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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, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, we get to be the rabid fans today. This is so exciting.
We've met our guests for like 15 minutes, and I already want to adopt her, so.
We already have plans to meet up, this is great. Oh friends, I'm excited for this conversation today. You know, we love marketing. We love marketing, not because it's marketing because of the power of storytelling. And the power of showing our values in really scroll stopping ways. And today we have just one of the foremost experts. Certainly somebody who is leading a lot of the conversation with the most progressive nonprofits today on the podcast. It is our huge honor to have Farra Trompeter with us. She's the co-director and member-owner at Big Duck. And we're gonna go talk about all things inclusive branding, even our board's role in branding, have you thought about that yet? And just how we can do more throughout the year to communicate through campaigns and these things that happen all the time at our nonprofits. Let me tell you a little bit about Farra because she is so fascinating. She leads the firm's marketing and business development efforts. So she's creating and building relationships with nonprofits who want to take this leap of faith who want to go to the next level and invest in their own brands and campaigns. But she has done this for dozens of organizations through major brand overhauls, fundraising campaigns, and more, since she's joined Big Duck in 2007. If you don't know Big Duck, just go to their website and just get lost in the case studies, in the storytelling and just the beauty of the design. But you'll probably know her because she's a frequent speaker around the country. She helps train nonprofit staff and board members on branding, on all the things we talked about. But you know what she does in her part time? She is a faculty member at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where she's teaching classes about strategic communications for nonprofit and public service organizations. She is just this powerhouse. She previously was on the board of NTEN, and the New York City Anti-Violence Project. And she currently is on Big Duck's board of directors. She is just our people. And if you haven't checked out her podcast, she is the host of the Smart Communications podcast by Big Duck. And the conversation and the music over there is really amazing. So go for the conversation, stay for the beats. And Farra is just a delight to have you on the podcast. Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I mean, please take us on a journey. You know, we love to just get to know the human behind these incredible stories. Tell us about growing up and what informed you and kind of all the steps that led you to your role today.
Sure, well, if you can't tell from my accent, I grew up in New York. I still have a bit of it. Though, I have also lived in Washington, DC and San Francisco. But I grew up in the suburbs of New York and an area called Long Island. And I grew up in a family where doing good for the world was instilled for me from day one. My father particularly was very involved in a group called The Hunger Project. He was the volunteer leader of the Long Island chapter. And so in elementary school, I was walking in walkathons, I was doing bake sales. I was fundraising, in essence, from a very early age without really labeling myself a fundraiser at that point. Then as I got into middle school, we actually lost a family friend from a drunk driver. And because of the way I had grown up, my response was, oh, I should do something about this. This was somebody who lost their life, their life in a way that should have been prevented. And so actually started our middle school chapter of Students Against Driving Drunk. This was in the 80s I don't know if SADD is still around.
I was a member of SADD in the Oklahoma City Chapter.
Yeah, take it back. Yeah. And you know, in middle school, when you're 13 years old, I was a lot of kids were like, well, we don't drive why do we have to care about this? And so here I was trying to well, you can get to a car when someone in your family could be let's thinking about, you know, kids are starting to experiment with their own substance use in middle and high school. And so early on also learning how do I communicate with people who may not understand or agree with an organization's mission, again, not realizing the path I was setting myself on and then again in high school, got involved in student government. I was just like the activist geek doing all that stuff. And then fast forward into college when I was at American University in DC, I started a group called Students for Healthy Decisions, which was my attempt to sort of make SADD for college, they were still experimenting with what they were going to do at the college stage at that point. And so I created something that was really more of a campus program to bring people together to talk about sexual health and STDs and identity to talk about eating disorders, and to talk about safer sex and all different kinds of topics, you know, host events that were beyond just everyone getting drunk, and really enjoyed that. And while I was in college, I also needed work so I wound up getting a job as a part time telephone raiser. So I was calling nonprofits asking them to renew their support, become a sustaining member, all of that on the phone. Again, this is still in the 90s, where telemarketing was a very big source. And it still is a source of revenue for many organizations. But I think it was a little more prominent than this was before online fundraising. And before you know it, by the time I graduate, and I know I want to work I realized now there's something called the nonprofit sector like oh, this is what I have been doing my whole life even as a teen and a young person, I could actually work in this field, I want to work in this field. So I wound up getting jobs in fundraising. It's funny you call yourselves Mark fundraisers described as would we so how are you describe yourselves?
