9 Nonprofit Trends That Matter in 2023: Marketing is Mission

8:16PM Feb 9, 2023

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Eric Ressler

Jonathan McCoy

Keywords:

marketing

people

mission

organization

build

nonprofit

storytelling

conversations

eric

content

community

podcast

story

design

curate

trend

cosmic

thinking

talk

world

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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, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

So let's get started. Happy Friday, Becky,

happy Friday, y'all. So glad you're back. We're talking about like, our favorite thing today. Yeah, so

I kind of feel like this has been my favorite trend of the entire season. And so I'm really excited that we need to take a whole week to talk about it. So if you're new to our Friday series, this is nine trends that matter this year in 2023. And these are from connected conversations, you know, we are approaching 400 episodes on the podcast are just kind of nuts. All have been happening post pandemic. So it's really like what's meeting the moment, what are we seeing, and really, this idea of marketing is mission is meeting the moment in a really unique way. We're really excited about this trend. Today, we're gonna give you some tactical, we have got a really special guests coming on the last half of this episode. Oh my gosh, can't wait for that. But first, we want to give some tone set. And why does this matter? And you know, kind of how does it apply to all of this? So I mean, the simple way to say this is marketing is no longer just a facet of your mission. Like it's no longer just a department. It is your mission manifested and what do we mean by that is that it's so much bigger than just the tactics, right? It's actually our ability, if you zoom out and ask the bigger question of what are you trying to accomplish? What is your mission? stand for? And how can marketing help accomplish that? How can get more people taking action out there? Whether they transact a gift or whether they ever come into your CRM or not? How are you actually moving and changing the narratives that are happening, the biases that exist and some of the bigger questions that we're trying to solve for. And so we've seen some of these case studies play out and we'll drop a playlist specifically on this episode, if you want to go back but a couple that really point out a couple that really stand out to me is we had the skim who you know, newsflash is not a nonprofit, but they were really passionate about lifting the conversation around leave, and the ability for people to have equitable leave practices at their jobs. And so they just started a conversation about it started with a hashtag. And it turned into this, you know, really global, definitely national conversation of companies in organizations lifting and talking about what the leaves look like in their actual organization that challenge people to look at their policy to feel like it's something that they want to post on social media, because they're proud of it. And it's causing a lot of conversations to happen. on the nonprofit side, I have to point out the spring, which is the monthly giving program of Charity Water, we talk about it a lot on this series, they use this 20 minute video on YouTube to launch the spring, who would ever tell you to spend a 20 minute, but you know, even this came up in our conversation with Scott Harrison to begin the season. That's part of the strategy because they also want to change people's ideas and change people's understanding of what the water crisis really is. And so to them, a win is also changing minds, not just getting monthly donors. And so if you if you haven't leaned into that, check out what they're doing. Because that is a real clear example of what marketing is mission really looks like. And so today, we want to give you more ideas of just how to do this in your own organization.

You said a word John. And I feel like it really sums up marketing really well. And you said fuel. And I think we have just a disproportionate advantage to looking at this because we started out in marketing, and we have that marketing background. But I think this is something that everybody can adopt. Reality is your mission is amazing. The stories within your mission are amazing. So are your people but the reality is if you're not flexing these tools, if you're not flexing different voices community, baking your brand into what is that story, how is it amplified? And how can people connect to that you're really missing out on that opportunity for people to connect with you in a very deep way. And I think one of the best ways to do that is really looking at your storytelling and storytelling, his mission. The words we use, the way we unpack and give lens to the systemic issues that are facing our mission. Those that are giving it uplift, those that are expressing need. That is the way that you attract Mark Get and find your believers in this mission work. And we say, if you're going to do that, do it well really put bacon some ethical story telling into that that means giving dignity to the person who's sharing making sure they're comfortable with how they're, they're portrayed. The words we choose the images that we select. And so if you can really hone in on storytelling, you know, we've said it a million times, that's also going to help you. The other thing that I would say is that marketing shouldn't be just another line item that may be up against, you know, the chopping block of your budget later this year, it needs to be so integral to all parts of your mission, that its present. And again, baked into all parts of the organization. This is not just sitting with your comms team, think about marketing across the board, how does it integrate with every part of your business, whatever you're doing needs to have that fuel that's going to uplift, great stories, need awareness, community build, crowdfunding, volunteerism, whatever that is, put some marketing behind it, so that it gives a ripple into your community. And you it's an opportunity for others to come in.

