesome team at Cornell, where do you hang out online? You can point us to all the ways.
Yeah, so I write an industry newsletter. It's lots of marketing, fun stuff, digital things. Other things that I find are interesting. In the summer, you'll hear about the peach trees in my backyard. And you can subscribe. Peach trees in upstate New York, you didn't know now you do. But you can subscribe, Ashleybudd.com. And I would love to have you there. Two DS, bu, D d.com. And yeah, in my team, happy to connect you anyone who if you want to, like drill down on that web app developer, data scientist or email lead, they are brilliant. It is a dream team. And we are over shares, that's like one of our identities. We are we want we want we know we're we're nowhere in a place of incredible privilege, working where we do, and we want to help move this entire industry forward. So we will share all of the things that we know and all of the mistakes that we've made and all the things that have worked.
Well, thank you, just by virtue of being here, you come with such an open hand. And I mean, I know you've also talked to me about this aspirational goal of putting these apps and these freebies up in an open source way, which is so generous to those who are really starting at the ground level. So we'll be watching for that keep us posted when it's open, we'll definitely share with the community and just keep going with this amazing work. You're disrupting for good and such a great way. We're so thrilled to see how it's growing your mission and not just in the financial capacity, but in the way that people connect with the university. So congratulations, keep going. We are definitely rooting for you.
Thanks, Ashley. It's been great.
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
