may not feel like it. But it's never been a better time to be a mission driven organization. You know, massive demographic shifts, massive consumer shifts is happening not only in the nonprofit space, but everywhere, right. And so we're all trying to figure out how to sort of ride the train with a different direction right now. And the shift is happening where people are more philanthropic, people are more empathetic, which is huge. And it's really making missions, the requirement for missions to be more tangible, more human connection, and they just need to matter. And ultimately, this makes stories telling essential.
Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky. And this is the We Are For Good podcast,
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So welcome to the good community, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world. So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's happening? Hey, everybody, welcome back. It's the summer of evolution. And we are talking all things evolved digital strategies this week. And today, we are dropping an incredible panel that we're lifting from the responsive nonprofit summit that was co hosted by We Are For Good and Virtuous. And today, this panel is modern impact thinkers who are exploring how to build those evolve methods to grow the Digital Influence of your organization. And let me just say, buckle up, because these four individuals are bringing the power in the heart to how to leverage media to build digital community.
Yeah, and these guests are not just one timers on the podcast, you're gonna recognize these names, but we get to have this incredible conversation with Sarah Adolph son. She's the CO CEO at the Artemis agency. Karolina Garcia jrM. She's the Executive Director of the Elevate Prize Foundation, Eric wrestler, founder and creative director over designed by cosmic and Nick Lynch, co founder and CEO of kaleidoscope.io. So can't wait for you to
listen in. All right, so let's get into this. I mean, we're going to be talking about marketing and branding, we're going to be talking about how do you flex influencers for your mission? How are we going to leverage media? What we're doing right now, to get your story out into the wild? And, Eric, you are one of the first people to talk to us about the attention economy. And you talk about how do we create that content that that you call scroll, stopping content? And so I would just love for you to talk about where have we been in the attention economy? And where are we going now?
Sure. So the attention economy, I think, is something that everyone is familiar with whether or not you understand the term more than dictionary standpoint. So the way that I like to think about it as now information is so free and flowing through our digital channels through social through events like this. And on the flip side, our capacity for attention as humans is limited. Our ability to micro task and multitask is not something that actually pans out to be all that helpful. And what that means is that finding mindshare and capturing attention and sustaining attention is becoming harder and harder and harder. And it's also a marketplace, right? Our attention is being bought and sold by large corporations, by advertisers. And as social impact organizations, we need to figure out from an ethical standpoint, how can we tap into that attention economy to move our missions forward? Where is it going? I think is a really interesting question. I think we're all starting to feel the negative impacts of the attention economy and the information overload and the the inability for us to focus and to stay true to course, for our missions. And I think something that nonprofit organizations and social impact organizations need to think about is from a framework of empathy, how are their supporters? How are their community feeling? And how are you generating authentic connection with them? A lot of this happens through content. But if all we do is just bombard supporters with content, but don't actually create meaningful connection, then we're not going to win in the attention economy.
I mean, I love the way that you've said that because I think there's a lot of scarcity that comes up when we look at like how fast things are moving and we realize what's our place in this world. And it's that authentic connection and Karolina is doing this beautifully in real time through their foundation through the GET LOUD campaign that I see on Instagram where they use people talking, what matters to you in this moment, what organization do you want to lift and so I feel like you're sitting in the vortex of this Karolina so I want to pass you this question. What shifts and philanthropy Are you seeing as you lean more into storytelling, and media, and why is now the moment to really invest in digital strategies at organizations.
