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Episode 37: Stand Out And Improve Engagement By Having A Real Conversation With Emily Taylor From Teeny Big

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 08:30:07 GMT

How do you stand out in a sea of communication?

On this week’s episode of Relish This, I had a fun conversation with Emily Taylor. She’s the Principal of Teeny Big, an organization that focuses on turning lackluster partners into passionate supporters.

Emily works a lot with the Audience Engagement Cycle—or what they call a Pathway —to connect with stakeholders and create deeper, more meaningful connections and stakeholder engagement.

Our conversation centered around escalating engagement. We discussed how to create intentional messaging to attract and connect with specific stakeholders. The goal, of course, is to get people to take that “next step” and ultimately, become life-long supporters.

The key is in relationship-building. To really forge a strong, lasting connection, ensure that you aren’t just blasting people with donation requests or constantly asking for volunteers to help. Get a feel for your audience and how engaged they are.

Testing a variety of content and scheduling in regular check-ins with your stakeholders is important to creating consistent engagement.

This was a great episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

Action Ask: Think about your audience engagement as a path.

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Listen to the podcast here

It’s not, “I put money in as a user and I get something out in terms of like a tangible, physical thing that I’m buying,” for example. That whole idea of a funnel is misconstrued in the nonprofit world. It’s more like a mountain because you have to keep pushing people up past these little ridges of friction and get them to the top where they then become actual stakeholders.

I like the idea of a mountain. I’ve heard ladder, which makes each piece sound very equal, but it is more like a mountain where there are different hurdles along the way.

What we’ve also found is that it’s not necessarily linear. A lot of times, there will be people who are convinced from the get-go and they’re like, “I love it. I want to become a donor. I want to be part of this organization.” Other people require a lot more convincing to take that leap. People can lurk for a while before they sign on. An interesting thing for nonprofits, in particular, to be considering is how much time and effort does it take to get someone to engage and be willing to ride that out?

I was looking at some statistics on for-profit companies that are using customer journey mapping and things like that for their own engagement. It made me think of how your audience is shopping their consumers, as well as philanthropists and advocates of your organization. Thirty-four percent of companies are implementing journey mapping so it made me think of how much consumers are getting used to that.

As they shift over to the nonprofit world, they’re not necessarily having that same staged engagement or that path to bring them along. They’re not feeling part of the process, but I think more and more people are getting comfortable with that because companies like Starbucks and Uber are bringing people down a journey and gathering feedback from them. They are building that process to be very engaging. Nonprofits also have to figure out how they can deliver on those experiences as well.

You bring up such a good point there that people become accustomed to how to be sold, and when something is breaking that process that they’re ready to accept and wrap their arms around, that can be additional friction added to the relationship right there. It’s because if you’re not following trends, there’s a potential that you’re turning people off.

They’re habits that people get used to and it’s hard for them to break them.

Tell us a little bit more about the journey and the mapping that you do. What’s your process there?

I like to look at an engagement with an organization. It’s like when you learn a guitar. When you first learn a guitar, you don’t know a lot about the instrument, but you get excited by seeing a famous person play guitar. You want to learn Stairway to Heaven but it takes some steps. You have these different elements of excitement, but also basics that you need to learn to move forward and start to understand more complex things, all the way to then getting to appreciate different greats in the guitar world and maybe performing your own songs.

In that same way, the nonprofit is going to forget how complicated their work is. They’ve done it for a long time and they’re such experts at it that our first process is to lift them out of that expertise for a moment so that we can look at it like, “Where are people starting caring about your organization? What are the hooks that bring them in and what are the baby steps?” They need to know those first notes or chords that help them get your organization.

We break it up into stages and think about what they need to learn next to care a little more, all the way up to whatever the most engaged they hope people to be. It could be becoming a board member eventually or putting the organization in its will. It’s the highest level. We look at that as a whole and build in those baby steps along the way so that they know where they’re guiding people towards.

Stand Out And Improve Engagement By Having A Real Conversation With Emily

My guest in this episode is Emily Taylor. She is the Principal at teenyBIG . She helps nonprofit leaders turn lackluster followers into passionate supporters. She is doing some great work to talk through the audience engagement cycle. She calls it a pathway and how to create opportunities to escalate people’s engagements. Once you’ve brought them into your organization, how do you get them to do more? How do you get them to take that next step?

It’s being intentional about your messaging to attract and connect with really specific stakeholders. It’s not being wishy-washy and focusing on how to get people to take that next step. This was a fun conversation. We had a lot of commonalities in terms of how we approach nonprofit marketing. I think you’re going to love this show. Here we go.

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Emily , thanks for being on the show.

Thanks for having me, Stu. I’m glad to be here.

I’m looking forward to our conversation. We appear to have a lot of overlap in the way that we think about nonprofit marketing. I know that you are an expert in helping nonprofits take their lackluster support, energize that, and get donors and volunteers excited about being part of the organization. I’d love to hear a little bit more about your business and how you do that. We can also talk some more about that engagement life cycle.

I help nonprofits take their lackluster followers and turn them into passionate supporters to build momentum for an organization, and to have extra capacities so they can pull in volunteers, advocates, and donors when they need them. My philosophy is based on my background in human-centered design, taking a look at what your organization looks like and means through your audience’s eyes. That informs a lot of the work that I do. I help nonprofits make a plan for thinking about how they’re engaging people, and bringing them along a path so that they do lead them to become those more passionate supporters that they need.

It sounds like it’s almost part of what we call our inspire phase where people have raised their hands and they’re part of the team, but they’ve maybe gone away a little bit. All of those places where an organization that’s trying to do more good in the world can reenergize that group or these people that are already knowledgeable about what you do, and have maybe participated in the past to do more.

It’s much like a pipeline. When you then motivate those people, how do you make sure you’re still having people you don’t even know yet fill in to that spot so you can then lead them up?

It’s like that escalation of engagement approach.

A lot of people call it an engagement ladder. I’ve been using engagement path and engagement map because there are more layers we can add to it as well to help guide us. Not just ask people to do stuff, but understand what they need to hear at the right time.

I had a conversation with a guy from NextAfter , and one of the things that he talked about was how there aren’t a lot of people who wake up in the morning and say, “How can I give away some of my money?” In the nonprofit space, there are a lot more challenges and friction to overcome when trying to get people to engage with the organization.

Asking for customer feedback doesn’t mean they’re directing your programs or changing your mission. You are just getting a sense of where people are at.

You’re really looking at motivations and the triggers that can occur to transition someone from a one-time donor to a repeat donor to a super donor, and then all the way up through volunteer opportunities, inclusion in the board, or getting them to inspire others to take part in that journey as well.

I talk about this as a map because it helps to know the points along that journey. Once you know those points, whether it’s following you on Facebook, and now you want them to make a small donation or come to an event, then we can take a look at that in-between point and how do you motivate someone to get there? In human-centered design, there are some elements we use that are called jobs to be done. We can look at functional jobs to be done and emotional jobs to be done.

I also like to throw in cultural and what that really is is looking at what do people need at that moment. There are some functional needs. They need to be asked, they need information. They might need some statistics that show the motivation, but they also have some emotional needs like being a bigger part of your mission. It might be joining a group of people with a similar passion for something. When we understand those needs and where people are at that point, it’s easier to get them to that next point and guide them there.

I like the idea of being aware of where people sit in their journey and understanding what the kind of typical next step might be so that you can present that at the opportune moment. Are you recommending nonprofits to engage with any tools that can help them track this, or what’s your approach to getting people to understand what their stakeholder’s journey might be?

I have a coaching program where I help guide them through this and we work through it together. We pinpoint what they know about their audience. The tricky part is usually once we’ve mapped that out, we realized there’s a big gap somewhere. You can see this a lot in arts organizations that have a lot of events. They run into a point where people are no longer seeing them as a philanthropic organization. They’re getting stuck at that coming to an event point and not moving up that path or that ladder to make a donation.

What we do is we start to talk to those people. Whether it’s work that I do or helping coaching organizations to do this, we look at, “How do you define where those people are, who they are, and talk to them?” It could be through one-on-one interviews or surveys, but trying to figure out where people’s minds are at and what they don’t understand at that point in their journey. It’s getting into those feelings, those emotions, and the functional needs that I mentioned before.

Once you’ve established where someone is in the system, then you make recommendations for the materials that they need to get them to hop up a level. Is that the next phase of your engagement?

Yeah. Typically, once you’ve talked to people, we can also get ideas out in front of people. I’m thinking of a specific example when I mentioned that. An arts organization that was having people getting stuck coming to their events, but not moving forward. One of the things we did with them is we prototyped some messaging. What we’re looking for is messaging that they could say before their events that reminded people of the bigger picture, and what we felt might be right for them at the time given the knowledge of the organization.

We put together a few different messages. One was about the history of the organization. One was more about how the organization fits into the broader world. Another one told a very personal story. I’m now guiding that nonprofit to interview people that fit into that point in their engagement path. Sharing these concepts with people and getting their reactions to them. Not saying, A, B or C is the right one, but hearing what they think when they’re saying those statements, and see if it’s the right motivation to then comment and say, “If you enjoyed this, we’d love to have you support the rest of what we do with a small donation.” Also, make sure that the reactions people are having feel like they’re going to lead people up to that.

It’s interesting and that’s data that can be pulled and essentially a list where you could pull out people who have been to an event but didn’t donate, and know that those people are at least potentially right in that sweet spot for a specific ask. You mentioned this in a LinkedIn post in terms of testing. I think that’s one of the places where most businesses, not just those in the nonprofit world, have a real opportunity that gets missed by not facilitating either A/B testing or some kind of testing where they’re seeing what works best and improving upon that messaging.

It feels like a missed opportunity. I can understand because I come from the for-profit world and people spend a lot of money on consumer testing. It can be very time-consuming, but what I love about just having a conversation with somebody or even new technology where you can do ABC testing and some easy to do surveys, you can do it affordably. It doesn’t have to be a big thorough deal to get some feedback. What I look for is how can we find some quicker, more nimble methods that allow nonprofits to work it into their work so that they’re not doing things the wrong way, and then find out they spent a bunch of money that way versus, spending a little bit of time ahead of it and figuring out the way that’s going to work.

What are the mechanisms that you recommend for nonprofits? Most nonprofits are very cost-sensitive. What are some of the methodologies that you employ to help get that data, but keep the costs down?

As I said, a phone call and asking the right questions is something that a lot of nonprofits are already doing, except for the asking the right questions part. Going in, knowing what you want to know, and making sure you’re asking a lot of why’s for people is time-consuming but affordable. It doesn’t need to be everybody. You can do phone calls with a small number of people and start to get a pulse on what’s happening in people’s minds.

Using surveys like SurveyMonkey , you can put together very short questionnaires that you could put in your email blast or even pop into social media. In the same regard, asking questions on social media and getting people to respond just to one thing at a time. Surveys don’t have to be 25 questions and ask everyone’s demographics each time, but sometimes it can just be, “What did you remember most about our virtual program last week?”

Those kinds of things can help you get a sense of what caught people’s attention. If you’re curious about someone’s response, pull them out and say, “Do you mind if we had a ten-minute conversation so I could ask you more about that?” People love to give feedback. I was in the same line when I was looking for some of those statistics. I found a statistic that said 77% of brands are viewed more favorably if they invite customer feedback. That is for-profit but it is a great way to connect with your audiences. Ask for feedback. It doesn’t mean they’re directing your programs or changing your mission. You’re getting a sense of where people are at.

What I love about that and this is part of the way that we talk about marketing, is it’s just relationship building. Whenever you are in a relationship, usually the stronger relationships are two-way in terms of there’s a conversation that’s going on, questions are being asked, and there’s feedback. There’s genuine concern for and interest in what’s being said. People tend to think of marketing as, “This is where you get up on the soapbox and you start shouting your message.”

What’s neat about even just the survey piece, in general, is the first thing is it’s another touchpoint. If you think about relationships as interactions over time, that’s another interaction that you’ve added to that list. You’re building that relationship, and then it’s even strengthened further by the fact that you’re hopefully genuinely interested in somebody’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions about your organization, an event that you just had, or what have you. Asking those questions can go a very long way to reinforcing this relationship that you’re trying to create with that particular constituent.

That’s a great way to put it. It reminded me. I led a conversation about what is your audience thinking. We were talking about different ways you can listen to your audience and gather that feedback. I asked the group if they could reach into their customer’s brains and know anything they could about the organization. What would they want to know? I was shocked, but it stumped people. They didn’t know what they wanted to know about their audience or what to hear from them.

It did make me realize that we’re informing our audience. We’re inviting them to things or letting them know about things, but that engagement isn’t always looked at as that two-way street. What do people not only want to hear but what do they need to hear? People don’t just wake up and want to donate to an organization. They need to know what’s needed. They need some information to back that up and they also need some help getting there.

It’s not the first thing on their mind. They still have to get their kids to school, eat dinner, and do their own expertise in the work that they do. It’s sometimes hard to think about it as a two-way street, but it’s helpful. I say that because I think sometimes nonprofits feel like if they ask for feedback, it’s going to shift or change their work, or they’ll have to not do the work in the way that they think it is important.

How I look at it is you’re just getting a pulse for your audience and figuring out what they still need to know. You’re realizing they might not get all the nuts and bolts of the work that you do, how you’re going to local elected officials and convincing them to build more parks or whatever it might be. They don’t get all the intricacies of that so you have to hear where they’re at and their understanding of it. Also, give them that little bit of information so they can understand it more.

There’s a fear component to this that it’s almost ingrained in us as people is we don’t want to rock the boat necessarily. If we’re out there asking people’s opinions, then there’s this potential that it could disrupt that boat a little bit. In actuality, if we come at things from a position of authenticity, vulnerability, and trust, then we get that back and it’s not something that we have to be afraid of that is going to somehow disrupt this relationship that we’ve built. Actually, it has the ability to strengthen that.

Clear and effective communication leads to better understanding. It saves everyone from getting into conflicts when discussing controversial topics.

You need to know how people are perceiving your work. I was talking to someone about the term greenhouse gases. This person is a scientist who was very used to using that word with other scientists, He started to realize that in certain situations he was in and trying to advocate to the general public about the work they were doing, is that some people immediately had a negative connotation of that word because of what they heard on the news or in politics. To take a step back and talk about what that means, the long-term effects and rising heat or more storms. Talking about that first and then mentioning that those were greenhouse gases. It helped lead the person to better understand his work in a way that didn’t immediately get into that controversy.

It’s funny how language can get politicized and completely innocuous terms can become very polarizing. I love getting back to this idea of testing. You can try things against your list where even if you just split test a headline, you can see if there’s a measurable difference in the way that people react to that. You can do that in a non-destructive way where you get happy with either one. You can even test a fraction of your audience if you have a big enough sample size and get data out of it that’s relevant.

It’s a great way of doing things. Going back to your discussion about fear, it’s tough for nonprofits because they do have so much funding that comes from sources that are keeping track. I think there is a lot of fear around being very careful with funding and money. I feel like sometimes testing in the nonprofit world can be viewed as potential for error or pretentious to make mistakes. If you sit down and look at it, if you don’t test, you could make a big mistake. If you can do these smaller tests, it certainly doesn’t exempt you from mistakes but you make less of them and make more impact and change.

That’s what it’s all about. It’s expanding that mission. Let’s say you have a landing page for donations and that’s converting at 10%. You can then come up with a new concept and push some percentage of your traffic to the new concept. You’re still going to theoretically convert at 10% on the original concept, but if that new one converts at 15%, now you want to put all your traffic towards the new one. You didn’t have that idea even prior to that.

What’s so great about digital media and digital marketing is that we can make those changes and change things back immediately without a lot of costs associated with making those small adjustments. I would encourage nonprofits and everyone out there to be aware of that opportunity and be able to run a test even for a few days. If you have enough traffic and impressions, then you should be able to get some kind of science-based data out of it that helps you grow and move in the right direction.

It’s good to do that with things that you do more frequently, like asking for donations versus maybe testing your big gala or a Giving Tuesday campaign. You can use that information when you do those bigger events to figure out what it was about that messaging that did work and apply that to everything that you do.

2020 has been particularly challenging for nonprofits. What are some of the things you’ve seen, the changes that people have made that have worked well?

2020 offered a lot of opportunities to reach out to people because there was such a loss of connection. Nonprofits are changing their events around and a lot of in-person interactions were gone. I saw some great things were just even doing some check-in calls with their audience, making sure they’re okay, and getting a sense of what’s on their mind. Because we’re all in the same ocean but on different ships, having these very different journeys during the pandemic. I have a child at home.

My life has been turned around in a very different way than my friends without kids. They’ve got to fill all their time. I say to do some phone calls and check-ins. Seeing how different people’s concerns have shifted over the pandemic. I also coach an organization that did a mailing campaign. They had an older audience and a lot of them were not able to shift to the virtual programming that they were doing.

They reached out by old-fashioned mail and put a mailer out that had a questionnaire that people could send back. It was an easy checklist. Like, “Do you want us to give you a call? Do you want to lay low until next year?” It’s like a what do you need from us checklist, along with a little blank space for people to comment. That was a nice way for them to connect with people that otherwise they probably still wouldn’t have heard from. Thinking and going outside of your normal ways of communication helped in the last year.

That was a great understanding of the audience where that organization that you just mentioned had an audience that was perhaps a little less tech-savvy and digitally connected, to be able to recognize that there was an opportunity here to reach them in a completely different way. Going back to some kind of older style of communication that was going to work well for the audience. Keeping one’s mind on the audience is super important.

We tend to get in our own little space, our bubbles, and think, “This is the most economical or this is the way that I would want to be reached.” It’s important to take a step back and remember that we may not be our own ideal stakeholders. We may fall outside of the ways that those people would like to be engaged with.

I see that a lot. People might’ve read some statistics and assumed that no one over 65 is on Facebook or using email and that’s not true. It’s less of a percentage. To understand where your audience is is important. I think the idea of switching up the communication helps keep people out of a rut. Everyone at some point is going to get too many emails. How do you look at reaching out to people in a different way? It’s this mix of like, “What are your audience’s habits, but also how do you keep it fresh so that you stand out in their sea of communication from others?”

I love that idea, that concept of keeping it fresh because I have found that not just recently, but over the last year, people have started to get Zoom fatigue. I’ve started going back to regular phone calls, which is essentially the same thing, except for maybe you can wander around a little bit more. At least in my mind, it is a lot more refreshing just to have something a little bit different so I’m not stuck in a single spot. I can have a little bit of freedom that perhaps that new great technology doesn’t afford.

Sometimes when we run out of ideas, we can go back to the old ones.

We can go back to what worked before.

Just keep switching it around.

What kinds of nonprofits do you work with typically? Do you have a certain sector of the nonprofit space that you’d like to work with or a size? What’s your jam?

I tend to work with smaller nonprofits. I’m definitely a lover of underdogs and helping elevate them into the minds of people, what their work is. Because of the work that I do, I tend to focus on organizations that are trying to engage the general public. They might not exclusively work with the general public, but it tends to be museums, arts and culture, advocacy work, and people that are fighting for causes that need volunteers, advocates, and support from a wider audience.

That sounds like a lot of fun. A lot of those types of organizations have been challenged in the last year, particularly the in-person entities like museums.

Museums have had a lot of difficulties, but I’ve seen some great work through programming and Twitter campaigns where they have done a great job of advocating for people. It’s still a big upward struggle for visitor-based organizations. 2021 is going to be an interesting time for them because they do have to bridge the virtual audience that might be different from who they’ve engaged in the past. How do they keep them engaged, but then also, bring back the “old audience” that loves to visit? Now, I’ve been guiding nonprofits to think more about a dual path and how can they figure out how to move both of those groups forward and simplify it as much as possible so it’s not double the work.

Yeah, it’s interesting. I was trying to come up with some ideas around museums. There are very few things that will replace that experience of being in front of a famous beautiful painting, sculpture, car, or whatever kind of museum you like to go to. It’d be interesting to see how to scale and create opportunities for virtual tours that then once you’ve created that material once, you could scale that.

If non-profits avoid doing smaller tests, they are more prone to committing mistakes. Do them more often, save yourself from errors, and make more impact.

You could do a timed walkthrough of the museum to hit very specific parts of that museum that somebody wanted to tour, and then leverage that material that you created for sort of a one-off that you could then just create this reservoir of virtual tours of the museum in some fashion. It’s something that popped into my mind that might be an opportunity for those types of nonprofits to be able to get people re-engaged.

What I’ve found so cool is that now there are fewer limitations in the virtual idea, the virtual world. You can do behind-the-scenes tours that you would never get in person or get the actual scientists that worked on these fossils to tell you about them. I think there are some cool opportunities and new experiences that people can have. The Field Museum is here in Chicago and they had Jane Goodall come to one of their virtual fundraisers. I thought, “How cool is that?” You never get to see her in person but to have that accessibility of virtual format.

When I think about an engagement path for these new virtual audiences that organizations have, the new frontier is going to be, “How do you engage them beyond the events and the tours? What’s that next level, and do you start to have virtual advisory boards or virtual dinners with larger donations?” Ways that those same people can still go through that higher engagement process without having to fly out to meet you, and open yourself up to more people who are unable to come to or they’re not physically able to meet you.

There are certainly a lot of opportunities that have been opened up by everybody being forced into this virtual space. Some of the creativity that we’ve seen over the past year or so in terms of thinking out of the box like, “It’d be fantastic to be able to have dinner with Jane Goodall sitting in a room together, but we can’t do that right now. In the absence of that, we can share that kind of experience. We can create that in a different way.”

It’s cool to have the opportunity to brainstorm some new ways of interacting. I certainly think that it doesn’t replace that in-person that most of us are missing but it does open up some additional opportunities. In fact, there may be people who don’t enjoy the in-person but would engage with a virtual type that was scalable in that fashion.

I must say with 2 feet of snow outside and single-digit temperatures, there are some virtual elements that I appreciate. It will be interesting to see as in-person things come back. The virtual elements don’t replace in-person, but in the last year, there hasn’t been an in-person competition. There are no other things that people can go to that are more engaging. It’ll be interesting to see and be thinking through as you do virtual events over the next year is when are you going to start competing with in-person events? Weighing what audience is appreciating the virtual event because they’re unable to attend an in-person event versus how many people are going to prefer that in-person event exclusively.

I think that those two things can certainly live together. It’s going to be interesting to think about the music industry as an example of an industry that has been hit pretty hard given that you can’t have concerts. They’ve done some interesting things in the virtual space. Certainly, we want to bring people back into clubs and venues to watch live music again. The fact that they’ve been creative and have managed to make interesting experiences happen can bring people from all over the world into these events, as opposed to people who happen to be in Chicago on a specific day or can get to Chicago on a specific day to see a show. It opens up that audience a lot broader.

It’s interesting that you bring music. My husband is a musician so we’ve definitely lamented a lot on the music industry over the past year. It makes me think, “When is anyone going to be comfortable being sweaty and in a room full of people even once it’s safe?” Those complex questions like, “What do I do when I know there are these good and bad things about virtual and in-person?”

This is where you’re listening to your audience and knowing who your audience is, especially the ones that will most help you reach your goals because I think it is really easy to say that your audience is everybody. Anyone is able to care about the work that you do, but ultimately if you don’t figure out who most supports your organization and how you recognize them, it will be very hard to get their opinion and understand where they are at so you can make those important decisions.

A great topic for discussion is the idea of differentiation and specification. You don’t want to alienate people, but you also want to become as attractive as possible to those people that are going to be most excited about what you’re doing. Many organizations try and cast a wide net. There’s an interesting exercise that you can run on Facebook where you do get your ad to a place good enough. You then cast your net widely and leverage the data that comes out of that to see who responded to that specific messaging.

One of the things that’s nice about that is it is data collection that enables you to tease out who that ideal audience was for that particular message. You can then spend more on going after that ideal audience. You can take that approach and flip it on its head, but at the end of the day, it’s all about figuring out who is that ideal stakeholder for your organization, and making sure that you’re getting in front of them with the right message at the right time so that you can expand your mission.

I don’t know what it is about human nature, but I feel like it’s one of the hardest things for us to do. I have difficulty with it as well as how do we not try to focus on everybody. How do we not try to reach everybody? It does feel like you’re leaving people out. I posted about this recently where I was using the analogy of a puzzle. I had this very complicated puzzle that I was doing. It was 2,000 pieces so that’s above my level. It was hard. It was this landscape and the way I got through it was I started to sort out the pieces. I put things that looked like the sky in one bucket and then things that looked like the ground in another bucket.

It wasn’t until I did it that I could start to see, “That pink is slightly different than this pink in the sky.” I could sort those pieces and then see the differences between them. This analogy for me is that the more you were able to focus, the more things you see within that group. I think the same about an audience is if you can start to define a group, and I don’t like the idea of defining by age or ZIP code or some of the demographics that we typically use, but defining people by what makes sense for your organization.

It might be people who come to certain types of programs or people that donate over a certain amount and separate people by their behaviors. You can take a look at that group and talk to them, gather feedback from that group, and get to know the intricacies in that group because everyone’s an individual and we separate into it. What you’re trying to do is get people into enough separation so that they’re getting the information they want and need to care more about your organization.

I think that the fear is missing out. “This person is willing to engage with me or this audience might be interested in what I have to say.” There’s a fear of missing out, but if you think about your existing stakeholder base, you have donors, volunteers, and people who go to events, etc. Let’s say you attach a dollar figure to each email that you have to send out. Wouldn’t you like to segment that audience to send emails specifically to the event-type people, if you were having an event?

If you have a finite budget and are wanting to make that spend go as far as possible, as opposed to spending more on the whole list, or perhaps getting the wrong email into the wrong person’s hands. That’s what that differentiation piece is all about, trying to figure out ways, common motivations, and interests that you can then fine-tune that message to perform as well as it possibly can for that specific audience.

For those that are afraid of not sending that to everybody, I tend to advise, “You can send it to everybody, but make sure it’s targeted to some group within there.” I use the example of if you think about the last pair of shoes you bought, no one said, “These are great shoes.” They either talked about how rugged, stylish, and comfy they are or how easily you can wash them. There was something about it that caught your eye. If you try to message everybody, it’s going to be ignored by everybody. If you’re going to send out that email about your event to everybody, make sure at least one group is targeted there to tell them about how awesome the guest list is for this event or the topics you’re going to talk about that they’re going to care most about.

I love that approach. It’s like creating a pair of shoes that’s going to work for everybody. At some point, they’re going to be so bland and uncomfortable for everyone because somebody has flat feet and somebody has wide feet. All of a sudden your shoe is essentially a bucket and no one wants to wear that.

It’s like the one size all approach. It’s not how it works.

I love that idea.

In talking about this too, I had an example I wanted to share for a museum that I worked for. They wanted to understand their most passionate supporters and how people have got to be there. It was interesting. This organization had gone through a lot of growth the year before I interviewed people. They were growing leaps and bounds with new members. As I talked to these stronger supporters, we started to realize that they felt like the organization was veering from its mission. That they weren’t authentic anymore and they weren’t doing things the way they used to be done.

It wasn’t true. This organization had great research going on, traveling the world and sharing their knowledge. Because everyone was getting the same information and it was being targeted to this new audience that was more excited about the Valentine Chocolate Event, the things that were for kids, and these ideas that grab new people in, this more engaged audience felt left out.

The more you can focus, the more things you see.

That is an example of why you can’t just message to everybody because then if you take these people who had been involved with your organization for 15, 20 years and all of a sudden they’re feeling left out, that is such an opportunity to separate that group and start messaging them with, “Look at this research we’re doing. Look at the impact we’re making in Europe and Africa,” and some cool stuff. You have a group that cares about that and you get to share it but the wider audience would totally be over their heads. It helps to figure out where those lines are drawn so that you can get people the information they need to keep carrying.

I think that’s a sound insight. It’s not that you have to be excluded, but you’re just trying to bring those people who are passionate about a certain thing. You give them something to continue to be passionate about. It’s a good way of approaching it.

People are complicated, but there are those ways we can start to understand them and help them along the journey.

How can people find out more about you or get connected with you if they’re interested in some nonprofit coaching or they have a little bit of a lackluster audience that they want to engage?

They can always go to teenyBIG.com and on the bottom part of my homepage, I have an assessment tool where you can test and see how well you are guiding your audience and get a sense of the methods and things that you’re using, like where you stand. Through that, I have some different resources that people can access in order to better understand their audience.

I encourage everyone to go check it out and see how they fall in the continuum of guiding their audience to action. I also love to end my shows with the idea of action. If you were to have people who’ve read this take some kind of action after reading, what would you have them do?

I like to ask people to think about their audience engagement as a path. We’ve been talking about that this whole time, but when you look at your actual behaviors, a lot of times, nonprofits will treat engagement as an interaction, a single point. I would love for you to look, at each interaction point, what do you want someone to do next? Think about how you can guide them there because then you’ll start to see it as a journey and allow people to move up that mountain, up that ladder towards the goals that you want them to achieve.

That’s a great thing for people to consider, and it is a journey. Even at the end of that, after they’ve taken that action that you’re trying to guide them towards, there’s an opportunity to give them the next place to go. We can always keep our audiences better engaged and I love your approach to that.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being on the show, Emily. I had a great time talking with you and learning more about your approach and hearing how things are going.

It was great to talk to you and hear your ideas. I had a great time.

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There you have it. It’s another great episode of the show. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. You can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you’re there, you can get your Purpose-Driven Marketing Score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you’d like to read back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That’s it. I’ll be back next time for another great episode of the show.

Important Links

About Emily Taylor

Emily Taylor, the principal of teenyBIG, is an expert listener who is passionate about helping nonprofits find better ways to engage the people who matter to them. She guides teams in stepping outside of their day-to-day work in order to create stronger connections with their audiences, turning lackluster followers into enthusiastic supporters.

Emily steers organizations to evaluate the experience of their end-user through strategic listening and engagement mapping. She also designs and facilitates workshops to help teams understand and expand the user experience and offers coaching packages to further guide that process.

Emily’s approach in this area is based on her background as an Executive Director, consulting for a diverse range of nonprofit clients, and audience research using human-centered design. In the private and nonprofit sectors, she has helped teams better understand what makes their audience act on everything from healthcare to sustainability advocacy to the arts. She has a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, serves on the Nonprofit Relations Committee at the Association of Consultants to Nonprofits, and is a community member of her local Chicago Public School.

Episode 39: Develop Your Organization’s Culture To Further Your Mission With The Apollo Foundation

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 08:02:08 GMT

Culture is an important ingredient in every business—and it’s an area that sometimes gets overlooked in the nonprofit space. After all, nonprofits are steeped in the culture of philanthropy and altruism, right?

There’s more to creating a great culture than just assuming all of your stakeholders will be aligned because you give back.

Today’s show features a team of young go-getters from the Apollo Foundation. This group of high schoolers saw an opportunity to help bring education to those in need around the world. So they founded their organization to improve access to STEM curricula in under-developed and economically disadvantaged areas.

Our discussion covered a wide range of topics. Then we narrowed our focus later in the show to discuss ways to develop a culture for your organization, in order to ensure that your team is all driving toward the same mission.

Values, vision, and mission are key ingredients for every organization, and taking the time to discuss and develop these foundational elements can make or break your business.

Action Ask : Don’t let something hold you backfrom doing what you think is right

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Listen to the podcast here

Something that we noticed was that we were focusing on STEM education. We realized that these children didn’t have the background to learn STEM and learn these difficult concepts. We tracked back and decided to focus on the curriculum in general and the more basic levels where we could try to help them with English, Math, and Science that were necessary to succeed in a STEM career.

What we tried to do was build a variety of curriculums. We succeeded by getting other people to make them as well. We were able to provide them with enough information and a base for their success in the future. What we also were able to do was we were able to provide the children in India with the Bihar Project, specifically the Roshni Project, where we were able to give them this curriculum and then eventually build their foundation into a more STEM-based curriculum.

At what ages are you folks starting your engagement? Are these grade-schoolers? Are they older than that? Where do you folks plugin?

It’s mostly grade-schoolers.

Is grade school the primary initial focus?

Yes, but we also noticed that a lot of the older kids didn’t have the same foundation or things that needed to succeed. We didn’t do it based on age but based on skill level because that’s something we noticed that everyone was lacking certain things. We started with people at certain concepts rather than the age groups.

How long have you folks been doing this?

For a few years now.

What are some of the successes that you’ve seen to date? Where are you seeing good traction? You’re getting some great traction because you’re expanding into different parts of the world. Tell me a few of the success stories.

I can kick it off with one. One thing that we would consider a success is the connections that we’ve gotten out of this organization. That’s something that’s not talked about too much. As high schoolers, we consider being able to connect with not only other children in need but also people other than us that are helping, be it the local or global communities. One of the successes is that we’re allowed to connect with them and reach out to them for any advice we need or general things such as that.

You folks started this a few years ago in your freshman year. Are you all seniors now?

We’re juniors, and Ishan is a sophomore now.

What are the biggest challenges that you guys are facing? Is it getting donors? Is it bringing in people to help as mentors in the program? What are the biggest challenges that you see with the program now?

At this point, getting donors is a pretty good steady basis for getting some money but what we’re having trouble with is securing sponsorships because many companies are having trouble, especially during the pandemic. They don’t have much resources to spend on nonprofits. That’s essentially the main point we’re struggling with, but donation-wise, we’re not struggling in that aspect.

Tell me a little bit about your sponsorships. What types of people are you trying to engage?

As a STEM-based organization where we try to help specifically improve STEM education, we try to get sponsorships and help from these companies that focus on software or that can also act as mentors. Not only funds. We sponsored with Bentley Partnerships , which is a large software company, which proved to be beneficial for us. They are hosting a hackathon that was international and had many people attending.

Develop Your Organization’s Culture To Further Your Mission With The Apollo Foundation

My guests in this episode are from the Apollo Foundation . They have this cool organization that’s touching lives worldwide and helping to change the way that education is handled for the underprivileged around the world. This is a group of great go-getter high school kids who decided to create this foundation. One of the things that we talked about was the culture in the organization and how to make sure that everybody is aligned and all driving toward that North Star. It was a conversation that went all over the place in terms of topics. These guys are doing some neat stuff. I’m excited for you to be able to read it, and I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

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How are you doing?

Good.

Great.

We have the team from the Apollo Foundation on the show. Where are you guys all calling in from?

West Windsor, New Jersey.

I’ll let you kick it off with a little bit of history and information about the Apollo Foundation. I’m excited to learn a little bit more about what you’re doing. It sounds like you’re doing some cool things to help people in the Middle East.

This was in our freshman year. Ishan, who started this, also started this in his freshman year, but he came in one year later. We started this, and Ishan came up with this project called the Roshni Project , which is situated in Bihar, India. This focuses on providing education for underprivileged students in that area. That is the first project we started off with. We grew from there, from studying to working with other foundations and different parts of the world.

To preface, our mission is generally the fund to provide accessible education to underprivileged schools and students in rural communities around the world that are suffering from poverty. The one we started with is the Roshni Foundation. It’s called the Roshni Learning Center in Bihar, India. It’s a school with two branches, and they have around 150 students. What we do is provide curriculum material and funds generally to make sure the environment of education is proper for them to learn.

Is it mostly in STEM or across all?

At first, we were doing general subjects, but we also are doing a project that focused on STEM and robotics, and Ishan can talk more about that.

It’s also worth mentioning that we did start with the Roshni Project. As you said, we have other initiatives in the Middle East, which is our Yemen initiative. We’ve also created initiatives in Cameroon and East Africa through the Atlantic Foundation. I’m going to let Aarush explain more about the robotics side of it.

I wanted to preface quickly and talk a bit more about the process because it’s important to shed light upon that. The way we approached this is that we all had this idea that we wanted to give back to people who don’t necessarily have the same educational opportunities and people who don’t have equal access to resources for education. Where the process comes in is not only do we want to provide for these people in need, but we also want to bring our local community and some other pupil from different chapters. We want to bring these people in and help with this project.

Our foundation has three large main rings. We have things for supporting these children in schools directly. This comes in the form of funding and making sure that they have adequate resources and whatever is necessary for them. We also have general things for education, so developing curriculum and making sure that they have the resources, especially if it’s in their native language. We make sure that they can understand all that.

Lastly, we have something where we have set up a communication platform for different chapters that we have. Since this is an organization, we have different people working from different parts of the world. We have people ranging from different states in the US and places in India. It’s cool to be able to connect with different people. That is how we hone in on making sure that we’re giving back to these people.

To talk one quick thing about their advice before I hand this off to Abhi, we also want to make sure that we’re developing their STEM skills a little as well. Not only are we taking the approach of simple education and making sure that they’re aware of different concepts and subjects. We also want to make it a bit more hands-on where they have some robotics kits that they can play along with and develop skills that they wouldn’t be able to before.

Check-in on the people close to you because they appreciate you more than you think. Go for whatever you’re passionate about.

Have you managed to put together some virtual events?