Marketers disguised as fundraisers.
Marketers disguised as fundraisers. I'm like, am I a fundraiser disguised as a marketer or like, I don't know where I am. But I started off in fundraising, and started off an individual donor fundraising, helping organizations with telemarketing, direct mail, then got into online fundraising very early days, even pre, a lot of social media, how do we use our website? How do we use our email to build relationships with donors? And eventually, really started seeing the connection between fundraising and communications and found myself drawn to the communications part of it all. How do we connect with people? How do we communicate in a way that builds a relationship and doesn't just, isn't just transactional, doesn't just say give me $25, or whatever it may be. And from there, I started learning about branding and broader communications. And after basically ping ponging in between working in house at nonprofit organizations to working at consulting firms who support nonprofits, I eventually landed at Big Duck after being in many other places, and also coming back to New York to go to graduate school for nonprofit management. So at some point as it was around when I turned 30, I had the I love nonprofits, I want to be with nonprofits. I want to be better at how I can help nonprofits. Maybe I should go back to school and actually study something related to what I'm doing, because I didn't necessarily in college. And yeah, and I've been in New York for almost 20 years now I live in Brooklyn, and adjacent and technically on Long Island, but a very different vibe. And yeah, I don't know, what else can I tell you?
I mean, Farra, you were born for nonprofit, you were born for purpose driven work. And I'll just like make an observation that no one can tell, your face lights up. When you talk about this. This is your passion. And I think use the word convicted, you're just very convicted. And the creativity, and the communication that kind of, I don't know, collide, has been such a boon, not only for the missions that you serve, but I can tell it's been like a great thing for you. And so I love the story. You know, we love marketing. And and I just kind of tie it back to this conversation we had recently when we dropped, like some insights that we had made after two years of podcasting, we just had our second birthday. And one of the ones we said was nonprofits who are investing in professional development and marketing are winning right now. And that is why I think this conversation is so important right now. And I think there's been a mindset, a scarcity mindset, or a stigma around investing in marketing and branding for nonprofits for decades. And I'm here to tell everybody listening, now is the time if you have not created a budget for marketing right now, do it immediately. And I want you to talk about that a little bit and what you're seeing, back us up Farra. You know, we're seeing it play out all the time. Talk about what you're seeing, and talk about why nonprofits need to be leaning into this moment.
Yeah, well, first of all, happy birthday. You look great for two.
I know, we're on solid foods now. It's exciting.
Like, what is two in podcast years? I don't know.
Yeah, definitely dog years.
I mean, one of the things I would say in reaction I often have said like, I think communications and marketing are often seen as luxury items and nonprofits. It's often the first thing to go or to be cut when an organization has to be lean, when either we are in or afraid of being in a recession. Of course, I understand. Like we have to keep serving the people that we're serving if we're a direct services organization, we literally need to keep the lights on. We may need to get those grants, you know, continuing to go out the door. But if we want people to remember who we are to think about us as a place to go to, for support, as a place to donate, as a place to take action to, we have to communicate, if we stop sending out our newsletter, if we stop updating our website, and the What's New page is showing content from 2021, and we're now almost in 2023, what is that going to signal to people? It will signal that you don't care, and then again, they will move on to someone else. So I think communications has to be seen as essential essential, it has to be seen as something we need to do if we're going to achieve our mission. And that's one of the things at Big Duck, we try to frame our work all around that how can we use your brand, develop campaigns, build your communications team so that you can achieve your mission? So I just, you know, in reacting to that note specifically about brand. You know, we think about branding, as an ongoing practice of really clarifying who you are internally, and then expressing that externally in a way that is both clear, consistent, on both end compelling, we'll add a third one there. And doing that to the point where it is only it's not only helping you achieve your mission, but hopefully also part of something bigger a part of collective change or collective action that to your point, if we take a more abundant mindset, we're thinking about how our mission is part of other missions, and really moving a whole group of issues or populations forward and not just for our organization. So in summary, I think marketing and comms needs to be seen as essential. I think clarifying your brand helps people understand who you are, and why they should connect with you. And then ultimately will hopefully help you achieve your mission.