Thank you for that. Our vision and our tagline Mine is to make good, famous, right, so inspiring and motivating other people to just to get involved, but to really drive progress themselves and not be by standards of, you know, the good that's being done in the world, but actually start to participate. So if you think about it, social media is democratizing impact, you know, and that it includes the ability for social impact leaders and nonprofits to amplify their own stories. And as Eric was saying, as authentic as possible, and you get to control the story and tell as many stories as often as you want, you don't have to rely on journalists and other people and gatekeepers to tell that story for you. So examples, like the Black Lives Matter movement, or the me to movement that affected economies affected global structures affected corporate bottom lines, and strategies, these are movements that were largely built and fought and led on social media. So they've shown us that social media can be a complete game changer in how storytelling can drive the mission. So think at that, the same time about thinking about how personal social media is, and people who are connected to your mission on an emotional level, are far more likely to follow through with action, right? So if you think about democratizing, you think about the personal nature of it, you don't get caught up in just numbers and thinking about what really matters, and what is your objective and trying to connect to people. So the shifts that we're seeing is how social media can be used to drive an organization's mission. And I think for nonprofits, it can be really overwhelming because the field, you know, is so big. So one thing to keep in mind that we often think about and scale and reach that scale and reach are the best metrics to reach and measure our impact. But really, it's about like Eric was saying that authentic connection and engagement, no matter what the scale is of your organization. So we have two quick examples. We have a winner Cynthia fast, who runs an organization in Africa called a Popo, and they work with Hero rats who detect landmines. And the popo has now almost 40,000 followers on social media, which is a lot of followers. But what's really important is that they're really engaged. They sponsor rats, you know, they can amplify their story, they found partners through social media. And that's a big number. But then we have another winner in Kenya called Teach lit Africa, Nellie Choi, and she has 2000 followers. But those followers are so engaged with her every single day that when she had to go out and get votes to become a CNN hero award winner, she was able to quickly galvanize those 2000 people behind her. So it's just you know, thinking about how to reach the personal story that you have, and not get too caught up in the big numbers of people that are following you, but how they're following you. That's I see that has been a really big shift.
That was amazing. And I was today years old, when I figured out you could sponsor a rat, which I think is amazing, because I love this organization, and what they're doing to transform their part of the world. But I do think that, that vanity metrics you pointed this out, can be very deceiving. And I know Nick, you're probably going to talk about this a little bit. Because how many times have we had a board member come to us and say, How many followers do we have on our Facebook or Instagram account. And the reality is, it doesn't matter. What matters is how they engage with you how they share their story with you how they engage with the mission. And I think those are such critical elements. And it's really making me think we've had a trend this year, called Marketing is mission. And we think this is such a tremendous opportunity, where marketing is no longer a part of or a facet of your mission. It is your mission manifested. And Sarah, you at the Artemis agency have just done the most amazing job with this. And I want to know, just how have you seen organizations, companies influencers, really take that power of marketing, and turn it into action? Because we'd love to learn that through the lens of the entertainment industry in the strategy that you use? What have you seen?
I mean, I, I've seen a lot of great campaigns happen in this sort of intersection of marketing and philanthropy. And I think primarily, and I'll get to this in a minute, but primarily, the whole mission of using marketing is to is to raise awareness. But I think right now we're having this conversation and I've kind of heard my fellow panelists touch on this already, which is what does it mean to raise awareness? If there's no clear call to action? If it's not driving change? If if you're you can say oh, we had a billion media impressions but did it move anybody to do anything? Right so I I think that's just kind of the one thing that at least we at Artemis are always thinking about is that's a great idea. But so what right what does it drive from a change perspective? I mean, I think right now, one campaign that's out that's that I have someone on my team drew our attention to yesterday is the foundation to combat anti semitism. And these commercials that they're running and they're using traditional media, they're using earned media, they're using them, I love them. They're they're really, really powerful and And while there's not like a go sign up here or go do this, the call to action is is that we can all be allies, we can all be heroes, we can all be there for our own for for other communities that might not be our own. And I think that's a really powerful message. You know, another another example that we did recently was with the ACE Resource Network, Aces are adverse childhood experiences. And these are the traumatic things that you experience in your childhood up until age 18. And they have initiative called number story, which is again to raise awareness. But really that call to action is to learn about ACEs, learn what they are, learn the connection of your childhood trauma to your physical health, and mental health as an adult, go go find out Go Go learn more about it. And there's actually a quiz that you can find out what your a score is. So you can have a real honest conversation with your doctor or therapist. And we needed to get that message out, get people to go and take the test and know what their score was. And we did a really exciting campaign with artists, a lot of art is born out of trauma, I would go I would go ahead and argue that almost all art is born out of trauma. And so we worked with a number of of well known artists and lesser known artists to create a content series that lived on YouTube. And we use three three influencers, celebrities, if you will, young Bae from one of those tattoo shows, which I can't believe I forgot the name of Emile Maza, who they a famous, well respected music video director, and Laura Jane Grace, who is a punk rocker. And they went and they told they were very vulnerable on camera, and they told their personal stories. And then we use social media, to invite other artists to use the hashtag my art story and share their art, share their songs, share their poetry, share their paintings, and share their dance, share their floral arrangements, we had a florist participate in the campaign, and and talk about, you know, their their own experience and how art is a really great tool for healing.