Yep. And I think, you know, I'm hearing this me say this multiple times this season. So I maybe this is a trend that I'm seeing across the trends is that we really want to be open handed to certain things. And I think with marketing, you're always going to have an objective, you know, you're always going to kind of have a best laid plan. But I think we're we're seeing really some nuance here is those that are coming at their marketing with enough of an open hand to say, we know what the core thing we're trying to do we know what our vision is, we're going to be relentless in the overarching vision, but really open handed to how it's going to take hold. Because as we engage with community, and as we empower people to be storytellers on our behalf, and to take our assets and share them in different ways, we have to be, you know, do the deep breathing and realize it's not going to be this controlled narrative of the 90s. This is going to be of the moment, a lot of hearts coming together and expressing that in their own powerful way. And guess what, that's what we want. You know, that's the kind of marketing that's much more authentic and meets the moment.

I think something that I've seen that's really interesting is how you are getting your brand out there in a way that people want to grab on to. I saw veterans serving farmers and both Arbor Day Foundation do this beautifully. They've got E commerce, they set up this sort of on demand printed merchandise. Yeah, I mean, we have it to John, and we're for good shop. But it's like they allow people to wear that brand. And it's like a walking billboard. And I saw one John the other day that I completely geeked out on, they had the QR code on the back of their hoodie. And it links to the website of the nonprofit organization. And they had no context on it. And I only know because of course I checked on it. So I really think that people are adapting marketing and really new and interesting ways. And we just need to keep up with it and see what works for each of our missions.

So you know, we rolled out this entire series A few weeks ago, and we opened it up to the community to add their voices to this conversation. And I loved a lot of the ideas that were lifted. I mean, I'll start Becky and we have a few that we put pulled together. But Jeff Miller with Crossroads insight, who's an incredible thought leader that you should go follow. He said, language matters, framing matters. The stories we choose to tell matter. You know, we've kind of lifted that with ethical storytelling. But having those conversations internally in modeling that externally is part of how we do this out loud.

Yeah, I think another good one was from Tasha von fluc, with EBO digital, who we just love so much. They're out of Ontario. And she said, marketing should now be brand awareness, not just donor acquisition. And she's right, if we're thinking that we're putting our messages out just to acquire donors, donors are going to and our audience is going to feel that. But if we can create that awareness and that connection, and that magnet, the donor piece is just going to come along with it. But you get other pieces that come you get passion, you get story, there's such a compounding effect, and I think Tasha nailed it. And then Colleen

Howell from sunbeam here in Oklahoma City, she made an important point about ethical storytelling and said, If we wouldn't share something directly to a client or a donor, we don't say it in our communications, like what a great kind of gut check.

Yeah, and I think there's just a lot of tools out there. And so if you're feeling overwhelmed, like where do I start, we got some great suggestions from the community that are tools that help you curate community based stories. So Katherine McDonald gave a shout out to proof packed, we love proof fact, it's a great storytelling platform. And Natalie Monroe, who we love so much gave a shout out to memory flux, which is also an incredibly powerful storytelling platform. And these are game changing in the way that they are curating stories from the community and you can use them and archive them. You will have stories for days, friends,