I just think it also helps you crystallize vision, you know, like to me, we're trying to connect people to where we're going in the future. And it's like the power of brand. Because as a designer, I can speak to this, when you can put that tangibly and somebody can see it and they can feel it. Like it's just a different level of experience. You know, and I think you are leading us into this, how are your values representative of your brand, and the deeper underlying things, we're not talking about colors, although it is colors, but it's like, when you talk about that piece, because I think people think of it as a surface, which hurts the investment discussion, because you're thinking of is just like this paint that we're putting on the top. But if it's intrinsic, if it's deep below the surface, like what does that unlock for the organization?
Yeah, I think most people, when they hear the word brand, they they go immediately to exactly what we're talking about the logo, the colors, maybe they think about the website, or they think about the name, they think about what we consider the brand identity or the brand assets. At Big Duck, our founder, Sarah Durham, wrote a book over 10 years ago called Brandraising. And, we've got if you go to bigduck.com/brands, I think is the URL, you can see the Brandraising model on our site. And in essence, we really try to get people to think about brands starting out, we consider the organizational level. So a lot of what you're talking about Jon, we need to be clear about the organization's vision, mission and values and understand where are we going as an organization, things that are often articulated in a strategic plan or a theory of change or a logic model. And once we know who the organization is, and where it's going, we can then say great, given this moment in time, given the context that we are operating in, that our audiences are experiencing? What are the primary goals for our communications and brands at this time? Do we need more people to know who we are so that they can get our services because we're the best kept secret and nobody knows and is participating in our programs? Are we in a place where we have an overflow of people in our program so actually, we need more funding? Because we need to expand? Are we in a place where we need to change people's hearts and minds about the issue or the world we're operating in or legislation so we really need to push for advocacy? And as we clarify our goals, then we can think about okay, who are the most important people that need to know and understand what we're about? And then what do we want those people to think and feel about us which we really identify as brand strategy, we consider the concepts of positioning and personality, to be your brand strategy, all informed by the organization's vision, mission, values, the communications goals and priority audiences. Again, positioning being the big idea we want people to have in their minds about us and personality being the tone and style we use to communicate the emotions we want people to associate with us. Once we pause and say intentionally, what do we want that position and our personality to be? Then we can look at our brand identity and our brand assets. And then we can think about how do we shape people's experiences of us across our communications channels. So that is, you know, how we think about branding and connect the dots and where brand is much more than for example, just your logo or your colors.
Drop that mic. Holy cow.
Whoa. And for any of you out there that are feeling overwhelmed with all of that. I will say it's a journey like the brand iteration. It is going to be a fluid journey the entire time and thank you for talking about it as an experience because I think that's something that nonprofits can can glean because we're here to bring a donor on their journey, we want to give them a full experience, why would we not do that with a brand? That is going to be so personal to somebody? You know, I agree with you entirely. And one of the things that I just want to say, because I've got this question, I cannot wait to hear what you've said, what you say about it, because I don't think we've ever talked about it on the podcast, is when we turn on this podcast, Mike, we wanted to make DEI a completely baked in part of We Are For Good, our first core value of our company is everyone matters. It's that simple. And you have this bent on looking at a brand and making sure that it's an inclusive brand, and that the thread of dei throughout the entire brand is lifted, and that it's a part of the communications of our organizations talk to us about how nonprofits can create a brand that is inclusive, that when people see it, they feel like it includes them, it's actually baked in to who we are and how we live out our mission and values. So I'd love to hear this from you Please teach us.