I mean, what a cool example, we need to see the link to that. And you know, last time Sarah came on the podcast, I just want to lift this because if you're watching this at your organization, and you're like, I don't have the connections to get these incredible artists to do this. Start with who you do have who are those rabid fans, who are this believers, because so many people, everybody around us has something to bring to the table it's unlocking and understanding what that is. And so all of us are in a position of power with that. And so I've heard all of y'all talk about impact already. And so I want to camp out on this idea of how can marketing drive impact? And Eric, I want to kick it to you. But I know others may want to jump in here. What have you seen works? And what's you know, in the moment?
So I think about this question, as really a design question. Maybe that's biased, because my background in design, I think a lot of times organizations really kind of jump ahead and start to look at campaigns and start to look at tactics. And those things are really important. But in my opinion, and in our experience, if you don't have your foundational house in order, you're not going to be able to maximize the benefits of that work. What do I see is that foundational house, I see it as having a very clear theory of change, having a very clear sense of purpose, understanding your niche in the broader social impact ecosystem, brand, building, having a strong impact story, all of that needs to be in order before you can do any of the rest of the work effectively. So we usually start there, then, once we have a clear sense of once that's an order, essentially, we can start to look at who is your audience? What are the actions you're actually trying to drive that audience to take? And then how can we kind of reverse engineer campaigns from there, it looks different for different organizations. And I think that that's something that takes experimentation, curiosity, a willingness to try things and fail, and also a willingness to trust the process to some degree and know that you're not necessarily going to get results back within a week, or even a month, or sometimes even a year on some of these longer tactics and strategies. So that's really how we started looking at the foundation, getting that in order. And once that's an order, we can start to experiment with different tactics, campaigns and channels and see what resonates with your individual audience.
Eric, what I heard there was one, you reflected our second core value of our company back to us, which is play the long game. And I also heard if you don't have baked into your culture, innovation, risk, trying stuff. That's the really technical term we haven't we're for good for innovation, just try some stuff. We need that ability to do that fail forward. We do need to test we need to see what's working. And I Nick, I want to come to you on this next question. Because we're seeing this evolution where nonprofits are not just mission delivers anymore. They're becoming media platforms. People are coming to their websites to their social channels, to glean information talk about why you're we're seeing the ship where they're trying to consume this information from nonprofits because there's a real power dynamic MCs shift here that I think is for good, where the nonprofits are owning their own narrative. They're owning their own story. They're choosing what to put out there. And the vulnerability and the authenticity are key. But I would love to get your insight on what you're saying, because you have such a bent on the corporate social responsibility and social impact side to track this, what are you saying? And how's it playing out?
No, I love that you said it, because it may not feel like it. But it's never been a better time to be a mission driven organization. You know, Demak, massive demographic shifts, massive consumer shifts is happening not only in the nonprofit space, but everywhere, right. And so we're all trying to figure out how to sort of ride the train the different direction right now. And the shift is happening where people are more philanthropic, people are more empathetic, which is huge. And it's really making missions, the requirement for missions to be more tangible, more human connection, and they just need to matter. And ultimately, this makes stories telling essential, right? How do you create those connections, those authentic connections, like everybody's been saying, so that you can find those deeper opportunities to connect to create deeper integrations, not only with your stewards, and your donors and your staff, but influencers with your community, and with a broader global world so that you can really build momentum over a long period of time to really make things happen. And so I've never been more excited in the work that we're all doing collectively, given that the timing is happening now. And this massive shift is happening now. There's so many tools available to hardest to use to really capture that momentum shift.
I mean, you're speaking to this moment, I look at Karolina on the screen, and I'm like, not only are they living this out, but they're also funding I mean, having the Evolve mindset to fund this kind of media and storytelling for nonprofits that otherwise may not have had access. I just want to give you the platform. I mean, how did what's the buy in look like behind the scenes to just say, this is where investment matters to long game. But it's a beautiful long game, because we're seeing it as a bigger than just an overhead expense, like many people view digital strategy.