It’s been hard with the situation we have with the pandemic. We’ve been trying to work hard on hosting certain events. As Abhi mentioned, one of them was the hackathon that we hosted. It was a new experience for us being able to get some people participating and setting up this event as a whole. In the future, we’re planning to do some more events. It can be along the lines of a hackathon. We’re also planning to do some other events and competitions with some of the other branches that we have.

Tell me a little more about the types of sponsors you’re looking for. It sounds like software companies and robotics. What’s your strategy around bringing new sponsors on?

A core tenet in our search to find sponsors is finding sponsors that reflect our interests. That reflects the education we are trying to provide to the students we’re supporting. Since we do have a bit of a greater emphasis on STEM and robotics curriculums, we are accepting of all types of sponsors, but the sponsors that are most interested in working with us are usually ones that are software companies and ones that do their work in the STEM fields.

What’s your approach to getting in front of people? Do you have a fantasy target list that you’ve put together in terms of like, “If we could get these five people on board, we’d be thrilled to death?” What’s your process?

It’s not a fantasy list. It’s more of us, cold emailing and cold calling tech companies near us. For example, there’s one that we’re looking towards is LSInextgen technologies. The CEO is good friends with Barack Obama. What we’re trying to do is gain a connection with the CEO and try to use his connections to get on a bigger platform and speak about our foundation. That publicity helps our foundation.

We’re also looking at companies that have helped FIRST Robotics in the past. FIRST Robotics is an organization that Aarush was talking about before we partnered with FIRST Robotics teams, who compete in competitions across the US and other countries as well. We’re looking at companies who are sponsoring them and who could also sponsor our cause. Another big thing that’s helping us is our volunteering platforms. Rian can talk about that in terms of fundraising in every department.

We’ve constructed three volunteering departments as part of the Apollo Foundation to manage our volunteers. We have our Fundraising Department, General Outreach Department, and Operations Department. With fundraising, the main focus is on fundraising and trying to find and create events that we could host to bring in more money for our initiatives.

It’s like a creative base for any of the major activities. The hackathon was a product of the fundraising department that we helped create through that. Like the other departments, the Public Relations Department is mainly based on social media and trying to get our name out there in terms of other aspects, such as newspapers, public publications, or partnering with the company. We also did do a partnership with Bentley too. They would be publicizing us as well.

How’s that going?

We’re keeping up our social media accounts. It’s the same thing with sponsorships. It’s a little bit more difficult to find companies that are willing to publicize this during the pandemic, but we are working through it. We do have some exciting projects in store for that. The operations department is mainly based on creating the curriculums we provide for the initiatives we host in India, Africa, and the Middle East. We create worksheets and instructional videos in that department, and we have volunteers. We recruit our volunteers into these departments. The work of our volunteers is mainly focused on and directed into the scope of each department.

You are using volunteers to fuel the heavy lifting in each of these divisions within your organization.

We’re starting to transition into that. In the beginning, we didn’t have a lot of volunteers. Ishan was Head of Operations. I was Head of Public Relations. We try to do it our own way and get the job done in terms of that when we don’t have volunteers. Now, we are trying to direct it into something more volunteer-based. We can supervise the process going forward.

Are you trying to tap other high school kids to do the volunteer work? Are you looking for older people? What’s the volunteer base look like?

Mostly, we haven’t tapped into the base of getting older people to hop on volunteering. Any volunteers are welcome, but our main direction towards getting volunteers has been a high school and middle school students.

Tell me a little bit about your outreach. I know you’re on LinkedIn because that’s where I met all of you. Where else are you active in terms of social media?

I can plug our Instagram. It’s @ApolloFDN . You can follow us there. We do a post related to any events that we’re hosting or new partnerships that we acquire. We also manage our Facebook and Twitter with the same handle, @ApolloFDN . You can check us out there. We post more on Instagram, but we do post any major announcements or partnerships on there as well.

As a preface, there are also some other projects we do other than the Roshni Project. There’s also the Lewa Conservancy Project . Like Rian mentioned before, we partnered with the Asante Africa Foundation . We’re in talks with the CEO. Her name is Erna Grasz. She’s into what we do in terms of STEM education and how we can help their initiatives. They have many initiatives and regional coordinators in multiple countries in East Africa. The one that we’re mainly focusing on is Kenya.

They’re helping the Lewa Conservancy Project. It’s essentially a wildlife conservancy project. What they do is, once a month, they go around a vehicle with suitcases and handle suitcases out to underprivileged students in schools that they sponsor. It’s a wildlife conservancy project, but they also sponsor schools around them.

It’s an educational program trying to get kids to understand wildlife conservancy through education. Is there a tie-in?

It’s not that much of a tie-in. There are some people from the Asante Africa Foundation who started this wildlife conservancy project, but they’re also sponsoring schools on them in those rural areas. What they do is those suitcases have textbooks in them ranging from a subject like Math, Economics and stuff like that. What they do is hand out those suitcases. It’s essentially a library on wheels, is what they call it. That’s a cool thing. They also help schools and places like Uganda, which we’re also looking to reach out to. Mainly, our focus is on this Lewa Conservancy Project and helping them incorporate STEM.

You’re trying to come in and help them with curricula. That’s where the biggest tie-in happens to your foundation.

There’s also another one in a project in Cameroon. The school is called St. Joseph Foundation School. We have a regional director there who’s part of our organization and also heading the operations at Cameroon itself. It’s in Yaoundé, Cameroon, the capital. Essentially, it’s an underprivileged school with around 150 to 200 students.

They are unlike Roshni and the Lewa Conservancy Project. They are around 16 to 18 years old. They’re older and around our age. What we’re doing is also providing monetary donations to them so that we can make sure the building’s infrastructure is sustainable and effective for all these students. Our regional director and some other teachers coordinate that school. They’re preparing the older students for GRE exams as well.

You folks are doing a lot, and it’s inspiring to talk with some younger people who are getting after it. You’re all over the world. You’re doing a ton of things. Let’s step back to the question of engaging with potential partners and sponsors. You are doing a lot of cold emails and cold calling. What’s that process look like? Are you pitching immediately? Are you trying to build relationships? How are you approaching that acquisition?

Abhi, you can piggyback off me for this as well. The general process for connecting with either cold calls and cold emails is we generally try to make use of our personal connections a lot since we have a lot of people in our foundation. We try to branch off to other connections that we have on different social media applications or platforms such as LinkedIn. It’s the most commonly used one for us. Based on that, we can connect with these people and sponsors. That’s the general process for what it looks like. It is making use of personal connections first, then branching out to the external domain, which is what we call it. Abhi, if you want to talk more about this.

It’s more on a small scale, specifically for our specific headquarters of Apollo Foundation. We also try to get our volunteers to call, email, and cold call like, “We were wondering if we could have a call with you and discuss further ideas or talk specifically about getting sponsorships and what we do.”

It’s per se inefficient, but we have had some success rate with it. That’s the only way we know how to do it and continue to do it that way. We are looking to hopefully expand and find ways to increase our efficiency in getting sponsorships. Especially in this time, people don’t want to sponsor when they are struggling in their own businesses.

It’s an interesting time. We work a lot in the nonprofit space, as you might imagine. We’ve seen both sides of it in terms of the willingness for people to come on and support a nonprofit organization and some of the challenges associated with that as well. This is anecdotal. One of the things that we have seen is some nonprofits have pretty good success with getting a lot more engagement on a smaller level. People want to participate, but they aren’t participating in the multi 5-figure or 6-figure donation level or sponsorship level.

That provides a couple of opportunities. The first one is in this list-building phase. What would be interesting for you to consider is instead of going for the, “Would you like to be a sponsor,” type of ask in those initial conversations, slow that down and come at this from the idea that relationships are what you’re trying to build. Relationships are built by having lots of interactions over a period of time.

When you meet a new friend, a lot of times, people click immediately, and away you go and your best buddies. Most of the time, it requires a few interactions. It typically requires seeing them in the hall or meeting them for something after school or seeing them online and then doing that several times. You build a rapport, and you’re establishing that relationship. It’s the same with marketing and building these sponsorship types of engagements.

What I would suggest, which you’re positioned pretty well, given that you folks are all in high school, is coming at it from a position of asking people who have a certain amount of expertise in a domain that fits with what you would like to be in terms of a sponsor. For example, find a bunch of robotics companies, reach out to them, and ask them a domain-specific question about robotics, how to get a career in robotics, things that you wish kids were coming out of high school or college knew about robotics, and start to create and build that relationship from that position of curiosity and intentional authenticity as opposed to jumping immediately to the, “Would you like to be a sponsor?”

There are always a thousand reasons why you shouldn’t do something. Be the one reason why you do start something and the reason that those thousand reasons don’t exist anymore.

That’s this nurturing phase. It’s this first phase of engagement where you’re trying to build that relationship from the ground up, and that will create an opportunity for things to be a lot more strong in the future. When you do have the opportunity to ask them if they might be interested in being a sponsor or having a mentorship capacity with your organization, they’re much more willing to do that because they feel like they know you.

That advice is very important. That’s what we saw with Bentley systems as well. That was one of the first sponsors where we first invited them to our event to show them what we’ve done so far in our progress and connect with them at a more personal level. After which, we asked them for promotional or monetary-based sponsorships. That advice carries too, and it would be much better if we implemented more of that.

It’s great if you can tie in what they’re doing to what you’re doing in terms of giving them something to talk about. This goes for PR as well if you’re looking for earned media, which is where you go out and pitch a story to a newspaper or an online publication. Getting a story that people can wrap their arms around helps a ton when trying to get somebody to even help you with reach. Essentially, the Bentley organization, if you can feed them stuff to use that ties into what they’re doing, it brings your name into the mix that they can then share with their wider social media audience. Smoothing that transition and giving them that runway is effective.

One thing I like about that idea is that it’s very content-based. That’s something that we learned, especially once the pandemic set in. I’ll give you an example. Before, it was around February or March 2020 when COVID was first starting to be a thing. We were planning an in-person hackathon in our local area. We were going to host it at a hotel. It was like one of that relationship-building and the nurturing phase that you were talking about. We were planning on doing that in our local area, partnering with local businesses.

One specific example, Ishan, can correct me if I’m wrong. It was the Crown Plaza Hotel. We were going to host the event. That would have been a great example of something of an organization that we could have partnered with because we had a relationship. We were talking back and forth with one of the representatives at the Crown Plaza Hotel. We were planning on hosting our event there. I would imagine that’s what you mean by building friends and creating the rapport that we need to garner sponsorship and stuff.

The other thing I would add to that is to make sure particularly those relationships that you’re building in terms of the social media impact are aligned with the target audience you’re trying to hit. It would be an amazing thing to mention that hotel in some of your activities, particularly on social in Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Ask yourself whether or not the people who are following them are the people that you necessarily want to get in front of.

That doesn’t mean that general reach isn’t a good idea because there’s a real benefit to that. Know that more specific reach, so getting in front of Sphero or some of these other robotics companies or software development companies that the audience that they’re going to draw is going to be much more aligned with those that you’re trying to hit in terms of bringing volunteers in and perhaps enticing other people to sponsor. It’s going back to that idea of building a list and thinking about who you would like to talk to, then figuring out ways to get in front of those people. Not immediately go for the ask when you get in front of those people, but try to nurture those relationships.

I know Rian is also on this. We were thinking of doing some webinars with one of our projects with the inspired education initiative in Yemen. What they do is help refugees and children who are forced into labor obtain a proper education. The CEO of this organization, the head of this, her name is Nabilah Hizam . We were thinking of doing some webinars in order to speak about our cause. It probably would be a good virtual platform in order to publicize and stuff. Do you have any input on this in terms of publicity and potential donors?

I like the idea of a recorded event and a webinar. That becomes scalable. It’s something that you can create once, and then you can share it over and over again. In theory, there’s a material that comes out of that. That becomes blog posts or more snackable content that you can use on your social media platforms or elsewhere. Webinars can be great. They can also create an opportunity to reuse the material in its entirety as repeat webinars. You can hold another webinar that feels live but maybe isn’t.

Webinars can go a long way there. What I’m wondering is if you don’t consider spinning up a podcast where you try to bring people on and have conversations about STEM, robotics, education challenges in some of these underprivileged areas, and education in general. To me, that might be a good opportunity to be able to have something to give to people as you reach out to them and start to build this library of information that’s accessible to a wider variety of people who may be interested in a certain specific topic, but you are having those conversations on a regular basis and publishing that material in a podcast form.

Your insights are pretty useful, and we’ll try to use them in the long run. I also wanted to add that since we’re talking about publicity. There’s something that happened which is pretty great for our organization. Since we’re a 501(c)(3) organization, we were able to apply for a Google partnership. Essentially, this partnership gives us $10,000 and in-kind donations per month on Google ads, and so far, we’ve gotten quite a lot out of it. We got around 10,000 interactions over the last couple of months.

When you say an interaction, are you building your email list? What’s an interaction look like for you?

These interactions are going to our website, clicking on the Sign-Up page, signing up to become a volunteer, or getting on our newsletter to learn more about anything Apollo-related.

How many people are on your email list now?

On the email list, that’s hard to check, but I can tell you that we’ve had around 156 volunteers signed up through Google. These are volunteers that show their status, and we can see that they are a part of the newsletter. They’re clicking the emails that we send them.

When you say newsletter, are you sending out something that’s a one-to-many newsletter? Are these emails that you send out on a regular basis?

They contain different volunteer opportunities or news about Apollo Foundation, but that’s pretty much its extent.

There are a few things that I would recommend. It’s awesome that you’ve tapped into Google Grants . It’s an amazing program for nonprofits that a lot of them don’t know or don’t know how to get involved with. It’s great to know that you’ve tapped into that program. The first thing I would do is look at the ads you’re running on Google using the Google Grants money you’ve been given. Make sure that you have a landing page on your site that you’re sending that traffic to that’s aligned with what that ad is asking .

If the ad is asking for volunteers, then have a landing page that talks about what it is to be a volunteer and how that person’s time is going to be leveraged to do good in the world in the ways that you bring that greatness to the table. If the ad is more about your, “Join our email list,” go ahead and have a landing page that’s very specific to that ask. Essentially, what you want to create is a great and strong tie-in between what was presented in the ad and what the person receives when they click on that ad. If you’re not doing that, I would highly recommend making sure you do that.

On that landing page, make sure that you optimize that page to tell your value proposition. One of the biggest challenges that nonprofits have is that you can’t necessarily dump people at the top of the funnel and have them go through a few processes, and then you get some activity at the end of that. You’re moving people against gravity. You have to move them uphill. It’s a little bit of a different challenge where there’s friction all along that process.

What you want to do is try to eliminate friction as you’re moving people up that process to make a decision. That friction can be like what I said if there’s a disconnect between the ad they saw and the landing page they get. That’s a friction point that you can reduce by making sure that there’s a good tie-in between those two actions.

Once they’re on the landing page, you can reduce the friction by getting rid of distractions in terms of, are there other things that you’re asking people to do? Are you asking them to donate or look at the leadership team or any of that stuff? If you strip all that stuff away, that reduces friction. It allows people to move up that mountain a lot more effectively until they take that action.

One of the things that you want to do is make sure you tell that value proposition story. Why should people engage with your organization over all of the other opportunities that are out there? Tell that story in a way that places them in the position of the hero. Make them understand why their involvement, whether that be a donation or a volunteer position or coming on as a sponsor. Why doing that with your organization is going to make more of an impact than doing it with any of the other organizations that are doing similar things to what you are up to.

That makes sense because that also ties into contacting robotics and STEM companies who would play that part in terms of us buying those robotics kits for kids in Russia and stuff like that because we can connect to them to what they do.

That’s where relationship building is great. We have people come to us wanting to help us advertise or make an impact. They’ll ask me a question, “Do you want to be known nationwide or locally? Where are you trying to land?” I always start small. I always start with things that enable me to have some connection with people. For example, if I’m trying to run a new campaign. I’m probably going to start here in the Denver or the Colorado area because that’s an immediate differentiation.

It’s an immediate commonality that I have with the people I would be reaching out to. It’s natural for me to say, “My name’s Stu. I have a digital marketing agency called Relish Studio. We’re here in the Colorado area. We also work with nonprofits here in Colorado. Since you’re a Colorado nonprofit, it would be great to have a conversation or connect with you here on LinkedIn or whatever I’m trying to do.”

It’s trying to focus on all of those little things you have in common. For example, if you’ve used somebody’s robotic kit. That’s something that you have in common with them as you’ve used their product. Figure out all those ways. It’s all about reducing friction and creating opportunities to build relationships. Thinking about all those ways where you can get a little bit of a foot in the door goes a long way.

These ideas are great, especially for the long term. After this show, we’re going to go back and try to change our strategy to implement these ideas, especially in our volunteers who do a lot of this small day-to-day stuff for us, the connection wise and stuff. We’re going to try to implement these strategies. They’re helpful.

How often are you mailing out to your email list?

As of now, it’s not so often, but whenever we have an event like we had that hackathon, we would have emails going out almost every week reminding them about it or telling people to reach out to their friends and families to participate in the hackathon. Essentially now, we would send monthly emails talking about what volunteer opportunities there are and what Apollo Foundation is doing at the time.

Have you thought about creating opportunities to share valuable information about your sector in terms of changes in STEM or new technologies that are coming online for kids to learn more effectively in rural areas or things like that? Instead of being so focused on news that’s all about you, try to flip that narrative a little bit and make it informational and value-driven for the audiences you’re engaging with. That might be a way to ensure that your email becomes something that people look forward to and want to engage with.

That makes sense. Would you say we need to change anything in terms of how often we send those emails?

If you have any problem in your community, be the first person to fix those things instead of waiting for someone else to do them.

One of the things that we’ve been doing, and we see this as valuable for nonprofits in general, is creating opportunities to send emails that tell one story. One of the things that newsletters tend to do is they usually tell a variety of different stories. Within that newsletter, there might be 5 or 6 things that you’re talking about or actions that you might ask people to take, whether read more about this initiative or donate or find out about the hackathon coming up in a few weeks. What that does is it creates distractions, so people don’t necessarily know what you want them to do. Either they take an action that you didn’t want them to take, or they tend to ignore those things.

The other thing that a newsletter doesn’t accomplish is creating this feeling and the idea that your email is a one-to-one conversation. Newsletters are typically not written for a specific person. Think about if your mom sends you an email. It’s text-based. It’s about one thing. Maybe it’s about a couple of things depending upon what your mom is trying to talk to you about at that given moment. Ultimately, it feels like a personal email.

The more you can make your emails feel personal and one-to-one, the more effective they become. Create opportunities to make sure that this is called the email envelope. Who is it being sent from? Is it a person, or is it from your organization? If you can make it become from a person in your organization, that can be a lot more effective. If from email address is that person’s email or something that looks like that person’s email address, as opposed to info@ or something like that, that then becomes something where people say, “This is too me.”

Working in the language in the subject line that creates a sense of mystery anchors everything in you. Try to work language into your subject lines that say, “This is for you.” If there’s a way to tie something to date, even if it’s something like, “I have something for you to consider,” that taps into a sense of mystery. It taps into a sense of individuality and personal approach that most emails from organizations don’t. It also creates something timely, so it feels like it was sent from a single person to a single person. Even doing that can increase your email’s open rates and click rates.

Once you get into the body, continue that and try to tie in some emotion and try to do that value proposition that explains to people or helps people have an emotional reaction to and an emotional connection with your organization as opposed to being very dry and asking for specific things. Those are some email tricks that we’ve certainly seen produce some good results.

In terms of these specialized emails, would you suggest doing mail merges or something where we can start with their name and then have their name interlaced throughout the messages that we want to send them?

As long as it feels authentic. One of the things that I would say is to create an email. You can do a mail merge. You can bring in their name on occasion, then read it. Have a test sent to you with your name in there and read it. If it feels too salesy or I’m using your name too much, strip out a couple of them. The litmus test here is when you read that email, does it feel like it came from a person, or does it feel like it came from a mail bot? If it feels like a person, you’re making strides towards improving those. You’ll see them connect a lot more effectively and create the opportunity you’re trying to create with engagement.

We can do a lot more with our emails that would help us seem more human to our audiences. While we’re on the topic of engagement, we had another question about the volunteering aspect of our organization since we’re a nonprofit. There has been trouble in the middle, maybe if there’s a lull between events or something like that, where we might have trouble engaging volunteers or having them be active. Do you have any suggestions on how to keep them interested in our work or have even more volunteers be able to come into our organization?

This is what we would call the inspire phase of the engagement. You’ve got somebody to take action. You’ve got them to raise their hand and say, “I want to do something with this organization,” but maybe you don’t have something for them to do right away. Layering in at least a one-to-one feel, if not actual one-to-one conversations with that audience, can keep them super engaged. What you can do is ask them questions, send them surveys, and keep them feeling like they understand where things are going with your organization and where they are now. Make sure that you are in contact with them on a regular basis. If you got me to raise my hand and say, “Yes, I’d like to volunteer as a mentor for kids in Cameroon,” send them a thank you for your interest and tee up what the expectation should be.

Say, “We’re trying to get things rolling here in the next three months. We’re going to keep you apprised of what’s going on in the meantime,” and give them a way to reach out to you if they have any questions or ideas. Maybe leverage that relationship to ask them if they know anybody else who might be interested. Maybe ask them survey questions about, “Which country would you like for us to go in into next?”

Send them information about the volunteer opportunity they signed up for in terms of, “This is what this is going to look like and what we’re hoping to achieve with this volunteer spot.” Keep in touch. It’s like having a friend that maybe you live in different states and don’t get to see each other very much. Reach out and be willing to listen and give in terms of value back to that relationship.

On the topic of keeping in touch and keeping them engaged, what do you think about biweekly or monthly video calls with volunteers from a specific department?

That would be amazing. It’s like the idea that we talked about briefly in terms of the podcast if you have that bandwidth to do that or have your volunteer team do that. Record that and see what stuff comes out of it because you’ll find any conversation you have is an opportunity for you to learn. It’s an opportunity for the person you’re having a conversation with to learn. If it’s a thoughtful, engaging, authentic conversation, something great usually comes out of it.

I see the potential with that, but there’s one of the problems we have faced in the past, and it’s something that we need to overcome. I have a question about how we’re going to overcome that. Since a lot of our volunteers are high school students or middle school students, I’ve noticed a lot of them do have the attitude that it’s something that they’re checking off on a list of extracurriculars or something like that.

It might seem like a chore, even possibly to them, to have biweekly or monthly video calls, which is not the direction we’re trying to go. We’re trying to create meaningful relationships with our volunteers and incentivize them to carry out their work. Do you have any ideas on how to shift the tone of our relationship with our volunteers or a certain volunteers from being something of a chore to being like a meaningful relationship that they want to engage in?

I do have a couple of ideas. One idea is to vet your volunteers a little bit more. Instead of letting anyone and everyone who checks the volunteer box become a volunteer, have some process, interview, or tasks that are required to become a volunteer. What you’re doing is you’re lifting up the idea of what a volunteer is to the organization and what the volunteer should expect out of their engagement as well as what the organization should expect out of the engagement. Make sure that you create some process by which people go through a series of questions or steps or submit something. Maybe make it a little bit of a roadblock.

Certainly, you’ll reduce the number of volunteers, but your volunteer quality will go up. That group will also be able to make recommendations or introductions to other volunteers that would be of similar quality and have a similar mission in terms of wanting to make the world a better place and not only check a box to get into college.

Vetting them is a good idea. The number of volunteers is also a point of contention, but there has to be a balancing factor between the quality of volunteers and the number of volunteers. That’s something that we’re going to look into and incorporate into how we recruit our volunteers.

It’s a matter of you having 10 great people versus 100 people who weren’t well aligned. One of the things with running a business in an organization like yours is a business, but one of the things to consider is the overall culture. If the volunteer experience for whatever reason, particularly if there are some volunteers that aren’t pulling their weight or are weighing things down, those can have a negative effect on the great volunteers that you have.

It’s building and creating an organizational culture that is inclusive and passionate and comes back down to the idea of core values in terms of what you’re trying to achieve. Let’s consider volunteers as hires. Make sure that when you bring people on, you’re hiring these people who are going to be a positive influence on the overall culture of the organization and lift the whole thing up.

We need to do that in the future because some of our volunteers don’t put in much effort, or they’re only part of the club to be part of the club. I was wondering if you had any advice on specifically trying to filter up these people that we have or trying to ensure that these people are more active?

It’s a little hard to ask people to do things sometimes when they’re doing it for free. If you position it in terms of the impact and the positive benefit you’re trying to bring to the world and want everybody to be on board and enthusiastic, there are some minimum requirements to be a volunteer or to stay at a certain level of volunteer.

Maybe you could have different levels, so people could decide where they wanted to land. They can be a supporter. Supporters are people who get regular emails. They get access to webinars when those happen, and in return, you would love for them to share things about the Apollo Foundation on their social media. It’s a low lift. They get something out of it. You get something out of it, but it’s not a super heavy lift. There’s the next level. Maybe those people are crew volunteers that you can come up with whatever name you have for them.

They might work within a certain department. The expectation might be that they could get a letter of participation from the organization or log volunteer hours and then come up with what those expectations are. You could have crew chiefs, and those people would have a different set of expectations and would get a different set of value out of it.

It’s trying to figure out how to create a structure within the organization that allows people to engage at the level they’re comfortable with. It allows you to create incentives, to boost people up to different levels if they’re doing good work. If you have someone who’s on a crew and they’re killing it, you can say, “We would love for you to be a crew chief. Would you be interested in that?” That way, there are ways to escalate.

To preface, as Rian said before, I know you mentioned departments. We have three major departments the grants in the PR, fundraising, and operations. Operations is helping with the initiatives and making curricula for the projects. Within those departments, we have department guidelines. We have guidelines for each role that people are able to go into. These roles are not leveled based, but as you said, there should be levels. There should be a social media volunteer who is a supporter. It goes all the way up to someone like a department chief. Could you explain more about what the crew chief would do exactly? I was confused on that part.

I’m not familiar with your organization in terms of the ins and outs but what I was envisioning was that there could be a supporter level. It’s a very low-value exchange. They may share some stuff with their networks. They may talk nicely about you guys and get some supporter recognition. If they want to be a volunteer, they could come on. Let’s say they are a volunteer in the PR realm. Maybe to be a volunteer, there’s a requirement of the minimum number of social media posts done every month, or you set minimums.

A chief would be somebody who would be helping to manage those volunteers. That allows you and the core group of guys here who have created the foundation to stay focused on that high-level stuff that brings a lot of value to the organization. It lets you have somebody more in charge of that day-to-day operations stuff that keeps the engine running. They’re putting fuel in the tank, and you’re building the car.

Rian went on to talk to this, but we don’t have roles. What you’re saying is essentially have roles in order for them to stay engaged in stuff and give them some more responsibilities rather than spoonfeeding.

What I’m hearing is that you have a problem with some that maybe aren’t pulling their weight. What that can do is create a poll on the volunteers who are doing great work. If they’re out there trying to get Susie to engage and Susie’s not doing what she’s supposed to be doing, and Laura is out there working her tail off to try and promote the organization, and there’s that visibility into that, then Laura might start to think, “Why am I working so hard on this when someone else isn’t?” One of the things that are a harsh reality but are part of the business world is not everyone’s a great fit. The saying that you hear a lot is, hire slow and fire fast. Sometimes there’s nothing more destructive than a bad apple in the mix.

If you take your time hiring and vetting your volunteer base or even your sponsors, make sure that your sponsors are aligned with your mission. Take that time to vet people and ensure that you’re bringing on the people who are the right fit. If you discover that they’re not the right fit, figure out how to remove them from that bushel as quickly as possible. Hire slow and fire fast is something that is a challenge. It’s no fun. That HR piece is always interesting, but that’s something that if you could take to heart, it will be good for your org.

Would it be efficient to create an HR department in that case?

Eventually, yes. Now, that’s probably a little bit of overkill. It could be housed within ops, but when you get big enough that you’re dealing with needing to bring people on the team, either here in the states or internationally, that HR department is something that you’ll find almost necessary.

The last thing we had in terms of volunteers was how to push out assignments. If not assignments, have them do stuff in their department or role.

Setting expectations early is the first thing I would do in terms of making sure that people understand what they’re volunteering for and setting those expectations. Figure out what the goals are for each of the departments that you’re getting volunteers to be part of. Part of this is that you attend video calls once a month or once every two weeks.

We certainly need you to be there as often as possible with the idea that you can’t miss more than 2 or 6-month periods. It’s teeing up what your needs are for each of those departments and what the goals are so that you can have something to drive toward. It’s hard to steer a ship if you don’t know where you’re going. Tee up where you’re trying to go, and that will do a lot to get things going in the right direction. I appreciate you guys bearing with some of the technical challenges we had there at the start. How can people find out more about the Apollo Foundation? What’s the best place for them to go?

Our website is ApolloFDN.org .

Once you search for anything related to volunteering, you will get a link to our website. On our website, you can learn quite a lot about Apollo Foundation, our volunteers, partners, and chapters, if anyone would be interested in starting a chapter.

Collectively, it would be Contact@ApolloFoundation.org .

I like to end all of my shows with the idea of action. I love having these conversations and hope that you have gotten a lot out of this and have things that you can act upon. If you were to have our audience who’s reading take any action to make the world a better place after reading, what would you have them do? I’ll let you go in any order that you feel like you’d like to answer.

This is very abstract in general, but the biggest thing I would say is to do it. Don’t let something hold you back or something stops you from doing what you think is right. Being gracious in that way helps out in ways that a lot of people don’t know something that I’ve discovered.

If I had to give my two cents on the matter, it would be to check in on the people close to you and the people that you care about. Trust me, they’ll appreciate it a lot more than you think.

If I had to say anything, it would be to go for whatever you’re passionate about. For example, we were all from India, and we saw all this poverty and inability to access education. We thought that we could truly make a change, and here we are now, starting this up. Don’t be afraid to start it up and do something for the world.

My advice would be that there are always going to be 1,000 reasons why you shouldn’t do something, but you should be the one reason why you start something. Be the reason that those 1,000 reasons don’t exist anymore.

Essentially, if you have any problem in your community, you should be the first person to go ahead and try to fix that problem instead of waiting for someone else to fix it. Not only your community and the world, perhaps. That’s pretty much it, generally.

I love those action items. I appreciate you being on this show and encourage you to continue to go out there and crush it and make the world a better place. I’m inspired to hear your story and look forward to hearing more about how you guys are making the world a better place. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you so much for having us.

Important Links

About Apollo Foundation

Apollo Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization founded by passionate students and supported by various well-achieved Outreach Directors that work to provide better and more enhanced education to impoverished students around the world. We do so through our dedicated volunteers, exceptional international chapters, compassionate sponsors/partners, and our ambitious management team.

Episode 40: Keeping Your Stakeholders Engaged Year Round With Gillian Winterbourn From Together We Count

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:46:06 GMT

How can you keep your stakeholders engaged?

On today’s episode I speak with Gillian Winbourn, the Executive Director of Together We Count, a unique organization that creates and motivates coalitions to help with the Census every 10 years.

The cyclical nature of the Census means long periods of almost no interest from the public—punctuated relatively short bursts of interest and action. So Together We Count has some really interesting challenges around inspiring stakeholders and keeping them interested throughout the years.

These challenges present a really good opportunity to look at how organizations with similar, but far less extreme, periods of “downtime” can keep stakeholders engaged.

What’s your outreach plan? How can you keep your audience engaged when your organization may be taking a break?

There are some answers to be found in this episode. Hope you enjoy it.

Links

Togetherwecount.org

ASK

Pay attention during the redistricting process and get active to voice your opinion to your Representatives. Keep a look out for the American Community Survey and be sure to fill it out if you receive it.

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Listen to the podcast here

The census is very deceptively complicated because you’re dealing with people and their houses.

Keeping Your Stakeholders Engaged Year Round With Gillian Winterbourn From Together We Count

My guest is Gillian Winbourn. She is the Executive Director of Together We Count , an interesting nonprofit that spins up activities once every ten years as we approach the census. They help create coalitions of people who are helping to make sure that as many people as possible are being counted for our census taking.

We talked a lot about the inspire phase of engagement, given that they have to try to figure out how to keep people engaged during this lull, and also have a real challenge with getting messages out and getting the word out about the census and how important it is. It was a fun conversation where she went into a ton of detail in terms of all the great work that they are doing over there. I hope you enjoy it. I had a great time talking with Gillian.

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Gillian , how are you?

I am doing well. Thanks.

Thank you for being on the show. It is exciting to talk with you. We first met over LinkedIn. I talked with your former executive director over there at Together We Count . You are the new executive director, is that right?

Yes. I am the new executive director. It was because the 2020 census lasted longer than we anticipated. We were trying to brainstorm ideas on how to extend the program, the project and the organization. At the time that we were talking about extending and thinking about money ways, COVID was in full swing. We did not want to divert any money or resources away from a lot of the philanthropic efforts that were going into that emergency which is ongoing. One of the easiest ways for us is to move our executive director to a senior advisor role, and then I take over operations. She was still very much a part of the organization in a pretty hands-on way, but I just took over the backend aspect.

Doing a census is challenging in any year, much less one as hectic as 2020 was for all of us. Tell us a little bit more about your organization, what you guys are doing, and how things went.

It is funny that 2020 was so difficult because we assumed that the 2020 census would be difficult from many years out. In 2016 and early 2017, Rosemary Rodriguez has worked in the city council. She has worked for a past Denver mayor. She has worked for senators as a state director. She has been plugged into Colorado for many years, and she volunteered with the census since 1990.

She has a lot of personal experience with it. Early on, particularly with the rhetoric from the Trump administration, our general lack of trust in government, apathy about giving away information, and no one is door knocking anymore, she saw this problem coming from miles away and knew that there had to be more of an effort than ever before.

The census is a federal exercise. Together We Count is kind of the nonprofit hub organization for the state of Colorado.

We could not have anticipated COVID-19 at all but we did anticipate a lot of challenges. We were able to at least build a pretty good infrastructure to support the organizations that were doing work. That was critical to COVID-19 when everyone is in an emergency situation. There was no time or energy or capacity for people to take on the census as well as their other priorities if they did not already have it built into their organizations or if they were not also financially tied to doing census outreach. The census is a Federal exercise but has many partners statewide, regional and national, so we were the nonprofit hub organization for the State of Colorado.

Your organization gives grants and then helps other nonprofit organizations in the census years. Is that accurate?

Yeah. We had never existed in previous census cycles. The census bureau’s model for outreach is reliant upon organizations volunteering their time, energy and effort, which I think in the past has varying degrees of success. As the state and communities rely more and more on direct service providers and nonprofits, we knew that they would not have any capacity without any financial incentive to work on the census. We spent many moons and years talking with nonprofit organizations. They all said the same thing like, “We need money.”

We worked on raising funds for a mini-grant program to help organizations that were may or may not have been in the civic space. The census provided a lot of opportunities for organizations that wanted to stay non-partisan. The census affects everyone. We were able to bring in new partners to either the democracy or civic space that may not have been involved or were able to give money out to organizations that had done many campaign cycles and had done a lot of voter engagement and stuff like that. It was a pretty diverse coalition.

A lot of our work bled into other work that was being done nationwide and also helped us create a community so that when something like the grant program for census outreach from the State of Colorado was around, there were enough people that knew what needed to be done and what level of engagement this would take.

We are not a lobbying organization, but there were partners around that we are able to be informed and say, “This is going to take some serious money.” We think the state should be able to contribute to that significantly, which they were able to with the $6 million grant fund. We are building coalitions. The other funny thing about the census is that it is a Federal exercise. As many of us know, anything that deals with the Feds is much more complicated than you would imagine.

One of the main things we took on was training because I always say the census is deceptively complicated. You are dealing with people and with their houses. You’re dealing with people answering what they may feel as personal and identifiable information so it got complicated quickly. We wanted to make sure that we were a conduit of information because we know trusted community leaders and trusted nonprofits want to make sure that they stay trusted. They do not want to lie and give false information to the people in their community.

It sounds like it was a multi-pronged effort where there was an information distribution component where you are trying to just get out to the citizens and people who are being counted what to expect and allay some of those fears that may have existed, as well as try and mobilize a volunteer force.

The census cycle is challenging because it is every ten years. Even people at nonprofits that remember the last census, or if they do remember the last census, they do not remember the details of what was done or what worked best. Ten years is a long time ago, especially the 2010 to 2020 jump. We have extreme advances in social media and technology, so it is hard to plan for it. There are a lot of lessons to be taken from previous census cycles, but it does feel like you are almost reinventing the wheel each time. It takes a lot of training and support, more so than one might imagine.

It certainly sounds like a challenge. I can only imagine you get tossed into the deep end every ten years and figure it out. By the time the next census comes around, a lot of those people have that knowledge or have gone on to other things probably. You have to retrain people constantly.

People change jobs. That is a fact of life. Circumstances changed. I do not blame anyone. It is inherent in the ten-year cycle, but it does make it more challenging, especially when a lot of the work is assumed to be on a volunteer basis. You have people who even have the experience that may or may not have the capacity to take up the charge. That is a lot of loss of time and energy. You can’t always replicate that again.