Yeah, I'm gonna start with the last thing you said. And go back also to the idea of brand strategy. I often talk about the brand strategy, which again, is your desired perception that people have of you has to be it kind of bridges the aspiration and the authentic. So it's often Who are we on our best day? It has to be who we are, it may not be who we are in an everyday way. But when we're really rocking it, who are we as an organization? How do we identify that, and then sprinkle it across everything that we do. Now to create and understand what we want our perception to be, the question becomes Who are we asking? Who are we? So when we think about being an inclusive brand, it has to start with the process of creating the brand or evaluating the brand? Whose voices are around the table when you're asking how are we seeing now? And how do we want to be seen? Whose voices are around the table when you're trying to understand what shifts should we make to how we communicate? So an inclusive brand starts by Are we just crafting our brand with the quote unquote, C suite or senior leadership team? Or are we making places first of all for our entire staff? And not just our C suite and or our board? And then beyond that, what about the communities that we're working with whether that's our donors, our program participants, our volunteers, our activists. So who is in the room quote, unquote, and that might be a digital space responding to a survey, participating in interviews, looking at drafts that are created, whose voices are crafting the brand. So that's, that's the first way we think about inclusive brand. And then we think about the experience of the brand. And when we are, for example, creating campaigns or updating a website, again, it's how are we engaging people? And again, not just engaging them for the sake of engaging them, but really listening to their voices, compensating them for time if they're members of our community, and we're asking them to respond to a survey or sit in in an interview. And then when we get to the actual and this I'm sure Jon has a lot of thoughts about when we get into the actual development of the brand. What about the words and colors are we using? Are we making sure we're using language that invites people in and doesn't exclude them or alienate them? Are we making sure we're using colors that work in different formats and for maybe for people who have different levels of colorblindness and not just you know, well, it works here. But there are now so many accessibility checkers, you can run so inclusive branding, can mean so much. But it starts with the process of creating, evaluating the brand. But then there are very technical things you can do, depending on how you define that word inclusive, when you're actually creating or updating the brand.
Oh, my gosh, I'm just like, every question we like volley over the little proverbial volleyball net. I'm such not a sports person right now. But you go so deep with it, and I love it because, again, it's not the surface. It's not putting the rainbow logo on for Pride Month. It's about actually being an inclusive organization all year and baked in everything that you're doing. And I love that. You're talking about that, from the standpoint of who are the stakeholders? Who are we bringing to the table, even digitally? Like I haven't thought of it like that. And I love that, you know, we have the ability to bring a lot more voices and experiences to the table. I want to this is complete sidebar. But I think it's interesting as you talk about growing kind of the influence of people having ownership. I want you to explain a little bit about Big Duck because I think there's interesting that part of your title is member owner. And I think that's unique. And I want to give you all a shout out because
We love it.
First, I love it. I think it's disruptive. And I think there's a lot of social good conscious organizations that listen to this podcast like cast vision for what does that mean, and how does that show up differently than other organizations?
Yes, so Big Duck has been around since 1994. We were started by Sarah Durham, and I've been on the team since 2007. And members of our team had been on anywhere from six months to also 15 years. In November of 2021 Sarah, through a process we went through, sold the business to the staff so We are now what's called a worker owned cooperative, which is why those of us who are now owners of the business are called member owners. So we went from having one owner to now a dozen or so. And in that transition, we also went to a shared leadership model. So we went from having a CEO, who was Sarah to know having co directors who's myself and Elizabeth Ricca, who were previously also on the leadership team, and working very closely with Sarah, but now set up. So we've tried to do this model where we're trying to share and distribute leadership throughout our organization. And in some ways, it's it's slow going, it's a transition, you're taking an organization that's almost 30 years old, and trying to kind of evolve it to something that's a more democratically run and governed organization. So now we have a board, which are some of our member owners, and Sara, is on our board now, which we never had a board before. We've always been a for a for profit company, all of our clients are nonprofits. But now we're even more nonprofit adjacent, I think, in how we operate. And again, the decision was made if we're committed to distributing power, if we're committed to working to become an anti-racist company, that has to start with who we are and how we work together. And I think one of the exciting things that's come we had a few blogs about this on our website about the transition, we've had a podcast or two about the idea. So if people are interested, they can feel free to reach out to me has been other agencies who have said, hey, maybe this is a model we should check out, we're not the first ones to become a co-op, co-ops have been around for a long time. But I think we tried to sort of share that we did it and why we didn't away that it has been exciting to see other agencies reach out to us and be inspired by it. And we've also learned from other agencies who made the transition before us.