So much of everyone with everyone is saying is so right on. I'm also looking at this really active chat going on. I love that the audience participation happening here. But and I know that people want really practical advice like tools that they can use, and hopefully we'll get to that too. But from a more kind of meta perspective and a thought leadership perspective, this has to happen within the nonprofit space, meaning that you know, nonprofit organizations themselves, but it also really needs to happen in how philanthropies thinking about this. And back to your point about failing fast. And you know, being able to take risks, this is not how philanthropy typically works. And it's very difficult for philanthropy to do it that way. So I think this has created a fear or scarcity mindset, whatever you want to call it within nonprofits of saying, We can't take a risk on social media until we have a full on strategy and build and all these things, when what Eric was describing is actually what you really need. And typically don't get in the nonprofit space, because there's no funding for any of that, you know, and when I built this foundation four years ago, it was the first time because we were built on this premise of make good famous and marketing and storytelling, that I invested in a real cmo who had this kind of background of branding, I really, I learned so much. I've been in this space for 25 years and worked in the art world and still didn't understand what it took to stand up an organization this way because nonprofits aren't supported to do that. So you know, I think this idea of how, you know, we see it in our winners, and the people that we work with, many of them are already adept at marketing, but where they get really interesting is when marketing becomes the mission, right? So we have an example. One of our winners, Crystal Echo Hawk, who runs an organization called illuminate IV and Sarah's, I'm sure, she's pretty incredible. And she's using storytelling to change the narrative, right, the narrative of what we know about Native communities, what we know about the history of Native communities in this country. And she's adept enough at understanding the story that this is how she's going to win hearts and minds, you know, so she just launched an incredible podcast for anyone interested in that topic. And she's placed over 1000 stories in the last year in the media. So this is massive, but it's also like a machine, right that she's constantly feeding resources into on a rather slim budget. So we're investing directly into organizations and leaders who are ready to tell their stories. And there's a lot and I could get into this in another time. But there's a lot of barriers to that for leaders and organizations. And the biggest one, I think being the way that philanthropy invests, but there's a lot of other ones that we need to think about. So it's telling stories, not just about how, you know, isn't just how we talk about changing the world. It's actually how we're changing the world.
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Okay, Karolina hard stop on that, because that was so powerful. I want to thank you, on behalf of the entire nonprofit and social impact sector for investing in that I will give just a quick shout out. We just finished on the podcast of funders mindset series. And we literally talked with Sean couch over at the JW couch Foundation, who is now funding Media for Nonprofits. And I think, Nick, that a lot of people are probably saying, Okay, but how can I make the case for this? How do I track this impact? And you were the first one that really educated us about the double ROI. I want you to talk about that. And I want you to talk about how listeners and individuals and nonprofits can set up these simple metrics for their rabid fans to start tracking some of that impact.
Yeah, for sure. So I mean, the our origin story of Kaleidoscope was really around making sure that we could bring more corporate participation into the direct relationships with nonprofits. I mean, we, in my background of advertising, I knew that corporations and brands were spending billions of dollars in social impact and cause marketing. And at the beginning of the COVID. If I could bring in more of those dollars to these nonprofits, when they couldn't do in person events, and all sorts of the standard pieces that they were typically doing to drive revenue were changing, that it would make a big impact. But one of the biggest barriers in terms of these relationships with these partnerships is really around transparency and reporting. And so a lot of CSR teams cause marketing teams, on the brand side, really look at it purely as a marketing exercise, did it reach awareness, engagement clicks? Like what are the what's the marketing report of our partnership. And that's really where we started to develop this idea around that double ROI, which is return on investment for the corporate partner, in return on impact for the nonprofit and creating this holistic reporting sort of view so that we can really measure tactics and outcomes. So not only the partner knew exactly what they were getting from a business standpoint, but also really understanding what is the what was our business partnership doing to create broader and larger impact in a transparent way. And that's a conversation that really hadn't been taking place, really, until now, when all of us are now deeper collaborating on a digital level. So it really creates an affords an opportunity for us to use all of the tools available to really look at both sides of the equation, so that we're building and scaling, mutually beneficial partnerships and opportunities around that. And, and so that's for us, that was paramount. And that's really where we focused all of our time at the beginning is really trying to understand how we connect those dots, and for us, and I think, Eric, you broke it down really, really well from a design perspective. And we always think about sort of what buckets of partnership, particularly on the marketing side, are we really focusing on? I mean, is this sort of this long awareness play, but we're really just want people to know who we are what we're doing and create some of that emotional tangible connection. Right? So is it an awareness? And so that's more around the broader tech metrics that we talked about earlier around reach impression sort of some of those those vanity pieces, but they're important to help validate? Are we actually getting front of the right people to do the things? If it's not awareness? Is that engagement? Do we want people to do something? Do we want people to follow us more? Do we want people to contribute where they think that they could be important? Do we want them to click on something right? What are what is the engagement goal around that and really build, you know, metrics to support that, right? likes, shares, comments, that could be click throughs, those sorts of things. And then the other bucket that we really focus on when we think about measurement is that action? What is that call to action? Do we want now that people know who we are and people that are liking our, our stuff on social media? Do we want them to sign a petition? Do we want them to volunteer? Do we want them to get our newsletter? Do we want them to donate, right? All of those various action items? Are those calls or actions that we can do, we really want to make sure we have something in place to measure that depending on what the action goal is. Again, it can be really straightforward in terms of donations or registrations or something like that. But ultimately, we want to measure both sides of that so we can really clearly see did those tactics actually drive the mission outcomes or the impact outcomes that we ultimately designed at the beginning of this conversation? Right.