How did it go in the state? Based upon coming into it with some trepidation, how did things turn out?

It is interesting that we know more now than we have in previous census cycles. The Census Bureau has been better about releasing information. Particularly with the digital census, they were able to give us in-time measurements of where certain areas were doing better than others. I will start geographically and then I will dive a little bit into the numbers and then the timeline is still messed up for the census and the impact.

Geographically, the other aspect is our most reliable data in preparation for 2020 was the 2010 census data. That is difficult in a place like Colorado, where we have had pretty expansive growth, especially in the Denver Metro Area but also in the Western Slope. We are already working from a deficit in the sense that we knew these communities have changed a lot. That is why it took so much engagement and talking to everyone we possibly could to make sure that we knew how the communities had changed, so we could use the qualitative and the quantitative aspects when we were looking at our maps and our numbers.

In terms of how COVID impacted the census, it was pretty brutal nationwide, but I would say that it hit us at a bad time in the mountain areas. The census online portal was opened on March 12th, 2020. We were at least able to be online, but particularly in these kinds of what the Census Bureau calls group quarters, a lot of in-person canvassing was supposed to commence around March 20th, 2020. That was all suspended.

If you lived in a rural area of Colorado that does not receive mail consistently or you have a PO box, you probably did not know that the census was happening maybe until June. We lost a lot of months in critical areas that we could not do anything about. There were definitely pockets of the front range area where we lagged behind, but the good thing is that we were able to see that early. We were able to at least do our best to course correct and try to help specific communities do targeted ads, targeted social media and stuff like that. Because of the COVID delays, the whole operation was delayed.

The online portal was up until October 15th, 2020, but we did have delays in the door-knocking operation, which is critical. Due to those delays, we won’t get the official census numbers until late 2021. This will impact redistricting and a whole host of other aspects that the Census Bureau has not exactly told us yet. The delays were critical. In Colorado, we potentially likely missed around 64,000 people, which is not insignificant. It is a large number. The question that we will always be looking for is, “Who do we think those populations were? Where were they located?” We can have a little bit of a sense of where they might be located based on the data that the Census Bureau released. That is where we are at right now.

In any census, you do miss some people. There are people that are over-counted and there are people that are under-counted. The two critical elements are the rural populations, which are a significant part of our state. We are delayed in receiving any census information. The second population are college kids. Typically, college kids are counted where they are living on April 1st. That can be their residential dorm or through living in a college town on off-campus housing.

When you had those kids sent home before April 1st, there was a lot of confusion on where they should be counted. It was confusing on the Census Bureau and our end. It was challenging to communicate that to our grantees, nonprofit partners and coalition because things were changing daily. We did not have a good sense of the timeline and the operation. It was pretty chaotic in terms of them combing through the data and making sure that it was accurate.

Are you still active right now or has the nonprofit spun down for the time being until we approach the next census? Do you run full-time throughout that ten-year cycle?

We are winding down. Ideally, all census work should work in between the ten-year cycle, but the reality of nonprofit work is that it is not necessarily realistic to continue to do census work for the next 4 or 5 years without anything concrete. Ideally, we will take this information and utilize it for other statewide issues such as vaccine hesitancy and any other civic engagement. We always said that we were going to be a temporary organization, which I am not sure if we should have said out loud too much, but we were lucky to be fiscally sponsored by Rose Community Foundation . They gave us a lot of space and time to build this.

They were supportive. It was an interesting organization because we never had an organization like this before, particularly for the census. It was a long-term campaign and a point in time. Those are valuable organizations, but they are challenging in terms of where they were housed, how do they look and how do they pivot. Part of the reason is Rosemary is semi-retiring, which she has done before. I will continue to work in this space, but it did not make sense. We are hoping and we have been able to talk to some statewide partners about making sure that this information lives on. Ideally, we would be able to what they call evergreen or at least that is what the census people say. We just could not figure out a way to make that happen.

Does the bulk of your revenue come from grants and partnerships? Where are you funded?

We are almost fully funded by Colorado philanthropic organizations. We did receive a pretty sizable grant from a national advocacy organization that was a group of national funders that pooled their money together to give out grants to people working on the state level, but we were mostly funded by Colorado foundations.

Does that fundraising typically happen during the five-year cycle that I heard you talk about a little bit, or do you start fundraising right away for 2030’s census for example?

There is what we did and what we think will be better in the future. A number of cities did create positions for census outreach coordinators. We think that more cities and counties should do that. We think that they should write it into their budgets starting in probably 2027 and ideally tie it a little bit more to economic development. That is one component that we did not quite make the connection early enough because the census is economic development.

It is paying for schools, jobs, roads and opportunity zones. Community block grants are all based on census. Ideally, that is one way. We do think that the state should continue to make this a legislative priority. They were able to allocate $6 million, which was not insignificant. We had a report done by the Colorado Fiscal Institute that called for $12 million for robust outreach. We know that it will continue to take that money, take that much. This is dependent upon the Federal level making census work still pretty voluntary on the state and the community level.

We do not anticipate that the Census Bureau will be able to have more resources for state and local, either nonprofits or governmental organizations. While we were happy that the philanthropic organizations took a gamble, they never had to invest in census work before. While we are happy, we also think that there should be continued funding streams from state and local agencies because it affects so much of our bottom line. It is what we have had for ten years. We were lucky and we were able to tap into great networks and had great support behind us. Ideally, we would like the support to be a little bit more institutionalized in the government. It won’t happen at the Federal level. I can see that on the horizon but at the state and local levels.

A census cycle is 10 years. There are a lot of lessons to learn from previous cycles, but you’re almost reinventing the wheel each time.

I like the idea of this economic play. I am on the Steering Committee of the Colorado Outdoor Business Alliance . One of the things that we have noticed is that framing the discussion in a way that is going to resonate with the person you are having that discussion with can be effective. We are all about environmental causes, land stewardship, lands conservation, and things of that nature. When framing arguments or discussions around those issues, depending upon the audience, we tend to recommend that people come at that discussion from a variety of different ways. When you are speaking perhaps with more green or progressive candidates, you can come at it from that environmental stewardship language and perspective.

When you are speaking with someone who is more fiscally conservative and business-oriented, it’s adjusting the way to have that conversation so that it comes from that perspective of small business growth or economic stability. It is interesting how you have to change that argument when you are making it based on who you are speaking with. I can see how coming at it from different perspectives when you are trying to get people on board with the funding could be an interesting challenge for you.

Honestly, my favorite thing about talking about the census was it was literally like take any topic and I will relate it back to the census. I had a couple of presentations. We live in Colorado. We have a lot of people that choose to live off the grid and do not want anything to do with the local state, especially the Federal government. I had a lot of those conversations. There was some pushback like, “This does not impact me. I do not care. I will just skip this one. I will sit it out.” They had come to whatever community event or senior event. I did a lot of senior events so I would say, “How did you get here today? What road did you drive in on?”

Looking at our transportation budget in the State of Colorado, most of our projects are now reliant on the Federal government. The fact that you were able to get groceries in your mountain community is because we have Federal highway dollars in Colorado to pay for the funding of those roads. We got a little lucky with the census, but I absolutely agree with your point that it is how you frame it. Particularly with funders, they have their own priorities. That is a great aspect and integral to their organization. With the census, this impacts so much and everything. It was easy to relate to it.

Bringing up the Colorado Outdoor Business Alliance, that was one area that we could not get our feet under. The census is non-partisan. In the past, in 2010, the National Census Bureau has had pretty good relationships with McDonald’s and Walmart and printing it on receipts. Even simple stuff like that, we did not have that in 2020. I will personally say that was pretty much due to the politicization of it by the Trump administration.

We had a number of businesses that felt too political. I hope it will change by 2030 because it was the most silly argument. I would be like, “It is in the constitution. How can it be political?” One thing we started at the end was talking about economic development. It is not my background and it is not necessarily Rosemary’s background. It did take us a little bit of time to understand that landscape and be like, “This is exactly economic development.”

I liked that you figured that out in terms of being able to start the conversations from that perspective. Perhaps in 2027 or whenever you start to ramp back up, having that as a framing opportunity is pretty valuable. It is interesting too that you mentioned the non-partisan component of it and how it did get politicized a bit in 2020 or this past cycle. That must be an interesting path to trot as well, where you have foundations and organizations that may have some political motivation or desire slant. How are you keeping those people engaged and excited about what you are doing, and maintaining that middle ground position that you need to maintain?

I would not say it was overall challenging, but it did have its challenges. It helped that the census has happened before, so it was not this completely new process. It started with the founding of our country. We made sure to highlight communities and the community impact. That was always our main focus. Also, it allowed us to make sure that the narrative stayed true to what we were doing. The Census Bureau has a definition of hard to count, which they look at as historically under-counted. A component that is it is the communities you might expect like immigrants and communities of color, but it also is rural.

All of rural America is hard to count for various reasons and renters. You have such a wide swath of people in that definition. We were able to utilize the Census Bureau even though some people at the top were working against that. We also use the Census Bureau’s own research and we would present that in meetings, especially to funders and to high-level people that were interested in what we were saying. The Census Bureau’s research, due to rhetoric, a lot of communities do not want to respond to the census. Making sure that we had not only anecdotal information from the state, but national research was pretty key to taking the stress off of the partisan aspect of the census.

We did not engage everyone. Another component is that some people did not view it as super important. I will say, in the end, it was interesting. We did get more people that were probably more involved and more passionate about redistricting when they heard the census might not be going as smoothly. Colorado is poised right now to gain another congressional seat. You had some people at the end calling that we’re concerned about that aspect of it. We want to make sure we get the congressional seat.

That is to be expected. In any coalition work, you have people that come in early and people that come in late. You try and stay on message. Having our program be statewide and focusing statewide allowed us to bring the conversation back to Coloradans because that is what this work was about. It was making sure that our state is counted because if it is not, we all suffer.

It is fascinating all the things you had to juggle there to get the job done. What portion of your outreach or your operating budget was around that outreach piece in terms of citizen education?

Our method was to train the trainer. We probably should have had a larger budget, I will say. We did not necessarily do the best job with social media. That was not something we prioritized that we probably should have. We focused on being the conduit between the messages we developed ourselves and from national advocacy organizations like NALEO Educational Fund and the National Leadership on Civil and Human Rights. They have staff, policy shops and communication shops. They were presenting us with national messages and then we would filter it through, take it and interpret it through the Colorado lens, and then pass it on to these organizations because, as a new organization, we had no community clout anywhere.

We did spend a significant amount of our budget, I would say probably about 30%, to make sure that these nonprofits were up-to-date with their communication. It ties back to that training. We developed a census guidebook. It was about ten pages. It was a glossy color. I tried to make it color-specific but after the training, they could take this. They could either use it with their promotoras or with our other staff, and have a resource right there where they did not have to call us every time they have a question. We had that in English and Spanish. Luckily, we had basic outreach cards that did not have a lot of dates on them. We could use them throughout the duration as the dates were changing.

The census is non-partisan but got more politicized by the Trump administration.

The other component is that we wanted to make sure that the information was as open-source as possible. Particularly with the coalition aspect, we did pay a cartographer to create a digital map of all of the grantees. Instead of the grantees having to go through us if they wanted to contact someone in their region or their area, they could just use this resource, go online, and see who else got funded and where they were working. The other thing that was interesting to us is a lot of these nonprofits are expanding into different areas either permanently or temporarily. Their offices might be in Denver but they work in Park County. They might have one staff member in the San Luis Valley but their main office is in Denver.

We created an open-source map with contact information and a little bit of detail. We do not want to be gatekeepers of this information. This is a coalition. This is important work. We want to make sure that everyone knows as much information as possible. That is why we provided our training for free. We gave out our materials for free. We tried to be a useful resource for these organizations. That would be in the wider comms budget, but it was a significant aspect of our budget.

One of the things I heard you mentioned was that you did not have a great or robust social media presence. All of these groups and organizations that came into that coalition, I am assuming they had mobilized quite a few volunteers or potentially had a wider reach opportunity that you could tap into.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially with COVID, most organizations pivoted to some type of online engagement, which became important. We were able to make sure that those organizations had the right messaging and the correct information available for their sites. We did do some Facebook ads, which was more challenging for census than typically because Facebook determine that census was a cause. You had to go through a little bit more hoops to make sure that you were able to verify your identity. The benefit was that we had little disinformation on Facebook, which was helpful as we have seen the opposite effect of that.

We did do some of that, but social media is definitely not my expertise at all so I can’t speak to it. We did do pretty well with our engagement online. It is hard to remember back but in 2020, we went through some rollercoasters of engaging online and then disengaging online and the yin and yang of it. It was hard to put a finger down on it. We did have some mini-grantees. They did phone banking and especially if their project was completely in person and they had to pivot, they did have a number of volunteers on deck. They are like, “How can we do this phone banking?” We helped develop a script and things like that. There were a lot of pivoting and movements at the end as well. It was not easy but I was impressed with how the organizations were able to handle it.

It sounds like you made the best of what you could do as everyone was trying to do in 2020. It is like, “What do we do now? Let’s give this a whirl.” I love the idea that you’ve mentioned a couple of times in terms of teaching the teachers, and empowering people to have the tools, the know-how, and the authority to be able to distribute that story. That falls in one of the phases of our engagement life cycle that we think about. It falls into this inspire phase where you’re trying to get all of your constituents or all of your stakeholders to further the cause in any way that they are able, whether that is making a donation, volunteering themselves, or sharing the word and spreading that message as far as you can.

Tapping into that wider network and giving them the tools to stay on the message would be something to keep in your back pocket when we roll into the 2030 census time. Who knows what will be going on then? At least that becomes an arrow in your quiver that you can deploy to help spread that message and make sure that it is accurate.

It was great for us. We had a half-day of training that we did make mandatory for the grantees, but we opened it up to anyone that wanted to join. Particularly when you have something like the census, that seems so boring to a lot of people. When you talk through it and get into the weeds of it, you are talking about how you identify racially and particularly the fear around the administration trying to add a citizenship question. You are getting into these pretty weedy aspects of how do we talk through this and how do I self-identify. I do not see myself on this form. Especially if you are from the Middle East or North Africa, technically, the advice is to designate yourself as White.

It was those tough conversations like, “I do not receive any benefit from labeling myself as White because I do not look White to other White people.” It was those conversations that made the census more personal. I do not think it fully did, but I think it helped them get over their reservations and helped us understand what those reservations were. I can be systems-oriented and forget about the people and then we would be in these training. They are like, “You are telling me the government is actually going to keep this information safe? When have they ever done that?” You are like, “Let’s talk through that. Let’s talk about how the Census Bureau is surprisingly different. I do not know why it is or I can tell you why it is.”

One of the biggest challenges, in the beginning, was talking with the Asian-American population because, in 2012, the Census Bureau admitted to the fact that they used census numbers for Japanese internment. Dealing with that cultural legacy in an age where a lot of people do not trust the government more, there were some recent cultural traumas and valid concerns that we needed to talk through. That training helped us bridge some trust with the people that we are going to be talking to. Having those conversations makes the engagement not as robotic or not as fake or what a lot of people would describe as inauthentic.

I was about to say it sounds more authentic which in theory, brings even more trust to the table. It is interesting that you mentioned authenticity because one of the things that I think harms both for-profit and nonprofit organizations out there is correspondence and automation, which all seemed good. We moved pretty far in that direction in a lot of respects, but we have gotten away from that authenticity where emails, messaging and advertising all feel like they are coming from machines as opposed to coming from a person to a person.

There seems to be a pretty decent movement or a desire to step back from that, and come back to the idea that we can create interactions and engagements that are helping to build relationships that are more authentic, and just taking the time to craft messaging, even if it is going out in bulk, and craft messaging that that does feel like it comes from a place of authenticity. It is interesting that you have seen that in your work as well.

I am relatively new to the space, but I had the pleasure of working with someone like Rosemary who has been doing a version of outreach almost her entire career, whether it was from an official place or an unofficial place. A lot of things have changed about it but a lot of core elements have not, which is talking to people or interacting with people one-on-one. People do not want to be lied to. They do not want to be misled. There are a lot of basic outreach and elements that we can tend to forget when we have new flashy technologies, which are great and totally beneficial.

We have to go back to the basics. That was one of the things we would talk to a lot of organizations about like, “Who’s your intake specialist? Could we train them?” They are the ones in your front office. A lot of organizations did hire a temporary census outreach coordinator because it is a full-time job. It takes a lot of work and takes that human interaction.

There are a lot of new flashy technologies today, which are great. But people shouldn’t forget about basic human interaction.

It is interesting to see how things are shifting back to this idea of authenticity and coming at it from a one-to-one instead of always thinking about, “How can I streamline this to get the message to the most people possible?” Do you have plans during this downtime to be somewhat active in terms of education in building trust in the census at all? Is it something that ramps up starting about 3 or 4 years out?

From my position, it would probably be ramping up. I do love the census. I would always talk about it to anyone, but the Census Bureau had positions called partnership specialists. They were community organizers. They were not called that but that is what they were doing. Unfortunately, they did not have a lot of resources to provide to organizations or local governments, but they were the organizing body on the ground. We had a great staff in Colorado and we worked well with them even if we did have critiques of the Census Bureau itself. There have been national calls to the Census Bureau to keep at least a number of those people on staff throughout the process to keep a little bit of the coalition alive, but also to do some education.

I know that they have done that in the past, but I am not quite sure what that will look like right now because I know a lot of the partnership specialists’ contracts end in October. There have been discussions. We are poised to at least retain more of that information from 2020 than we were in past census cycles, but there is not a ton of avenues right now. Particularly with COVID, we have some serious elements of daily life that we need to focus on. There has not quite been an appetite but hopefully, at least the Federal Census Bureau can maybe keep that charge up.

It is such an interesting topic. It comes around every ten years. We do not necessarily think about it a whole lot in between those times. What I am getting at is if there was a way to keep it not top of mind, but at least back there like, “That is this thing that we get to do every so often,” and continuing to get people to understand why it is in their best interest to engage with and be part of that process and make sure that everyone gets counted.

A conversation that has been happening with other advocacy organizations that I talk to nationwide is maybe not necessarily keeping the census drumbeat alive but keeping the coalition alive. As we have seen with COVID-19, there are instances where we need quick coalition-building rapidly. A number of organizations are working on redistricting, which is the most common next civic advocacy step for a lot of organizations.

We have two organizations, Common Cause and the Rural Communities Resource Center . They are leading the charge on the redistricting engagement outreach, but a number of nationwide organizations are pivoting to that. We are not, but there are a lot of ways that this type of network can continue, either through public health means, civic or anything like that. There are still talks about that. For the nonprofit cycle, longevity can feel challenging.

Especially on that ten-year cycle, maybe the play is to continue to come up with ways that these organizations and these groups that have come together to form this coalition can stay active in that down cycle between the years when they are super engaged and busy. Distribution of public health information is certainly an opportunity there. There may be some other things to keep all those people engaged during the downtime.

We will see.

This has been super fun. I am excited to know a bit more about how this part of our process works and to hear all the great things that you guys have done to help fuel it. How can people find out more about either the census or your organization, Together We Count?

The easiest way would be to go to TogetherWeCount.org . There, we did a story map or the timeline. There are a lot of visuals and maps of how the census went in 2020. Also, we wrote a policy guidebook for the 2030 census. That is utilizing the best practices that we did in the 2020 census and getting either local governments or nonprofits to start thinking about 2030.

We provide sample timelines, things we do not anticipate changing on the Federal level, things that worked, and things that did not work. All of those can be found on our website. You can contact me through that website as well. We will have those up. We are going to keep everything up through the redistricting cycle, but since we are not entirely sure when that will happen, we will continue to make sure that website stays up probably through the end of the year.

I would encourage everyone to go check that out. I would like to end all of my shows with an ask or an opportunity for you to give people something to do. I like the idea of having conversations that lead to action. If you were to ask people to take action after this interview, what would that action be?

It is funny. I feel like I have been asking people for so much for so long. There was a part of me that is like, “I have tapped myself out of that.” I would ask people to pay attention to redistricting. It can feel partisan, but there is a lot that can be done just as a community member. They take testimony on how the lines are drawn. There is a large process that might shift a little bit based on when the numbers come out. Pay attention to that and skip over the partisan elements of it.

The other aspect is in between the decennial census, the Census Bureau releases the American Community Survey . That is the only way that we can judge how accurate the 2020 census was and also provides us with more in-time information. It goes out to a very small percentage of the population, but if you do receive that, please fill it out. It does take a long time, but it is important to us. I would say those two things.

When does that usually come out?

It comes out every year. It only goes out to about 5% of the US population, but for some reason, in 2020, we kept getting so many calls. I feel like they were targeting Colorado. It does go out. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to fill out. It is important information for us.

I may have gotten one of those earlier.

They were sending them out in 2022, which we begged them not to.

I got it in 2019. I filled it out. I remember it taking a while, but I am pretty sure I got one of those. That is pretty neat. Thank you so much for being on the show, Gillian. It was wonderful to hear what you have been up to. I am sure that you are ready for a little bit of a break. I am excited to keep in touch and hear how things start to ramp back up.

Thank you so much.

Guest Bio:

Gillian Winbourn is a policy advocate with experience in operations, program management, and grant-making. She achieves success by collaborating with others on a shared mission to create transformational solutions. Able to navigate political systems and build grassroots coalitions to achieve policy goals. Strong interest in leveraging background in advocacy and philanthropy in a social change environment.

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Episode 41: Finding Common Connections To Build Stronger Relationships With Tim Kugler from Gunnison Valley Trails Association

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:27:44 GMT

Fabulous episode today with Tim Kugler, the Executive Director of Gunnison Valley Trails Association.

This show made me think about relationships and how quickly they develop when you look for common ground. You see, Tim and I have quite a bit of overlap. I grew up in Gunnison, where Tim’s organization is based, and I’m as passionate about the outdoors as he is. I also get up to a lot of the same shenanigans as he does, and coincidentally I serve on the Board of the Nederland Area Trails Organization ( nedtrails.org ) that does some of the same work.

If you drew our lives as a Venn Diagram—one of those illustrations that use circles to show the relationships between things—you’d see a really robust intersection between Tim and me. That intersection between you and someone else, or between your organization and your members, is the “sweet spot” that drives a real opportunity for relationship-building.

Looking for these types of overlaps can contribute markedly to how you build trust and get people excited about your programs.

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As you can imagine, Tim and I had a great conversation. Hope you enjoy the show.

LINK:

gunnisontrails.org

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Donate 1 day to public lands and trails stewardship.

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Listen to the podcast here

Finding Common Connections To Build Stronger Relationships With Tim Kugler from Gunnison Valley Trails Association

We have another great episode. My guest is Tim Kugler and he is the Executive Director of Gunnison Trails . They are a really fun organization that does trail work and advocacy in the Gunnison Valley which is very dear to my heart because I grew up in Gunnison. While reading this, you are going to get to see Tim and I nerd out on trail work and things of that nature.

We also talked a lot about how to keep an audience engaged during that inspire phase, how to get people to move from a donor to a volunteer to an advocate, and then we also talked about optimizing email and some of the trends that we are seeing in the nonprofit space that tends to make your emails work a lot better. You are going to enjoy this episode. I had a ton of fun. Here we go. Tim, how are you?

I am doing great, Stu. How are you doing?

I am well, thanks. It is great to have you on the show. I am excited to hear what you are up to over in my hometown of Gunnison with the trail system over there. Are you one of the Founders of Gunnison Trails or are you just the Director?

I am the Executive Director. The organization was founded back in 2006 by Dave Wiens, who it sounds like you know all about. I took the reins from him back in 2017 when he went on and took a job as the Executive Director of the International Mountain Bike Association.

He has been with IMBA for a few years.

Since I took over for Gunnison Trails, he moved over to IMBA. It would have been in the early spring of 2017.

Tell us more about what you have going on there at Gunnison Trails.

We are a nonprofit trail advocacy organization. We were founded with a simple mission. We mainly caretake and maintain the trails out at Hartman Rocks Recreation Area. It is about 3 miles South of town and has about 45 miles of mechanized trails that are outstanding top-tier trails. We started to steward those trails, in addition to educate the greater trail-using public on proper trail etiquette and trail closures as it relates to wildlife and springtime mud closures. The third piece is to look for new opportunities to build additional human power trails here in the valley in Gunnison County.

Reward folks who give you feedback.

I know that I have an interesting challenge over there with the Sage-Grouse.

Sage-Grouse is a unique species that was identified many years ago. That very much dictates a lot of what we can and cannot do in terms of neutral development, but then also it has some pretty heavy-handed closures. Not just with trails, but a lot of our county roads are closed as well when those birds are mating. The closures here for Gunny County are March 15th through May 15th. We have a lot of roads and trails closed to give those birds some time.

I grew up over there and I remember visiting a couple of years ago and I was not aware of the closures. I started to do a run-over on the Signal Peak area and I quickly came to a bunch of areas that was not accessible at that time.

That has been interesting because we have had some new trail development in the Signal Peak area. There has been a long history of use up there, mainly on roads and then there are some old school trails that also meander their way through there. There was no real management strategy up there until we submitted a plan to build some new trails. We got it approved by the BLM. When new trail development started to go in, that is when they started to incorporate some wildlife restrictions and enclosures, both for a big wintering game as well as the Sage-Grouse.

It was a blessing that we got a lot of opportunities to build some really cool new trails close to town, but at the same time, it came with some heavy-handed closures, whereas historically, you could have gone up there in the spring when it was dry. Now there is a whole area where there is no human use at all, so there is no mountain biking, no trail running, and no hiking for two months for Sage-Grouse. That all came about in 2017, so it has been a learning curve too for folks that have historically used that area and now they cannot for a couple of months in the springtime.

It is always a challenge. People want to have access to the stuff that they want to have access to. At the same time, that is part of living with the wildlife that we so enjoy seeing. We have to both be respectful.

The nice thing is it is definitely a challenge, but at the same time, it is not unique to the Gunnison area. If you recreate in Durango, so many places around the state have closures, whether it is for wintering the game or for other unique species. Trail users are getting used to seeing such closures and having springtime as a time where you might come across a closure and not be aware of it. They will have seen a similar closure somewhere else, and it will not be completely new to them.

I know there are some climbing areas over here in the Boulder area that gets close for Raptor hatching at certain times during the year. It is something that we all have to contend with as we encroach upon and live within these areas where wildlife is present.

A lot of times, the trail-using public or trail users as recreation get pointed to wanting to go out and get their adrenaline fix if you are a mountain biker or maybe a bit of a selfish reason for going out and getting your one-hour run in or something. Everyone I know that uses trails loves when they come across wildlife and loves that we are sharing the landscape with them. It goes hand-in-hand with us being good stewards. If we want new trail development, we need to be willing to acknowledge that we’ve got to share the landscape.

Is that part of your mission at Gunny Trails? Is that an educational piece for the public?

Very much so. Right before we started chatting, we sent out a newsletter every now and again. We have about 3,000 people that are signed up. This one is going to speak to the Sage-Grouse closures we have coming up on March 15th. We still have snow on the ground. Folks are not exactly in the trail mode, but as well as anyone when winters are long here in Colorado. When spring starts to open things up, people have the trail fixed and want to get out.

It is important to get these messages in front of people well ahead of time. A big portion of what I do is getting the education out there as well as trying to do things differently each year people so are not seeing the same message every springtime on March 10th from me. It has more of an impact or it might catch people who would not otherwise read our newsletter.

One of the things we have been seeing in the nonprofit space and in the for-profit space as well is a slight shift away from newsletters and moving toward an email standard that feels a lot more one-to-one. Instead of having a highly designed newsletter with a whole bunch of different messages and things that people can do, honing that down into a text-only email that comes from a person, it comes from you. You are who it is from. The reply-to address is an actual person. The messaging is very key toward timeliness and a person.

If you can customize even the subject line to use somebody’s name or at least use the word “you” in that, that tends to be effective. In the body of the message, stripping out all the design there as well and having it feel like it came from your mom tends to hammer home that this is a person talking to the person who is receiving the email. We have seen a much higher rate of attraction on those.

It is crazy because it is a science and so much of communication. I would not say I am blessed in being a terrific communicator, especially now with all the different social media platforms. It is an ever-changing and ever-evolving world that I am constantly learning or needing to relearn. I am trying to enjoy that element of my job instead of wanting to pull my hair out. It is also rewarding when you have folks who give you feedback and say, “I really appreciated when you reached out and said this, that, or the other.” It is definitely something we are always trying to stay on top of.

The Signal Peak trail system is a great example of a lot of the users are students at Western State College. Talk about a class of individuals that are not going to want to get another email. If I send out that generic email to Western kids, there is a good chance that they did not even open it up. Another unique challenge is how to reach those students to get some of these important messages out. A lot of times, it is telling a good story. If you have a good story for why we are closing the trails, they are going to be receptive if I can spell it out in such a way that captures their attention.

That sounds like an additional challenge that you have is your audience types are all over the place. Trying to figure out where to put those messages out there is a real challenge in terms of the fact that you have all these different avatars that you need to be able to talk to.

Do so from a less of a heavy-handed, “Here are the rules and you need to follow them,” approach to more of like a, “There is a really cool bird up here that you have never seen. This is why we are closing the trail.”

Crazy events are incredible sources of income.

Do you give them opportunities for other options, like making suggestions to go to Hartman or to wherever that does not have those closures?

We certainly do. We are fortunate in that the trails in Signal Peak would dry out in a normal year a couple of weeks earlier than the trails of Hartman Rocks. We are fortunate in that we do have an outlet and a system of good trails that are open when folks might want to otherwise go to other areas. We are lucky there. We have certainly put out the word before when we have a lot of snow here. That is not news to anyone anymore. Everyone knows a lot of the conditions in some of these other places.

I like that you guys have built some new trails right there close to the campus. In theory, at least my recollection is that the Sage-Grouse closure was 0.25 or 0.50 miles back on the main two-track that goes up above the water towers. There is a lot of opportunity below that toward the campus or toward the cemetery there.

That is a combination of private and Western Colorado university land. You are correct. There are about 7 and a half to 8 miles of single-track trail that you can access when the area is otherwise closed. That is plenty to get fixed for your typical hiker trail, runner, dog-walker, and even cyclists, but I know people who recreate five times a week. If they mountain bike, that is a short loop and all of a sudden, they are ready to move on to the next thing. That is critical for us to maintain those closures to allow people to have access to some of the trails that are close by. The fact that they are so close in proximity to downtown Gunnison is awesome as well.

Education is so key and gives people options as well. Letting them know, “Ride it clockwise and then turn around and ride it counter-clockwise. You get 16 miles in.”

I can think of a lot of areas where folks are not as fortunate with close-to-town options and options you do not have to drive 30 minutes or 45 minutes. Another selling point of these closures in a winter like this, those trails are going to be dry right around the time the closure sets in. In another couple of weeks, they are dry and taunting you from town, but we have these other amazing stretches of trail that are close by. People get it. For the most part, the compliance is good.

It sounds like you have a good mailing list. How frequently are you trying to reach out to that group?

Not enough, but at the same time, my job is very seasonal in the sense of when we are trying to communicate a lot of different things. We are starting to ramp up in terms of outreach to trail users as well as our seasons unfold and start to get busier. Come summertime, we are doing weekly trail workdays. We are sending out at least one email a week, but come wintertime, people do not need to hear from me every week. I try not to kill folks on that front.

We groomed a wintertime trail system that has been new for us in the last few years. It has been a super hilarious learning curve to figure out how to groom single-track trails. Things are updated much more quickly. An email would be the ideal choice to use. Instead, it is Facebook, Instagram, and those sorts of forms to get grooming reports in front of folks. We transition back and forth as to the best outreach for some of these different initiatives.

That is out at Hartman, correct?

It is.

Did you guys get a Snowdog? We bought one of those. We have not had enough snow over here to use it yet.

The Snowdog is the Russian equivalent of what we have. It is hilarious that you brought that up. I might need to test that out at some point. I don’t know if your Snowdog wants to travel or come up to Gunnison to have a vacation day, but I have been intrigued to see how that machine would work versus we have a Trail Tamer. It is built by this company out of Lake Lillian. They sell snowmobile tracks. They have big fat bikes single-track seen in that part of the country. They made this purpose-built groomer. It is very similar to the Snowdog, but the thing weighs twice as much as the Snowdog.

It is super cumbersome and top-heavy, but it can put down some good trail when you have figured out how to use it. We groom about 14 miles of trail out at Hartman. We have been permitted to groom a little over 25 miles, but there are certain trails that it does not work on. There are other trails that we still have not tried to groom yet because we are waiting for the right winter or more time to figure out what does work and what does not, and then we will expand from there.

It sounds like you have a good social media presence in terms of those updates that happen more frequently. You are hitting your email list, particularly during the season, fairly regularly. You have your website as well. What is your donor situation like? Are people active or is that always a struggle for you?

It is one of those, the more time I put into that, the better off and the more that would grow. We have a diversified donor source. We have memberships folks can buy and that is a super popular program that has taken a while to be more automated and less of people writing in checks, which people still do, and more automated credit card stuff. That has been consistent slowly growing over the years.

We have got business sponsorships. It is partner levels for businesses to sign up and get various perks from marketing on our end for them. We have a cool program that started back in 2016 called Pennies for Trails . It is a 1% type program. You, as a customer, go into a business and that business tax has an extra penny for every dollar you spend there and it comes directly back to our organization.

We were looking at trying to do that for NATO a few years ago. We never managed to get our act together enough to do it. That is a great way to diversify those revenue streams and create an opportunity for a variety of different streams of revenue. Do you guys sell kits or anything as well? Do you have a retail component?

Different trail networks appeal to different people.

We do have merchandise. We move back and forth into various local stores here in the valley, which has been cool, but it is mainly on our website. It is something that if I had more time and get more of that merchandise into stores rather than sitting in my garage. As much as I love to put time into that, you look at the cost-benefit and how much time I would put into it before we start seeing a return. We treat our merchandise as breaking even. The more we get out there, the more advertising we have for our organization.

At the same time, we are not going to be bringing in extra six-figures by selling hoodies. The merchandise is definitely another piece. We put out a race every Memorial Day weekend called the Original Growler . That is definitely a good spot to get some of our product in front of 700-plus racers that come.

That is a great race. In fact, I was out riding on my cross bike and I forgot that the race was going on and I ended up on course. People were cheering me on and I am like, “I did not race this whole thing on my gravel bike.”

I have had a couple of people reach out saying, “I sold my cross-country bike and all I have is a gravel bike. What do you think?” It is always like, “It could be done.” We had to skip it 2020. 2019 was the last year we held it.

You have a variety of different revenue streams, which I love and the fact that you can probably throttle some of that stuff a little bit as well, in terms of being able to flip switches. For example, if you decided that you wanted to put on another race, you have that infrastructure and that historical knowledge of how to do that. Being able to spin up another version of it, if you think of scalability, it is great to be able to have those switches to pull. A lot of nonprofits have a hard time because they have one revenue stream and then if that dries up, they are in trouble.

The longer I am at this job, the more I realize how fortunate. Dave Wiens started the Growler in 2008. It was year number one. The cross-country race scene was evolving, but everyone could have put on a race and watched it flourish. Now we are at a crossroads where there are new formats coming up like enduro and gravel races. A lot of the races that come and do the Growler would be good candidates to do gravel races as well. When I took on this role, I inherited a very successful race. There are a number of years where if I am not really putting energy into that race, it could wither.

It started to bring in a source of revenue to have a paid director. It is crucial to our organization. The more I live and breathe this job, the more I recognize how fortunate I am to have a successful race that already has a massive following. I am not trying to say, “We need another source of revenue. Maybe we could run an event.” They are so hard to get established. There is much competition in that world.

It is and during pandemic times, it is near impossible to do that. How did you guys replace that revenue in 2020 or did you?

We did not. By the time we had to cancel the race, about 400 folks had signed up. We gave them the option of, “You can get a full refund, but if you like what we do and you want to support our organization, this is an important source of revenue for us. Feel free to donate a portion of your entry or you can even donate all of it.” We had good feedback on that to the tune of close to $20,000. We recouped some of the race proceeds there.

We have enough on the books that we could weather and it is not going to sink the ship. It was tough not to put on the race, but at the same time, we have diverse revenue streams and are not living paycheck to paycheck. You take a year like 2020. It was not ideal, but we can roll with it and hit the ground running again this season.

The nice thing about not being able to have events is you do not have the cost of those events either. That is a bonus if you want to try and look at it in a positive light. What did you do with those new email addresses that people that did donate? Have you been trying to nurture those people even though they are not necessarily Gunnison Valley standards?

They all get thrown into our Growler email list. They got the occasional email about what we have been up to. Despite the pandemic in the summer of 2020, we run an in-house trail crew. When we first started in ‘06, we were all volunteers. We do weekly volunteer work nights. We did those to a lesser extent in 2020 because of the pandemic. A very important portion of our organization is getting people out on the ground and doing the work. It is cliché, but it really does offer that buy-in.