Again, like you just this is all part of this discussion. It's not about the brand. It's about wow, we really believe in this. And so this is this is what this looks like. It's about shifting the power in our own teams. So Oh, my gosh, I'm like, I'm so excited about this conversation and just kind of where you're taking us. But I want to get back to branding here and think about this next chapter of involving your boards. No one has brought this up. I love that you're going there. What does that look like as you kind of engage teams around branding of their board's involvement?
I have a lot of feels when it comes to the board and branding Sarah and I actually recorded a podcast, I think back in 2018, or 2019, one of the first episodes of the smart communications podcast about this, which I can find and send to you later. But my feel, you know the board, I think the board of an organization for most organizations, depending on that organization's lifecycle and where they are in their formation and operation. I think boards should be governing bodies, they should help an organization, you know, they're fiduciary have a financial responsibility, they should help an organization when they're trying to figure out major pivot points. But the day to day operations of the organization should be left to the staff who do this work in a full time way, for most organizations. What that means is when it comes down to for example, should we pick logo A or logo B, you know, the staff know the community and know the organization best, I think certain decisions should be left to the staff. I do think if you've got folks on your board who have a communications background or experience, they should be invited to be on a working group, they should have a voice in the process. But when it comes to really shaping what their brand should be, again, I think the board is an important input place. I do think most of the decisions should be made by the staff. That said, I think when we're talking about changing the external expression of the mission statement, that and the vision and the values, that might be an important place for the board to weigh in. If we're talking about changing an organization's name, that might be an important place for the board to weigh in. But things like what our tagline should be what should be our new elevator pitch, I think many of the decisions related to what the brand should be should be left to the staff, or again, potentially a working group that has staff and board members on it, and maybe even members of the community, depending on the work you're doing. Just to have as opposed to everything has to be decided and agreed upon by the board. So one of the things we often do in our projects, one of the first things our account manager will do is really have a conversation with our client about stakeholder engagement, who's making decisions where who's in charge, who's approving who's giving input? so we're big fans of using models like MOCHA, or DACI or DARCI or RACI or all of these acronyms, where you're really plotting out who's the decider who's the approver, who's responsible, who's consulted, who's informed, etc, depending on which model you're using.
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That is really an evolved way to think about stakeholder engagement. And I just Jon and I used to have a phrase like about taking creative stuff to the board and we would call it like death by committee. Because it was like, where all creative projects go to die.
Put the two logos together.
Something about a camel. And we often talk about frankensteining. Like, Oh, I see what you've done with one and two. But could you take this from this and make that you're like, sure.
Literally always happens.
It always happens. But I do think your point is well taken that there, there needs to be shareholder engagement. But that is where the power lies and decision needs to be outlined, you know, initially, and we had a great conversation with Tara Abrahams, and Mona Sinha. And they're really giving us an insight and I feel like you are too about this sort of new way of looking at boards as partnerships and not as the sort of top down heavy handed approaches of doing our business because it makes the nonprofit worker feel very paralyzed in a way and they have all the knowledge, they have all the skills. And yet someone can take that idea with a very small amount of information and kill it or take it another way and so I really liked this idea of just talking about partnership with your board and making sure that they're engaged. And I honestly think communication is the way to do it. I mean, Tara talks about, she works with her, you know, Executive Director Tammy Tibbets, and they share articles, they disagree on things very respectfully, you know, they come with an open hand, Tammy is a teacher. And I can tell you, I have never been in an organization where the ED was the teacher for the board. And but that's really why our board members are there. So thank you for that excellent sort of mind shift, my dimples are showing, I'm just geeked out about this conversation. But we want to get into like some tactical things. So here you guys go. If you're listening right now, and you want to take some notes, Jon and I are gonna ping pong. And we're going to hit you with a couple of different questions on branding. And the first one is I think some listeners may be asking, like, how often should I be rebranding? Take that one.