I love it. So we've actually put together a full playlist of conversations that really support this. I mean, we do talk about this as a common thread of the podcast. So there's at least a dozen or so conversations there that you can pour into if you want to go deeper in this but Just before we start to transition over to our special guests, I want to give a couple of case study examples that I think are just so powerful. And one is from the Exodus road, you know, we've had their executive director, Laura Parker on the podcast. But this example came about actually talking to our friend Cameron Bartlett, who works in the SEO space, and is this really brilliant Digital Marketer. And he shared this example that, you know, if you go in and type into Google, if you're looking for information about human trafficking, they had this really brilliant strategy at the access road, to actually serve with knowledge and serve with education, because they realized that's part of their mission is, is, you know, changing the way the culture in Acts with this and has an understanding and kind of breaking down some of the stereotypes. So if you google this, they were one of the top couple of hits on Google, which is no small, on a really popular topic like that. But what's powerful is you go into that article, you go into that blog, and not only is there a ton of really relevant information for someone looking to learn about this, so they can be better educated. But on the side, guess what you can join their monthly giving program, this is your passion, and you feel moved by what you're reading, and you feel connected to it. What a great natural way. And to me, that is marketing his mission, you know, you're serving a broad, broader audience, but you're not losing sight of what you're trying to accomplish. At the same time, you're just trying to do that in tandem. So way to go access road. Love that, you know, kind of applied case study of this.

Yeah, I love seeing those out in the wild. And I just think trying stuff is such a hallmark of making marketing your mission, and we're gonna fail in some ways, but we're going to fail forward. But the more that we're talking to the community, the more that we're engaging, I think that path becomes clearer. So we want to leave you with a couple of pro tips, because we want you to get active today. So the first one is Get clear on your values, your mission and your vision. Are these elements of your mission clear in your marketing? Are they expressed in your storytelling? Can you tie back maybe a testimonial to why you exist to that, why? And express it once people start to see that you're living your values, they're gonna say, hey, those are things I believe to, I want to click on this. And then you create that scroll, stopping content,

so good. And I'll leave with this protip that the way the values and the way that we show up isn't just externally it starts from within. And so putting a lens on this, that the culture of your organization is building, your brand and your marketing, you know, we've had experts, Mark Miller, Ted Vaughn, come on the podcast, talk about it through their book culture built my brand. And this is a really powerful look at how the culture the way that we treat people internally, and even then feel excited and enthusiastic and overflowing with those kinds of feelings, becomes a magnet becomes this marquee culture that starts to attract the donors that we want.

Last pro tip I would give is if you embrace that storytelling as mission, find a way create some time this year to capture story. And if you're saying I don't know how to do that, I'm telling you, it's okay. Because I think there are many nuanced ways to do it. And if you're looking for a starting place, start with yourself. Write your story down. Why do you care about this mission? What have you seen, start with your staff, ask your board members to coffee, there are so many ways to curate this, make it a focus this year, I promise you, it will give you not only content for days, but it's going to help lift the voice of the community into your mission. So you're not speaking into the echo chamber of your own organization.

So I mean, Becky, when we're talking marketing as mission, let's, let's go back. I mean, the person that really, really got this in my head was Eric wrestler, and I feel like the first time we met him the first time we talked to him, I'm like, there's some people that just view our work from a completely different lens, and one that is more aligned with making an impact and the impact uprising that we talked about. And so when we thought about who we're going to bring back to this episode, we had the tap our friend Eric Eric,

just freakin wrestler. There was literally a list of one for this. I'm so glad that our friends at cosmic are back because we respect them so very much in the way that they are coming at marketing, branding, movement, building ethos is so different and evolved, we just adore them.

Okay, so without further ado, Eric Ressler, founder, Creative Director over at cosmic social impact creative agency, get back in this house, it's so good to have you back on the podcast.

I'm so glad to be back. Thanks for having me back

on when you came on before, we talked about this manifesto that cosmic had built and the way that you story tell, is so wonderful and outstanding. I just want to give a shout out to that we're going to drop that episode in the show notes so everybody can go back to that. But like, I want you to just set some tone for this conversation. Eric, I mean, you were one of these first people in our world that was saying, marketing is mission. Everything that we're doing, has to come back to connecting the marketing to the mission. Why do you believe that and why has that been such a big driver for cosmic?