We had an eight-person trail crew in the summer of 2020. We let these folks know, “Your Growler proceeds allowed us to hold a bigger trail crew than we ever have before. We got 3,500 hours worth of work done.” We are acknowledging those people that did give that, “The race is much more than a race to us, but it allows us to do these phenomenal feats all summer long.” In terms of donor’s support and feedback, again, if I had more time, that would be something that would be time well spent acknowledging those people that give.

I love that you had that messaging in there of the, “This is what your donation contributed to toward. it kept somebody on a crew, it helped build X number of miles of trail, or we put in this many work hours.” Giving people something very tangible as a result of their contribution is incredibly powerful. I love that you are already thinking in that way. I would encourage you to continue that and think about how you can segment the audience and speak to those people differently than you do to the Growler audience at large. The event fuels a lot of the stuff you are doing but giving people the ability to donate as add-on to their race fee can generate a lot of revenue.

That is an option. I remember when I first started in this role in 2017, Dave Wiens was holding my hand. I took over right at the beginning of May. Growler was about three weeks later that year. It was trial by fire, but Dave was still putting on the Growler but gave me the caveat of, “This is my last year doing it, so pay close attention because this is your baby next year.”

I remember noticing that year, “We are already asking them to pay X amount of dollars to race. Now we are asking them for like an additional donation.” People donate and then they show up and they thank you and say like, “Great work. We are so excited to have the opportunity to give a little bit more.” Do not be afraid to ask when you put that out there.

There is a saying that gets thrown around a lot. It is, “The answer is always no if you do not ask.” Giving people an easy way to kick in more. There are ways that, in theory, you could incentivize their performance, like having them do some sponsorship where if they finish under a certain time, they are trying to get people who will pay to match that performance. That then helps with their performance as well. There are a lot of ways to get really creative, particularly when you are talking about race entry fees. I used to race marathons. New York City Marathon had a few different ways that you could get in.

The first way was you could qualify. The second way, you could throw into a hat as part of the raffle and then the third way was to raise money. They had either a specific charity or a group of charities that you could choose from. If you got up some dollar figure, $1,500 or something like that, towards this charity, you got access to the race. Doing things like that and being creative with that user base, we see mountain bikers being generous in their desire to give back to the trail systems that they love, maybe more so than some of the other groups that use them. Leaning on that would be something I would encourage.

Bike advocacy groups are pushing for more engagement and written permission.

When you see the amount of volunteers that come out, and it is not unique to this valley, but we have a really strong volunteer force in this valley that comes out for trail workdays between the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association and then Gunnison Trails. You do not want to say they are all mountain bikers. A lot of the time, it is various trail users, but I know the mountain bikers and all of us like to point to, “We do come out in droves to give back to our trails in one form or another.”

Giving people the option to either pay to play because some people have more money than time and some have more time than money and some have a little bit of both. This is the inspire phase of this audience engagement cycle, but trying to get people to move between different levels of engagement, taking a volunteer and getting them to donate and taking a donor and getting them to volunteer. Trying to get some transactional movement around that ecosystem can be super effective. Are there any other events that you put on during the course of the year in a normal year?

We have three main events. One is the Growler and that is a colossal event. It takes a ton of energy and it is the biggest source of revenue from all of them. We put on a fall end-of-season event called Ales for Trails . It used to be the Big Beers for Big Gears event. It has always been around. That was right around when they had Beer and Chili Fest up in Crested Butte and we had a bunch of brewers in town. It has always been an excuse to get folks together and drink some beer and celebrate the trail season. Our founding Pennies for Trail partner, High Alpine Brewing, host this every fall.

It is less of a fundraiser. It is an event. We are trying to raise revenue for our organization, but it is more to show some love to one of our big sponsors, High Alpine Brewing, so we pack their house. It is also a way to raise a glass to everyone and celebrate a trail season as we come into wintertime. I hate to say that it is my favorite event, but it is my favorite event. It is very little in terms of work that goes into it. It is almost a way to thank those that have given us so much. It comes back and it pays itself in dividends, not necessarily that night in what we bring in, in terms of money, but keeping folks happy and acknowledging them that it took a lot of work on the trail season.

That one has been fun. We do one in the middle of winter, like the doldrums of winter in February, we host what we call the Winter Blast , an auction. A bunch of local businesses donate some cool swag. We auction it off and we have a big dinner held at a Western in their ballroom. We sell about 160 tickets for that. It is a nice source of revenue in the winter, but another way to give trail users an update on what is coming up that season and a nice something to look forward to in February in Gunnison, which is the coldest, darkest place in the continental US.

Those are our three biggies. It is funny when the Growler finishes and you have that post-event buzz like, “I am happy to have gotten through that.” That is when my mind will be like, “Show we do a fall Growler?” Reality quickly sets in and I am like, “We are not doing another event.” I have toyed with doing some other type of race. We have toyed around doing a winter race of sorts, probably not to the tune of what the Growler is by any means. Events are incredible sources of income, but they are excessive in the amount of time and energy and oftentimes expense that goes into them. You want to know what you are getting into before you start going down that path.

Is Fat Bike World still held in Crested Butte or do they move that around now?

They moved that around. 2021 was the year. In Gunnison County, it could not have happened, but it could not have happened in the traditional Fat Bike world Scene. It moved up to Wyoming. The idea there is to get it to the other cycling world events to move around in various places. Hopefully, it will come back home, but it would be good to have a change of scene. Someone in Oregon may not want to drive to Crested Butte to attend it. It would be great if it moved around to various places.

I was thinking you could put a crit on or something in conjunction with that.

Someone reached out and I am not sure if they had even reached out to you guys up in Nederland because you are grooming trail now, but they thought about reviving the Colorado winter series and having a winter series throughout the state on various trails. That is almost the sweet spot for an event where a lot of the planning and marketing and things might not necessarily fall on our organization or me, but we would put on a cool event and have a kick-ass weekend.

In 2021, it would have been faster on your cross bike around here. At that point in time, we were riding mountain bikes fully in the woods until mid-January. It has been crazy. We had a real dry winter so far.

We are getting back to close to average, not in Gunnison, but up in the high country around here. It was bleak up until January, when the snow started falling.

Tell us about your weekly trail building that you do during the course of the season.

Up until 2016, we did and still do these, but it was all volunteer maintenance. We had built a couple of new trails out of Hartman Rocks, but they were always volunteer folks coming out for the better part of a Saturday to knock out a new half-mile section of trail. We do a thing called Trailwork Tuesdays every Tuesday night from 3:00 to 7:00 or 4:00 to 7:00. It is standard maintenance. Out in Hartman, for example, when we get these heavy rains. We get a lot of erosion out there, so clearing drains and making sure that the soil is not moving too far and replenishing it in areas where it needs it.

With all the use we have been seeing, we are making sure that we keep the trails as narrow as we can and close down, go around as they form. Hartman is a technical area and there are a lot of opportunities for people to get to a spot where they cannot. They are in over their head and then they decide to ride around something. Up until 2016, that was all volunteer and then starting in 2016, we started with a youth core of three people for ten weeks. That has grown into now eight-person crew that works June through October.

A lot of that growth was because we were approved to build trails up in Signal Peak. We have built about 6 new miles of trail and we have been building, on average, about 3 miles a year. We have got another 3-mile plan for this year then after that, we have another 4 miles of trail before it is built out according to the plan. There will be over 20 miles of trail when all is said and done up in Signal Peak. To give you an idea, Hartman Rocks has about 45 miles of trail. It will be about half the size of Hartman’s. That has been a big learning curve in terms of I had some experience lining out trail and doing some trail building, but I had more experience working in trees and places with rocks.

It has been good. It has been super frustrating at first. I wish I had ten more years under my belt before we start lining the trail that is going to be on the ground, hopefully for eternity. They do not last that long. I beat myself up all the time because you are you want to knock it out of the park every time. We have been on a learning curve up there, but it is amazing to have the system of the trail we have that you can access less than a half-mile from Main Street in Gunnison. At first, I was lamenting that it was not Hartman Rocks. There are not those amazing rocky granite spires and the topography up there is very different, but at the same time, it is great.

We have two very different trail networks that appeal to different people. It took me a while to realize that just because it is different up there, it is not necessarily a bad thing. 2020 was a little different with COVID, but the trail crew organizes our weekly trail workdays. It is a bit of a juggling act now that we have an in-house crew to help out on a lot of those smaller maintenance projects. I find myself like, “How do we keep projects coming for volunteers?” It is a good problem to have. Now are going to have a trail crew in 2021 to work at Hartman Rocks.

Set aside one day to go out and do a trail maintenance project because it’s more rewarding than you might think.

There is plenty to do, but juggling both the paid trail crew as well as volunteer force took some doing. The crew splits its time between 2020, for example, they spent half their summer building trail up in the Signal Peak area and then the other half either maintaining trails out at Hartman’s. It has been pretty rewarding. We have been able to move a lot of what we do up into the high country. We are starting to assist a couple of different forest service ranger districts with backlog trail maintenance that they have.

For our organization that has historically worked at Hartman’s and in the Sage country, it has been cool to expand our skillset. When looking at the map around Gunnison, you have three massive wilderness areas with a ton of trails that need love. A lot of times, trail organizations get pegged as mountain bike organizations, but it was strategic when he started Gunnison Trails that it would be Gunnison Trails.

We have got a couple of big projects lined up to work on long stretches of trail in either the West Elk Wilderness or the Fossil Ridge Wilderness. For me, as an avid cyclist and a lover of two wheels, it is also rewarding to get to go into some of these places where you are leaving a big impact and you are doing it for not necessarily a place where you are going to come back and get to ride the trail.

That is one of the things that we have done at Nederland Area Trails Organization. We try to be very agnostic in terms of usage. We are trying to build fun, safe, challenging, and unique trails in the area for all different user types, everybody from equestrians to runners to hikers to people who are on bikes. Our trails are mostly non-motorized in terms of motor vehicles. Most of them are mechanized but non-motorized where we are working. Although there are some wilderness areas close by that we could get up into that are for hikers only. We do try to build trails for everybody and that is a really important thing to get out there. You are not just doing this for the mountain bike community.

A lot of times, the core hardcore mountain biker might point to some of those multi-use trails as being a sanitized version of what they really want to see. They are not wrong. I am fortunate in that I live in an area that has a good diversity of trails. When we do build a new 6% grade trail in Signal Fun, we are trying to make it fun for everyone and keep all users in mind. We acknowledge that, “If you are looking to get gnarly, there is plenty of opportunities to do that that is not only close by, but you can pedal to a lot of it.”

I do feel for some of those areas that may not have some of the diversity that we have and how do you satisfy a lot of differences that people are looking for. That is something we will see more of. You see more bike-optimized trails and areas that are trying to separate some of the uses again. We happened to be in a spot that has enough trails for everyone to get their fix.

There is certainly a ton of opportunity in the Gunnison Valley.

It is good to acknowledge that. I try not to take that for granted ever, but I also acknowledge that there are areas where there might not be those gnarly steep trails that some twelve-year-old on a mountain bike, like I was once, is looking to get after it on. It is tough, but it is nice to see agencies acknowledging that it exists. A lot of that is to credit the mountain bike advocacy groups that are really pushing for more of that engagement and written permission.

That is what we do. They may be trails that are not particularly great for running or horses that are built more for mountain bikes, but in the same area, there will be some other opportunities that allow for that access that everybody would like.

It is always a challenge, but one asp ect of the job makes it rewarding and fun.

What are your plans for 2021? You have your in-house crew that is going to be active. It sounds like you are going to be able to continue doing some volunteer stuff. The race sounds like it is on for Memorial Day. What else is on deck for you guys in 2021?

We have about 3 miles of trail that will make for some cool connectivity up in Signal Peak. It will make the biggest outer loop of the system. To provide a really long distance, if they were to connect all the single track using the new stuff we are going to build this summer, you would be looking at a 20-mile ride where you would not have to ride on the same trail.

That is the main focus point this summer. Another really cool opportunity that has come down the pipeline and it is by no means set in stone, but with the passing of the Great American Outdoors Act, there is some cool funding coming down from the federal government that organizations like Gunnison Trails or Youth Corps can access to help them with a backlog of deferred maintenance. We are hoping to expand a lot of what we do into not necessarily a forest service, but a lot of it is on forest service trails in and around Gunnison. Hopefully, we will get that accrue cross-cut certified and they can go in and safely clear some wilderness trails where we cannot use chainsaws.

For me, it is cool to be able to expand the areas where we work, but at the same time, I recognize we have an opportunity in Signal Peak to build a new trail. At the end of the day, those opportunities do not come down the pipe every year. A lot of what we are going to need to focus on is maintenance. We have some amazing stretches of trail here that have never seen a tool for the last number of years. I love exploring some of these areas that, to your average rider, it might be a miserable experience, but these are historic trails that have been around forever and they were well before sustainable alignments were used.

We do not want them to go away. We might have the opportunity to reroute them one day or make those unsustainable bits more sustainable. Even the task of clearing them and keeping them open is monumental. That is a big portion of hopefully what we will be teeing up to work on in the next several years, knocking out some of these trail segments that need proper tree removal and brush clearing to even open up the corridor again.

I nerd out and I look at some of the maps from all these wilderness areas that we are so fortunate to have close by. They are covered in trails and what is crazy is I have not had a chance to explore half of them or even two-thirds of them. To be able to have a reason to get into this country and call it “work” but also be assisting with a pretty service that a lot of folks will appreciate is special. That got me excited between having new trails to build this summer and then also having some pretty cool maintenance projects on the dock. It is exciting times, for sure.

How can people find out more about Gunnison Trails?

You can always send it to our website. We try to keep that up to date with a news feed on the front page. If you head to the website, you will have a little window that pops up and you can join our newsletter or you can follow us on Facebook or Instagram .

I love everything that you guys are doing. It sounds like you are crushing it and I am really excited to see what is next for you. The next time that I come over with a bike and it is trail riding time, I will give you a shout. I love to talk about how what we can all do to get stronger in marketing and how we can make our nonprofits thrive. I like for the people who are reading to have something to take action on at the end of our conversation. If there was one thing that you wanted people to do after this show, what do you think that would be?

Take one day to volunteer. It does not have to be a local trail organization, but some stewardship project and hopefully, your readers use public lands and trails and like to get after it. We are fortunate to live in an area, Colorado specifically, that has so many opportunities to get out there. Volunteer stewardship is the reason I am in the job I am in. It is how I met my wife. It is incredible to get out there and see some of the work that needs to be done on the ground. One piece of advice is to set aside one day to go out and if you have never done any trail maintenance or done any stewardship project, take a day to do it because it is more rewarding than you might think.

It is a lot of fun. I would encourage anyone who has plans to go over to the Gunnison area to look up GunnisonTrails.org and see if there is a volunteer opportunity while you are there to give back to those trails that we all love and use and abuse a little bit. Thanks so much for being on the show. I had a great time talking with you, Tim. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Sounds great, Stu. Thanks for having me.

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There you have it, another great episode. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. You can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you are there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you would like to listen to back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/Podcast . That is it for this week. I will be back next week for another great episode.

Important Links

About Tim Kugler

Growing up just outside of Washington, D.C., Tim’s passion for trails began while exploring the Shenandoah mountains in central Virginia on bike and foot. After receiving a degree in Biology from the University of Virginia, Tim moved to the Gunnison Valley in 2008 to pursue new adventures in even bigger mountains. He served on the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association board of directors for 5 years before returning to school to earn a Masters in Environmental Management from Western Colorado University, focusing on recreation and environmental stewardship. He was fortunate to take the reigns of Gunnison Trails just after graduating in 2017 and feels incredibly lucky to pursue his passion for trails and public land advocacy right here in the Gunnison Valley. He and his wife Lauren began their newest adventure in the fall of 2018 with the birth of their daughter, Vivian.

Episode 42: Creating Multiple Avenues of Engagement For Stakeholders With Mike Fye From Big Brothers Big Sisters

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:08:41 GMT

Big Brothers Big Sisters has been around for over 100 years, and my guest today had a LOT of great history to share.

Mike Fye is the Director of Corporate Sponsorships at BBBS Colorado. They are doing some fantastic things to mentor kids and help them navigate the world.

Not only that, Mike understands how to craft content to help fill in the whole picture of what BBBS does, and explain how they need more support than just volunteering as a Big Brother or Big Sister. Many nonprofits miss this kind of opportunity to get the word out there and diversify their support.

Mike explained how every nonprofit has the opportunity to create a variety of ways to engage. Doing so will help you bring people into the fold and escalate their engagement as their comfort with—and understanding of—your organization grows.

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Lots of good stuff in this episode. Have fun!

Links:

biglittlecolorado.org

Action Ask: Building a strong community takes community effort. Ask yourself, “Can I become a mentor?” and if not, consider who you know who could and how else you can contribute to someone’s life.

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Listen to the podcast here

Creating Multiple Avenues of Engagement For Stakeholders With Mike Fye From Big Brothers Big Sisters

My guest is Michael Fye. He is the Director of Corporate Partnerships at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado . We talked about a whole bunch of stuff. They are doing some great work over at Big Brothers Big Sisters. One of the things that stood out is this idea of creating multiple avenues to engage and how well they have done that over at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado. I hope you enjoy the show. I had a great time talking with Mike. He is a great dude. Here we go.

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Mike , thank you for being on this show.

Stu, thanks for having me.

It is a real pleasure to have you on. You are working with Big Brothers Big Sisters . You have mentioned that you have been around for more than 100 years.

That was crazy. We started in Denver at the last pandemic in 1918, and here we are going through the next one 100 years later.

The fact that you have been able to weather two of these so far is a merit. That is certainly something not to scoff at.

It has been quite an adventure. A few things have changed since 1918, but the missions remained the same.

What was the impetus for the founding of Big Brothers Big Sisters?

In 1918, there were a lot of Alaska kids. A judge noticed that there were kids who needed more adult presence in their life and somebody to provide quality activities for those kids to do. We started Big Brothers, and Big Sisters chapter started a little bit later on. Fast forward, we joined forces to become Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado. The missions remain the same through all those decades. We have seen a common theme. There are always kids in our community that have so much potential and need someone who believes in them and supports them, and they can do amazing things. That has been constant for over 100 years.

Was it the flu that was going on that was causing the major problems? Was it the economy? I know that was right in that Depression Era zone. What was the root cause when Big Brothers was founded?

It’s a mixture of the economy and also the wartime. A lot of fathers were out fighting the war and kids back at home were left to their own devices after school and run around in the neighborhood. They saw the need for people to come together as a community to support those youths that may not have the same opportunities as others.

It’s definitely a challenge when you’re a relationship-based organization, and so much of our activities are in person and thrive off of that.

That was right during World War I. It is interesting that we have not solved that problem yet. It is great to have an organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters out there to help continue to fight the good fight.

It is all about community. We do one-to-one mentoring. It is all about coming together and how we can support kids that have so much potential but need some opportunities and somebody that says, “You can do it. I believe in you.” It is simple but that is all a lot of kids need.

Kids are pretty resilient but they do need that backbone support to lean on. I’m imagining 2020 was a bit of a challenge for you. How did you guys tackle the proximity challenges that we’re all faced with during this pandemic?

It is a challenge when you are a relationship-based organization. So much of our activities are in person and thrive off of that. Right away, we knew that the need was going to be there. We serve families that are the most vulnerable populations to be affected by the pandemic. We knew that connection was going to be important. As a staff, we did not even realize how important that connection piece would be.

We were close to our families and support them in a number of ways. We talked a lot to them during that time. One of their biggest concerns for their kids was social isolation. They had so many other challenges you would anticipate like health, job security and, “How do I do school virtually when I’m a single parent with multiple kids?”

We are all there but parents are concerned about their kids’ well-being and connection to positive influences when they are stuck at home every day. School and sports are canceled. Having that mentor figure that can call them or see them if they can, even if it is a virtual call, could help them with their mental health and social and emotional development. Having somebody to talk to was one of the most important things that our parents told us about.

We did everything we could as a staff to maintain those connections, whether that be running virtual Zoom game events or providing art kits and virtual cooking lessons and things like that just to maintain that connection. That went a long way. What was interesting was how much it helped the Bigs as well because the Bigs were affected by the pandemic in a number of ways.

We had a match that figured out how to play virtual catch together over Zoom. You throw a ball and you can see it go up on the screen. The Big acts like, “Here it is,” and catches it in front of their screen, which is funny. That is how they kicked things off to do something together. That led to quality conversations. We even heard from a Big that she had lost her job and she had concerns about the health of her parents. She was in a stressful time. Her little sister had a family with multiple kids. She is the oldest. She was helping her mom out with a lot of things around the house and trying to do virtual school.

They are both going through a lot of things. Those virtual calls were the highlight of their week and kept them going together. That is the beautiful thing about mentoring relationships. There are great impacts for the kids but the Bigs get as much out of it and it is this wonderful relationship that they can share together.

It is interesting how there are these relationships that you’ve created that seem like they would be one way in some capacity in terms of who is getting “the most” out of that relationship. It turns out that both parties benefit from those interactions. It is a cool thing to see. I have been mentoring some people through Energize Colorado . They are coming up on our first anniversary of kicking off that program.

One of the things that I reflect upon is I asked, “What are some of the nice things about the program that you have seen?” One of the things I noticed was how much I get out of it. It makes me better at what I do because I’m coaching or teaching. We have those things that I do for clients all the time, as well as getting those good feelings of being connected, being able to give back, and lifting somebody up are super valuable. I love that you guys are seeing that in your programs as well.

The perspective you can gain when you get into a mentoring relationship like this is amazing. I have been fortunate to see a lot of the relationships over the years. I have been here for many years. I have seen a lot of amazing relationships. You are bringing together two people from completely different backgrounds and cultural experiences who would never have met otherwise. They can get into this multi-year relationship where they meet each other’s families. They learn about new cultures. You are in a different role as a mentor.

In 2020, racial issues have come up as well. A big part of it is how we bring communities together so we can listen to each other and hear what each community is going through. That is something that you can do through mentoring because it is a structured and safe way for people from two different neighborhoods and backgrounds to meet each other with the support of staff, events, and healthy ways to meet the families. I hear from people, “How do I meet other people? How do I integrate with any other communities?” We guide that process and help it be a healthy long-term relationship.

It is an interesting concept or something to consider as well. Those are pretty diverse communities that you are trying to reach, the mentor and the mentee, the Big and the Little. How have you guys tackled that in the past in terms of that segmentation piece and make sure that you are able to get enough Bigs to serve the need that you have or vice versa?

There are a lot of kids out there that are in single-parent homes that have reduced free lunch. There is a high percentage of that. We know there is always a bigger need than we can fulfill in that area. We are always recruiting mentors. We have a disparity. About 80% of our Littles are of color and around that same percentage of our Bigs are White.

That is something that we are always trying to help with that ratio and honor the preferences of families. We also think that there is a lot of value to bringing together communities that are not always together and do have different experiences. We do our best for recruitment and partnering with other community agencies to get as much of a diverse pool as we possibly can and honor the preferences of families. We also see the value in bringing together people from different backgrounds. That has been a powerful thing over the years.

Are you trying to recruit more Bigs? Is that one of the goals of the organization? Where does that initiative stand?

That is a high priority and it has been for many years. Nationally, for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America , it is always something we are striving to do. We are partnering with different community organizations, fraternities, focus groups and cohorts. We started a cohort called Black Mentors United . We saw the need.

We had Littles from the Black community that had White Bigs and they had great relationships but those parents had said that it would be helpful if they had any mentors who looked like them and grew up like them. They might have a little more understanding and could talk about these specific racial issues going on. We reached out to a group of our Black mentors who already had Littles in the program and said, “This is a need the families have expressed. What ideas might you have to support these Littles?” They stepped up and wanted to start this cohort who would meet monthly over virtual calls to start and talk to those Littles about, “We understand what you are going through. We know you have questions. Let’s talk through them.”

We have Littles who have their own Bigs already and Bigs who already have their own Littles, but they both see that need. We have been facilitating amazing discussions around the racial issues that have been going on between these Bigs and these Littles in this cohort. It has been amazing to see. We are trying to access what those other groups or advisory groups within our own network can do to support these issues. That’s on top of still striving to be more diverse and find a good ratio between mentors and Littles.

It’s amazing the perspective you can gain when you get into a mentoring relationship.

That is a cool way to get an almost one-to-many approach where you can bring a bunch of people together at once and get some good benefits out of those relationships that get built within that group. What a fascinating challenge that you guys are up against. You certainly had gone through a few generations of people who had been Littles in the program. Do you find that those individuals come back and become Bigs at all? What is that relationship like?

That is one of the coolest things that I have seen. We’ve heard about Littles who wants to come back and has seen the value in mentoring, and wants to pay it forward. We have had Littles that have become Bigs and even multi-generational stories. We have an alumni association where we reach out and ask for former Bigs and Littles to stay involved, tell stories, and be part of this journey. I run our social media accounts as well and I had a gentleman reach out about his Big Brother who had passed away. He said they were matched for 57 years.

He said that he grew up in Longmont. They were featured in the Rocky Mountain News when he was a kid. They built a boat together, did all these outdoor adventure activities, and all these things that he introduced him to. They stayed lifelong friends. He talked about how much this Big changed his entire life and shaped who he is today. They were close friends for the rest of their entire adulthood, even playing senior league softball together before his Big passed away.

It sounds like his Big influenced a whole number of people and was a big presence in the community. He was so proud and wanted to thank his Big for all that he did. We did a feature on Thank Your Mentor Day with their story and some pictures from their matches. We hear those stories a lot. That is what we tell our Big sometimes when they are in active relationships. They may not think, “Am I making an impact? Am I seeing those outcomes quickly?”

We say, “You are planting seeds and the kids are going to remember this. They may not tell you right then when they are ten years old in the first six months. This is going to be so huge for their future and you might not even realize it.” We hear stories twenty years later like, “I did not tell my mentor at that time when I was a kid, but those two years were so huge for which path I went on. This has resulted in me being successful.”

We do a new series called Igniting Potential Stories of Impact. It is a virtual event, an innovation born from the pandemic. How do we share these amazing stories of impact with our supporters without an in-person event? We have created these Zoom meetings where we can invite donors, board members and current matches and share some of these amazing stories. We kicked one-off in December 2021 with one of our Board of Directors, Shane Portfolio , who was a former Little in our program.

He is one of the Top Executives at Comcast and has this incredible story. He was able to share that with our donors, our matches and our kids. We were able to even get his Big who is in his 70s on the call. You had all those members together who normally would never be in the same room or same event. It was free and amazing to get all those voices in one place. That is an innovation that we should keep and share those stories in this virtual space.

I had a show where we talked about some of the interesting benefits of being thrust into this challenge of virtual meetings all the time, and how people’s comfort level with it has grown to an extent that it has enabled a lot of nonprofits and a lot of individuals to scale their reach. Where normally things would be in-person and local, you can bring people in from all over the world to have those conversations and to be part of that community that normally would have to be in the same room or at least the same proximity to one another in order to interact. It is pretty cool to see how people are adapting.

That is probably one of the things I’m most excited about. I’m the Director of Corporate Partnerships so I work with a lot of our corporate partners on how we can do employee engagement and get people involved. There are a lot of people that can’t be mentors. It is a commitment. You have to have the time for it. A lot of people have said, “I wish I could get involved but I have kids and I do not have the time to be a mentor.”

We have always had those barriers, but we have learned through these virtual events and communications that we can bring them into the story. For example, we did a virtual STEM day. We had matches where we’ve created STEM kits ahead of time. The matches got those kits delivered to them. On the Zoom calls, we had engineers from Excel and BOA Technology and consultants with Accenture who could do hands-on STEM activities with the kids in breakout rooms. They could talk to them about their careers and answer questions.

It created this intimate space that normally they would not get before. You could get people from across the country to get in on this call thinking about, “How much could our Littles learn from now that we have this untapped resource of people that can connect through a Zoom call?” We are always trying to work on workforce development, expose our kids to new industries and get that spark going. This has opened a whole new door to do that. I’m excited about that.

I like some of the technology that is being developed, and Zoom is the elephant in the room. When they brought breakout rooms in, that changed the way that a lot of people were handling Zoom calls and engagement. I could see how you would perhaps be able to let kids self-select where they wanted to go and which of those rooms they wanted to go hang out in and do a STEM project. It is a cool use of that technology and it is neat to see how you are bringing all those people together in that way. With the virtual stuff and the remote mentoring, is that something you are planning to continue? Do you feel like that will phase out as we get back to being able to meet in person?

We have three core programs and one of them is Mentor 2.0, which was already built to be virtual pre-pandemic. We partner with high schools, adopt their entire sophomore class, and go through graduation. They have an online curriculum that they do with their mentors weekly and then we would typically meet once a month at the school.

It was nice that you had that platform set up for that program to continue virtually. The other two are community-based programs. That is the one-on-one mentoring that they typically go out and do their own in-person events, and our sports buddies programs are all group-based sporting events each weekend. They had to pivot the most for sure.

Everybody is eager to get out and be in person again. I do think there is a lot of opportunity with the virtual space, especially for mentors to introduce their Littles to professionals in the community or people who might have the job that their Little wants to have. Because of that, we have started a vocational video library for our Littles, especially our high school Littles to access.

We have a video guide. Our corporate partners can record short self-made videos talking about their careers that said, “This is what I do on a daily basis. This is the advice I would have given myself when I was sixteen thinking about what I wanted to do when I got older.” It is another opportunity. Those people are not becoming mentors, but we are going to have multiple industries represented where our Littles can explore and watch these short videos to learn what is out there.

We are hoping that those videos will create a spark like, “I never thought of it that way. That sounds exciting.” We could connect that match to that professional who made the video and then start getting contacts for this kid and networking. We have grown that where we are piloting a new paid summer internship program.

We have seven paid internship opportunities with three different companies to help create that spark. Some of them are going to have to learn how to work in a hybrid environment. Some of them are going to have to do remote for a while and then go in-person. The point is they can get these 6 to 8-week experiences that something goes off like, “That was so cool. I met this engineer and I want to be like him. I got to use this technology I had never seen.” When they are done and they go to college or trade school, that will keep motivating them and they started to build a network.

That is a cool way to approach it, particularly as you are able to rub shoulders with these experts. I could see how that could have a huge long-term benefit to these kids as they are trying to start their careers.

What is great about it is it is so beneficial for the Littles but also for the companies. I work with a lot of companies that are trying to improve their diversity and their talent pipeline, and address the gaps there in education, wealth and talent. They are trying to provide opportunities for the exact type of kids that we have graduating from our programs.

Everybody’s eager to get out and be in person again, but there’s a lot of opportunity with the virtual space.

It is a natural connection. There are a lot of generous companies that want to provide these amazing experiences and have a lot of great digital resources to teach kids about careers. We have kids graduating from the program. We are in a tough spot because during a pandemic it is like, “I do not want to go to college during a pandemic but I need an opportunity. I need a job that pays.”

With an opportunity like this, they get the networking and the experience, and they get paid. The company can meet this whole new demographic and bring them into their community. It is great for team morale and everything to have mentees that are eager to learn from them and to develop this pipeline within their own company.

You said there were seven paid positions that you are filling?

Our partners at Boa Technology, Accenture, and Cigna Biosciences have all offered to provide paid internships. The other thing is you need to provide the structure for the Littles to be able to succeed. I spent a lot of years on the program side. We have these amazing resilient kids who would get to the finish line of graduation from high school. A lot of them would qualify for scholarships, get into community college, and do different things.

That first year after graduation is hard. That first year of college or first year in a different job is hard for any of us. Not a lot of people in their families took that route or had been in college before. When it got hard, a lot of them bailed and did not know how to ask for help or what resources were out there, and then they were stuck and got lost for a bit.

Our Mentor 2.0 program saw that need so they added a 13th-grade year to support where the mentor continues to support that first year after high school. The other thing with these internships, the videos and making more of those connections is our thought if right after high school, they do an amazing experience at a company, that spark goes off again after 6 to 8 weeks, “I got to design a product. I got to learn all these cool technology skills. I met all these people.”

When they are in that first semester of community college or those vocational schools, when it gets hard, boring or you do not have the resources, I’m hoping they do not want to quit that time. They would be like, “I want to do what I learned about. I met this awesome engineer and I want to be like him. I’m going to push through some of this hard stuff. Now I have my mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters.” A lot of the companies are going to be providing buddies at the workplace to help them be successful. They will have a mentor through their internship who can all set those parameters of support to get them through the hard stuff, make it to the finish line, and get into their career.

Layering those contacts, providing them with all those resources, and extending that Big-Little relationship for that additional year have got to be powerful. The first year of college can be tough for anyone, but I can imagine how much more difficult it is for someone who feels that they are either the first person in their family or in their community to experience this. Maybe they are the first person who has ever gone through this. In the business world, a powerful thing to know is that you are not on an island. Knowing that someone has gone through the same thing before and has managed to make it out the other side is helpful.

They have a lot of pressure on them. Most of our kids come from single-parent homes and there could be multiple kids in the home so there is that pressure of, “I need to support my family. I might need to help with my siblings.” It can be hard to stay on that course and see the longer-term view. We are hoping that by putting enough support in that kid’s life, they can handle those pressures. They have somebody to talk through them and see that end goal instead of what is right in front of them and have that support to succeed. The kids that come through this are incredible and the potential they have is amazing. They just need that little extra layer of support.

What are the things that have been the biggest challenge for you over the years in terms of your program? Has it been getting Bigs to volunteer or donations? What is the big hurdle for you on a typical year over year?

Pretty consistent is getting enough men to volunteer. Typically, we have more boys that are seeking a male mentor. We have a lot more women that will volunteer to be mentors. In the past, there have been very long waitlists for boys to get a mentor. That is one reason we created the Sports Buddies Program in 2000 here in Denver to provide a more structured program that was based on sports. That was a nice introduction to mentoring where you always have staff there at the events to support and we help with communication.

We have found that with men, a lot of times, there is a little more resistance to jumping right into a one-on-one relationship and knowing, “What activities do I do? What do we talk about?” Those sorts of things can be hard to jump right into and we understood that. That is why we have three good options with a lot of different flexibility, age and activities where you can be in a group environment through sports buddies.

In the community, you can start one-on-one right away. Mentor 2.0 is tied to the school and has support there with high schoolers. We found that mix has helped out with the ratio and to get more men involved that we were struggling to get involved in previously. That is something that every agency in the country struggles with. It is getting enough men for how many boys who are typically on that waitlist.

I’m assuming that you do a good job of setting expectations and all of those things. Are there resources that perhaps could be created to help draw more men into the program? Do you see much movement between the sports program, the 2.0, and the more standard mentor? Are there people that are escalating their engagement?

Yes. That has been amazing to see. I was part of the Sports Buddies Program for twelve years. I saw a lot of guys come through. I interviewed a lot of guys who would say in those interviews, “I thought about mentoring but I was a little hesitant. I had some concerns about starting one-on-one right away. I saw that this was supervised in a group environment.”

It is a different commitment level. Sports Buddies is six months, Community is a year, and Mentor 2.0 can range from 2 to 4 years. We are able to tell guys, “We are asking you to do 1 or 2 Saturday events a month for six months. We are going to plan all the events for you and do all the communication for you. You do not have to contact the family or pick up the kid. All you have to do is pick one of these fun events from the schedule and we will do the confirmations. You just show up and have fun with the kid through sports, whether that is playing football at the park, going to a Rockies game, going for a hike, ski trips, and all kinds of fun stuff.”

You lay it all out that. It is pretty hard to come up with an excuse why they can’t do that. You are going to have a blast anyway for 1 or 2 Saturdays a month. It gets a lot of guys to come through that are like, “That is what I needed to feel comfortable enough to get going.” The beautiful thing about that is even though they made a six-month commitment, our average match link in that program is about two and a half years. Once they get into it, a lot of those fears go away. They meet the kid and they’re like, “This kid is awesome.”

We match them to have similar preferences and personality types. They are having a blast on the weekends doing sporting events in Colorado, which is awesome. You start developing that relationship and then that bond is set. You are getting more into their lives. They are talking to you more about school and asking you questions. You are seeing this kid grow up.

That is special to be a part of. You do not want to stop. Hardly anyone stops at six months and they keep going, so we added what is called Sports Buddies Plus where they could move into the one-on-one program when they are ready. They have formed this bond in the group space, and then they have gotten along well enough that they’re like, “I would love to go to his football game. I would love for the two of us to go hiking together or work on school more. Now, I’m ready to do one-on-one.”

We had a Big who won our Big of the Year and was nominated for National Big of the Year some years ago. He spoke at an event. He was matched for ten years total with his Little. His Little is now 23. I had their match for several years. I’m convinced that this Big saved this kid’s life. He had a lot of anger issues and bounced around from juvenile centers to foster care. There were a lot of tough things he and his mom went through together. Over those ten years, that Big was the glue that kept that family together and kept that kid on track.

It’s a community effort. We all need to step out to support our youth. They need it now more than ever.