My advice is once a year conduct a process we call a brand checkup, where you literally put everything out on the table or on a set of screens, and you look at how you've been communicating the past year, you come back to the fundamental questions of what are our goals for communications, who are important audiences to engage and really know who we are and participate in our work? How are we doing and reaching that if we have articulated our positioning and personality? Is that coming through? And what we're putting forward? Are we being consistent? Are we being clear? Are we being compelling? And just see how you're doing? And some years, you might be like, we're doing great other years, you might be like, wow, we really need to change our boiler plate. We can't be talking about things in this way. You know, rebranding, I think people hear that word and think it's a complete overhaul, it's a 360 got to change everything. That's not always the case. For some organizations, you do need to change everything. But for many organizations, it's an evolution. And so I think you could be if you believe in the brand is an ongoing practice. If you're thinking about how you communicate and an everyday way, you might be constantly changing your brand. That said, I think most organizations do some kind of significant branding process every five to 10 years, it often can be connected to the strategic plan. And so if we've done a strategic planning process, and that's a whole other topic of conversation, but for many organizations, if they're doing one that maps out a three to five, 10 year, whatever the vision is, for the organization, it's important to say Does our communications reflect that? If we're now we've said, we need to reach an entirely different audience, we need to do an entirely different set of work is our brand communicating who we are now or who we used to be? So I think it kind of the brand has to move as quickly as the organization is changing. For some organizations, that's every month or every year. For others, it's every five to 10 or 20 years. And again, it really just I think the best thing to do is at least once a year, set aside some time to do a pulse check and ask yourself these questions.
Okay, I'm putting that on the calendar. Because I mean, what a great advice
I'm like we need to do that.
I'm exactly saying that.
What a fun activity for January 4. Set it on your calendar.
Thanks for those couple days of break there, we appreciate that. Okay, next one. Should I change the name of my organization? Like is there ever a time when it makes sense to completely rename yourself?
Yes, this is a question we get asked a lot. I think a lot of organizations often are what about our brand equity people know us as X so we're afraid to change our name because we're going to lose the people who know us that way. I think to that folks who are wondering about that piece of it. That's where you come up with a really good brand rollout plan. You think about what you need to invest in who you need to communicate to that you've changed. It's been done before it can be done. Now going back to why you should change your name or should you, you ever change your name, you know, we say your brand, your name has to really communicate who you are, it's the most widely traveled ambassador of your entire brand. So if your name is not representing you in an accurate way, then it's time to change it. So for example, if my organization name has an audience in it, a geography and it like a state or a city, or in some some other specificity, and now all of a sudden, I'm beyond that specificity. That's a clear reason. The other big reason that a lot of organizations are reexamining their names is because the language in them might be stigmatizing or alienating. So we have a blog where we did an interview with a client who used to be called the Prisoner Reentry Institute, this was an organization where they were getting to a point where staff didn't even want to list their name on their resume because prisoner was such a stigmatizing word. They were working with people who were currently and formerly incarcerated. And they were doing a lot of work connection, connecting to higher ed, and providing access and their name sound that wasn't even accurate to their programmatic work anymore, let alone it was stigmatizing. So their new name now is the John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity, because they're connected to the John Jay College here in New York. But can you can see how that shift and when we actually talk about inclusive brand and when we went on that journey, they came to us knowing the name was broken, and we just wasn't weren't sure we're in all aligned about all the problems and what needs to go into fixing it. We had their staff did interviews with folks who were in their programs to get to understand what was working, what wasn't working, they tested options with their community before they rolled that out. And so I think if your name is not communicating what you do, and or has words and language in it, that is stigmatizing is no longer used in our vernacular, because we change, then it is important to think about it, we also see organizations who take ARP, which used to stand for what the American Association of Retired people now just uses ARP because we don't use retired people. UNCF, NAACP, there's lots of other organizations that have held on to their acronym, but no longer say what it stands for. Because what it stays stands for his language we don't use anymore. So sometimes the evolution is, is, is small. Sometimes it's completely different depending on what needs to happen with your name and what it's not doing for you now.
I hope nobody in 20 years calls us WAFG. I just want to put that out there in the world.
I generally am anti acronym. And in fact, a fun thing for folks to do if we're in the tactical mode is there's a website called acronymfinder.com. Go, if your organization normally uses an acronym, go in and type in your acronym, because you might find your acronym stands for something else that you may or may not want to stand for and be associated with.