So I think the reason that we believe it, is because we're designers and so this is just in our blood and I think when we get into conversations around marketing, and is it mission, is it not? Sometimes I think maybe even just the definition of the word marketing may be part of where there's some disagreement or argument around this. And really, we embrace Seth Godin, his definition of marketing, which is anytime you're trying to persuade someone to do something, you're doing marketing. And I think sometimes people think about marketing as their emails or their ads, or placing an ad in a magazine, or their social channels. And those are all marketing methods and marketing tactics, but marketing kind of with a capital M, really, it has so much more to it than just that. And so the reason that we think about it as being bigger and connecting to mission is because of our background in design and seeing this actually transform organizations. And I think one of the things that we've seen more and more is that when organizations embrace this as a core pillar of their organization, and not something that happens after the real work is done, that's when transformation really starts to happen.

Yeah, I mean, I think that is the secret sauce, that part of the work could be in how the marketing is playing out. And I see this because I love stocking shelves, case studies on your website. I think I've told you this before. But like if you want to get into the mind of a designer, because y'all don't just like throw up the visuals, which are always beautiful. But it's like the storytelling of like, how you arrived at that, and like, what the process was like. And I think I see a lot of like, these action hubs getting built when you work with these different nonprofits. And I'm like, That's honestly, the word that I gravitate to. Because marketing and it's in game is not just getting the click or getting the signup, like you're saying, but it's also like just getting people to take action, and sometimes that is delivering our mission. And so I want you to talk about that and give you space to say, how do you get clients to land and focus on what is that really key action they're trying to get people to take and just kind of unpack that concept with us?

Yeah, so I think this concept of action centers or action hubs is appropriate for organizations, especially, that are trying to build grassroots movements, where they're trying to activate 1000s of people, not just hundreds of people. And we see marketing and what we call the digital hub, or the website as a key element to that and operational element to that where so much of advocacy, education, fundraising, volunteer signups is happening online these days. And so we are huge proponents of building that in your core stack, instead of kind of offloading it to third party software, sometimes that needs to happen. And often we are leveraging third party software, but we're integrating it into the main website. So we're building these very intentional curated bespoke experiences that really meet the exact needs of the organization that we're partnering with. So an example is we built an Action Center for LP, LP, the Lakota people's Law Project, which is a client, a longtime client of ours. And they've leveraged that action center to raise millions of dollars to actually change policy and law to build a huge movement of grassroots supporters. And to be fair, a lot of that work, most of that work is happening because of the strong team at LP, LP, and their organizers and their volunteers and their staff. But the technology that we built together with them, is the operational backbone of all that organizing effort.

Gosh, Eric, I mean, you just don't see the world like everybody else. And I think that's what CEOs. I know, truly, that's why I think what your messaging your marketing, your branding, like the whole, the whole stack, It's nestled in to the mission, and I love that you're saying like, quit offloading it, bake it in, bake it into what you do. And I and I love that you quoted Seth Godin, because we just think he is like the marketing oracle of all and, and you know, something that we've noticed, and I would love to get your, your thoughts on, this is just how the world digital is becoming this creator economy. And I think you were one of the first people maybe in our last episode, even talk about this. And so I think about nonprofits stepping into their power, I don't think any nonprofit me, including, you know, five years ago would have seen themselves as a creator. But those spaces are the future for this go to content, for authenticity, for vulnerability for sharing stories among trusted friends. And how do you recommend to anyone who's either working with a nonprofit or working within a nonprofit or a social impact movement? How can they seize this moment really stepped into their power as a creator? And what are some ways they can just start to leverage this growing trend to build that bigger digital community?