He did community service with him. He would go to court with him and visit him at the juvenile centers. This was a guy who when he started said, “I did not want to do the one-on-one program. I did not feel confident enough. I needed the group opportunity through Sports Buddies to feel comfortable enough to even start.” He started in that environment. Ten years later, he has been doing the one-on-one program for 6 to 7 years. He is intimately involved with the family, helping this kid get on track.

I will never forget when he called me and said, “My kid graduated high school.” It was the biggest achievement you could ever dream of knowing what this kid had been through. They are still close friends. The Little stayed out of trouble and repaired his relationship with his mother. It is this beautiful community that was formed. Here is an example of a guy who never would have jumped into mentoring if it was only a one-on-one option.

There are a lot of guys that I have spoken to that have that same mindset of, “I do not think I’m the right fit to be a one-on-one mentor. I have too many concerns. I’m not going to start.” Sports Buddies has helped those guys overcome those mental hurdles. For many years, we have seen a ton of guys who have long-term relationships, move into a one-on-one program, and have major impacts on kids that they did not expect to. That is what has been cool to see over the years.

How does that program change the Sports Buddies Program during the pandemic? How do you manage to keep that guy rolling?

That was probably the biggest challenge because, in that program, the Bigs and Littles couldn’t communicate with each other. It all has to go through the staff. They would typically only see each other at in-person events. There are little under 300 matches in that program. Figuring out how do we create a virtual space to get that many matches together through Zoom was a big challenge.

I was blown away by the program team there. They have been so creative and they put on Big zoom events where they would have a trick shot contest like Dude Perfect style on YouTube. They would have game nights. We have a partnership with the NFL Inspire Change . Bradley Chubb from The Broncos got on a Zoom call with 60 matches a few months ago. He told his story, answered questions from the kids and kicked off an essay contest. We have had former athletes and retired players from The Nuggets that have got on Zoom calls to talk to the kids about those things.

We have still maintained those connections and use breakout rooms where the Little and the Big could have a space for the two of them to catch up, and then go back to the larger group. We did a holiday party on Zoom. Everybody wore their Christmas sweaters and still did our holiday games and those sorts of things. Luckily, we have been able to get outside a little bit more and have smaller groups in rotations at the parks.

We did a basketball event outdoors at a park and had multiple rotations throughout the Saturday. It has been a ton of logistics and different types of planning, but it has shown us that it does not have to be this fancy exciting event every time. This is true across the board for all of our mentoring programs. Sometimes Bigs think, “I need to spend all this money or come up with these lavish activity ideas.” It is not the case at all. It is all about the quality time where the kids have a consistent figure who gives them a call or takes a walk around the park with them.

I have even had Littles that I have asked, “What has been your favorite activity with your Big?” They said that they went to the Rockies game or Dave & Buster’s or something like that. One said, “It was the day he took me to Home Depot. I got to run errands with him and help him with a project.” We had another Little that was through the roof that his Big let him fill up the air in his tires at the gas station. He thought that was so cool.

You think about how many of our kids are growing up in single-parent homes. A lot of our boys do not have the father figures in their life. They miss out on all those moments and we might take those for granted. To think, “I can do simple things like that,” is something that the kids are never going to forget and be so excited about. That does not require a lot of money, planning or fancy things. That is what it is all about.

That is what we recommend when people are hesitant and say, “I do not know if I have the time and if I can plan all these things.” Live your normal life. You just have this cool kid who is your new friend that can do life with you. If you can fit in and if you find a nice rhythm to do that, you are going to get as much out of it as the kid.

I’m amazed by some of the things that are so unexpected with programs that you hear. You think that it is going to be this struggle or it is going to take a lot of planning or investment. It is those little things that make a huge difference. It is cool to see how that spilled out in the program. Aside from people donating funds to help fuel some of these activities, are there other ways that people can get involved?

There is a number of ways. You might think of mentoring relationships and it is just the Big and the Little. That is where the impact is made and that is where we need to invest. That is our core. It does cost about $1,800 per match to have that professional support, have the resources that we provide, and make sure it is safe and quality.

Having consistent donors and corporate support is helpful, but a lot of different people can play a role in the journeys of our Littles. If they have those certain opportunities at different parts of their life, they can help get them to that finish line to reach those goals that they have. This Zoom virtual innovation time has revealed a lot of that.

How could you step in and help that kid get to the next level or open that next door that he needs? Our kids face a lot of barriers and may not have the same opportunities that a lot of other kids may have. Maybe you work for a company that could provide some workforce development tools. Could your employees share some videos that might open a door or spark something for that kid to follow that path? Could your company provide an internship for a Little who needs an opportunity after they graduate from high school?

We also have so many events and activities we are trying to do for the kids. Do you know somebody who could run a football camp event for our Sports Buddies kids? Do you have connections who could possibly run a virtual STEM session or do a financial literacy class over Zoom? There are always opportunities there. What kinds of activities or opportunities could we provide for these Littles that might propel them and support that relationship to another level? There is so much potential for that.

Are you getting that word out in terms of those opportunities to engage on social? What is your outreach look like on that front?

We are trying to dig into this workforce development. We are looking at launching a whole new platform that would have all of these videos where you can upload the vocational videos. We have a great network of corporate partners that we are working through that can see, “Could we develop a partnership where we do have our fundraising events, you can be a corporate sponsor and do team builders? Could we integrate some of this into your employee engagement?”

We will do virtual lunch and learns with companies. I have even brought matches with me onto the call to share their testimony about being matched and say, “Who from this company might be interested in mentoring?” If others maybe can’t be mentors, I would be happy to share some resources for my job. Our department could maybe do an internship or bring some people together and do a financial literacy course for your Littles.

We are working through those corporate partners. We are always looking for new partners who would be interested in having that multi-layered effect to not only support the agency and what we are trying to do with our match relationships but also to provide those opportunities for Littles, which also help with employee engagement and feeling that impact.

You can be an amazing mentor despite a lot of those concerns.

I’m trying to brainstorm ways to get that message out and also give people other opportunities. One of the things that we like to talk about a lot is meeting people where they are able and comfortable engaging with your organization. A lot of times, people might look at the mentor-mentee and that Big-Little relationship, and think that they do not have the ability or capacity to take on that level of engagement.

They want to do a little bit more than just donate. It is giving people all those opportunities and options in terms of ways that they can engage with your organization. It is cool that you have that infrastructure and that whole system built out so that people can get involved the way that they are comfortable.

It is something that we do want to amplify. We launched a new website. We beefed up our social media content to get these amazing stories of impact out there for people to experience that this is what Big Brothers Big Sisters is all about. This is why it is so critical for our youth to have these opportunities. Making it clear that we always need mentors, but there are also so many other ways that you can support this and be part of that journey.

We have even integrated that with our individual giving. We have different giving levels and we have a group of match ambassadors who have stepped up and said, “We want to help support the mission of the organization. We are happy to share our story and connect donors.” They write quarterly newsletters to donors talking about what is going on with our match, “These are the things that I have seen develop in my Little,” and then send those to the donor. They’re also providing content for social media and videos, and joining us on corporate lunch and learn calls.

They try to also leverage the technology to bring that impact to the donors. It is pretty cool to see that you are not just writing a check. In a sense, you are also getting to meet these matches who you are supporting. You hear from them about how your donation is supporting their match, how they are growing, and all the fun things they are doing together. That resonated well to have faces to your investment. They are like, “This is so cool. In a year, I’m able to see how this match I’m helping support has grown and developed.” That means a lot to me as a donor.

My wife and I have been long-time donors with Save the Children . They do a good job of that by matching you with a kid that your donations are going to help. Even though the donor may not be able to participate in a one-on-one or a more hands-on way, that community building helps create the idea that the support you are giving is leading to benefiting an actual life. It is cool to hear that you have a similar approach in that regard. That is a great way to build that community.

What we want is a 360 community. We love to see when kids come through the program, graduate, go on to college or jobs, and then come back to tell the story to donors and current Littles where they can say, “I was in your shoes too. This is what happened to me.” We will have our next Ignite Potential event virtually. We have a Little coming back who is in college to share his story about how mentoring and positive youth development helped him become who he is. He started in the Sports Buddies Program many years ago.

When he started off, he had three sisters and a mom who worked three jobs. He is not involved in a lot of things. He is a shy kid and does not have a lot of confidence. He attached to his Big and they found a love of golf together. They enjoyed learning to golf together. The kid had never played before. It was a great way for the Big to teach him life lessons through golf and to be a positive force in his life.

He kept building up his confidence over those events, 1 or 2 a month doing sporting events. At one of those events, the Little said, “I’m thinking about running for student council but I’m nervous about it. Should I do it? I have not done anything like this before.” The Big has always been strength-based like, “You can do this. I believe in you. You should try it.” He went ahead and tried it in middle school. Fast forward to his senior year of high school, he became the student body president. He became a community leader in the school and lead a lot of efforts in the district.

They had a lot of suicides in their high school and he led an effort with the superintendent and counselors to have an event to help support kids who might be struggling with those issues. He went from this shy kid who is afraid to do a lot of things to everybody knows him. He is doing speeches. He is a community leader. He got a scholarship to college and he is doing great things.

Now h e wants to come back and share his story to try to encourage donors and other Littles to support mentoring and see what is possible if you have somebody consistent in your life saying, “You can do it. I’m here for you. I’m going to support you,” and look at what can happen. It is great that we have him back and connects with these alumni Littles. That is probably the most powerful thing for donors to see like, “This works. Look at the journey this kid had. I want to be a part of that.”

One of the things I was going to ask is about peer-to-peer fundraising and/or peer-to-peer engagement with getting Bigs to bring more Bigs into the fold. It is so cool to know how much growth can be created for these kids and the Bigs as well through your program. It is fascinating. I’m sure you have thousands of great stories to share.

That’s what has kept me here. Seeing hundreds of relationships over the years, how amazing the kids are and what they can accomplish, and also how it changes those Bigs. John, who I mentioned earlier, was matched for ten years. There were some times when he did not know if he could do this, “Am I making an impact? This kid is struggling in every area.” His wife encouraged him to stick with it, “This takes time. Keep going.” He did that and they had these amazing results.

By the end, when they graduated, he had said, “Despite it being hard at times, that was the most enriching thing I have ever done in my life. That has changed me as a person.” It is those powerful things. It does not have to be a ten-year match. You could be matched for one year with the kid. Job changes and you have to move, but you have planted that seed with the kid.

You have instilled in them that, “I am special. There is somebody who cares about me. I do have potential. I’m going to keep trying.” That can lead to great things. We have these amazing 10-year matches or 30-year matches where it’s like, “I was in my Big’s wedding,” which are wonderful. You could also have an amazing impact even in six months or a year with the Littles.

How can people find out more about your program here in Colorado?

We launched a new website, BigLittleColorado.org . We have multiple match videos. You can see what a match is all about from the different programs. We also have information on all the three core programs where you can volunteer. We also have pages if you want to become a corporate partner, an individual donor, or if you would like to support this workforce development that we are trying to expand. That would be a great way. On social media, we have plenty of great content to check out there as well.

I had a good time talking with you about your program and hearing more about how you guys have managed to stick around for over 100 years. That is fantastic. I appreciate you being on the show and I love these conversations. I love having these talks with people in the nonprofit space. I also want to try to foster action after our discussion. If there was anything you could have people do to make someone’s life better or bring some happiness to the world, what would you have them do?

It is a community effort. We all need to step out to support our youth. They need it now more than ever. It is a critical time for the youth that we serve to be supported. If it is a good time for you to mentor, step up and volunteer in that way. You could think about who in your network might be in a good place to mentor and help them with the conversation. It is not as scary as you might think. You do not have to be this perfect person, have the right answers or have the perfect schedule. None of our mentors has that. You can be an amazing mentor despite a lot of those concerns.

Think about, “If I can’t be a mentor, how else could I contribute to what they are doing at Big Brothers Big Sisters? Could I help support through workforce development? Could I help put on a great event that would make a great memory for one of the Littles?” You could also donate tickets if we could ever go to events again. We can’t wait for that, but maybe activity donations where you can help support a good experience for the matches. That was one but we have a few options there.

I always like options. I just want to spawn action. I appreciate you sharing all those different opportunities. I would encourage people to check out Big Brothers Big Sisters and see how you might be able to plug into their program and make a difference in a kid’s life.

Thank you. We appreciate the support and hope to hear from people soon.

Thanks for being on the show. I will talk to you soon, Mike. Have a great day.

Thanks, Stu. Take care.

Important Links

About Mike Fye

Innovative and experienced management professional with history of developing successful programs and partnerships that drive impact. Collaborating with others to create positive impacts and opportunities is what drives me. I’m a passionate storyteller, accomplished writer and presenter across multiple media platforms with marketing and communications experience. Natural ability to facilitate and build relationships with diverse stakeholders from youth and families to volunteers, Board members and corporate executives.

Darkness

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 05:52:07 GMT

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach. ~ Pliny the Elder

This is the time of year I usually dread. The days are unbearably short (I know, I know… Alaska) and usually freezing. Neither of which contributes fantastically to keeping a level of fitness together. Fortunately for me, I had the means to invest in a solution to both problems – I purchased a kickass treadmill to battle the darkness and the cold. Mother nature has conspired this year to take a big bite out of #2 as we have been experiencing a return to summer of late. Not that I approve, this climate change stuff could be a doozy long-term, but being able to run outside, in shorts and a t-shirt, in mid-December is a treat at which I will not scoff. I do hope for some more seasonal weather in due time, however.

Barker Reservoir is usually firmly locked in a thick layer of ice by this time of year. This season, however, it remains mostly in liquid form. Eldora’s trails are in fairly crappy shape as well and we have very little snow on the ground at the casa. As I write this, in fact, it is nearly 45° at 7:00pm. Not normal at all. The I-70 corridor, however, has been getting pounded by terrific winter storms so the skiing in the high-country is actually pretty stellar. Best of both worlds, I imagine. Good times.

I have managed to keep up a somewhat silly run streak for 46 days. I am in desperate need of a day off, however, and am taking one Thursday in prep for this weekend’s 10K event in Denver. Not sure exactly how I will do since a) I have never actually run a 10K race and b) am not sure my prep has been as fantastic as it could have been with lots of work-related distractions keeping me from focused training but I plan to give it all I have, race smart and come away with a sub-40 chip time. So I guess the first half of that sentence contradicts the second half but the truth will be, as they say, in the tape.

I have managed to get in several days of skiing at the Basin as well and am finally coming back into some semblance of form and style I crafted two seasons ago. Skiing with confidence again, which is nice and I feel really able to explore the opportunities a mountain like A-Basin has to offer. I did throw down some coin on a pair of AT boots and am very excited to see how well I ski locked down. I predict ample gains in what I can accomplish when not constantly faced with the prospect of flying over the bars. Should be fun.

My two remaining goals for 2010 include logging an honest 2500 miles for the year (as of today, I am only 50 miles shy of that target) and running that elusive sub-40 10K. The latter is going to be the touchy one as (barring injury or unprecedented flame out) I have the former pretty much in the bag. I’ll announce a day on which I’ll cross that arbitrary threshold and anyone who wants to join in the fun and/or games can come along. Afterward, beers will be served.

So stay tuned. News is forthcoming.

Episode 43: Leverage Your Most Powerful Asset, Your Mailing List, With Sarah Murray From Women’s Wilderness

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:54:30 GMT

Your email list is a powerful asset. But if you’re like many organizations, you’re not making the most of it. After all—what’s better than an engaged audience, all of whom have raised their hands to be part of your program?

Today’s guest is Sarah Murray , Executive Director of Women’s Wilderness. WW is an amazing organization that helps women and girls become their strongest, best selves by teaching and immersing them in the great outdoors.

Sarah and I talked a lot about the opportunities in their list, and how they could gain valuable insights from the people on it by sending surveys, testing messaging and program details, and even asking them to increase your reach by sharing your emails with others.

This was a really great episode. I hope you enjoy it!

LINK

womenswilderness.org

ASK

Consider how interactions with the outdoors can inspire a shift in the injustices we see.

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Listen to the podcast here

There are plenty of opportunities for all nonprofits to do harm as well, even with the best intentions.

Leverage Your Most Powerful Asset, Your Mailing List, With Sarah Murray From Women’s Wilderness

My guest in this episode is Sarah Murray. She is the Executive Director at Women’s Wilderness . They have a mission to support girls, women and the LGBTQ+ people in accessing their power and improving their health through outdoor community and the connections that you can build in outdoor spaces. We talked a lot about how to leverage their list to get more information and to get a good understanding and buy-in to what Women’s Wilderness is trying to accomplish in this crazy world in which we live. You are going to enjoy the show. It has a lot of good ideas that any organization can hop into to create relationships and build on those relationships that you already have. Here we go.

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Sarah , how are you?

I am well. Thank you. How are you doing?

I am hanging in there. Tell us about Women’s Wilderness. It is a cool organization that you have going on down there in Boulder.

We have been around since 1998 and we are a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to support girls, women and LGBTQ+ people in accessing their power and improving their health through connections to the outdoors and community. What that means is we take a lot of folks outdoors, especially folks that are queer or girls and women to rock climb, backpack, canoe and do all kinds of different activities. Some of them are much more technical, longer, more intense, and a little more extreme and others that are afterschool programs that are a low barrier to entry like slacklining, exploring city parks and trying to get folks in the outdoors.

We do this work with the lens of social justice and looking at intersectionality. We are thinking about who is not in the outdoors and who has the worst social determinants of health, mental health and physical health and could use this experience. When we look through this lens of intersectionality, we see that race, socioeconomics, immigration status and gender all come into play and weave together to keep people out of doing some of these things that create a lot of healing, physical health, joy and transformative experiences in all kinds of ways in our leadership that lasts in our lives.

We do our best to try to make those experiences bespoke and designed for and available to folks that might not be outdoors otherwise. We have programs. We do some afterschool programs in Boulder, Jeffco and Denver. For those of you reading outside of Colorado, those are all areas in the greater Denver Metro area. We also have a huge summer course series where girls and women alike and some queer folks do summer camps with us. Everything from a 5-day, 3rd and 4th grader with one overnight day camp type experience to 21-day expeditions in Pecos Wilderness in New Mexico or in Utah, that is the work that we do and we love doing it.

Are most of the people who participate in your programs from the Denver area or do you get groups coming in from outside of this area as well?

It is a bit of a mix. Because of COVID, we ended up having a local crew in 2021 in our programs, but the year before, we served people from eighteen states. Our afterschool programs, because of their nature of them are much more local, but 70% of our participants are participating in a course or expedition or retreat or event. Those folks tend to come from different places. A lot from Colorado and the Front Range, but other places in Colorado, other surroundings like Intermountain West, the Rocky Mountain States and some folks take planes to get to us as well. It is at the heart of some of our marketing challenges right now. We are in this growth trajectory. When COVID came, there was a physical and mental health crisis and a lot of recreation and outdoor-oriented groups had to go dormant or had to shut their operations.

We have been trying to do the opposite. We have been trying to lean into what folks need and the trauma they have experienced. The healing that they need, connection, joy and the safeties that the outdoors provides that a lot of indoor activities do not, we have had this aspiration to grow nationally where we will still do our programs here in the Rockies.

We run programs in four states in New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, but hopefully, draw a more national crowd of folks who are interested in doing that work, especially work around affinity spaces. Queer groups, only women’s groups and groups for BIPOC or Black, Indigenous and People of Color as well.

It’s hard to justify big marketing dollars to attract a national audience.

You mentioned that you are having some challenges with that. Is it mostly just the expansion of the mission that has become a hurdle in getting the word out to people in other states? What are some of the challenges that you are facing?

At the end of the day, it is about resources. As a small nonprofit that has worked in a bootstrappy way for a long time, it is hard to justify big marketing dollars to attract a national audience. Part of that is a strategy coming up with like, “Who is it exactly that we want to reach, where are they and how will we reach them?” It also goes to resources. The bigger issue is like, “How do we fund the advertising dollars or social media marketing budget that is for in low thousands or high hundreds? How do we find those resources to do that outreach to grow in that way?”

Because of the nature of the work we do, we get funded. Talking about our funding sources, some of our funding is an earned income stream for participation in some of these programs. About 30% of people pay full price. Also, about 70% of folks are getting a free or scholarship experience because we are trying to make this accessible to people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. We do have some earned income streams, but it is hard to get those fees increased when we do not have the big advertising dollars to spend to put an ad on Backpacker or Parenting magazine or something like that.

It is always a challenge of that, “What do I do first?” You need the money to get the reach, but you need the reach to get the money, so you are always ooching each of those up.

Also, how big of a risk do we want to take and what will the return be? For the past number of years, we had a part-time marketing person that was doing both marketing and community outreach. They are going to schools and the ground game is associated with getting folks to participate in a program like this. We invested in a full-time marketing and outreach person and that has been great.

Their name is Anna Ghublikian . They came from the private sector and worked at Craftsy. They understand some of the strategies behind what we are trying to do and this blended approach of a very community-oriented, go to PTA meetings, meet up at REI to more digital and macro look at how to attract a more national audience. Think about our user segments, look at our database and be able to segment and message in very specific ways to specific people.

It sounds like you are doing a lot of the right things in terms of that investment and hopefully, you are seeing a return on that. Investing in people is an investment as well. It sounds like that is the first big step. I am glad to hear that you are on that path.

That has been important to us. At this point, we are trying to basic assets for the organization. We had a pro bono by a group in Portland called Struck . It was great and they created amazing branding materials for us, but now it is taking that brand and putting it into regular posts on social media and a website that is super compelling and easy to navigate. That has been the work that we have been doing to try to set foundations. We can then get into the more specific campaigns around certain days or certain groups or ways in which we slice and dice our offerings to make them more attractive to people.

I heard a couple of things earlier where you were talking about who, where and how of the people that you are hoping to engage with. Have you done that research? Do you know who those people are that will feed both the 30% who are paying clients as well as the 70% that get some scholarship?

We have done some rudimentary work around that. It is so diverse. When you talk about girls, women and queer folks in the US, you talk about 55% of the population or somewhere between 53% and 55%. Each of our courses has a different segment. For instance, one of our courses of the afterschool program is called Outdoor G.I.R.L.S. .

It stands for Girl Immigrant and Refugee Leadership Series. It is specifically designed for girls who are immigrants, refugees or asylees. They are newcomers to the US who are living in Denver. How we attract those girls to this program is very different. Our materials have to be available in Swahili, Karen, Spanish and in all kinds of different languages.

We are often talking to their parents, who are gatekeepers to their participation. That is a very different conversation. One of our courses is an intro to trad climbing. This is for women or non-binary folks who are looking to transition from gym climbing or top roping to trad climbing. They want to learn the basics. That demographic is typically middle to upper-class white woman who often does not have a climbing community to teach her that thing so she wants to get some support and get some lessons in that. It is different.

On the other hand, we have like our Trailblazers Program , which is for Black Indigenous and People of Color, women, specifically, who are interested in learning basic outdoor skills, backpacking, lighting a stove and navigation. How we are reaching women that are BIPOC nationally that do not have a socioeconomic designation, it is not a specific age designation. We are broad in what we do. We have done some of it, but we are in the very early stages of getting smart about how we identify, articulate, target and go after specific folks.

It is a real challenge. You have a really diverse set of audiences that you are trying to reach as well as it sounds like a fairly wide range of services that you provide in terms of skill level, perhaps. That further complicates things when you start looking at that matrix of all those people with all those different levels of activity. It can get daunting. Have you done much segmentation either with your lists or tried to get people to self-select on-site in any fashion?

We have not on the website. To a certain degree, when someone signs up for a course, we know that if you sign up for a queer course, you identify as queer or BIPOC or a certain nature. There is some segmentation that we have for participants, but that is the burden at hand. What we have not done much of and we use Salesforce as our database and we do keep that information. For instance, repeat participants are a big pool for us. If we have someone participate in a summer course in middle school in 2020, we are going to share with them the middle school and high school offerings for 2021. We know quite a bit about that person.

That one for us is easy because there is an inner circle of folks that we have already met and we know how they have interacted with the service that we offer. For us, what we have not done much is the segmentation of our broader audience. We have 15,000 people in our database. Some have donated over the years. We have been around for a long time, but we do not know who all these people are necessary. Our email list is almost the same size and our social following as well. It is in the 16,000 or 17,000 across our channels. We have not looked deeply into who those folks are and how we want to present what to them.

We know that there is not a very high conversion rate between our social media and our registration, which is fascinating to us. We make sure we put all of our newest offerings. We were going to try to do a new adult women’s expedition in Utah. It does not seem to have much of a conversion for us, which is fascinating. Folks are hearing from word of mouth or through outreach or historically knew about us. Attracting new people to our offering is where we have not done too much workaround.

Is it that you have not done too much work or is it that the work you have done has not proven out yet?

We have done a bit of a spray and pray where we message across all channels and hope that it will land in the right people. That is not true for the Outdoor GIRLS Program and this afterschool program that we have had to recruit participants with such intentionality. It is three cups of tea approach to getting people to come and participate. That is a different beast and there are also some of our BIPOC programs that come through a networking experience but are open enrollment, like girls’ summer camp or girls’ afterschool programs that are open enrollment or women’s programs.

We have a retreat called Summit Sisters , which usually attracts between 100 and 200 women. It is a three-day up in Rocky Mountain National Park. We have all these amazing presenters that do spiritual and physical sessions. They do things that are very technical sometimes. It is an amazing experience, but we have not been very specific about who we have targeted to come to do that. For instance, using Google AdWords, we do not know how to use Google AdWords. We probably could and it could be helpful for us.

It is interesting that you mentioned Google AdWords because they do have a program for nonprofits where they will donate or grant $10,000 per month for that targeted outreach. It is called Google Grants. There is money available to play. You have to apply for the grant, but my understanding is that it is relatively straightforward in terms of the application process. As long as you are a 501(c)(3) and in good standing, they will usually get you signed on for that.

That gives you some money to start to experiment. That is what is interesting, particularly if you can do some testing. You can leverage that grant to drive some traffic and then do testing on that traffic to get a good understanding of what works. That is a cool program that you might want to take advantage of or look into, at least.

We have not received the grant and gotten it, but we have set ourselves up for it. You had to do quite a robust sign-up. We have not been able to access it. We almost hired a consultant to help us access those grants and then could not afford the consultant to help access those grants. It is something that we will look into. Do you have much experience with the actual application process or understanding of how to access that?

Sadly, I do not have a ton of expertise there, but I wrote myself a note to try and figure that out because it sounds like something that I could help you or other people with if I knew more about what was going on there. Fortunately, I am on the board of a nonprofit called Nederland Area Trails Organization , so there might be some opportunity for me to run a couple of experiments.

That would be great. We would super appreciate it. It feels like a mirage.

You keep walking towards it and it never gets any closer. That is an interesting conundrum. I have not heard that before, but certainly, I will look into it because it feels like there is some opportunity there to at least bring some knowledge to the table for groups like yours that are looking for some opportunities there. In terms of your outreach, have you identified which groups respond most successfully to things? Are you doing any testing that can give you a little insight as to what messages are working and how to supercharge that stuff?

We did a survey amongst people that were already in our database and asked them about their preferences and a whole score of things that related to our business and our marketing and how they like to be spoken to. We have not done any testing for folks that are outside of that already captured place. I am curious. For other nonprofits, is that a strategy that they have been able to execute when you do not have folks close to you to get them to give you information about their preferences?

It leads to an observation that we have made where people do like to help provide information to nonprofits and other organizations that they feel are giving a little bit of help. People like to help out. That can lead to a lot of great strides in relationship-building. Simply by reaching out and asking someone their opinion and providing a three-question survey or something that the bar is pretty low on, it cements you in their mind as someone that they can help. It also starts to spawn this question about whether or not you can help them because most relationships are give and take. Most relationships are two-way. Whenever you have had a one-way away relationship, I am sure it has not felt very good, even if you were on either side of that.

You are like, “Why isn’t this person giving back? Why am I always taking?” Leveraging those opportunities and it sounds like you have a fairly decent-sized contact group in terms of your social media. It sounded like you had about 16,000 or 15,000 people that are following you. It would be worth reaching out if only to start that conversation and start that back and forth.

Trying to create those opportunities for dialogue is a great way to get this conversation started. You would be surprised at how many people will give you an answer to some survey questions. When you follow up, thank them and give them another question, “What are the programs that you might be interested in?” All of a sudden, you start a conversation which leads to a strong relationship.

How are folks doing that? Are they doing them very tactically? Is that happening on Instagram or is that happening on Facebook and what tools are they using?

It depends on the audience. You can run polls on certain platforms. You can put links out, change your bio link or run a story on Instagram. If you have an Instagram following, it might be worth running a story with an either/or type of question. You could run a series of those and maybe that becomes some content for either the course of a couple of weeks or you could start asking questions on a given day. It could be a special day that your post on Tuesday is always asking people to engage via question and start doing it. You can commit to doing it for a couple of months, once a week and see what happens.

With social media, you can post as much or as little as you would like to. Certainly, there are some suggestions in terms of how often one should post, but if you got into a cadence and started leveraging some of the built-in tools or even something like Google forms would allow you to create surveys or you could go to SurveyMonkey or something like that. Give people the opportunity to feel like they are in a conversation. I would be interested to see if that spawned additional inquiries or questions coming back to you in terms of interesting things that people could try either on their own or how to engage with your programs.

We will definitely do that. Thanks. I made a note of it and it would be a good thing to chat with Anna about.

I would be interested to see what would happen with that. It sounds like you have a pretty good mailing list. Sixteen thousand people or 15,000 is nothing to scoff at in terms of your email. We always say that it is easier to get someone to come back and buy from you again than it is to get a new customer. That holds true in the nonprofit space as well.

It would be interesting to see if you could hypercharge your mailing list and get that a little more active and try to go back to that well. Particularly, your donor list to see how many of those people you could get to donate again or if they are not able to donate right now, share your mission and share materials with their networks.

People like to feel like they are part of something. That group that has already raised its hand and is active in terms of they have taken an action with you before and you got their email address somehow. Those are the kinds of people who you can typically get to take additional actions with your organization, even just sharing information.

Our experience with our survey that we sent out to understand people’s preferences is one, we send into our email list of folks. The response rate was high. I was thinking it would be in the single digits. It was somewhere in the 20% or 30%. It was way high. Our open rates are above that, but it felt like a lot of people that opened that email actually wanted to do something to help and that echoes what you are saying.

How long ago did you send that survey out?

I want to say that it was in October or November of 2021.

Sometimes, you get this sense that you are operating with blinders on. You do not know how what you are throwing out is being received.

It might be worth going back to that list and sending it out again, particularly if you have the ability to segment the list based on people who either did not open it the first time or did open it and did not take action and say, “We would like to give you another shot. We got a great response.” Tee it up from the perspective of this is a winning group of people that you want to be involved with or a part of or feel like you are connected to. Give them the opportunity a second time to engage with that survey and then it might be time to create another survey for all of those people who did respond.

One of the things that I am curious about is the organization has been, over the years, a gender-informed organization. We have worked to try to create opportunities for folks that are not just girls and women but are girls and women that have some other non-dominant identity in a way which is not exclusively the work we do, but that is a piece of it.

We, from very early on, understood that Latina girls in our community are not going to be out climbing unless there is some special provision that is made because of the racism and misogyny in rock climbing and the outdoor industry in our town in general or this area but also having to do the cultural expression of outdoors. Folks that are Latinx often and how you access the outdoors looks different and rock climbing might not be part of that experience.

With that being said, we have this history of doing social justice work. We have this large base of people that have participated with us that have donated and have worked for us that is probably at least 70% white. In the past years, we have doubled down on our social justice work and been like, “Look in the context of this country at this moment.” What we need to do is we need to look at folks who are experiencing this complex discrimination and marginalization. We intensified our focus on folks with these complex discriminations. We still do lots of open enrollment programming, but we have been doing things like issuing statements in our anti-racism work.

We issued the statement about violence and violence against women in response to the shootings in both Atlanta and the shootings in Boulder that happened. We are showing our support for our community here in Boulder and talking about justice and our ability to live free from violence as people, and also recognizing the Asian-American and Pacific Islander violence and the violence against women specifically that happened in Atlanta that being gender-motivated and racially motivated. They are also being a class dimension to that.

I am curious about how these statements feel very one-directional. I’m curious am about how they attract new folks into our work or how they repel people. We had a conversation with someone who called our phone number after our first statement and questioned it. She was an older white woman who had been part of the organization many years ago who did not see herself in it anymore because we were specifically calling out our interest in working with girls of color and folks of color and queer folks.

It felt like her organization had changed. I am curious if there are other things that you have seen where folks have taken this moment of racial reckoning and social justice. Also, their reactions as nonprofits to that and the role they play and being able to have the conversation that you are mentioning as a back and forth with their stakeholders.

There are particular challenges that we have to face in that space as we are making statements with the understanding that we are not going to appeal to 100% of the people 100% of the time. There is usually a vocal minority on either end of that bell curve that feels compelled to reach out. Unfortunately, what we tend to hear are either the people who are on the “hated it” side of the bell curve or the people who are on the “loved it” side of the bell curve and do not get a great finger on the pulse of that beefiness of the bell curve, which represents the vast majority of our stakeholders or constituents.

It is always a challenge. The first piece is to have good, solid values, vision and mission in what you are hoping to accomplish with the understanding that the people who are running the organization and who are part of the organization are all on board with that North Star of where you are hoping to go. We tend to get swayed particularly by the negatives, but we are not going to hit it out of the park 100% of the time.

Frankly, if we are not upsetting someone or making someone joyous every once in a while, then we are being too middle of the ground. The first thing I would recommend is to not get too roughed up internally about the fact that someone did not like that particular approach. It gives you the opportunity to have a back and forth and to get their thoughts on what they would recommend. Have a dialogue with them. It also gives you the chance to learn or take that experience and perhaps make it into a bigger learning experience and put it out there to some portion of your list to get a feel and get an understanding of where people sit.

If you come at it from the perspective of, “This is what we are trying to do and these are the reasons we are trying to do it,” and put it out there as a question that you are seeking people’s opinions on is a good way to start a dialogue and to demonstrate that you are listening. There are a lot of organizations that come at this from the perspective of a soap box. That is not how relationships work. They need to be two-way. It is hard. We all tend to react to negative comments and also get very sensitive to those that we do not want to have to happen. Sometimes if we are doing big things that are hard, there are going to be times that we are going to ruffle some feathers.

It is not that having a couple of folks who are detracting from that or are vocally disapproving. That is much of a problem. What I am curious about in your bell curve example is, “What is the middle of the bell? How are they perceiving this? How is our constituency or our stakeholders, people that we are working within all the ways shifting by this orientation of ours that is very mission-driven?”

Maybe it is not shifting at all or maybe it is growing or maybe we are having a more diverse group of people that are caring about what we do because we are more visible in the space related to diversity, equity and inclusion in the outdoors. Those insights would be super valuable to know how we do outreach and marketing and the impact of what we are doing. Sometimes you get the sense that you are operating with blinders on. You do not know what you are throwing out is being received unless there are massive unsubscribes on your email. There are some things that you can see, like fluctuations in open rates, but a lot of them, not. A lot of it is opaque.

There are a few things that you can try. The first is holding things a little closer to the vest in terms of who you are reaching out to with bold statements before you have tested them. That is where you could leverage that email list as opposed to putting stuff out on social because you do have the ability to frame that in this perspective of, “This is the direction we think we are wanting to go here because we feel that it is important to be inclusive and to take a stand on violence against women and violence against people in general. This is a direction where we are planning to go.”

Ask the question and say, “How do you feel? How should we tackle this?” It gets that relationship going. It gets that dialogue, that back and forth going. It does it in a less public scenario. People can feel like they have the opportunity to weigh in on it, but at the end of the day, you are still pushing that agenda.

By asking that question, you are putting that out there as something that you feel is important and is nudging that list toward that ultimate goal that you are hoping to achieve. That is interesting stuff and it is so challenging. The other thing to consider is the big chunk of that bell curve could be moving one way or the other, and hopefully, it is moving in the direction that you want to take the organization. Another thing to consider is the meat of that bell curve is very fluid as well.

You look at examples from the private sector. You look at Nike and when they put out the ad about Colin Kaepernick, they showed support and put out a big ad campaign behind it. He was a polarizing figure at that time. Nike does a great job. There are a ton of criticism that you can make around Nike and their supply chain in the ‘90s and sexual harassment claims during #MeToo and them being a male dominant and white dominant organization. They push the needle on a lot of social justice issues in ways that a lot of sports organizations, especially big sports organizations, do not do.

When that Colin Kaepernick ad campaign came out, the NFL and a lot of the owners were under attack for his treatment of him and looking at race and blackness in their sports. Nike stock’s skyrocketed after that. For them, their bell curve grew. It was great for their business. Although we are nonprofit, there is something interesting to learn from that. Following your gut or your market, maybe that is your marketing genius or maybe that is knowing that you stand for something and you are going to stand behind it is going to be a risk. Sometimes those risks are going to pay off in dividends and either way, it is your DNA you decided to be, so you have got to see convicted and how you speak about the issues that you care about.