Oh my God.
in addition to acronyms are just people never remember what they stand for. They'll flip the letters around, it's hard for you to like stay and build mindshare if you're using an acronym. So, in most cases, if you're using an acronym, that's probably because your name is too long, and you need to change your name. Or you need to think about something else.
And just an update WAFG has no other similarities.
Great. Who would? Okay, last one. And I'm so curious about what you're going to say here. If somebody has an anniversary coming up. Now, what what are they going to do?
Well, I'm curious what Jon thinks about this, I, you know, lots of organizations will all of a sudden, you know, create the logo that has the number in it for their anniversary, create a set of branded materials, all with that number in it. And I get that that's a common practice. I generally advise against that, because it creates a bunch of things that are dated you can't use again, I don't think it's always a great use of resources. I think anniversaries are a moment of credibility. We can remind people we've been around for X long, it's a great thing, especially the community who's most engaged with us. It's a moment to celebrate together, look what we've done together. But it's always someone's anniversary. So to me, I'd rather I like using anniversaries to celebrate. What are you doing in the future announce a new campaign. Sometimes it's a good time to roll out a new brand. If you're changing your brand, like I think it's a good moment to recognize, but it's always someone's anniversary. So yes, you can acknowledge, you should acknowledge your anniversary. You know, I do fundraising campaigns with organizations where we might make a symbolic ask, you know, give to us X amount of month or X amount in honor of our anniversary, I think that's fine. But think about how you can use your anniversary as a moment to build and grow relationships beyond just your anniversary. Like, I think the anniversary is more of a PS than the headline, if that makes sense.
Yes, we're kindred spirits on that.
But you can still send an email to your donors and your funders, like look at us, we're going to have a little gathering.
Absolutely. It's a reason to talk about yourself. It's a reason to reflect and it's a reason to talk and that is a good thing for your mission.
I love that transition because we want to talk about talking here and I think it's fun that you said it was kind of inverse for you or you could play it both ways the marketer disguised fundraiser or fundraiser disguised as marketer because we just believe in the power of those teams really coming together. And I know it's something you're passionate about. So can you talk about, and I know this isn't for every organization that has a communications team, I realize that's a privilege in some organizations that have that. But what have you learned as you try to see these two teams come together, whether it's inside or outside of the organization?
I mean, I often see and hear a lot of tension between those two organizations and people saying, well, this is my audience. And this is my audience, or we're updating the social media, you're sending out the email, and you can't post here, this, there's often tension I see between those two organizations around the communication channels they own around who can communicate to what when. And I think that plays out in a way that the audience then is very confused, and often as disjointed, they might get an email back to back because two different departments are sending it out, use different email systems, and all sudden, they haven't heard from the organization in a month. And then they get two emails within three hours. And like what is going on here? There are people who might be on both lists, for example, I think it's important when that's happening to take a moment and pause and have a conversation with those groups together to say, okay, who are our audiences? Again, it always comes back to audiences, who are audiences? What are our goals? How can we work together to build relationships with our audiences to support our work? Now, it may be that the comms team is really in charge of you know, we, we often think about a ladder of engagement. Our ladders of engagement typically is unaware to observers, to supporters, to advocates, and those those bands can change depending on your organization. The unaware, the people who don't know us, but should; the observers are the people who are kind of casually following us, maybe they're on our email list, they're following us on social; the supporters are people who regularly participate in our programs, maybe they're a donor or program participants, staff member, whatever. And the advocate is what I call the superfan, the ambassador, the major donor, the alumni, the frequent program participant, and not every person is going to go from an unaware person to an advocate, but how we communicate with them can help build that relationship. So I've seen many organizations where the comms team is really thinking about those unaware and observer audiences. And then development programs, advocacy, other departments are coming in, when we're start moving people to become supporters and advocates. So you can think about that in a way where the comms team is kind of building the base that then the other groups can come to pull and connect with, but we should be thinking about our work together and, and really make it again about the mission and our overarching goals and not just have goals per department, which then creates, I think, a lot of turf wars, in fighting, etc.