So I feel like to answer this one. We do have to revisit the attention economy, which I know we talked about pretty in depth in the first podcast, and people can refer back to that one. But in brief, the way that we think about this, in our perspective on this is that today, we're recording this in 2023. This has been true for a while now, but it's becoming each year more and more true. We are living in this information era and this attention economy. So we all are so connected through our digital devices, we have this influx of digital information, probably too much these days, right, hitting us all the time. And so what that means is that information isn't the scarcity anymore, which it used to be. And now our attention, the ability to kind of capture people's attention to sustain it. And to actually drive action is a new economy. It's something that everyone is trying to build market share for. And so if you accept that, then what you really start to realize is that, if you're trying to educate, advocate, share information, drive action, ask people to do stuff for you marketing, then you really need to build out an entire digital infrastructure to support that. And when you build that digital infrastructure, which is your marketing hub, or your website, all of your digital channels that you distribute content through, you're building a big machine at the end of the day, and the fuel that drives that machine is your content, because without content, there's nothing to fuel the machine, there's no reason there's no message, you can't just keep saying, Hey, look at us, we're this organization, here's our mission, three times a week in your social channels, right? Everyone knows that intuitively. But I think when you start to think about it, and really realize that as a social impact organization, you need to become essentially a new media company in generating content, and a variety of formats of content, from articles, to podcasts, to video, to events, and live streaming. And you don't need to do all of that. But you need to do some of that. That's really, I think, where this idea of the attention economy really brings all that together. And this kind of content creation piece becomes more and more important.

This is why I love brainstorming and talking to my friend, Eric, because I'll be honest, when we were setting out the year with our trends, one of them on my list was baking a media company inside your nonprofit because I believe in the power of that. But I feel like it's honestly too early to say that because I think we got to get some of these steps, which I think was when we landed on marketing as mission this year, because the baby steps to get to that mindset of what you could unlock if you really did that if you really did orient your staff and the way that you storytelling the way that you think that is like gonna create scale for this action center. And these impact hubs that are beyond what we can't even imagine now. So I love that you're leading us there for the nonprofit listening that's like ready to go. And they're they're ready for 2024 trend already on the media of like immediate network, go there with us. I mean, how can nonprofits do that functionally inside their organization? Maybe just give us a couple advice points on that?

Yeah, I think often what we see is that we can get organizations on board with this conceptually when we work with them. And they come to us to a degree kind of understanding this, maybe not explicitly, but intuitively, and they're coming to us to help build their brand to help refine their impact story to build out a new iteration to their digital hub or their website. And when we start to talk about content strategy, and we start to talk about this need to build out a new media arm to your organization, that's when we see clients start to seize up a little bit, because the very first thing they start to think about is capacity. Well, that sounds great, but like how are we actually going to do that. And we do kind of try to coach our clients to take some baby steps and also to get creative. So we don't think that you need to start with a even full time person who's doing only this. Obviously, as you scale this and grow, having one or many full time people doing this would be ideal. Of course, just like any new media company has multiple journalists or people publishing content. But to start, you can really assign someone in your organization to be the owner of this, but the owner does not necessarily need to be responsible for producing all of the content. So you can kind of think of the owner of this within your organization is like the editor in chief, their job is to find and curate stories from within and potentially even without outside of the organization. So can you get people to contribute who are supporters or partners who are not staff and you know, or contractors who can do this who are not staff so you can start a little bit smaller than you know what the ultimate vision of having an arm within the organization doing this? That's that's their sole job. Can you get creative with it? Can you write a haiku instead of a blog post? Can you go out there with your phone and capture an authentic two minute video response. You know, not everything needs to be long form, in depth research papers, and there may be a need to do that, especially if you're doing really high level policy work to publish these, you know, essentially research papers or white papers and that long form content is still very valuable. I think sometimes people think that that's dead, it's not that at all. But at the same time, if you're looking at how you can build capacity, I think you do need to look at can we get creative with our content, and that might even be more effective in breaking through in the attention economy.

Thank you so much for saying that. Just because you have an owner of this content does not mean the work all falls to that person. And and I think that's the mindset shift, we need to get around, I can see how this would be an easy sell for everybody, theoretically, to say, yes, I want to be a creator. Yes, I want to build something that creates, you know, what Eric has taught us is that scroll stopping content, you know, that stands out in the attention economy, but it's gonna take a village to do it. And I want to tell you all that you don't have to start from scratch to do this. We talk about it all the time. What are you doing right now, that has high value content in it that has high value messaging, storytelling, it could be that script that your ED just gave at a luncheon that could have a ton of really high quality content in it. So it's really about auditing and assessing what you have and what could be new, indifferent. Thank you for talking about a haiku. Which is hilarious and probably would be scroll stopping content. Yeah, I think about the people who were tethering their save the dates. You know, at the time where the Bernie Sanders mittens were coming up, I saw an ad that was like, Don't get caught out in the cold, like, save the day. And it ended up trending, because everybody just thought the mitten thing was so funny. But you know, I really think if we're going to dive into these tactics, we got to talk about the mindsets that are holding us back. And I would love for you to kind of talk about what are some old mindsets about marketing that we need to release? And which are the ones that that are sort of habit forming, that we need to start embracing? What would you recommend there, Eric?