More companies have had success when they have taken stands than when they have not. One needs to have a good understanding of the target audience before you take a stand. Nike could have taken a completely opposite stand and it would have been interesting to see what would have happened there. As long as you are coming at things from an authenticity standpoint or a position of authenticity, a position of passion and that you have done that work that identifies what your values are and your long-term vision of how your organization fits into the world. How it is going to be a better place due to all of the great activities that you are up to on a daily basis and then the mission, which are those day-to-day activities that drive toward that vision?

As long as you are solid on that, have communicated that and are taking steps that are aligned with those guiding principles, in the end, you are going to come out ahead. People tend to get in trouble when they get wishy-washy about it. When they either take a big stand or then back off from that or they fail to take any stand at all, so they feel very center of the road. People like to be a part of a movement in a lot of ways. If your heart is in the right place and you are in your driving toward those ideals that you have defined as part of your organization, you are going to win .

Sometimes, those risks are going to pay off in dividends.

For you, leaning into that list, particularly the email list and figuring out how to segment that in ways that enable you to tell different stories to different parts of that list. That may be going back to the list and asking them what they are interested in and giving them several things that they can choose from. Figuring out how to get this diverse audience into slightly smaller buckets to which you can start to have conversations is going to benefit you on a whole host of levels. You are going to see more people sharing that content. More people are standing up and saying, “I want to be a part of this,” and also, people engaging in the services you provide.

What is the quintessential example you have seen of that or the most successful anecdote you can share? I am curious because you probably talked to a lot of people about concepts like this.

One that I have talked about in the past and I hate to use the same example all the time, but they stand out to me for a lot of reasons and that is Patagonia . I remember back in the day, Patagonia got derided as Patagucci and people said, “This is expensive. It is for a yuppie user.” Maybe it is still going on. Maybe I am hanging with the wrong group. Patagonia still gets derided in that way, but it feels like that attitude and that assessment of that business tapered off pretty heavily when Patagonia leaned into its environmental stance.

As soon as they started taking big risks in terms of taking a solid stand on their position in terms of the environment, I am not going to suggest that Patagonia is the perfect company out there or anything, I have not worked for them. I imagine that they have problems like any large organization, but as soon as they started leaning into that idea, I feel like the attitude around that Patagucci label fell off.

People started saying, “These guys are willing to put their money where their mouth is or where their badge of environmentalism in such a way that I am willing to support them with my dollars, understanding that it may cost more, but I want to be part of that movement.” I do feel like that transition happened when they finally went for it in terms of their stewardship.

Patagonia is a great example. REI on Black Friday and closing doors on Black Friday is another one of those examples that is almost counterintuitive but would drive more sales because they took an intense stand. I respect those plays for sure.

When you take stands that feel like they are against where you should be in terms of Patagonia’s ad that everyone mentions, they certainly did some big things on Black Friday as well in terms of shutting down and then donating all of their revenue. They did some cool things to bolster this idea of community and environmental stewardship, but when they took out the “Do not buy this jacket” ad, it was a big shift as well.

That was a little more recent than them jumping on the environmental wagon. You think, “Patagonian is out here to sell me more jackets. Why are they advertising to repair the one that I have?” They have seemed to have stood by that ethos. People like to be buddied up with organizations that are willing to take big stands.

Especially when it is in an authentic way. You hear Yvon Chouinard and he says like, “We are in business to save the planet.” That is literally how they define an organization. There is certain authenticity, but there is a conflict in a multinational market-driven company that is selling clothing and also, at the same time, is trying to do this deep environmental work. At the end of the day, it is to do no harm.

It is to get to a place of zero where we are not negatively impacting. That is a bit of a different proposition than nonprofits, who come out with the idea that there is a net social or environmental benefit to them being there, not just to do no harm. It is not to say that they cannot do harm. There are plenty of opportunities for all nonprofits to do harm as well, even with the best intentions.

The nonprofits have some additional challenges that they need to continue to try to overcome. At the end of the day, if I am going out and I have decided I need a new jacket and I am going to make that purchase, the reward that I get comes after the sale. “I feel good about this because I got a thing in return for that value exchange of money.” With a nonprofit, the reward happens before that sale. You have an immediate fall off as soon as you have made that decision. The hard part comes because you have to actually part with your money.

Talking about donations, for example. There is this additional friction that nonprofits have to overcome to keep people motivated after they have reached the point of enthusiasm about an organization and then they want to participate in some fashion. It is an added level of friction that nonprofits have to overcome that for-profit industry leaders or businesses do not have to have to contend with as much. I have enjoyed our conversation. I know you need to get going. I want to thank you for being on the show. How can people find out more about Women’s Wilderness?

They can do that by following us on Instagram or Facebook , Women’s Wilderness. We are pretty easy to find. Go to our website. We have a new website and it is WomensWilderness.org . There, you can figure out how to donate to us. You can figure out more about what we are doing and why we are doing it or sign up for courses. We have got expeditions and afterschool courses and programs going year-round. We would love to have any of your readers join us. Stu, thank you very much for the work that you are doing to try to support nonprofits in this area of marketing and for specifically shining a light on Women’s Wilderness and the work that we are trying to do. I appreciate it.

It has been my pleasure. I like to end all of my shows with an ask and that is some way for people to take action. I love having these conversations, but I also like to leave people with something to do at the end of our conversations. If you were to ask our audience to take any action after reading this, what would that action be?

I am tempted to say donate or sign up for a course on our website, but it is actually more than that for me, in the climate that we are operating in, where there is so much violence and such inequity from an economic standpoint and a racial standpoint, I ask folks to consider how their own interactions with the outdoors might be able to inspire some change and some shift in the injustices that we see. They are unlikely bedfellows for a lot of people, but if you take a look at our work or follow what we do, it might prompt some ideas about how your own activism and ability to create some change might be able to be connected to your outdoor or your play life.

I am looking forward to going outside and playing here since we have longer days now. I appreciate you being on the show. I had a great time talking with you and learning more about your organization and all the great work you are doing over there at Women’s Wilderness.

Thanks so much, Stu. I appreciate it.

Talk to you soon.

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There you have it. It’s another great episode. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. Right now, you can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you are there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you would like to tune in to back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That is it for this week. I will be back next week for another great episode.

Important links

About Sarah Murray

Sarah has spent her career making the world a more just and equitable place, using sport and play as her unlikely tool of choice. In reality, sport is often the last frontier of unapologetic discrimination. In her work, she has proven that if you can achieve inclusion and advancement in sporting environments, you can transform communities and societies more broadly. Over the past 25 years, she has worked in over 65 countries on strategies that leverage the power of play for social justice.

Sarah is currently the Principal at Grow the Game – a global consultancy. She is also the Executive Director at Women’s Wilderness, a nonprofit organization based in Colorado (USA) aiming to transform outdoor culture so it’s a place where girls,’ women and non-gender conforming people can build their confidence, courage and connectedness in the same way that men with dominant identities have always done. She was previously the Executive Director of Women Win Foundation USA, a global NGO dedicated to equipping adolescent girls to achieve their rights using sport and play based strategies. In this role, she spent 10 years supporting the work of grassroots practitioners and activists from Bolivia to Bangladesh and impacting the lives of over 3 million girls.

Sarah spent a decade with the Women’s Sports Foundation, working on issues of health, access and equity from a U.S. perspective. She is a Master trainer with the THNK School of Innovation and provides cross-sector consultancy to influential organizations globally to employ systems thinking, human-centered design, gender analysis and play-based methodologies to address the most pressing social issues of our time. In these capacities, she led projects across sectors with Nike, FIFA, Gap, Vital Voices, the U.S. Department of State and DFID.

A mountain woman at heart, Sarah spends her free time riding, sliding and running on trails and enjoying the outdoors with her wife, Signe and their fierce young daughter Tallulah.

Episode 44: Creating a compelling story through marketing and communication with Mark Eller from Leave No Trace

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:40:16 GMT

Here at Relish we try hard to adopt sustainable practices, recycle, and reuse as best we can. Generally speaking, we do our best to minimize the impact we have on the planet.

I bring it up because I had a fun conversation today with Mark Eller , the Memberships, Major Gifts, and Foundations Director at Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. Leave No Trace is easily one of my favorite organizations because they teach people about interacting with our natural spaces with more care and consideration.

Mark brings a ton of expertise to the table at Leave No Trace, having as he does a career steeped in communications AND marketing. So, as you might imagine, we talked a lot about these subjects. We both feel every nonprofit can benefit from understanding how Communications and Marketing intersect to tell stories that compel transactional relationships.

One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was about measuring success. Yes, it’s important to use data to identify trends and information—but it’s also important to pair your data with observations and watch people’s behaviors. That will help you identify whether their actions match up with your organization’s mission, so you can learn where you can better educate and train your stakeholders. Using anecdotal evidence paired with data makes for a stronger plan of action going forward.

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Check this one out. It’s a ton of fun.

LINK: lnt.org

ASK: What could I do better the next time I go into our natural spaces? Be a steward with a protection ethic.

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Listen to the podcast here

That is what I love about small magazines, and that is what I like equally about nonprofit communications and marketing work. I work in the development department for Leave No Trace, raising funds. At IMBA, I was focused on communications than fundraising. Like my small magazine background, I like that you can wear a bunch of different hats. I have helped invent our Citizen Science program at Leave No Trace because I saw the need to have a cool technology program to wave in front of potential funders and donors. That bought me into learning everything I could about Citizen Science.

It reminded me of being a magazine editor where you are like, “There is this whole set of climbers I did not know about that are doing deep water soloing. I’ve got to find out everything I can about that scene in our sport.” Off you go, you learn what you can and try to report something back to a readership interested in authentic knowledge-based. You cannot pull the wool over their eyes for too long. I tried.

It is amazing how scrappy both the independent publishing arena is as well as nonprofits. It is this DIY, get-it-done attitude. It is one of the things I love most about working in this space. I was an intern at Rock and Ice before you joined. It is fun to see how many different touchpoints we have together.

It is a small community and lots of people doing cool things. Boulder is great all. With the multiple nonprofits here, you can learn a lot. A part of that process of wearing lots of different hats and being able to tell a good story is learning to listen to experts. If you are talking about outdoor recreation and environmental education, we have got a lot of experts here in Boulder that are worth listening to.

It is a great place to be able to get a ton of experience and expertise in that realm. One of the things I am intrigued by with Leave No Trace is all of the impacts that have been going on over the past several years. We see it most noticeably here in the Front Range of Colorado but people are going crazy in the woods. I love seeing people enjoying our open spaces and natural resources. Tell us a bit about your mission there at Leave No Trace and how things are going with that as we see unprecedented use of our natural places.

It has been quite the story. One of the nice things about the Center’s approach is that we take a very data-driven approach to what works and what does not in terms of messaging and addressing impacts on natural areas. In that regard, we oftentimes partner with Penn State for large-scale research projects. We did a nationally representative survey of Americans about their recreation habits. It was a multi-phase throughout the COVID pandemic.

Fairly early, we’ve got our first survey out there and then did two more phases after that. One of the big takeaways is that people initially were canceling international trips and other types of vacations and deciding to buy some backpacks or paddleboards and make their vacation plans around natural areas close to home.

We also know from the survey work that that is likely to continue. People are saying very clearly in the survey data that eventually, they were able to get their hands on some outdoor equipment, which all sold out immediately. They started planning their trips around natural areas even more than they had in the past.

At least if they are going to believe, people take them at their word will not recede very quickly because they have made that investment in the equipment. They had a lot of great experiences but it also left us with a lot of new users or people that are new to a new form of outdoor recreation. That has the potential to create a lot of impacts. We all experienced that. It was not that there was heavy use but there were also people doing things they had not had so much background in the past.

Creating a compelling story through marketing and communication with Mark Eller from Leave No Trace

My guest is Mark Eller. He is the memberships, major gifts, and Foundations Director at Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics , a Boulder-based nonprofit that does a lot of great work getting the word out about how we can all be better stewards when we are out in the outdoors. One of the great things that Mark has is his wealth of experience in communications, copywriting, editing, etc. He sees an interesting differentiation between communications and marketing. Marketing things are all transactional, and communications are all about building awareness. It was a cool conversation. I hope you have a good time reading it. Mark is a great guy. Here we go.

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Mark , how are you doing?

Stu, I am doing well.

Thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate you joining me. I am excited to talk more about what you guys are up to at Leave No Trace, how everything is going, and have a fun discussion about communications, marketing budgets, and how nonprofits can differentiate between those things.

It is a rich topic for sure.

It sounds like you have been doing a little bit of research, which I thoroughly appreciate. Thank you so much for doing that. Tell us a bit about your organization, what you have been up to, and how things are going coming out of the crazy pandemic we have been involved with.

It has been an interesting time for Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics . We are a national nonprofit based here in Boulder. We have been around since 1994. Interestingly enough, the Leave No Trace Center once shared a building with our friends at the Access Fund , the climbers’ advocacy group, and with International Mountain Bicycling Association, which is where I worked for eleven years before joining the Center. I have been with Leave No Trace for a number of years but did a long stint as Communications Director for IMBA. All three of those Boulder nonprofits shared a DNA and used to share an office space together.

Was that at Galvanize where you were with IMBA?

The old office was on Broadway until not too long ago. Close to the Hill Campus area, there was an old IMBA logo still on display. You could see it from the street. I never worked out of that building but that was the origin story for those three nonprofits.

I worked for an ad agency back in the day called MPH. This is back in the late ’90s. They had an office that The Nature Conservancy or Access Fund moved into after they wrapped up their operations. That was out of the Folsom where The Nature Conservancy is now.

One-size-fits-all messaging has its limitations. When you customize your message to an audience, it gets better results.

A lot of nonprofits share a common history with an organization that either became a peer organization, went away or evolved into something. One of the funny things about those three, Access Fund, IMBA, and Leave No Trace, all have had some version of a traveling program. Subaru has been a sponsor for Leave No Trace and IMBA. Access Fund is still with Jeep but they have all had traveling educators. You see this DNA expresses itself in different ways in different organizations that have some common themes running back in time.

Boulder is such a place that has so many great nonprofits doing some amazing things in that community. You cannot throw a rock without hitting a nonprofit in that town.

One of the things I am excited about is our Tourism Partnerships Program , which is new for the Center. We have been involved with tourism in different forms for a long time but this is a new partnership program. We have engaged with statewide partnerships here in Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, and New Hampshire. One of the common things, when you meet with these tourism groups is that they say, “There are so many different environmental nonprofits in our state or our city. Trying to get them all aligned around one message is a challenge unto itself.” It makes a lot of sense.

It is a good reason for us to be involved in that work. Leave No Trace is able to come in and say, “Let’s do some work in this area and get these stakeholders as aligned as possible,” which is easier said than done and get a bunch of different nonprofits who might be in totally different spaces in terms of the recreation types that they deal with or the interest that they have and see if we can find the common elements, which we all share of wanting to protect natural resources.

It is cool to see when nonprofits are able to do that. I remember a great case study when they were trying to open up an area North of Grand Junction. They were going to open it up for a lot more oil and gas development. Two organizations came together, one was Ducks Unlimited , and the other was somebody like Access Fund that you would think would not have a ton of overlap.

They both saw how much impact this was going to have on that area and came together and made it so that development did not go through. That area was preserved for wildlife and wilderness. It is cool to see when nonprofits can pool their resources. Even if they have different missions or different user groups, they were able to create a huge impact.

It is fun when it works. It does not always work. At the end of the day, nonprofits are like every other business where you have competitors and can play in a competitive space sometimes. Other times, you are able to put differences aside and say, “The benefits of working together outweigh looking at each other as competing for dollars, members or messaging.” It is nice when you can move past the competition level and strike up a partnership.

By way of background on me as your guest, I moved here around the timeframe in the late ’90s to work as an Editor at Rock and Ice Magazine. I have been an East Coast guy my whole life and have drifted into journalism. Getting a job at one of the climbing magazines was my dream gig. I landed in Boulder and worked for a bunch of different outdoor sports titles as an Editor. I started writing for Trail Runner, the sister publication of Rock and Ice, and then eventually shifted to different things.

I am working with Ski Racing Magazine, which VeloNews, their parent company, had acquired. That was a funny episode in my professional life because I am not an Alpine skier at all. I was going to help cover the Nordic scene. The lead editor left, and I was thrust into covering World Cup Alpine Racing, which is such an intense, awesome sport. I still follow it to this day. I still do not Alpine ski. I am a snowboarder and a Nordic skier but it was one of those things where you had to adapt on the fly and, in some ways, fake it until you make it.

Communication is about inspiring knowledge and trust in your organization.

For example, people that are used to running on the Boulder Creek path here in town saw that, “I cannot stay 6 feet apart from people. I will get out on a trail.” Trail running is similar but not the same as running around streets and paved bike paths. People have learning curves and good positive messages about how to anticipate the impacts you might cause when you are in a natural area. I am not afraid of running out of work to do for the center in those areas any time soon.

It is one of those challenges that continue to grow. It is about education, and that is what I love about your organization. It is that mission toward getting people to understand how their activities affect the places they like to play.

That is what we are hearing with this Tourism Partnerships Program. That is a couple of years old now but getting inundated with a lot of requests. This is by no means unique to the Front Range. We are talking to beach communities, communities in the Great Lakes region, and here at home in Colorado. They are all saying the same things like, “You would not believe it if you saw how crowded our trails or beaches got this summer.” We are saying, “We would believe it because we are hearing it from every sector of the nation and internationally as well.”

This happened in Europe, too. We have a dynamite presence, especially Leave No Trace in the UK, Ireland, and Scotland. It’s the same thing there. People are going into natural areas. They go on a little farther than they used to try to get away from all the busiest places. That is leading to a real need for good environmental education.

What are you doing to get the word out and spread that knowledge about how to behave in the outdoors?

We focus on the education aspect. The #RecreateResponsibly Movement is a great thing that we have had a hand in shaping. #RecreateResponsibly is a message-based campaign that does not offer a ton of educational resources behind it. Whereas we see that as our specialty, we have good messaging, and we love to work with a lot of the tourism partners in particular. The health or gear companies we work with have great marketing in-house and can devise a fantastic looking campaign but when it comes to, “What are you going to do to train rangers and state parks across the State of New Hampshire and how to share low impact practices?” That is where that depth of educational knowledge comes in.

That center has a long tradition there. It is great to work with marketers who come up with good-looking campaigns and smart-sounding taglines but taglines and imagery only get you so far when trying to change people’s behaviors in the outdoors. You have to say, “What could we offer them in terms of training? How are we going to assess all of our environmental messaging and see how well or how not well-aligned it is?” That is where the center’s work can shine.

It seems like there is an opportunity there to incentivize people through accreditation for people to have a patch to put on their pack or vest. I am sure you are doing some of that type of work.

We customize with all these partners. We have community partners who are usually smaller-sized organizations. We have this new category of tourism, lots of others. Like most nonprofits, we have too many categories that we work with for the membership side of things. With all of them, we try to assess their particular needs and tweak the messaging to fit their audience the best. One-size-fits-all messaging has its limitations. When you can customize it to an audience, it gets better results. You can measure those things. It is a real challenge.

Another thing that is familiar territory to a lot of nonprofit pros who might be reading is metrics. How do you measure success? In our case, particularly of Leave No Trace, the essence of it is, “How do you measure the impacts that did not happen because you were successful in educating people?” You measure the absence of bad things. If you are doing a fantastic job of educating people but the volume of visitation goes up by 400%, you still may have more impacts than you had the previous year. You have got to tease out some pretty sophisticated techniques.

One thing that Ben Lawhon, our Education Director, has become a real expert in the field of human dynamics when it comes to resource management is paired observation studies where you survey people about their beliefs about Leave No Trace or other environmental things. You also observe that same person who filled out a survey or answered some questions at the Trailhead, and then you watch their behaviors and pair what the self-reporting said with what you observed them doing.

People may not even be aware that those things do not match up their behavior did not match up with their self-reported understanding of Leave No Trace principles. We can help the land manager, friends of the group or whoever we are working with to say, “Even though these people think they are doing a great job with waste, what that means to them is not necessarily what we want or what you want to limit resources. Let’s dive deeper and see how we can figure out where the misunderstandings are happening and help people do better.”

That must be a challenge in trying to figure out how to normalize the data so that you are comparing apples to apples. Figuring out how to make that happen is a real challenge.

You have got a lot of assumptions people make. One of the things in this tourism realm is that there is always this tension between the residents and the tourists. There is a lot of othering, “I lived here for twenty years. I know what to do.” It is these people coming in from wherever. They are the villain. What we have observed a lot is that residents give themselves a lot of agency to not follow the regulations, “I lived here, and I have always used that trail. I do not care if it has been closed off for the season for revegetation. That is my trail.” That is a difficult dynamic to break down.

It is nice that Leave No Trace has a message, theme, and high level of consumer trust. I loved working at IMBA. It is a great organization but you are always coming into every conversation with that, “Are you pro bike? Are you anti-bike?” You’ve got the single user lens that people look at you through like, “I do not like the mountain bike people, so I do not care what you have to say.” It is nice to work for an organization that does not have that single user group tag associated with it from the get-go.

One of the nonprofits I work with is a trail organization in Nederland called Nederland Area Trails Organization . We position ourselves as agnostic in terms of trail use. We ride bikes, run, have equestrians among our group of people, and people who like to go out and hike to the picnic spot. We try to position everything we do from that lens of multiuser access and enjoyment. It is tough.

Mountain biking does show up fairly loudly, so people tend to associate our organization with mountain biking in particular, even though we are trying to be an all-inclusive trail organization. One of the things I was thinking about is being able to get that Leave No Trace message out to a diverse set of people. It must be one of your main missions.

One of the legacies of this particular organization is that it has this big tradition in scouting. A lot of people associate Leave No Trace closely with their Boy Scouts of America or Girl Scouts of the USA experience. That is a great thing, and it is helpful from being able to play well on both sides of the political divides that we have. Scouting groups tend to be more conservative in their orientation.

If you’re not paying attention to how marketing has evolved, you’re probably not being the best marketer for your nonprofit.

I see that an immense strength for Leave No Trace is that we are not so easily categorized as like, “They are the hippie types from Boulder.” We’ve got those, and we are proud of having those kinds of people in our organization. We have a huge presence, and that scouting tradition is strong and has been doing wonderful things.

For example, I have always said about the Citizen Science stuff I mentioned. If you give a couple of Eagle Scouts the right Citizen Science project, they will do things that will blow your mind. You have got these earnest young people who need to impress their leaders and show them that they are worthy of that designation. It is a great opportunity to tap into something science-based and helps get you away from, “Which enclave are you going to associate yourself with in terms of user groups or political orientation?”

Leave No Trace has some nice advantages and everybody else’s challenges as well for how you are perceived. Perception is a good moment to shift towards that marketing and communications stuff that we have been talking about of when is the right time to focus on a communication strategy or a marketing strategy and break down those barriers people have of why they think they should or should not support your organization.

Let’s dig into that. In your mind, marketing and communications, I am assuming that you feel that they are rowing the same boat but sometimes not in the same direction.

I came from magazine and editors positions. I am more of a communications person than a marketer at heart but I have found that the marketing challenge is interesting and very rewarding when it goes well. In my mind, marketing is all about trying to inspire a financial transaction. Sometimes beyond financial, and sometimes it is coming to join a trail work event or participate in a program.

Often, the crux of marketing and the way you are evaluated in that space is, “How many dollars did you raise?” That is a fair and necessary part of nonprofit work. No money, no mission. For eleven years at IMBA, I primarily focused on spending the money that the development team would bring in through different communications products and initiatives.

Now it is quite healthy to be on the other side of the equation and say, “How am I going to raise enough money that we can do this great new webinars series that we want to offer?” As a development department person, I am more in the marketing space than ever before. To me, communication is about inspiring knowledge and trust in your organization. The marketing part of that is, “Are you going to make a donation or do something else to further the capacity of the organization? The communications inspired you, and now we are going to try to convert that into some form of support.”

That is an interesting way to look at it. We tend to think of the audience engagement cycle as having four main pillars. The first is to attract, convert, bond, and inspire. People flow into and around that ecosystem as their needs change and their engagement with your organization changes. You are likening communications to that attract phase and then marketing on what you do with those people once you get them to the site to try and get them to take that action. That is what the converting and bonding phase of that process sounds to me like.

It is related to our past lives in journalism. For a long time, people were quite willing and assumed the natural order of things was to subscribe to the magazines and, eventually, the websites that provided the content you liked. What we have seen that is made it so incredibly tough in that world is that consumers now have so many choices for free content. They have spoken loudly that lots of free content are as good as or better than paying for premium content. That has led to a death spiral for a lot of smaller publications. You are competing with social media, in particular, that offers unlimited free content. You can consume your whole life away.

A lot of people have made it clear that, “If the quality is not always as high as professional journalists, I can keep scrolling until I find something that I do like.” People love to whine and moan about paywalls but at the same time, they will equally whine and moan about how there is nothing but crap out there to read. It is quite a dilemma. For nonprofits, the way that that happens is you can communicate yourself until you are blue in the face about the great work you do and how inspirational you are. That is not going to get you a member to donate or the money to do your mission until you can marry that to some effective ask.

Simply streaming as much content out the door as possible is not a good communication strategy. It is part of a communication strategy to do enough that you stay on people’s radar but you have to be able to mix in a readable, entertaining or inspiring ask message, not crank out as much inspirational content as you can, whether you think of yourself as a communicator or a marketer, you are going to have to address this question of, “Is it enough to have a great mission?” Scream it from the rooftops how great your mission is. It is not going to get you too far in nowadays’ super busy communication streams that we are all trying to swim in.

Our friends over at NextAfter have this value proposition where there is all this friction in the nonprofit world where it is an uphill battle because people do not necessarily wake up every day saying, “How can I give away some of my money today?” For-profit space, there is an exchange of money for a product or service. In the nonprofit space, the trigger happens before that transaction is complete. As soon as somebody makes a decision like, “I am going to give to this organization,” there is an immediate fall-off of that enthusiasm and dopamine that gets hit.

You have to make sure that they follow through with that intention. It is also such an uphill battle with friction points all along that route of trying to get them interested and understand why they not only should donate to you. The decision is not just, “Should I donate to organization A or B?” You have to differentiate yourself between other similar organizations but also this friction of, “Or not do it at all?” There is all this additional tension that is in there. Having that unit that unified or coordinates communications and marketing strategy is important in getting people to make that final decision.

I have always thought that for-profit companies should take a hard look at an application they get from any applicant with a nonprofit background because you are trying to sell a product that is nothing more than an idea and a feeling of belonging. If you can do that and succeed in getting people to donate consistently, you have pulled off something impressive. We all, as nonprofits, pride ourselves on our mission and program efficiency. The center has a top four-star rating from Charity Navigator and other nonprofits but that is not going to get somebody to donate either.

You can say, “Ninety cents of every dollar goes towards programs.” That is all great but you are still trying to get somebody to write a check for $100 or a couple of hundred dollars or $1,000 based on mostly a feeling of, “I like these guys and gals. I like the work that they do and the way they do it. I need to contribute to this cause.” That is quite the challenge. Some organizations focus on a great suite of member benefits, which can be a good thing. For a while, IMBA had, when I was there, bikes fly free. For a lot of people, that was like, “That is why I am a member. I do not like everything you do but bikes fly free. You cannot beat that.” When that went away, it was hard to replace.

It is a bit of a treadmill to get on with the member benefits package. It has always got to be there. It is an important part of marketing your organization. If you are trying to sell a membership to a nonprofit purely based on getting the backpack, you are always going to be on this treadmill of, “How can we get a better benefit than last year? We cannot get this one again. Are we going to lose half our members because that voucher went away?” It can be a fraught path to go down.

You said it well with the idea that if somebody can market and communicate that story in the nonprofit space and any industry, we recommend trying to position your organization or business as the guide in that process. Figuring out how to do that as a nonprofit is a challenge to get the organization positioned to make the donor or the volunteer the hero. It is a twist in that communication that needs to happen so that people can get excited and decide, “I am going to give to Leave No Trace versus another organization that does similar things or not give at all.”

Marketing is such a multi-layered beast these days but you have got the world of content marketing, which is something that you and I, as editors, feel at home in. You have to be an effective marketer to track ads and all the subtle tricks of the trade that go along with Google Analytics and tracking social ads and demographic profiles. You have to at least have a working knowledge in all those different areas to be effective in nonprofits like you would in a for-profit company. If you are not paying attention to how those things have evolved, you are not the best marketer for your nonprofit that you could be.

Don’t fall prey to making assumptions. Be data-driven in your approach as much as you can.

It is a real challenge because everything changes on a dime sometimes. I know there are some new Google algorithm changes coming up that are going to make some people’s heads hurt.

Why are we not all on TikTok? I cannot tell you.

That is all audience, and that is the real challenge for organizations, particularly ones that have a very wide variety of stakeholders. Let’s say you are a trail-building organization and a lot of your volunteers tend to be younger but your donors tend to be older, and your corporate sponsors tend to be in the middle. You have to figure out how to message to each of those audiences effectively and figure out how to get in front of them where they show up to get information so that you can bring them into the fold. All of a sudden, you are spread so thin that you are not able to do as effectively of a job as you could if you were focused on one user group that you could wrap your arms around where they go to get information and show up.

One of the nice legacies of Leave No Trace is that it is a data-driven approach that is built into the organization. That is true. We all have a way that we market and communicate. Not making assumptions about, “Your demographics is key.” For example, your Facebook audience is the oldest slice of your demographic. For the center, Facebook, our strongest demographics are the 18 to 25 and the 26 to 38. The biggest following on Facebook is the youngest demographics that are tracked other than the tween age people.

That is a good example of when somebody tells me, “Do not put that on Facebook because there are all the old people.” I am like, “Look here. This is the biggest reach that we have for 18 to 25 is our Facebook following.” Do not fall prey to making assumptions. Be data-driven in your approach as much as you can. I am an English major, so these are painful words for me to say.

I will put in a plug for our friends over at Google. You do not always hear nice praise for Google every day. People see them as too big but Google for Nonprofits is an incredibly powerful program. If you are not enrolled in Google for Nonprofits and are in the nonprofit space, I would suggest you take another look at that. The array of tools, free ads, and things that you can do by having an enrollment in that program is amazing and worth celebrating.

People talk about Google Grants from time to time. That is an amazing opportunity that does take some effort but once you are in that program, it may not be your best traffic source but it is a new traffic source that is sitting there, ready to be tapped. Looking at all of those tools is great advice. I appreciate you bringing that up.

Especially most of us out there are on a $0 marketing budget or close to it. We try to do as much as we can with all the free tools that are available. It has limitations and tends to change for nonprofits that get above that $5 million to $10 million mark. You are not talking about a $0 marketing budget at that price. You are still used to doing everything you can, as cheaply as you can. Google for Nonprofits is certainly worth a look if you are working on that $0 marketing budget.

At Leave No Trace, how do you distinguish or differentiate between communications and marketing? Are they connected at the hip? Are they two separate parts of your organization? How does that work where you are playing?

It is joined at the hip and tries to stay in synchronicity as much as possible. For me, it had been a good professional challenge to step away. The thing that comes easiest to me would be to write press releases, call up folks in the media, and do all my bag of tricks from being a Communications Director. I have a different set of tasks in front of me now. I try not to step on toes too much. The people doing communications at the center are great at what they do. I will say, “Here is a story that might be worth a share on our social feed.” I have a marketing purpose behind wanting that story to go onto our feed but that is not my role.

The communications team is welcome to say, “It is not what we are talking about this week but we will keep it in mind for later.” That is totally fair. We need to find that happy medium. In my mind, if I had to give up a formula to it, 10% to 20% of communications messaging might take up a marketing theme something about joining as a member, contributing to a campaign or making some contribution to the mission. I am perfectly happy if 75%, 80%, and 90% of the messaging some weeks are around raising awareness and communicating the values and knowledge that the center has to share.

It has got to be a blend. You can overburden your followers with too much marketing-oriented messaging but you do not want to go down the road of like, “We will crank out so much content about how great we are, and we will never ask anybody for anything.” That is not going to get your nonprofit to where you want it to be.

One of the things that we like to push is this idea of value exchange and getting great information out there that comes from an organization but is not necessarily always about that organization. It can be effective. You are not constantly beating people over the head with asks for their time or money. Positioning yourself as someone who is knowledgeable, willing to share information, and excited about the idea of educating people can then help bolster those asks when they are made.

It is also celebrating the people that got you there, your board members, and members. For us at Leave No Trace, a lot of times, land managers are doing a great job of spreading a Leave No Trace message in a particular forest, park or river. Those feel-good messages build that personal affinity. That has a marketing function to it but in those cases, I do not think those are primarily marketing-focused messages. Those are building constituency and improving your communications about who you are and what your values are. That sets up a marketing message down the road.

I was thinking about the idea of you being able to brand your organization through all of the great work you do and the information you can share and get out there into the world. That becomes that awareness piece that then brings somebody back. I do some volunteer work with Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado . I am pretty sure that they usually have your little placards at the registration tables when volunteers show up to work. Getting in front of that wider audience builds that awareness piece for you.

Coalition building and finding like-minded groups like VOC is a wonderful thing. You have to balance that with like, “Where are we going to make sure that this furthers the capacity of the organization?” You want to be able to tell your board, your members, and all the people that support you that, “We are not preaching to the choir or reaching the same small audience. We need to scale this thing to where we are protecting more natural resources next year than we did this year.” To go back to our earlier point, the next year that we are looking at is going to be hugely important to make sure that we have grown the capacity of the center to bring the messaging in front of as many people as possible.

The need is clear that there are tons more room to grow. We believe passionately that dollars contributed to the organization help protect more natural areas. At the end of the day, that is still going to mean asking people for dollars. You can’t just be saying, “This is important work, and it needs to be done.” One of the things we did not touch on but has an interesting balance between positive and negative messaging is if there’s anything we can learn from our brethren in the political realm, it is that negative messaging can be highly effective. In our world, it is important not to scold and not to be perceived as like the trail police but at the same time, people can be extremely motivated by a message that says, “These areas are in trouble, and it is because of bad behaviors that we need to change.”

That can be a motivating message for people. That is not wrong. That is not fear-mongering. That is letting people know that there are bad behaviors out there, and they are not necessarily being conducted by people who are bad people. The impacts they are causing are harmful to wildlife and harmful to natural places that we treasure. We believe education is the best cheapest, most effective way to get people to change those behaviors. It is not all happy-go-lucky messaging all the time.

Most of us out there are probably on a $0 marketing budget or close to it. We try to do as much as we can with all the available free tools.

I was reading a book talking about coaching. This was coming at it from a perspective of sports. Some of the most effective coaches have a real solid balance between praise and criticism. When you can find that balance and create that synergy where people understand that there are opportunities to do better but what they are doing is also good, that tends to be where a lot of that progress gets made.

It is like educators too. You look back on the teachers that meant the most to you. They were not going to be the pushover that called every Friday free study hall. It was that teacher that got something out of you that you did not know you had. That meant some honestly harsh evaluation of your work as a student at some point.

The nonprofit has a need to find out where we can push people in a way that they are going to appreciate of like, “We can do better.” You can help somebody do better. You can show some tough love. It is a real danger in this field to be perceived as scoldy or holier-than-thou. We have all made our mistakes in those ways at times in the past but there is something to be said when somebody looks and says, “I appreciate that they were willing to shine a bright light on something that needed to have it exposed.”

That is where testing comes in and plays such a huge part. You usually hear that mostly in the realm of marketing. You can test messaging and communications and see what is creating the effect that you were hoping to achieve simply by pumping the brakes when we tend to get too excited about a particularly bad event that is going on. Leveraging that passion and idea but testing that message before we go out and do something that will turn some large percentage of our audience away.

There was a vocal voice on social media that was saying, “Leave No Trace is too namby-pamby, and I am going to take it on myself to call people out in the harshest possible terms for their bad behaviors.” It got a lot of attention. It is easy to get the attention that way but if you look at it, you say, “What was the outcome of that? How many people change their behaviors in positive ways because they were getting trashed?” That has its drawbacks. There is never an occasion to harshly call people out. Since we are talking about communications and marketing, it is an interesting tension that sometimes a heartfelt, honest, and somewhat negative message can have as much impact as something that is very positively worded and happy in tone.

There are plenty of examples of both sides of that where you have people who are so overly harsh about everything. That can turn an audience off but if you are constantly praising and not pointing out the fact that there are actual problems out there, people start to wonder why you are in business or what it is you are doing.

I do a fair amount of grant writing for the center. It is not the most enthralling writing that I have ever done in my life but it is satisfying when it works, and somebody feels you are worth creating a grant opportunity for an organization. You start a grant with the problems. You do not say like, “Everything is great. We educate people. It is greater. There is a real need for you to donate $50,000 or $100,000, $10,000 because here is the problem. Here is how we are going to solve it. Here is the timeline that we will be working on. These are the outcomes that we anticipate.” If you do a good job with that, it started because you stated the problem.