So o'clock Kaleidoscope is like in the world now helping us track these things because it does matter. And sometimes the data is the thing that will speak to people in power those donors who want to invest in radical innovation. So love that, Nick, thank you so much.
I just think that just add to that. One, one thing that I think is super important about measurement is that it's not only just sort of like reporting back to see like what we did, but it also allows us as organizations to figure out what didn't work. So we can cut out the things that didn't work and optimize and scale of the things that did. I mean, we worked with the American Lung Association at the very beginning of COVID, to help them build their first ever, sort of digital event. And 115 years, they had never once really measured some of the digital stuff that they did. And we just measured very simple things and found where we thought there would be impact there wasn't and when where we didn't think there was in fact, there was. And so we really quickly, were able to shift attention, resources and budgets to focus where it was, was valuable when we crushed the goal. That was like 250%. So it's not just like reporting back to see how well we did. But it's like what we didn't do, right? And how can we cut that out for next time or now? Right?
So I mean, I love that you're breaking that down, because I'm thinking of it through the leader perspective, it's creating the psychological safety, to have that conversation. This is not working, it's time to change this. And leaning on transparency. You know, we just came out of a leadership panel, if you didn't catch it, go back and watch it, because we talked about the power of transparency, just for getting your team around you in this moment, you know, to so think all this stuff is stacking together. And I look around the room, y'all work with a lot of influencers. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what do we do with influencers? What do we do with people that are perceived to have more social capital out there? And I want to, you know, talk about how can we flex people that have different, you know, positions of power or influence in in alignment with our mission. And so I know, Nick, seri. Clearly they all work with people in these positions. So who wants to hop in there first? Sarah, I want to hear from you.
Sure. Sure. I'll start I mean, I just I have so many reactions to so many of the great things that people have already said. But I feel like that's maybe an offline conversation. Because there's so much brilliance on this panel. I think, you know, authenticity is something that we keep talking about on here. And I think that is that is number number one. When you're working with an influencer or approaching an influencer, make sure that what you're asking them or their team to do is aligned with what you already know, and have seen that they care about, right? Don't Don't Don't ask somebody to get into puppies, if it's very clear that that they're you know, focused right now on Ukraine.
Their names, the puppies.
We only work with people into puppies. But I think another thing to, to think about is partnership, a lot of influencers a lot of celebrities, whenever we're an influencer now it can mean anything. I mean, there's influencers on this panel, right influencers are not necessarily Lady Gaga or Pharrell Williams, they can they can be somebody who's influencing the community or in a church. But I think I think trying to identify Win Win partnerships, everybody's got their own cause everybody's either gotta a nonprofit they've associated with because of family members involved, or or they found it a long time ago, when they were young, trying to see if there is some sort of win win for, for example, we're working right now with an organization that was a former client, and we have a celebrity who's starting to launch something. And the celebrity is looking for an audience is looking for some gravitas to show that what they're building is actually rooted in some kind of in reality, and that it can move the needle, and then this organization is trying to reach a whole new audience. And so we're talking right now about bringing the two together so that the celebrity has this great backing, and access to potential donors that they normally wouldn't have had. And this organization can actually move the needle on their mission by getting in front of new people. So you know, finding those kinds of win wins, I think, are sort of the new strategy versus let me go out and throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and hope that one celebrity or influencer says that's a great idea. I'm in go and be really intentional and being really strategic. Listen, and by the way, strategic sometimes might just mean can you pay the celebrity to do the thing? Right, I we need people to participate. I need a voiceover artists to be a part of this campaign that we're doing. We don't have a lot of money. We're a nonprofit, but we can pay you $2,000 for an hour, your time. Sometimes it's worth it just to get it over the over that hurdle.