So I think this idea that marketing isn't mission, or that it's overhead is kind of the most traditional form of thinking, and that it's something that you can do if you have extra time and budget, which we never have extra time or extra budget in the nonprofit world, or after the real work is done. And I think, again, we really want to flip that on its head and say, this needs to be built into the next program, you spin up, how are you budgeting for and investing in storytelling and marketing and design to help make sure that that program is successful. And even to open it out side of marketing a little bit, when we start to use the word design instead, which is, you know, really at the core of what we're doing, then you start to think about how design can have an impact not just on how you communicate the program, but even how you design it, right? How you build it, and how you think about building the team, how you think about actually creating change in the world. And so that's such a bigger way to think about it. And that does definitely start to go outside of marketing. But to me, design and marketing are so inseparable that I have to go there when I think about how to answer this question. So again, flipping it on its head and thinking about it from the beginning, as a first class citizen in the design of the program, or of your organization, you know, we've seen a trend in the business world of designers, as founders, designers, as, you know, principles within organizations, because the power of design is so strong to improve and affect change. And so when the organization exists to effect social change, how could you not build that in at the core, because if you're not, you're risking wasting resources or being effective or designing the wrong programs, or doing a lot of really good work and not getting, the attention it deserves or the outcomes that you're really going for, because communication and design and marketing are so key to the success of any individual effort or program today, given that we're in the attention economy, and even just outside of that, how you actually construct and think about how you build things as an organization, that that's really why it can't be last it has to be first.

I feel. I know, I wish I would have known Eric, you know, a decade ago because I felt that I've always felt like there's the odd man of a designer in a fundraising field. But I always thought that my capabilities were never tapped because truly, in the sense that we really could solve for bigger things if we just thought outside of the box of traditional channels. And you know, a thread of our podcasts is always asking bigger, better questions, to get to the core of what you're really trying to accomplish and start to start to break down some of those walls. So thank you so much. I mean, Eric, I know y'all work with truly like dream level. Lance in my book, I mean people that think differently, they're willing to match that investment with that level of vision, we point to a case study that you think is a really powerful example of this in action.

The first case study that comes to mind for me is a client that we worked with late last year of constructive dialogue Institute. And they are, the reason that I come to them first is because what they're doing is really cool. And I think really timely and important in our culture. So they've developed a curriculum that's targeted higher education, but they're actually expanding into the corporate world and into lower education as well, high school aged kids. And what they're really trying to teach is they're trying to teach us how to have conversations in a more constructive way. And to essentially depolarize our culture, which is just so critical, in my opinion. And they're doing it with science and research based psychology. And they're doing it in a way that is really modern. And they brought us on to help them really re articulate their vision and build out a more effective action center and digital hub for their work. And so all their curriculum is delivered online, through their website and through a platform that they're building out. But beyond that, they publish thought pieces, content free resources. So their their entire ethos as an organization is to get this idea out there and to create very effective, easy to use tools, regardless of whether or not you're in a formal university setting, or you're just a person that's curious about this. And so I really respect the work that they're doing, I really respect their team. They were wonderful to work with. And they have such a good vision for this work. And they have built out and invested in a content creation team, they've written their entire curriculum. They're publishing stuff consistently on their blog, and through their social channels. And they're doing all of that in house. And that's something that and they're not a huge nonprofit, their staff size is, you know, I would say medium in compared to especially some larger ones. So I think they're a great case study, because they're an example of a very small effective team that is really embracing a lot of the concepts that we believe in. And they did a lot of that even before coming to us. So it was really a great match. Because we just found as soon as we started working with them, we were just so aligned around the ethos behind it. And we could just kind of tap in and just become one team for the work, which is always what we love.