If you think about an action movie, there are lots of ups and downs during the course of a good, well-crafted film. You do not have one inciting event that gets overcome, and then the movie is over. That would be pretty boring. The hero tends to go through all of these crazy parts of the story where it looks like they have gotten to the other side, and then there is another challenge. It is that overcoming and that process of painting that picture for people that creates a compelling reason for them to engage with any organization.

I would go back to where in my mind, marketing and communications for a nonprofit is closer to for-profit work than people realize. If you are selling house paint, you need to convince the consumer that, “You might be happy with the color of your house now but our colors are nicer and more durable. There is a sale coming up where you can get a bunch of our paints. You are going to have this great-looking new house.” Truthfully, it is not all that great. You need to start with, “You’ve got something and could get something even better. We can provide it for you.” A lot of that is similar. People know that there are problems in places like outdoor spaces. They are not sure what the right solution is.

F or one person, if you are super focused on trail access for hiking, the American Hiking Society might be the place where you want to go. You are all in on that activity, and all of their imagery and messaging looks like, “This is the home for me.” They have succeeded in finding their consumer. They have got the right content and feeling of belongingness for that consumer. That is the space that we are playing in.

We have somewhat competitive relationships with our other environmental nonprofits out there but we also have great opportunities for collaboration and partnership work. Those two things are not exclusive. We might convince somebody that they want to Leave No Trace membership and an AHS membership or whatever else they want to do but we are marketing to them and communicating with them. That is part of what we are doing. It does not work to pretend otherwise.

It is such an interesting topic of conversation in terms of trying to create an understanding around when you should be taking that action to ask and when you should be spreading the message and continuing to reinforce why that action and that ask are so valuable.

There are lots of good challenges out there. I hope we have covered a lot. Are there any things that we wanted to tap into before we wrap up?

That is a great place to wrap things up. I would love to have you let people know how they can get a hold of your organization and find out more about Leave No Trace.

It is LNT.org . That’s the easiest and best way to get started. Search for our feeds on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and YouTube . We still do not have that TikTok channel up yet, but you will find us in all those places. Let us know how we are doing. Mark@LNT.org as well if anybody feels inspired to shoot off a message to me.

I love having these conversations. I love talking about how we can all make a difference in the world and how nonprofits can do a better job of getting their message out and getting people to take action. That leads me to my final question for you. It can be anything. If you were to ask people to take action after the show, what action would you ask them to take?

The best starting place is to ask yourself, “What could I do better the next time I go to a natural area?” We all feel like we are Leave No Trace in the way we handle things but when I joined this organization and took the Master Educator course, I realized that there is still farther than I could go. Getting into that frame of mind of seeing yourself as a steward of the outdoors with an ethic of wanting to protect natural values is the most effective thing I could ask anybody to do in terms of how they are going to contribute to the natural world.

I appreciate that. We can all do our part to make sure that we are leaving no trace when we go out into our wild spaces and whether that is making sure that we go through that puddle that is in the middle of the trail instead of going around it or picking up some of those dog poop bags that are becoming more and more frequent out there but making sure that we are aware of what we are doing. We all have an impact. I love that approach. I appreciate you being on the show.

Thanks for having me. It is a fun conversation. I’m looking forward to hearing from anybody out there that wants to carry on the conversation.

Thanks, Mark.

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There you have it, another great episode. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. You can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you are there, you can get your purpose driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you would like to listen to back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That is it. I will be back for another great episode.

About Mark Eller

Mark Eller develops partnerships and grant proposals, including new business, government funding sources, private foundations and corporate grant programs. He has a background in journalism, including editorial positions with multiple outdoor sports publications, and served as the director of communications for the International Mountain Bicycling Association for 11 years before joining the Center.

Mark@LNT.org

Episode 45: Learning How To Identify And Nurture your Ideal Audience With Julia Keller From Mindful Youth

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:24:44 GMT

In this week’s episode, I talk to Julia Keller, one of the founders of the Mindful Youth Institute. They are teeing up a lot of great opportunities to address bullying behavior—and to help potential bullies find a different path.

Their organization is fairly new so we had a great conversation discussing every facet of the audience engagement cycle. In particular, we spoke about how their organization can tell their story, build their mailing list, and create engagement and support by Bonding with stakeholders.

This episode is jam-packed with information, including how to build personas, launch your first Google campaign, develop a strong social media strategy, and even foster new relationships with potential stakeholders.

Loved talking to Julia because it reminded me about the importance of relationship-building and leveraging personal connections, creating stories that resonate, and building conversational marketing to better engage new stakeholders when you are just getting started.

This was an information-rich episode, so I hope you enjoy it.

LINKS:

Instagram: drkellercoach

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julia-keller-mindful-youth-institute

Our website: mindfulyouthinstitute.org

Our GoFundMe campaign: https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/help-teach-bullies-compassion

ASK:

Give yourself time to relax and breathe. Reconnect with the earth. Get grounded.

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Listen to the podcast here:

We left it open to any at-risk kid, kids that are at risk of failing in schools for emotional problems or they have trouble learning. We’re starting a campaign for kids that have social-emotional problems and bully other kids as a result.

You’re working with the kids who would be identified as the perpetrators of that behavior.

There isn’t a lot out there that aims directly to help the bully. Usually, stuff like anti-bullying interventions are aimed at helping the victims and the class but we want to try to change the bully’s heart.

That sounds like an interesting place to be spending your time and energy. I don’t know a lot about that space but I certainly do know that I’ve read things that indicate a lot of bullying behavior, stems from a lot of other insecurity and other emotional challenges that kids are facing, even financial and social, etc. It’s cool that you’re taking that approach to it.

What everybody says about it, the research says that bullies lack empathy, so everybody’s trying to develop empathy in these kids and we’ve got some innovative ideas that might be more effective than other ones.

Can you tell us a little bit about those or are they proprietary?

I can tell you about them in general. I’ll give you a little bit of the story about why I’m interested in it if that’s okay.

That’d be great.

A lot of stories come to mind, but the one that’s most in my mind is I went to a school and visited a teacher. There was his child in the classroom who was about seven years old, but he looked like he was ten. He’s a tall kid. He had these pointy cowboy boots on and it turns out, he wasn’t bullying the other kids but he was also bullying all the adults in his life, his teachers, his mothers. He would wear these pointy cowboy boots and kick his teacher with them that left bruises all over her legs.

We know that teachers don’t have a lot of wiggle room about what to do. I was a teacher for a long time, and you can’t restrain kids and you can’t punish them. It’s not okay. The teacher went to the kid’s mom and said, “Could you please not let him wear those cowboy boots.” The mom said she had no control and so he kept wearing them. Unfortunately, this thing is not the first time I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it over and over again where bullies aren’t bullying other kids but they’re also bullying the teachers, the parents, and all the adults around them.

That’s interesting. I assume that partially comes from the idea that you do something and it works, so that’s the thing you pick and you do that for the rest of your life. My guess is there are some underlying emotional and mental challenges that are going on there as well.

It’s about a way to establish power and control over your environment. It’s also a lack of being able to see someone else’s perspective, what it is you’re doing to other people.

There is an empathy component to the behavior.

They don’t feel it. If you felt it, you wouldn’t kick somebody. A normal kid would do it. They’d kick somebody and they’d realize, “This is what I did. I hurt somebody,” and they don’t want to do it again. Bullies or aggressive kids don’t have that component. It’s like the mafia. This is the example I always use. If you’ve watched The Sopranos, or goodness knows how many other mafia shows are out there, if you mess with the mafia member’s family, they take revenge and that’s their way of responding to empathy. You hurt my friend. I’ll beat you up. That’s not the empathy we want. We want to change their hearts so they feel like caring for other people.

Learning How To Identify And Nurture Your Ideal Audience With Julia Keller From Mindful Youth

Everybody’s got a soft heart somewhere in there, so we try to reach it through images and exercises. It’s like you said if we could teach them how to reach that part of them, the cells on their own, and they find it rewarding and not boring, then we are changing the circuits in their brain, and that’s cool.

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My guest is Julia Keller, one of the Founders of Mindful Youth Institute . They do lots of great work or team up to do a lot of great work with bullying. They’re trying to make adjustments to kids’ behaviors, so if they’re exhibiting bullying behavior, they can help those kids get on a different path. It’s important work, great work, and hard work.

They started, so they’re still trying to figure everything out in terms of the audience engagement cycle. We talked about everything from persona development, all the way through to this bond phase where you’re trying to build relationships. If you’ve heard me say anything, it’s that marketing is all about building relationships and this episode is jam-packed with ideas and information on how you and your organization can do that. Julia was a lot of fun to talk to and I hope you enjoy this episode. Here we go.

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Julia, how are you?

I’m doing well. How about you, Stu?

I’m doing great. It is a little bit cloudy up here in the high country but it’s nice to get a little extra snow. This episode will be released in June 2021, hopefully, it’ll be a little warmer by the time this shows up in public.

It will probably be a lot warmer in June.

I hope so. Where are you located?

In Pueblo.

I haven’t been to Pueblo in quite some time but it’s a cool community. My step sister lives down in that area.

Where does she live?

She lives on the west side of Pueblo. She’s in the medical field, so she does X-ray tech stuff, and imaging and I know that she works a lot in Canyon City and some of the other facilities in the Pueblo area.

We live in Pueblo West, so west of where your sister lives. Pueblo West, so this is a pretty nice place.

I’ll have to come down and visit sometime here. I hear the mountain biking down there is good.

The lakes are beautiful and the reservoir.

I’ll have to make a journey down that direction once we’re fully vaccinated and ready to go.

There’s always that.

You are one of the Founders of Mindful Youth Institute. Tell us a little bit about your organization.

We got started at the end of 2019. My husband and I had been wanting to do this for years and so we got together with a group of people who were all interested in helping young people, especially young people with learning problems. I have a passion for that. We’re trying to find ways that are innovative and cutting edge that will make a difference in their lives.

Are you primarily dealing with kids who have learning disabilities? Are they having a hard time in school? Is there a particular segment of that group that you help with the most?

Everybody’s got a soft heart. If you could reach that part of them, you will be able to change the circuits in their brain.

There’s a lot of talk about kids who are on the spectrum and how well they receive training in social signals and things like that. It sounds like it’s a similar challenge.

In not picking up signals or maybe not responding to them or maybe justifying it saying, “They deserved it.” What we want to do is we want to use some innovative technology, some virtual reality to help get them to first experience themselves virtually what it’s like to be a bully and try to use techniques to make them feel caring for other people. Maybe these kids don’t know what it feels like to love someone and that it’s a good feeling.

That’s cool that you are bringing technology into play as well. That’s something unique I haven’t heard about. Tell me a little bit more about that.

We’re looking at virtual reality. Have you ever done virtual reality?

I haven’t done it. I’m trying to think. It seems like I’ve done something that had a component of it. I’ve never worn the new glasses and things that are super cool and dropped you into that space. I haven’t tried that out too much.

Kids are doing it. I saw something at the mall where kids can go in and do virtual reality and then you see them acting strange, but they’ve got the goggles on, they’re hitting the things etc. It’s cool. With the little bit that I know about it, it’s cool and immersive. Of course, we wouldn’t have kids hitting things but we would do it in a way that it’s a game for them, it’s fun and it helps retrain their brain so they can learn some self-control, without having to do the breathing exercises and meditation exercises. I’ve done a lot of that too but these kinds of kids will say, “It’s boring. I don’t enjoy it.” We want to make it fun and interesting for them, hook them in that way, and see if we can get them to experience what it feels like to have a compassionate heart.

Is it like rewiring of some of those pathways in the kids’ brains where they’re able to reconnect some things that may have either gotten unconnected at some point or maybe never had the chance to form completely? Is that the physiology of it?

Exactly. The brain is plastic which means it can change based on your activity throughout your whole life, which is pretty exciting. These kids don’t have the self-regulation circuit and so you can train that by getting them to focus and getting them to focus on things like a kitten maybe. Try to break through and try to open their hearts a little bit. Everybody’s got a soft heart somewhere in there, so we try to reach it through images and exercises. It’s like you said, if we could teach them how to reach that part of them, the cells on their own, and they find it rewarding and not boring, then we are changing the circuits in their brain, and that’s cool.

I love that idea and it’s neat that you’ve been able to take this technology that was certainly, originally designed for entertainment purposes a lot. I’m sure there are some training purposes and some other things. You usually hear about VR in that realm of entertainment and recreation, so it’s cool to be able to take something and repurpose it for this important change that you’re helping to facilitate.

It is. A couple of years ago, I found out that it was a game. It was called, Please Don’t Kill the Zombies. It was a zombie killing game and we didn’t want to do anything like that, but in the game, they were hooked up to some biofeedback monitors. When they were able to calm themselves down, they were able to do cool things like walk through walls or be invisible, whereas when they were losing control, the screen would shake and turn red and all kinds of things. It was a way to motivate them to self-regulate and breathe. That’s what we’re trying to do except use it in a way to show what the victim’s experience is like and what it’s like to do nice things and things like that but have it be motivating and game-like.

Are you building this technology now or have you developed it and you’re trying to get the word out? Where are you in your lifecycle?

We are trying to get the money so that we can start developing it. We’ve got a person on our board that knows a lot about tech and about VR. We started our first fundraiser, a GoFundMe , and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to raise the money for the equipment and then develop the intervention and see if it works.

How much money are you trying to raise and how close are you to that goal?

We’re not close at all. We only launched this. We are starting and that’s why it’s so great that you invited me and our organization to be on the show because we want to get the word out. It’s exciting. We launched our GoFundMe campaign and we’re looking into other campaigns to get the word out and to get this going.

Have you looked into Google For Nonprofits or Google Grants at all?

I have filled out Google For Nonprofits and I am still waiting to hear from them.

Perfect, so that’s a great place to start and they keep changing the names of these things, so I’m going to call it Google for Nonprofits because that’s the latest iteration of it but it’s a great set of tools that Google provides for nonprofits free of charge. Also, they make available up to $10,000 a month of free advertising. If you set things up correctly, you can drive to a page on your site that then talks about your GoFundMe campaign and links back out to GoFundMe.

My understanding, at least last time I checked, was that there were some things that you had to do to jump through the Google For Nonprofits’ hoops in order to promote an offsite campaign like GoFundMe. As long as you have a page setup that talks about it, and then links back out to it, you should be in good shape.

Let me ask you this because I saw that about the ads and I thought it said, “In kind,” which to me means we’ll give you $1 if you’ve got another dollar from another donor. A dollar for a dollar, is that what that is?

The last I checked was that they’re giving you $10,000 worth of advertising free of charge, so they’re not giving you $10,000 to go spend however you want to spend it. They’re giving you $10,000 of their in-kind services to enable you to run ads but they may have changed that. I don’t think they have but I could be incorrect. I’ll have to go check that.

That would be cool. We’d love to spend $10,000 on advertising.

My understanding is that’s the way that the program has historically run. It hasn’t changed. Double-check that but that is my understanding of that program.

Would Google Ads be the best way to go? I’ve also heard about Facebook ads.

When we talk about advertising, we tend to look at what your target audiences are. Depending upon who you’re trying to reach, this still holds pretty true that right now, in the nonprofit world, the most lucrative or the most giving from a $1 figure standpoint are still the Boomers. Figuring out where Boomers go to get information and where they go to engage with things like this is where you’re probably going to have the most success.

These days, bullies aren’t just bullying other kids. They’re also bullying the teachers, the parents, and all the adults around them.

Given that, Facebook is still a pretty good venue to do some advertising and promotion in order to reach that audience. A lot of Boomers are still pretty active on Facebook and it’s a good place to get in front of that particular demographic group. If you’re looking for someone a little younger, Facebook is still a good place to go. Facebook is still the elephant in the room of social media but as your audience changes, you need to start looking at where that type of person would go to get information and engage with an organization like yours.

For example, if you’re reaching out to Gen Zs or Millennials, then you might be wanting to play a little bit more solidly in Instagram, TikTok, or one of the newer platforms. Typically, when platforms start, they have a younger audience that tends to age out as the platform ages. Keep in mind who your target audience is and make sure that you get in front of them, where they go for information. Speaking of elephants in the room, Google is the big elephant in terms of search. The reason why Google For Nonprofits is so important, valuable, and amazing, is that they’re sponsoring those ads.

Depending upon what ad you run and how well you segment and target that ad, I would expect your performance to be less through Google but at the same time, those ads aren’t costing you anything. That’s why it tends to be a good go-to place where you can at least test the messaging and do some things like that. If you were paying for it, I might recommend sticking with Facebook or something like that but since it’s something that’s coming to you in the form of a grant through Google, it’s essentially free advertising, it makes sense to go ahead and use that service.

In getting an ad campaign started, what do we do? You’re talking to someone who’s been in education all her life and doesn’t know much about marketing.

The first thing I would do is set your goal and have a good understanding of what it is you’re trying to get people to do. For this one, it may help fund this organization’s growth and success to help teach bullies compassion, for example. That seems to be your tagline for the GoFundMe campaign.

I didn’t tell you how much. You asked me how much. Right now, we’re looking at $275,000.

That’s a great goal and it’s achievable for sure. The first thing to do is to have a great understanding of what you’re trying to do, in terms of, what the end goal is. Funding the campaign or funding the GoFundMe campaign would be the end goal of your advertising. With that in mind, working back from that, think about what messaging you might need that engages people’s feeling center. It gets people to have an emotional response to the situation.

What you can do is if you can craft your ad so that it leads people to say, “Yes, I resonate with this and I’m passionate about helping to create change in this space,” in creating your landing page that the ad points to and have that landing page be closely tied to that message. Make sure that there’s no disconnect between the advertisement and the page that people get to once they’ve clicked on that advertisement and collect as little information as possible in order to drive people to take that action.

I don’t believe Google will allow you to link directly to the GoFundMe page. In order to get the grant, they will ask you to go ahead and send people to a landing page on your site. On that landing page, the thing that you need to create is what our friends over at NextAfter call their value proposition. That is this idea that most people don’t wake up every day trying to figure out how to give away their money. You have an uphill battle as a nonprofit to get people to give to your organization versus a different organization or not at all. In this situation, there’s a three-way pull that’s going on there.

If you can create your value proposition that tees up the understanding and gives the messaging around why your organization, above all the others out there trying to do similar work, deserves this person’s investment and/or why they shouldn’t keep the money in their pocket. That’s what that messaging needs to be on both the GoFundMe campaign as well as on the landing page on your site that then links out to the GoFundMe campaign.

Since you’ve heard my story a little bit, what do you think would resonate with people the most about what I’ve told you?

There are a couple of things to me that are probably good places to start. One is engaging people’s fears and concerns for the children. Whether their children are bullies or are being bullied, there are a couple of powerful emotional pulls that you can leverage that you can pull there to make sure that people have a good understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish. Why is this important? What’s in it for them? Typically, on a website, one of the things that we recommend is having messaging that captures the answers to a couple of questions within about seven seconds.

When you go to a well-optimized page, you’ll see this pop-up, which answers the questions of who is this for? How does it make their life better? How do they get it? On these landing pages, we certainly would want to facilitate that question and answer in terms of giving people a good understanding of why they’re here and what it is you’re hoping to accomplish that makes everybody’s life a lot better. Trying to engage with that feeling, most of us have either been bullied or have been a bully, probably in our lives. There are probably not a lot of gray areas there.

It’s trying to tap into the emotional state that occurred when either your kid was being bullied or you remember being bullied or tapping into that empathy in terms of, “I feel bad for these kids who are going through life with this attitude or this emotional state. They aren’t able to feel empathy and things like that.” Tapping into those emotional feelings would be one of the first things that I would do with your copy and your content.

When I told you my story, did it happen? Any feelings?

Certainly, it immediately threw me back into junior high, where a lot of people feel like they have experienced bullying in that phase of one’s life. I don’t know if it’s all of the hormones that start to develop at that phase in people’s lives or if there’s something else going on. It certainly put me back into that seat where I can remember being bullied as a kid. It also tapped in for me, in terms of this idea, when we were talking about empathy about how sad that is for kids whose minds aren’t wired in a way that allows them to feel empathy because I get a lot out of my ability to empathize.

I put myself in their shoes a little bit when you were telling me the story and thinking about how sad that would be and how amazing it must be for these kids to be able to experience empathy. Also, understand how other people might feel about either their behavior or other things that would affect them. It seems like it’s such a life-changing experience if you were able to transform someone from that position of being a bully to not being bullied. That’s probably an amazing transformation that someone would be able to experience.

It’s been hard to do. I’ve looked at a lot of research and it’s not successful in changing bullying behavior. It’s a mystery. Your story makes me think of the television show Shameless. Do you know this show?

I watched a little bit of it. Yes.

Are you familiar with Carl on the show?

Carl is one of the younger boys on the show.

Boomers tend to be the biggest donor class right now. People tend to donate more money as they get older.

He’s the one that thinks guns and violence are cool. Speaking as a psych person, he’s a psych nerd. He’s an antisocial person. He thinks all these things are cool and then he ends up going to juvie, juvenile detention and he gets the cornrows in his hair. The actor did a marvelous job. It looks exactly like a young kid in the juvenile diversion. He’s perfect. He’s like a street kid. He comes out, he’s selling guns in the school, selling drugs on the corner and everybody predicts he’s going to be in prison for the rest of his life. He’s one of these kids that we’re interested in helping.

One day, he had a not so good experience. He sees somebody killed, a child, and it changes him. It transforms him. He’s saying, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to see kids get dropped anymore,” to use his language and he decides to use his energies to become a police officer. For me, I love watching this kid. He’s a bully at school too, by the way.

He slams kids’ hands and all these things in lockers. Because this show is a long show with eleven seasons, to watch him change and have it believable from someone who didn’t care, a real tough kid to somebody who wants to do good. I love that. That’s the vision that I have of reaching these kids that are so hard to reach, yet they’ve got things to offer.

It’s trying to tap into that. I talked about audiences a little bit. Those can be called avatars or personas but essentially, it’s a creation of a semi-fictional representation of who you’re trying to reach. You have a good understanding of what their motivations are, what might inspire them, what challenges they face, etc. That’s typically one of the first steps that we take when we’re engaging with a new organization, or a new client is to help them help us get a good understanding of who we’re trying to reach. In that regard, you could think about the parents of the kid like this.

You told the story of the young kid who was kicking his teacher with cowboy boots. A child isn’t going to make this decision for themselves. It’s tapping into somebody who might be able to either recognize their kid in that story or see how this could help them overcome some challenges that they’re facing in their lives.

For example, if their child is a bully, it’s helping to fund this research and this programmatic system that helps people transcend that type of behavior. It’s framing those asks from that position of, “How does this make their life better,” and framed in that position of what are their challenges and what are the problems that they’re trying to overcome.

You’re doing that to determine your audience.

We help our clients and other organizations figure that out, if they haven’t done so already or we help them tell us who those people are so that we can make our best recommendations in terms of who or where we might recommend that they spend their time and energy. Also, invest their revenue and their dollars to reach out to different potential users or potential donors, etc.

I get that. It’s the age group. Our audience is parents directly. Why would Boomers be interested in this, you said they’re the biggest donor?

The Boomers are the biggest donor class right now, in terms of your group that donates the most money because that tends to be the case. People tend to donate more money as they get older and a lot of them tend to have a little bit more disposable income in terms of, they’ve built up a certain amount of wealth and they’re trying to do some good with it.

A Boomer might resonate with this, if they have a grandchild, for example, who is being bullied. That might be something that would inspire them to say, “I want to participate in this.” If they are thinking back about things that they regret in their lives, perhaps they feel they might fit that bully type that they might want to be trying to make amends. Those are a couple of different motivators that might be able to be accessed in order to encourage someone of that generation to participate in a GoFundMe campaign to help you guys get farther down the road.

If you think more in the parent’s perspective, you’re still thinking about how the person’s kids are probably affected or if they recognize bullying behavior in their own child and are interested in funding research that might help either their kid or someone like that kid live a better life. Those would be some of those challenges that they would want to overcome.

This might be a little bit of a switch-up of a subject but I was also looking for small business grants or small grants in Colorado. I went up and I looked at the Colorado Nonprofit Association thinking, “I’ll look up grant guides because it looks like they’re out there to help Colorado nonprofits.” You probably heard of it, Colorado Grants Guide . That sounds like a great resource and then you open it up, and they want a subscription for $100 a year or the foundation wants $100 a month, which seems ridiculous. Do you know of a better place to find out about Colorado people, organizations, and businesses that want to donate?

There is a lot of money out there available and grants are certainly a great place to start playing in terms of attempting to access some of those funds. In terms of a list, I’m not sure. I’d have to do a little bit of research on that. The Colorado Nonprofit Association is a pretty great organization that has a wealth of information for people in the nonprofit space to be able to access training. Also, potentially gain access to vendors or people who could help out with grant writing or helping to do that research.

We’re a member of the Colorado nonprofit association, so there are certainly dues involved when becoming a for-profit member of that organization but I haven’t looked into what the costs are for nonprofit and what resources open you up to be able to access. When I try to make those decisions, I start to look at how much potential upside is there to an investment in that system. Also, there’s an opportunity to join for a month and try and glean as much information as you can and then join again later once one’s revenues increase. It’s looking to be pretty flexible.

Most of these kinds of programs do have a different fee structure for actual nonprofits. It’s probably worth exploring some of those opportunities, but I’ll do a little more research into where to go to find grants. There’s probably quite a lot of money out there available for an entity such as yours to get into that grant space.

That’d be great. I have experience writing grants, so it’s not a problem. I knew that Walmart has a program and you go through some steps to answer questions about your nonprofit and your mission. They use a separate vendor, business, or whatever to verify that information and then you can apply for up to 25 times a year. We’re going to give that a try and see because we would like to use it to try to get some advertising. I’ve done the Google For Nonprofits and we’ll see what they have to offer. I like to write a little bit so that we have maybe some money for Facebook advertising.

Facebook would probably be a pretty good place for you to play. There are certainly a number of groups on Facebook that you could join. I don’t have kids, so bullying isn’t top of mind for me, in terms of stuff I’m researching all the time, but my guess is that there would be groups on Facebook that would talk about that. It’s getting active in those kinds of groups or being able to target ads to those types of groups, would be a place that I would start to play. One thing that’s nice about Facebook advertising is it does give you a ton of granularity in terms of who you’re targeting that ad to.

Can you explain what that means?

Engaging with people through social media is a way of free advertising.

You can get specific in terms of your audience. If you wanted to target, for example, school teachers, which might not be a bad group to target, Facebook tends to have a lot of information about their users including, how much money people make and the types of things that people buy. Also, the types of groups that they’re active in, age, location, etc. There are ways to hyper-target ads against a certain group on Facebook. What tends to happen is, as you get more and more specific in your targeting your cost per reach, your cost per click tends to go up for Facebook.

One of the tactics that we have deployed in the past is to start out broad and get an ad that is good enough. Don’t spend a whole bunch of time or energy trying to fine-tune your ad. Get something that you’re like, “That’s worth a shot. Let’s give that a whirl,” and then distribute that to a fairly wide audience. For example, if you were looking for just people in Colorado or if you were looking for people in Pueblo, you might try and toss that ad wider, so cast a wider net because your cost per view is going to go down. What you’ll find is you’ll get some data out of the performance of that ad.

Let’s say it gets sent out to 100,000 people, and 1,000 people either click on it, view it, or whatever metric you’re looking for but let’s say 1,000 people click it. You have good targeted information about that 1,000 people so you can start to look for similarities within that group. Now you can hyper-target that same ad to cast a wider net around that specific group target.

Maybe you can expand that to outside of Colorado but with those specific demographics. You have a higher level of confidence that the same ad is going to resonate with that group outside of the state as well or outside of the Pueblo area, for example. It allows you to leverage the advertising itself to get data on how your ad plays with a certain demographic.

That makes sense.

Google has the ability to drill down quite a bit too. They tend to cast a much wider net. You’ll probably be able to see improved performance with Facebook ads but the cost is a lot lower when your advertising is free on Google.

I’ve also gone into social media. A lot of people do it as a way of free advertising but I’m learning to engage with people so that I’m able to ask questions that people answer. I’ve started learning that but LinkedIn and Instagram are the main two that I’ve got right now. I haven’t ventured into Facebook yet.

I love to hear that’s how you’re approaching social media. We wrote a blog post about this, but so many people see social as a one-way street, so they tend to use it as getting out with a bullhorn and shouting one’s accolades or whatever you want to say. Social media is all about relationship building and the best relationships, at least, tend to be a two-way street.

It’s making sure that you’re engaging with people on their pages, asking questions, answering questions, being curious, going out, and trying to expand your network from a more manual standpoint, as opposed to assuming that people are going to somehow find you and join in the conversation but they’re trying to engage with people that you think might be good people to have in your community. It’s leveraging social to harness the power that it has built into itself, in terms of conversation-starting is important. A lot of people miss that mark. They go out and, and put out their latest press release, and think that’s the way that social works and it isn’t an engagement avenue or channel.

It’s interesting to watch how people try to engage with me. For example, some people will try over and over and I find that annoying. To me, it seems like a bad strategy. People don’t want to answer you the first time you let it go but to keep pestering someone seems a bad tactic.

It’s about creating value, exchanging value, and building trust. We like to say that marketing is all about relationship building. Whether that’s convincing someone to buy a $0.75 widget or trying to get somebody to donate $1,000 to your campaign, it does start with this idea that we need to develop a relationship. If you think about the majority of the relationships that one has in one’s life, they rarely start with, “Hi. My name is Stu. Can you give me some money?” There’s usually a back and forth of, “What’s your name? How are you today?”

It’s creating those opportunities for back and forth. What we recommend is when you start outreaches, temper your desire to jump to the ask immediately and invest some time in building that relationship and building that trust. A lot of times, that’s about value exchange. One of the things that you would be able to do pretty effectively and immediately is developing some materials.

They are materials that help people who maybe have a kid who is displaying some bullying behavior or have a kid who’s been the victim of that behavior. Give them some tips on how to manage that and how to deal with either of those situations. Essentially, you could create a 1 or 2-page document, a PDF, or something that gave some tips for handling. Let’s use the child who’s displaying bullying behavior as an example.

Create a PDF that gives some tips to parents who suspect that their child might be a bully. Put the ask out there, say, “If you’re interested in this, go to this place on our site.” When they get to that place on the site, explain what the thing is that you’re hoping to share with them and ask them to say, “Where can we send your guide?” That tees them up for the understanding of why you’re asking for their email address and maybe asking for their first name and email address. When they provide that information to you, send them to a landing page where you then get that material. Have the PDF on the landing page and at that same time, ask them to support your GoFundMe campaign or to donate in some other fashion.

You’ve created the opportunity where they have a little bit of a feeling of indebtedness to you and so it’s a good time to do what we call an Instant Ask for donation. At the same time, you’ve now collected that information and they’re in your email list. Send them an email immediately that says, “In case you missed it on our site, here’s that guide about how to handle your child, if you think he’s a bully.”

You can either ask them if they’d like to participate more to help out or you can also now email them in a week or something and say, “I wanted to check in and see if you had any questions about the guide that we sent you.” Now, you’re on that path of relationship building. You’re creating back and forth opportunities and you’ve demonstrated that you want to help them. That’s a good way to start to build that list and build those connections that are going to provide you the ability to succeed long term.

I’ve been trying to start a business working with coaching kids. I don’t want to get sidetracked on that, but I did use MailChimp . I had questions about whether their kid was anxious or not. It wasn’t effective. I had a lot of trouble with MailChimp getting it started. MailChimp does one free and you have to pay for it. There were a lot of technological problems. Do you use MailChimp or do you use something else to get a mailing list going?

We have used MailChimp in the past internally and then an awful lot of our clients use MailChimp because, at least the last time I checked, their policy was a certain number of sends per month and so let’s say that was 1,000 or 2,000 sends. You had a list that had 2,000 people on it, you could send to that list one time where if you had a list of 500 people, you could send four individual messages to that list or any permutation of that led up to a couple 1,000 sends per month. At that point, they do start charging for that service.

If people don’t want to answer you the first time, let it go. Stop pestering people. That is a bad marketing tactic.

If you’re talking about email, I have had good luck with MailChimp. The other big guy in the room is Constant Contact , which is another service. Constant Contact may charge earlier than MailChimp or maybe not even have a free service. I can’t remember. Both are fairly reasonable in terms of costs for bulk mail sends particularly if you’re using the system. If you’re talking about surveys, asking people questions, and filling out a survey, there are a couple of different platforms that we would recommend and the first is Google.

When you signed up for Google For Nonprofits, I’m sure they gave you access to their suite of apps and tools that you can use as a nonprofit to do things like create surveys. It’s called Google Forms, is what they’re still calling it but it’s a pretty straightforward mechanism to allow you to create forms that let you ask questions, collect data and get analytics on those data. The other option is called SurveyMonkey and I don’t know the costs of Survey Monkey but they probably have either a nonprofit program or some free engagement opportunity there if you’re looking to do surveys.

They do. I use SurveyMonkey in my dissertation. They have a nice free part of it but how do you get people to answer these surveys? If I see a survey, I skip it. How do you get people to answer?

That goes back to relationship building. When you have a relationship with a person, when you’ve provided value to that person, they want to go out of their way to help you out, particularly if it’s not a heavy lift. We’re looking for experiential information, and we’d love to get an understanding of your experience with bullying or challenges that you’ve seen either in your students or with your child, in terms of learning challenges and things of that nature. Once you’ve established that relationship, once you’ve started to build that trust, usually you start to see a group of people from the whole group come out and raise their hands and say, “I want to help.” It’s consistency and trying to create value exchange.

Probably this is the final question. If a person writes to me, they want to talk to me about their kid, their kid got in some trouble at school, I’ve made the mistake of jumping directly to the ask right, and then I don’t hear from them, what do you recommend? This is through social media and messaging. When do you ask? When do you know?

Paying attention is the first step to that. As you have more conversations, you’ll see, “If I asked before the third time we’ve gone back and forth, then people tend to go away.” You’ll get a feel for it. It’s different for every organization. There’s not necessarily a magic number, in terms of you need to have sent seven emails before you asked him for a donation there. A lot of times, people are ready more quickly and some people are never going to be ready. What I would do is to try to figure out ways to scale or streamline the information that you provide.

I bet that you probably get some of the same questions over and over again. Creating an FAQ or creating materials that answer those specific questions, whether those be blog posts or PDFs, a little bit longer form, but creating materials that you can share fairly quickly tends to help. Not only is it scalable because you get the same question five times a week, so you probably don’t have to type it out five times.

You can type it once you create something that answers that question and the next time someone says, “How do I handle this?” You say, “We wrote a blog post about that. Let me send you that link.” You follow up with them and say, “Was that helpful?” “What else can I help you with?” “Is there any other information I can provide?”

Essentially, you’re positioning yourself as someo ne who wants to help. From there, you can expand that into, “I’ve helped you. How about you helping me?” Certainly, not every person is motivated in the same way. Not everyone is going to become a donor, even after you’ve provided them with a valuable resource, tool, or information.

Embracing the idea that you’re there to help and am coming at it from that position of, “Would you more help with that?” “Would you like to know how I can help more?” Getting yeses to things before you provide that information or maybe before you provide an ask, that’s the hard ask like, “Donate to us. Hire me to be a consultant.” Getting buy-in that people would like your help first can be super effective as well.

That’s helpful. You have given me a lot of ideas. Thank you.

It’s my pleasure. I can’t believe it’s been an hour. It seems like we started our conversation. It’s fun talking with you. How can people find out more about your organization?

They can go to our website, MindfulYouthInstitute.org . That’s the main place. I would go there or to my LinkedIn if you look me up. You can look up Julia Keller Mindful Youth Institute and you’ll find me. We also have a company page on LinkedIn called Mindful Youth Institute .

We were talking about a little bit of a touchy subject with bullying but are there any other resources that you would want people to be aware of if they needed help with bullying?

Off the top of my head, no, I like your idea to write a little sheet with information about how to handle it. That’s something I want to do.

I have enjoyed talking with you. One of the things that I like to do on all my shows is not just talking but giving people something to act upon. If people were to take any action, whether that’s going to give your mom a hug, get outside to enjoy the sun, or whatever it is, what would you want people to do after listening to our show?

I like your idea about having some time for yourself. That’s relaxing where you can breathe and reconnect to the world around you, to the earth. Something that I like to do when I go for a walk is to feel my feet on the ground. My head’s all whirling and swirling and how it is. I think about my feet on the ground and I feel grounded. I’d recommend that for all of us, busy people.

I’m going to take that to heart and see how I can do that for the rest of the day-to-day. I appreciate you being on the show. That was a super fun conversation. Julia Keller, thanks so much.

Thank you, Stu.

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There you have it, another great episode of Relish THIS. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the Audience Engagement Cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. Right now, you can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you’re there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you’d like to listen to back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week for another great episode of Relish THIS.