Yeah, I can just add a couple of things to that. We recently got involved this past year with the Streamy Awards, which is celebrating online creators, and it's in LA so I was there for the Streamy Awards. And we met a lot of these content creators and influencers who some of them have, you know, over 10 million followers. These are major major content creators. And what I found time and time again, because I met most of them after the show was that most of them were really desperate to have more meaningful content. and purpose driven campaigns, but they really didn't know how to do it. It's not their background, they don't know how to connect to organizations, I know that I am in a very privileged position that I was in that room with those people. And that's hard to get access to. Is it normal nonprofit, you know, in Oklahoma, it was loved what Oklahoma and other parts of the country. So how do you bridge that divide, I think is something we have to think about as funders and to think about as people who are able to bring people together and, and gather people in that way. It's something we hope to do through our own make good famous summit in the future. But I love everything, you know, that Sarah was listing and and I echo all of it. And I think an important thing, when I was even thinking meeting all these different influencers is do your research, that puppy example is really important. But it's also expand your idea of what it can be. So if you're into climate or environmental change, it may be don't only look at people who are in that space, but maybe people who are in fitness, you know, people who are using the outdoors for their livelihood or for their habits, and start to find, you know, influencers or people who have some following. And I think what Sara said is also so important, it's not just people with millions of followers, but the kinds that are really speaking to the values that you want to have. I'd also say, be really clear about your ask, you know, what is it that you want your audience to do that example earlier about, about antiSemitism? Maybe that was just about getting people to think and be inspired. And I need to circle back with Nick later on, because we're trying to understand how to measure inspiration. And it's really difficult to do. But if that's the ask, be inspired, be clear. That's the ask. And so you may not see on the other side numbers or, you know, kind of traditional metrics to tell you people have been inspired. So how is it that you're going to know you're doing doing well. And then the last thing, I would just quickly say, because I work with artists, so much of my career, if you're going to be working with creatives, let them do the work, trust the creative process, and trusting artists, and get out of the way, you may not love what happened at the other end, you may even decide that wasn't a great partnership for you. But artists work in a very particular way. And many of these content creators really have crit, you know, they are creative people. So it's not going to be your typical partnership. So listen to them and take their advice when it comes to crafting your message. If you want to reach the people. They're reaching.
Such good humans. I mean, this is such a cool, Nick, please keep going with your thoughts.
No, I mean, there's so much to say they absolutely nailed it. And that the reason the feedback that you got from the influencer is literally the reason why we created Kaleidoscope because we just knew that all of these sort of separate stakeholders wanted to work together, there was just no real connectivity around any of that right? And really bring people where there's vision and value alignment, and creating a scalable opportunity to to make an impact. I think the one thing I want to like double and triple down on is, is the specific ask that to me is is probably what separates our DMS and phone calls and texts and emails from every buddy else that hits all of these influencers up for Ask it's like, Hey, you have a big following. Can you say something that's not really an effective ask, but what is an effective ask is? Hi, my name is Nick, I'm from the Make a Wish Foundation, I noticed that you really involved with your community, and particularly around making sure that kids get to achieve certain things when they're sick. I also understand that I would love to work with you, if you could maybe share this one piece of information about Make A Wish next week. That would be awesome, right? It can be that simple. But it has to be specific or else it gets lost in sort of like, okay, you're just like everybody else asking me for something. But you've done your research, if you can ask them that specific type of ask, then there's a little bit of connection between what you were trying to achieve and what they can provide.
You all are all we're for good podcast. Alums. We've loved having you on the podcast. So you know that we in all of our conversations with a one good thing. So I want to hear your one good thing. And, Eric, I want to start with you, Mr. Design thinking and by the way, I gotta give a little plug. You have not read cosmics manifesto on their website, please go to design by cosmic.com It is amazing and life changing. So Eric, please go with your one good thing.