That is such a perfect example, Eric. And I love the fact that they were already all in when they came to you to embrace this mindset in this model, which has allowed them to iterate it and grow it and pour differently into the content. And I just think the way that we are curating stories, the way that we are having people tell our stories is also a huge takeaway in this conversation to me, because even as someone who had a public relations background, I was always thinking, Oh, I'm driving the story, I'm in control of the story, I'm going to pick the beneficiary, I'm gonna pick the frontline, you know, staff member who has a story or the donor of why they gave but no, it's about really releasing that control. And giving it to somebody else in the beauty of that creation is everybody's going to give you a different lens into your nonprofit that you would have never seen before. It's going to open up an entirely new network, because we're not in that same space as that human being. And so there's so many advantages to this. I love that example. And I love depolarizing our world, we need more of it. So, Eric, you know, we end all of our conversations with a one good thing, bring it on home for us, when you think about marketing as mission, what's the one good thing that you would leave with our audience today?

So I think that, especially for marketing, and I think this is just a generally good principle for how to operate in the social impact sector, but curiosity. And I think that it's often something that isn't embraced fully enough. So if you're thinking about bringing some of these concepts into your organization, or even if you're looking at different tactics or methods for marketing, you really do need to remain curious about what's working, what's not working, and why. And not fall into the trap of instant gratification. And why this campaign didn't convert the way we want it to. I guess that doesn't work on to the next thing, you really need to start to get curious about why wonder why it didn't work, was it because we didn't reach the right audience or the story was wrong, or the technology wasn't there? What might be going on here? And I think thinking about things from that standpoint of curiosity and design thinking and really remaining open is really what's going to drive success when it comes to marketing. So you have to be willing to iterate to experiment to stay curious, or this work is not going to really come to fruition the way you're hoping.

And Eric Ressler. That is why this will not be your last visit to the podcast. Thank you, sir. But for always coming in and teaching in such a powerful evolved, meeting the moment type of way, so I know people listening, you're gonna want to connect with you. And let's just talk about your amazing team also at cosmic give a

shout out to Lisa Benson who is like your co conspirator that we love so much. This is such a dynamic team over cosmic.

I mean, seriously, they are like family on the west coast. So tell people how they can connect with cosmic and just the good work that you're doing.

Thank you for acknowledging, Lisa, first of all, and Lisa is the kind of secret weapon at our firm A lot of times. So I think the best way to connect with us is through a website designed by cosmic.com, where we have our manifesto that we listed and I'm sure it'll be in the show notes that really kind of outlines more of our perspective around attention economy, and building out a new media company within your organization, some of those more high level principles and ways of thinking. But then we also have an insights tab on our site that gets a little bit more brass tacks tactical, more specific around certain topics. So we've invested a lot of time and energy, posting free content there that's accessible and open to everyone. Given that we're a small firm, we're not able to bring on all that many clients each year. Sometimes budgets aren't really feasible for smaller org. So this is kind of our way of sharing our thinking and trying to give back to the social impact community. So we post articles, white papers, podcasts, like this videos, all kinds of stuff. It's pretty extensive. At this point, you can search it, you can filter it, so if you're interested more in fundraising, or branding, or messaging or digital, you can kind of sort content that way. So I would definitely point people there. And then of course, if people are interested in talking to me, I'm always open to connecting the We Are For Good community. My email address is Eric E. Ric design by cosmic.com.

Thank you guys for the way you show up and move through this world. I want to give one more shout out to cosmic who has a four day workweek. They have figured out how to optimize the four day workweek they have incredible balance just fine, fine human beings. Check them out. So happy that you're on the podcast today. Thanks for coming in and giving incredible insights once again.

You have thank you guys so much for creating this platform and doing so much good service to the to the sector. Good to see my friend.

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