And if they're comms, they're going to understand that there's like a bigger message here.
Right? It only helps you to collaborate.
Yes! Like bring them in, awaken their hearts, awaken their spirits, get them involved, make your comms team, a rabid fan, not just you know, the people that we're actually talking to. Great counsel there. Okay, Farra, you call yourself a geeky activist. And I know that a geeky activist has gotta have some heart wired stories. And as a communicator, I want to know about a moment or a story of philanthropy that you've witnessed that has changed you as a human being and has stayed with you, what's one that lifts to the top for you?
Two moments, maybe?
Yeah, go for it.
I mean, one, I think one moment was probably early in the days of social fundraising. So over 10 years ago, where I tried for the first time, like it's my birthday, donate to at the time, this group in New York City, Anti-Violence Project, who I was very actively involved with. And all of a sudden, people were coming, you know, friends, friends, that I wasn't even that close to, acquaintances were donating to this organization. And I was able to raise through collective giving a lot more than I'd be able to personally donate. So that was a moment of like seeing the power of, again, people coming together to support something that I was able to bring people in in a way that felt good and genuine to who I was. And then many of those folks then became repeat donors for the organization, which is often a challenge for crowdfunding and social fundraising. But that was able to happen. So just where I was able to leverage my network to connect with a mission I was very passionate about and bring people in. So that is one thing that comes to mind for me. The other thing I would say more recently is over the past few years reading, you know, reading Vu Le's blog, Nonprofit AF, listening to Michelle Shireen Muri's podcast The Ethical Rainmaker, learning about the community centric fundraising movement has probably been the biggest shift in my personal understanding, preaching, thinking about fundraising and communications and really challenging phrases and ideas that I used to promote. And so for me personally, I've had I think I've been most profoundly impacted by and continue to be by reading the blogs and the content hub on that site, participating in the Slack channel, really understanding what that's about and how we can, you know, really shift how we're thinking about communicating with donors and asking for donor support and involving donors in our work. So that's what comes to mind for me two different experiences when you ask that question.
I love that I feel like they're both threaded together like a grassroots effort. And we'll link up CCF, we talked about them on the podcast, we'll make sure that link is in the show notes. Because there is a wealth of resources and amazing people that are just telling a different story and narrative that could really help all of us have a deeper understanding. It really connects to the branding discussion today too, I feel like to have just how we're wiring our words and how we're showing up in the world today. So thank you for both of those. We're starting to round out and you know, we have to close every show asking you about your one good thing and I know it's hard for a professor to narrow down to one good thing, but what could you leave us with? This could be a personal mantra, or a piece of advice around this.
I'll quote a movie that I loved as a kid and still love the Rocky Horror Picture Show," Don't dream it, be it."
Boom.
I'll leave you with that.
Okay, that is so good.
It was also my yearbook quote. So I'm taking it all the way back to about to hit my 30 year reunion.
Simple but still, like truly a powerful and what a quote unquote, for the moment in time that we are sitting in that is very precarious. Take it and do it. So okay, fair, people are going to want to connect with you. They're going to want to connect with Big Duck. Tell us where people can find you give us all the URLs and tell people Yeah, where the best place to meet with meet up with you is?
Yeah, well, definitely a go to bigduck.com. You can read blogs, check out our podcast, read case studies, ebooks, we've got a ton of free content. We also are often doing webinars and workshops. So you can check that out there. Our podcast is called the Smart Communications Podcast. You can get that on our website, Spotify, Apple, Google Play, all the places. And then if you want to connect with Big Duck, we're also on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, perhaps one day again soon, we kind of have a deactivated presence there. And then me personally, the best places to find me are on Twitter and LinkedIn where I magically have the username, just Farra, F A R R A, the joy of having both a unique name and being an early adopter. So you can find me there.
Not surprised. You're an innovator.
I mean, there's just so much to this conversation. hank you for unpacking so kindly and so like smartly. Love the work that you're doing. So glad to finally meet you today. So thanks for being here.
And just keep going in this work. We are totally rooting for the way that your work is rooted in such equitable practices. So really, really cheering for you.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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.