So I think usually I answer this with the word curiosity because I think that that is such an important element of doing this work. One thing that I actually want to double down on today though, is to echo some of the good work and the advice from Karolina, which is we need to fund this work. And this work needs to be part of our core strategy for the organization. Because if it's always work that happens when the real work is done, or when there's extra budget laying around, which never happens, this is never going to be done. I also want to advise organizations in the social impact space that you do not need to do this work alone. You need to find experts to partner with or build in house expertise. We think about the kind of poster child example of Charity Water that literally built an agency Use an organization. And that's a very extreme position to take, I don't think that's necessarily required. But if you're trying to get people to do this work is your second or third job, it's never going to be effective. And you don't have to you there are so many good consultants and agencies and professionals out there that are eager to help organizations like yours. And I would just recommend really reaching out to your network and bringing experts on to help with this work. And on the flip side, making sure that you fight for funding for it and value it and prioritize it as core to the work and not something that happens when the real work is done.
Okay, when panelists are quoting panelists, my I just have all the warm fuzzies. So carefully, and I'll kick it to you next.
Well, one good thing is I think, don't focus so much on the media part of this focus more, I think, on developing your story, and getting really clear about the story and the why of your story. And then I would say, tell that story over and over and over again, to as many people around you who care about you and your story, because we always think it's so clear, I mean, our founder, Joe, like he thinks everything is so clear, you know, and I make him say it a million times until it's truly truly clear, because I find that the more people you collaborate with, and who understand your story, really clearly, it's going to unlock these opportunities in these ways of reaching many more people. So start with really honing in on your story,
that that probably would have been my one good thing if I'd had one. And I would also say syndicate that story, wherever you're saying it say it everywhere. We don't all consume information in the same way and in the same place. Are you breaking up Joe's comments? Are you putting them on a quote card and putting them on your Instagram real? Are you putting it in the annual report? Are you working it into your gala comments, wherever you can put those comments, put them in there because even if somebody's heard them multiple times, it's going to reinforce that same elevator pitch and that why to them and then they start to own it and a magical thing happens when that occurs. So Okay, Sarah, what about you your one good thing.
I've got like several and most of them were said by other people. And I'm stealing that I need to double click on what Karolina said about trusting the artists. I cannot say that enough. And I saw everyone on this panel, nod their heads, because I think we've all seen that when we bring in an amazing creative and the nonprofit goes now. It's like, this is this could be a game changer, right? This is this is what they do for a living. They make lots of money off of it. Trust them, they've got the ideas. And I think to that same end, you have the celebrities already in your organization. I've talked about this on the podcast that we did, but the people that you're serving, have the amazing stories that are almost too good to be true, right? They have these stories. So if you're going to, if you're going to tell the stories, go look within and see what you have. And then if you're going to bring on an influencer, just use the influencer to elevate that person's story. They don't want to talk about themselves. They want to talk about the real heroes within your own organization. So find them find a great creative, get a celebrity to promote it.
Okay, less than one minute Nick Lynch, bring us home.
Man, they nail that. So yeah, I mean, I think that if you're starting at this, you have to start with the story and continually make sure that everybody is really knowing what the story is. And if you haven't thought about how you tell your story in 1015 20 years, you probably should look at it again and really think about how are we telling the story now in this new world, and so we sort of develop these three principles that we feel like we wrote the book on, which will be out later, but essentially is how are you creating social moments with that story? How are you creating partnerships with that sort of with that new story or your story? And how are you making it connectable and human around your story, and if you can create social moments, find partnerships to amplify those and make it human and real. You have something there. And that's how you really double and triple down on on your mission and how
I know where's the Oscar swell music because that was so good. And we're gonna lead you all offstage. Thank you so much. For this incredible work. I will just say if you are someone who is ready to take this step into evolve digital strategies, consider starting with your story. How is the mission changed you put it through your lens and how you've seen the impact. Start there, start with your values. Please go connect with these four incredible humans who are changing the world with their creativity, their heart and their curiosity. Thank you all so much. We are so humbled by your incredible counsel. Thank you all for coming. Thank you.
Thanks so much for being here. We hope you're loving the summer of Evolution Series. And to learn more you can head over to we are for good.com/evolution All the playlists resources and other ways to help you get inspired and activated this summer. We'd also love for you to join the conversation. Share what you're learning on social media, or join us at our free community at We Are For Good community.com Bonus points for snapping a picture and showing us where you're listening from. Can't wait for the next conversation. shun See you soon friends