About Julia Keller

Julia has 20 years of experience working with children who have learning disabilities as both an educator and a researcher. She has been the Principal Investigator on four school-based intervention studies looking at the impact of mindfulness training on the development of attention, working memory, emotion regulation, and academic progress in elementary students. She also designed and administered a study looking at the effect of mindfulness training on increasing creativity in adults. She is passionate about helping young people find ways to be more mindful, joyful, creative, compassionate, generous, and productive at school and at home. She is an expert on stress management for kids; for more information go to her website: drjuliakeller.com . Julia received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of New Mexico. Contact Julia at mindfulyouthinstitute.org.

Episode 46: Maintain Momentum, Build Your Audience, and Prevent Burnout Through Small Wins with Setsuko Hata Executive Director of We Are From The Earth

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:06:22 GMT

In this week’s episode, I had a great conversation with Setsuko Hata, the Executive Director of We Are From the Earth.

WAFTE is building a social media platform that helps people cultivate compassion and live a socially conscious lifestyle. Yes, you can connect with like-minded people there, but the platform is focused primarily on educational resources and content that encourages idea-sharing and community-building. This is a really ambitious idea—but, admittedly, Setsuko is facing challenges around developing an app and platform with which people will interact.

A lot of our conversation focused on celebrating small wins to prevent burnout and keep yourself motivated on long-haul engagements. Anyone who is an entrepreneur working on big things can benefit from this conversation.

Setsuko and I also discuss how to identify your audience, how to craft content to encourage users to engage and get excited about joining a new social media platform. Then we look at creating MVPs for apps and using Invisionapp (a great prototyping tool) as a solution to provide “tactile” demos without having to invest in a full app design.

This is a great conversation; I hope you enjoy!

Link:

Site: https://wafte.org

Action Ask:

Appreciate how beautiful you are and express yourself.

Buy organic!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Maintain Momentum, Build Your Audience, And Prevent Burnout Through Small Wins With Setsuko Hata, Executive Director Of We Are From The Earth

My guest is Setsuko Hata. She is the Executive Director of We Are From The Earth . We Are From The Earth is a cool organization that is building a social media platform to empower people to cultivate their compassion and live a socially conscious lifestyle. They are bringing people together who are all wanting to live better. It’s an ambitious idea. One of Setsuko’s challenges is creating this app. We talked a lot about app development and how to make sure that you are building something that people are going to engage with. That’s one of the more interesting things that we discussed during our conversation. We also talked about how to keep from getting burned out as an entrepreneur and celebrate those little wins. Anyone who is engaged in a nonprofit and is trying to do big things can identify with that. It’s a fun episode. I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

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Setsuko , thank you for being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

It’s my pleasure. You are the Executive Director of a cool organization. Why don’t you tell us what it’s called? I’m spacing right now because my brain is not working.

It’s called We Are From The Earth. The acronym is called WAFTE. That’s the nickname. Everybody calls it WAFTE.

Tell us more about We Are From The Earth, when it was started, what you are up to and how things are going.

Our mission is to empower people to cultivate their compassion in their daily lives and then live a conscious lifestyle. It’s a very holistic approach we do. Initially, I founded this organization back in 2018. I was doing events and workshops to promote conscious living. I’m going to get into the definition of conscious living. We learned that to have a bigger impact, we may want to shift to a more technology-based platform. We are developing a mobile application, WAFTE App . It’s a social media function but an educational app. It’s fun to connect with like-minded people but also primarily, it’s going to be for learning.

We will list a lot of conscious content that will empower you. After you consume the content, you are asked to share your thoughts. Normally, people do input and then output. If we can have people do output, execution writing is going to be the best way because you have to organize your thoughts. Whenever you do that if you can share it with others, that will also make it more exciting. You are asked to share your thoughts after you learn specific content. That will be like social media. There’s a public feed and you can watch other people’s thoughts on the same content. You are like, “I like this person’s comments or thoughts. I can follow and message this person.” That way, it’s social media and you can find friends.

Self-love is the foundation of a happy life.

We don’t have the likes. Those are the negative aspects of social media. Consciously, we are seeking validation from others and not being authentic. We are trying to be popular. We eliminate that kind of negative aspect of social media but also we do keep the comments and then messaging. Also, a global map we are thinking of, which will be cool. You can find people from a virtual Earth and then visit the profile. That way, you can be, “I want to find somebody in Africa, India or Japan and go with same-minded people.” As long as they make a public profile, you can find other people. Mainly, the contents we will do are holistic. That’s conscious living.

Conscious living in our definition is we have a good relationship within ourselves. Self-love is the foundation for your happy life and then expanding to other people in your family, workplace, school or any communities you belong to. Mastering a relationship is the foundation for our happiness. We do want to also empower ourselves to cultivate our creativity and maximize our potential so we can actualize our dreams. That’s another aspect. Also, financially, many people don’t get educated about it. I never had a financial education. Those practical things we are going to talk about to empower people to become the best version of themselves.

Also, we talk about consumption, which we do every day by food and drinks and then buying clothes and other stuff. We can make a change by being a conscious consumer by purchasing socially conscious and ethically made products. That’s also a big aspect that we talk about and then also the business. We spend eight hours a day on average work. What kind of work do we do? Mission-driven work is something we encourage. If you are hired by a company, why don’t you pick a company which is aligned with your value? If you do your own business, do something to make a positive change.

That’s the mindset instead of seeking profit. Let’s focus on the purpose. The profit will come as a result. That’s something we also encourage people to do. We also encourage people to use their creativity, free time or any resources to do extra push to help the world. It could be volunteering and donation. Run a new project. Maybe it’s some new projects in school or in the community neighbors. That’s holistic conscious living. It’s a lot.

We are unique in our mission because most of the traditional nonprofits identify the problem and then find the solution. Those are very needed. The program is coming from human beings. All the environmental issues, racial issues or any social issues are stemming from us in our hearts. We have to change inside and become more conscious. We are going to reduce the problems as a result. That’s the approach we do. That’s the basic summary of We Are From The Earth and our mission in what we are trying to do.

There’s a lot going on there. It’s interesting. I love that you are grabbing all of this, tackling it and going for it. That’s cool to see you recognize that there might be some root fundamental issues that we could resolve that would solve problems down the stream. How did you come up with this concept? Was it something that you stumbled upon as you were navigating other social media platforms? What was the onset of this idea?

I was raised with the philosophy of Buddhism, which is the interconnectivity of our lives, other lives and the environment. If you change, everything will change. That’s the big philosophy I have been subscribing to since I was little. That’s why all the things happening good and bad in the world are collective reflections of our inside. If we want to change the world, we have to change the inside. That’s my philosophy. When I moved to the US, I lived in New York for a while. I was engaging with the barriers in volunteer work especially through music since I do singing and playing the piano.

One of the most empowering experiences was singing at the hospital weekly for mentally-ill patients. Those are beautiful moments whenever we connect with people in an authentic way, even though we just met in uplifting the hearts. After all, I felt like I changed this little moment. It did not make me feel like I’m solving the fundamental issue like, “This person didn’t have to go through a mental illness if there was more awareness around. Maybe the person could have led a different way to live.”

I could encourage this moment but I wanted to do something with the root cause of all the pain. After all, I decided to come up with this idea like, “We need each person to do good, the little thing or do the right thing. There will be no trust. There will be no pain on the planet. Everybody needs to take a tiny bit of responsibility and compassion. That’s not easy but that’s all we need. One person cannot change the world but if everybody does a little bit, that’s going to be huge.”

This is my need and desire like, “What can I do to address the root cause after doing all kinds of other volunteer experiences to make a cause?” I come up with this idea like, “Let’s talk about lifestyle. Let’s talk about how we do things every day and moment-to-moment decisions. What do you eat? How do you interact with your mom? How do you treat your body?” Every little moment, this is it. Eventually, this idea came. That’s the answer to your question.

It’s very aligned with the idea itself. One little small change can create a lot of changes elsewhere or a lot of changes within other people. I like that it’s all aligned. That’s pretty cool. We talked. At that point in time, I’m assuming you are still trying to raise money for the app. Is that still the primary focus at the current time?

Yes, we need to raise money to complete the app and then successfully launch it for sure. We are not in a hurry in a way. We need to make sure that all of the designs and contents will be crystal clean and then on point. I feel like once we have more substance to show, it’s going to be very easy to raise money. We prepared for the crowdfunding campaign, which we already created. In a way, we have not polished the contents yet.

The money will be needed eventually but it’s the quality volunteer who can dedicate to creating the contents together and then also the specific talents. It’s a UX designer and then a software engineer. Those are the real people we need. I feel like once that product is ready to go, it’s going to be super easy to launch the crowdfunding campaign in the market. We need money but still, we are at the stage where we want to polish the product better.

You are collecting and building content now to seed the initial round of stuff.

We select high-quality content and then find the engineer to make a beta version. We are going to do the test run among the community and then get the feedback. If we have money, we can hire anybody. That could be also a way to do it. Also, I want to have people who truly believe in our mission and want to help instead of hiring somebody, which we could do. That’s where I am. If through this show somebody is a UX designer software engineer, volunteer or anybody who wants to help create the content, we will be happy to connect with you guys.

What else are you doing to recruit? It sounds like getting the content and volunteer group together is pretty high on your list. What are you doing to recruit people to start generating materials for the site?

Empower yourself to cultivate your creativity and maximize your potential so you can actualize your dreams.

We can use VolunteerMatch , which is a website to recruit a volunteer. The only thing is once we opened the gate so many people will come. It’s exciting but also I did not know how to manage everybody while I’m also working because I’m not paid through this nonprofit at all. I will select the quality people who have the skillset and passion to help. We reduced the volunteers. We have only a few people who dedicated and helped. We become more productive to get things done.

Many things are happening but nothing is done. That was the experience I had. Maybe that could be because of the lack of my leadership too. I’m also a human so I’m learning. I have never run an organization. With the limited time and energy, we are looking for specific talents who are passionate about conscious living and then good at writing and researching or UX designer or software engineer.

There are quite a few places to go to start that. I noticed that you have several social channels that you are engaged in. It’s Facebook , Instagram and Twitter . You are up on YouTube and LinkedIn as well. Depending upon what your audience looks like in each of those platforms, those might be good places to start trying to recruit particularly for people who like to create content. If you are looking for individuals who you are hoping will create good environmental-type content, good nutrition content or things like that, that’s a great place to start reaching out to people and creating those two-way relationships where they become “friends” on social media. It’s easier to ask for a favor or their engagement once you have established that friendship. It sounds like you probably have a pretty good idea of how to tackle that at this point. Keep up with that platform.

I have read your mini-book about purpose-driven marketing. Thank you so much for sending me that. I’m excited to learn more about it. Also, I appreciate that you try to help nonprofits to be successful. Marketing is important because if you do something and nobody knows, how can you make a change? We are at the stage where we need to polish our product a little more and then we will be super confident to promote it to the mass audience. You are right. We could recruit specific talents through marketing. That could be the stage we are at.

One of the things that I usually recommend for clients who are talking about creating an app is to use tools. There’s one called InVision App . That allows you to design what the app is going to look like and then allow people to click through the app. It’s live but it’s a working model. Usually, that’s my recommendation when the primary next step is fundraising if the next step was, “We need to get people on board to understand how this is going to work.” People like to be able to see and click through. There’s a tactile component to the way that we like to do things.

An app lacking a physical manifestation at least will let you click through things. InVision App is a great tool to let you mock things up and then show how it’s going to work. If you get in front of investors, you can say, “Here is how it’s going to work. Feel free to play with this and see what the experience is going to be like without having to have build the whole app.” It tends to save people a lot of time and money.

It’s not even the beta version. It’s touchable or movable.

You create hotspots within the design that you can click on. You can create a button. When someone clicks on that button, it goes to the next page or the page that button is supposed to relate to. It can show what the user experience is going to be like, which helps people wrap their arms around, “What is this thing? How is it going to work? How are people going to use it?” If you decide to go that route, that’s a good tool to use to mock things up.

That will be our next step because we are almost finishing the actual design and accumulating the quality content. Once we have enough polished content, we go to that level and then start to talk about fundraising. Maybe that’s a realistic step.

I have seen a lot of money put into app development for either a concept that needed a lot of reworking. Before you could beta-test it even, it needed a lot more massage. Instead of doing a preliminary step like using InVision App, they jumped in and started developing. It’s expensive to develop an app. Most quality apps are six figures at least. They require a lot of ongoing maintenance to keep up. Whatever you can do to reduce your risk in that department can go a long way. If you dumped $70,000 into an app that needed challenges versus working those challenges out in the design phase and the user experience phase, that’s a pretty good chunk of a good developer salary for the year. Thinking about how to leverage those things can be important.

It’s how well you do the preparation. If you do a good design, you test it before you do the actual development and get feedback before you spend a lot of money to improve it.

All that time goes to streamlining your development work as well. If you can get things built out in a facsimile in a non-completely functional version of what you are trying to do, you can work through a lot of the pitfalls and then you speed up your development time, which saves you money as well. As far as the other two, it’s a software engineer and UX design. Certainly, there are lots of options out there. I would go back to that network. It’s all about relationship building. I would continue to try to build out that network and get those people who are passionate.

I love that you are coming at this from the perspective of wanting to make sure people are aligned with your mission and passionate about the project because that’s a great place to start. If more organizations and businesses started from that perspective, we would see better workplaces, better retention and all of those other things that fall in place after you are doing those things.

It’s going to be easy for both parties because there’s love, fun and passion. That’s going to be the glue. If the money is the only glue, it’s going to be difficult. We care. The money is just a reward. It’s the community and love. The work itself is fun. People want to do it and they are self-motivated.

There’s so much research now coming out, particularly the younger generations. They are making things happen and making big changes in the way that workplaces are run. It’s refreshing to see that more and more people are thinking about, “I have to spend 1/3 of my life here. I want it to be a place that I’m excited about being and that I feel cares about me and then I can care about the overall good that we are doing.” It’s great to see that shift. It sounds like you are very aligned with that lead.

I had so many opportunities to speak to teens and twenties because those are our main volunteers. Gen Z and the Millennials are conscious and very smart. They don’t just do it because of the profit. They do it because they like to do it. They know who they are more. I feel like the new generation will make a change. There’s so much negative news out there but also there’s so much hope. The power of the youth is a miracle.

Focus on the purpose, and the profit will come.

When are you hoping to launch? Are you letting it be pretty organic?

It’s better to have a more specific plan too. Also, it’s unpredictable sometimes because all the volunteers can come and go. I’m also doing it as a volunteer and founder. I could treat this as a paid position eventually when the app is launched so that I don’t need to worry about hustling my life too much but right now I’m not there yet. I have to hustle with my own life too in that way. Naturally, you become a little more push and then pull. We have created the plan but also we could not get there.

I realized if I’m so stressed out, I could execute the goal and then I feel like, “What is the point?” I want to also keep my excitement and passion. It’s not like feeling that obligation. I’m trying to be nice to myself too. I was nonstop working too much and spending so much money in the beginning, especially I was doing events and then I was taking financial risks too. The lesson that I learned is this is a long journey. It’s not a 2 or 3-year journey. It’s going to be lifelong. Maybe I may run until I die. I should not torture myself like, “This is the deadline.”

In a way, I want organic unfolding. At the same time, if there’s no North Star, we will be lost in the world. I’m sure it’s a middle ground. We need to have some goals but not too many. I want to also encourage other founders of nonprofits especially those who are still new. I’m sure they have the exact same program. They are doing it out of their passion but they also have to hustle on their life. Most of the people are not rich to be able to sit there and do the mission. They are not alone.

There are many beautiful moments where you connect with the volunteers and then talk to the people. They appreciate the mission we do. Those are the reward for the hard work like, “These are the moments I work hard.” People are seeing the positive change in their lives by applying a conscious lifestyle. It’s a lot of hard work but a lot of beautiful moments.

It’s good to do a few things there in my experience and what we have seen working in the space. One of those is to celebrate those little wins. I wrote a blog post about this. As soon as we are getting close to the finish line, we push that finish line out and we say, “If this is within reach, we can do more.” We are constantly moving that finish line out and never crossing it. We are never taking the time to recognize that we signed up for a marathon but we have run 50 miles at this point.

The finish line, we still have never crossed it because we don’t take that time to stop, look back and say, “This started in 2018 as this very small idea that has blossomed into this great big thing. Here are all those milestones that we have met. Here are all those small opportunities that we have been able to experience.” It’s making sure to celebrate along the way and take the time to reflect and understand how far we have come. Likewise, it’s setting little goals. It’s not necessarily thinking about all of the stuff that we have to accomplish. If we can break that down into small chunks then we get these little wins all through the day.

There was one idea that a friend of mine told me, which was fantastic. It was a couple of years ago. He said that one of the things that he would do is to make sure that he had small little goals to achieve during the day so that he would get that little satisfaction of being able to check the box of getting something completed. Even if it was not to launch the app but it was to hire a UX designer, interview two UX designers or whatever those little bitty steps are, those are all opportunities for little micro-wins which can help keep us going when things get hard.

Thank you for the reminder. This can be applied to my own personal life too. It’s like, “I have a goal and I achieve it. I can do better.” I push and never take a moment to celebrate. That’s very true. We have got to be conscious when it comes to that like, “Today, I’m going to celebrate this little victory.” Take a moment in how much you feel that victory. We need to do that for sure.

Share that with your team, volunteers and social media audience in terms of like, “This is a milestone that we overcame. It’s one small milestone on the way to this bigger one but we were able to get past this point that we thought maybe we won’t ever get past.”

Otherwise, we are going to become so old, “What did I do? I worked so hard when I don’t even remember.” We don’t want to live like that. We want to make sure that a special moment will be treated special.

You took the time to read Mission: Uncomfortable, which is the book that I wrote. Did you have any specific questions about it? Was there anything that you found interesting or did not quite understand in terms of what I was talking about?

Everything you said in the book aligned with everything I think and also researched. I’m not an expert in marketing at all but I did it because I’m the Executive Founder. I had to do basic research. I did some YouTube videos. I got the audiobook about marketing. Everything that’s written makes sense. I totally agree that many people are afraid of the term marketing, especially nonprofit people like, “We don’t have money for that.” It’s the glue between you and the people. You can make a huge change. You should not be afraid of marketing.

Also, it’s coming from an authentic self. It’s not coming from the sugar-coating shiny object. We become authentic. That’s purpose-driven marketing. I like that. I don’t have any specific questions or anything. I wanted to say thank you for that knowledge. Once we are at the stage where we need to do real marketing, like not just recruiting the people but talking to the potential users of the app, I would love to apply everything written there.

The biggest mind shift that one can make when thinking about marketing is that it’s not an expense. It’s an investment and understanding that there are objectives with marketing. It’s not just something that you are supposed to do and so you do it. It’s something that’s supposed to make a difference and that’s why you do it. If one can come at it from that perspective and keep that mindset, it makes it a lot easier to commit to that consistency which is important and then reap the rewards of that. That’s the main idea of the book itself.

One person cannot change the world, but if everybody does a little bit, that’s all we need.

Thank you so much for doing that. You are also working with the other nonprofits specifically helping their marketing. That’s also what you do.

As much fun as I have in doing podcasts and writing books, my main business activity is Relish Studio , which is a digital marketing agency here in the Denver Metro Area. We are trying to primarily work with nonprofits and purpose-driven business leaders to help them expand their mission and reach their goals through marketing.

Do you have any social gatherings? I know maybe it’s not face-to-face but talking about networking and connecting with people. I’m a member too.

I have participated in a lot of networking in the past. I did host a weekly happy hour there for a while during the heart of the pandemic. People started to get a little burned out on those. We pumped the brakes on them. One of the things I am hoping to do and that’s a great reminder is to do a networking event with all of the people who have been on the show. You are the 47th or 48th guest that I have had since I started this. The vast majority of them are from the Denver Area. As soon as we can all get vaccinated and get released to meet up, maybe we can throw a little get-together and see if we can put a bunch of great nonprofit leaders together in a room.

That’s going to be amazing. You can also do hiking or something in the outdoors. It’s almost like hanging out but also organically, we can talk about what we do because we have so many mountains here.

That would be fun. Maybe I will do that. Once we get this snow out of the way here, we can put together a Relish THIS hike or something like that.

It could be going to the lake and having a little picnic or potluck so that you don’t need to hustle. Go to the park and then bring your drinks and lunch.

Have you been continuing to do events throughout the past? Have you stopped those?

We had to stop. It’s a lot of work in the events and then preparation, coordination, financial thing and marketing. I was doing more traditional marketing, like knocking on the door and putting the flyer. That worked too because people feel your passion but it’s only at a local level.

There’s a lot to be said for a handwritten note. That’s something that has fallen by the wayside as we have moved to more digital stuff. Relish is primarily a digital agency but we still use handwritten notes fairly frequently when we can. They are pretty effective.

Since I did music, I was using live music as a vehicle to promote our mission a lot. Maybe I can seek the opportunity here in Denver too. I organize the band. Back then, I was in California. I was performing for more government events or local community events. People love music. In between the music, I talk about WAFTE and then giving the flyers. At least, they will know the website. It’s up to them if they want to click and then learn more about it. That’s something maybe I should go back to do. Maybe in Denver they have some outdoor live music. I miss that a lot because it has been a while.

Some of my good friends are musicians. One of the things that they miss the most is being in front of an audience and being able to experience that collective joy and watch people get all excited about playing. Hopefully, we will turn the corner on all of this so we can all be in rooms together or at least be in closer proximity outside. That would be fun.

We all use music and the human connection.

It’s cool to hear that you are trying to create a platform that’s going to help with that human connection and help people live more purposeful and conscious lives. I’m excited to hear how things go. I appreciate you being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

People can find you at WAFTE.org . Are there other good places for them to find you where you are particularly active?

Those little steps are all opportunities for small wins, which can really help keep you going when things get hard.

We have social media too. The website has all the links. That might be the easiest way. There’s an email address, which will be sent to me so I can directly contact them.

If you are a developer or UX/UI person or would like to volunteer as a content coordinator-type person then people would be welcome to reach out.

I have a LinkedIn. My personal is Setsuko Hata . If they feel comfortable reaching me directly, people can message me too. Thank you so much.

I love having these conversations. I like to end each show with an ask, which is something that people can do after reading the blog that they can take action on. It can be anything. If you had somebody read the blog and say, “This is great. What should I do to make the world a better place?” What would you ask them to do?

There are so many things you can do. The first thing you can do right away is to talk to your body and mind and appreciate how beautiful you are and then all the things. Your body is digesting your food every day. Your eyes are watching everything. Your ears are like, “Thank you. A miracle is happening in my body.” Your mind is like, “There are many ideas coming to you. Thank you so much.” If you live with your friends or families, you can also find something that you can appreciate to the person and express your appreciation. If you go to a store, maybe you buy organic food. Those are very simple that you can do to be conscious.

I’m going to go take a few moments to appreciate the miracle that is my existence. Thank you for sharing that. Thanks for being on the show. I will talk to you soon.

Thank you so much.

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There you have it. It’s another great episode. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the Audience Engagement Cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. You can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you are there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you would like to read the back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That’s it for this week. I will be back for another great ep isode.

Importa nt Links:

We Are From The Earth
WAFTE App
VolunteerMatch
Facebook – We Are From The Earth
Instagram – We Are From The Earth
Twitter – We Are From The Earth
YouTube – We Are From The Earth
LinkedIn – We Are From The Earth
Mission Uncomfortable: How Nonprofits can Embrace Purpose-Driven Marketing to Survive and Thrive
InVision App
Blog Post – Treat Yo Self – Create opportunities for small wins
Relish Studio
Setsuko Hata – LinkedIn

About Setsuko Hata

Setsuko Hata is the founding executive director of We Are From The Earth(WAFTE), whose mission is to elevate humanity’s consciousness to become more compassionate and realize a humanistic and sustainable world. WAFTE is currently developing a socially conscious social media called “Joy of Compassion” which is purely dedicated to uniting people for solving global issues and making a positive change.

She is a singer, keyboard player, dancer, songwriter, composer and has been dedicated to using her music to instill people with hope and share a humanistic philosophy at various shows, festivals, and charity concerts. Inspired by the power of music and arts, she also has founded a 503 (C)3 non-profit organization, Compassionate Universe Within You (CUWY)in July 2019. CUWY’s mission is to create and share music, arts, and movies which cultivates people’s compassion and raises social awareness. Setsuko holds B.F.A Jazz Vocal Performance from New York City College and B.S Food Science from Osaka City University in Japan.

Episode 48: How to Run Your Organization Like a For-Profit with Sherry Manning from Global Seed Savers

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:52:29 GMT

Profits or revenue… What’s your organization’s focus?

If you can’t answer that question, perhaps you’ll enjoy this week’s episode of Relish This.

I had a great, all-encompassing conversation with Sherry Manning, the US Executive Director of Global Seed Savers. They are a really cool organization that helps farmers stockpile and diversify their seed stock to ensure farming can continue year after year.

Most of their work is based in the Philippines, and Sherry manages their US branch – focused on engagement and building awareness of the great work that they do.

Here’s the point: Sherry and her team have laid a lot of groundwork to create a healthy foundation based on a strong Values, Vision, and Mission. They also have a strong handle on the idea of relationship-first marketing and strengthening engagements by creating opportunities to have conversations.

Our discussion primarily focused on two main ideas:

How organizations can further their missions by focusing on running their nonprofits like businesses – really keeping an eye on profits by consistently assessing costs and net revenues when looking at the actual success rates of their ventures.
How to analyze data to build personas – target audiences – to focus your efforts and do more of what’s working.

If you’ve been running your own organization without a firm grasp of these concepts, you’re sure to like this episode.

Links:

Global Seed Savers https://globalseedsavers.org/

Ask: Step away from your computer, go outside and be still, and observe what you see in nature. Look for a new life.

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Listen to the podcast here:

You work with farmers there in the Philippines to help them get their current crop harvested and then save for future crops. Is that part of your program?

We come in with an education program. We do a series of different pieces of training. Our core curriculum is a program called Seed School , where we’re teaching and facilitating. By we, I mean our farmers and staff in the Philippines are training other community members in this historic practice of saving seeds. For your readers who don’t know gardening or seeds, how we got our past food diversity is by saving seeds.

Crops are meant to be planted and then a portion of them saved and grown to seed and then replanted again. In many years, as multinational chemical corporations have taken control of our food systems, the practice and the art of saving seeds are being lost, particularly in growing populations like the Philippines. We’re coming in and working side-by-side with the community to help restore those traditions. We do our technical training program and then, depending on the needs of the community, we’ll work with those farmers to do seed trials where they’re in the field, dedicating a portion of their land for seed production and then helping them establish seed libraries in those communities.

This is fueling my curiosity here but are individual farmers doing the seed storage themselves or are there repositories? How does that work?

We do a little bit of both. A big part of what we encourage is helping the on-farm seed storage because that’s a hugely important piece of it and then we’re also helping communities establish local seed libraries. These are not Svalbard Seed Vault up in Norway. These are small cabinets in proper storage containers where all of our partner communities bring a portion of their seeds so that the rest of the community and other farmers can share and exchange those seeds as well.

There are a lot of diversifications that go on with the mixing of seed stocks.

The thing that you want is diversity. We know that in many aspects of our world but in particular in agriculture, you want diversity. You don’t want mono-crop. You’re way more prone to disease to pass to the impacts of the pandemic and climate change unless you have diversity. It’s a simple solution that we’ve overcomplicated in our modern world. I always like to say that in the sector, people like to talk a lot about innovation and doing the next big thing in the nonprofit world. We take a lot of pride in that we’re helping return and restore old traditions because that’s what works.

It’s getting back to basics and leaning back on those things that have been proven to work for generations. In terms of your organization, where do you feel like you land in terms of your maturity in building awareness and bringing donors? Do you work with volunteers?

We’re at a pretty exciting tipping point in our life cycle. We are primed, ready and have moved from a scrappy startup to a more established adolescent nonprofit over the last few years. We do have two full-time paid staff members in the Philippines, Filipinos that run our programs and operations on the ground. I’m the only US staff member. We’re getting ready to grow. We’re planning to bring on two new team members in the Philippines. We do have volunteers here and there in terms of helping with events and different things here in the US, but the core of our people that make the work happen are on the ground in the Philippines.

How To Run Your Organization Like A For-Profit With Sherry Manning From Global Seed Savers

My guest is Sherry Manning, the Executive Director of Global Seed Savers , a cool organization that helps farmers save out a certain amount of their seeds to plant again the following year. They do most of their work in the Philippines and have a Philippines unit as well that does a lot of great work over there. They’re doing some cool stuff throughout the engagement life cycle.

We had a cool conversation. Two things that came out of it. The first was being able to help focus your organization on profits. Even though we are nonprofits, when we run events and things of that nature, we do need to be focused on the costs versus the net revenue that’s generated from those endeavors. The other thing that we talked quite a bit about was persona development and understanding how to take what’s working, develop a persona around that, and then do more of what’s working. It was a fun episode. You’re going to enjoy it. There are lots of fun things to talk about. Here we go.

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Sherry , how are you doing?

I am good, Stu. How are you doing?

I am doing well. Tell me a little bit about what you have going on at the Global Seed Savers Organization.

Global Seed Savers is an international nonprofit organization. We’re based here in Denver, Colorado, out of the Posner Center for International Development, but our primary operations are on the ground in the Philippines. We work with smallholder farmers and farming communities. They’re helping restore the traditional practice of saving seeds and restoring local food systems. I’m happy to dive into more details, but we’re all about restoring food and seed sovereignty and working from the grassroots up to ensure communities have the local resources they need to sustain themselves.

There are some interesting challenges with that here in the states. Is that why it’s a Philippines-based organization or do you have touchpoints here in the States side as well?

We do have some domestic partnerships here in the United States. We work with an organization called the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance , which does a lot of seed education and training throughout the Rocky Mountain West, but my work in the Philippines and the reason that’s where we’re based started years ago. I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer there, back when you didn’t get to pick where you go. I like to say that the Philippines chose me. It’s my time there as a volunteer learning, listening and living with my host family at the time that spurred the creation of what’s now Global Seed Savers.

In the nonprofit world, people like to talk a lot about innovation and doing the next big thing.

What’s fueling that ability to grow the staff and expand your mission?

It’s many things. Over the years, we have honed in on exactly what our value add in this big ecosystem of sustainable ag, regenerative ag or whatever you want to call it. There are a lot of different words floating around the world. In particular, the pandemic has reawakened the need for these local systems. In a country like the Philippines, that’s only been even more exacerbated with the other challenges that were already existing there. It’s a land of 7,000 islands. Food supply chains were cut off very quickly. They already had densely populated urban areas that struggled with food insecurity and the pandemic only exacerbated that.

Communities are saying, “We need to go back to these local systems. We’re being cut off from each other and the world. We want to engage and do this ourselves.” We were primed and ready for the pandemic. We already had some momentum. We’d run programs in different regions of the country. We had our two staff members on the ground already and we’ve been able to respond to that. We’re grateful for all of our supporters and donors. We’re continuing to build on that, but the timing all came together positively.

It’s great that you were primed and ready for that. There are a lot of organizations out there who had the knowledge and the capability to bring valuable assets, information or assistance to these areas that were hit hard in the last few years, but they weren’t able to take action on that based upon their revenue streams or other mechanisms that they couldn’t put in play-based upon cashflow. It’s great to hear that you were able to pounce on that opportunity.

I’m continuing to work on not having a scarcity mentality. Being the founder from the bottom up, it’s amazing to sit back and see where we are, but one of the benefits that we were placed as an organization is we were pretty small and lean as it was. A lot of nonprofits and colleagues at the Posner Center had to take a hard look at their budget when COVID first hit and make some hard decisions, but we’ve been pretty lean from the get-go. We were able to ride it out.

We had to put a pause on a lot of direct programming in the field because of travel restrictions, but we didn’t have a lot of wiggle room in the budget in the first place, so it put us in a position of being able to dig in and maintain all of our staff. That’s something I’m proud of. We were able to keep all of our team and keep paying them. The pandemic is a very different situation in the Philippines. We’re coming out of some of this and responding to the growing needs.

What are some of the things that are on your growth agenda in terms of helping to be able to expand that mission or reach more people to help them with not only teeing up their ability to handle these kinds of challenges in the future but to expand that mission?

We’re in early conversations about some of these kinds of program model changes. Global Seed Savers and Global Seed Savers Philippines want to be the hub and the center point that’s building a coalition of all of these community partners, farmers and other nonprofits that want to engage in this work. We’re excited about building out that membership model.

A farmer’s organization, local government unit, and other organization that wants to partner with us can become a Global Seed Savers Philippines member. They’ll pay into that and then with that, they’ll get you a menu of our options. They’ll get access to online seed schools and gatherings of other members of the community to learn from them. As the demand for what we’re providing is growing, we want to continue to think about how to do it smarter, not harder and have Global Seed Savers be the center point of making all of these connections for these communities doing this work.

What outreach are you doing to explain that new positioning and get people on board?

We’re in the internal conversations about that, but we have several partners that we’re constantly in communication and working with. We’re building out that internal membership model at the moment but almost every day, myself or my colleague in the Philippines, our Executive Director there, gets requests and emails from a school who wants local seeds for their school garden and from a farmer’s organization that wants access to our seed school programs. We want to be able to not just respond to those kinds of in a one-off way but say, “We’d love for you to engage. Here’s how to do it formally.”

The other thing that we’ve seen with the pandemic is the rise of everyone in the Philippines being more engaged with farming, be that urban folk or rural communities. Our hits on social media and social presence have increased in the Philippines, which is super exciting. We’re getting ready to bring on a local marketing and communication staff member to run those things for us to make sure that the voice of the audience is being reached. We have our donor audience here, but we’re having that Philippine voice share the perspective of our work and what we’re doing.

What’s fortunate is that the cost associated with bringing someone on and over in the Philippines is a lot lower than over here. You can get some great people in that area for a lot less money than here domestically. The authenticity piece is fantastic to hear as well. It sounds like you don’t have what we would call an attraction problem. You have a steady influx of inquiries and people who are engaging with your brand. Moving on to that connect phase, it sounds like you’re collecting email addresses and building a community. Is that accurate? Are you doing things with all of these touchpoints that you have?

Yes. We have a newsletter list and our growing social feed. We’re keeping a running tally of all these things. Honestly, it’s an abundance of desire at the moment. We want to position ourselves and ensure that we are not overtaxing our small but mighty team in responding to these needs. We’re spending the next month or so doing a lot of this internal work, bringing on more team members and folks and then we’re going to be able to hit the ground running and continue to respond to the needs.

Newsletters are a great part of any organization’s general outreach. One of the things that we’ve seen starting to work well for our clients and us as an organization, my real job as a cofounder of a digital marketing agency and what we have started doing is paring those emails down to one specific piece of information or value-driving component as opposed to throwing a bunch of stuff out there for people to choose their adventure.

When people send out newsletters, they tend to have the 3 latest blog posts, the other thing that we did, this event that went well, some other thing and 2 or 3 calls to action. People can get a little lost in that messaging. It also feels impersonal because people can spot a newsletter 3,000 miles away from where there’s an opportunity with your email list. People on that list have raised their hand, so they’ve taken an action to get on that list.

Providing more frequent and specific elements or items of value to that list can be effective because it does feel so personal. If you strip out all that design, choose your adventure messaging and deliver a single piece of valuable material, insight or information that feels like it could have been written to a specific person, you would see how you start to get better engagement because people feel like they’re being talked to as a person and not just a list.

Thanks for sharing that tidbit and knowledge with us. We’re on a bit of a pause from some of our communications in that way because we’re rebuilding and re-envisioning how we want to go about sharing those messages, but I love that you shared that. Something we did a better job was we peppered a monthly newsletter and every other month was a blog. It was more of a personal story from one of our staff members or getting permission from one of our farmers to share one of their stories. I agree with you. It’s that personal connection. We’ve all adjusted to this digital connection, but we still need that human or personal connection. We need good stories in the world. I love that tip. I’ll make a note of that and share that with our new marketing person when we bring her on.

There’s a real reckoning happening in the world of philanthropy right now. And it’s very positive.

One of the things that we’ve seen work well is to take those blog posts. Instead of a synopsis of three posts in a newsletter, go ahead and send each of those posts out individually. Have a greeting that says, “Hey, Stu,” and then go right into the blog post. I could have gotten that if I’d gone to the site, but you have engaged this captive audience that they’ve asked to correspond with, so they’re more likely to see that.

Have a single call to action if there even is one. I would mix things up and have it that you’re not always asking people for donations or action but allowing them to engage with your organization in a variety of different ways. It can be effective. In terms of your social media, how frequently is it? What’s your approach to social?

It’s not like we’ve found our unicorn, but I’m very excited that we’re bringing on a specifically dedicated team member to help run these aspects of our work because I do think we’ve reached that stage as an organization where we need a committed team member that’s managing this. We mainly have a presence on Facebook and Instagram . We do have a Twitter account, but we don’t post there a whole lot.

We post 3 to 4 times a week and it’s a range. We’re in the process of thinking through more of a schedule and how are we tying that into our bigger communications strategy. A lot of what we’ve started to do as more and more of our partners in the Philippines are becoming more active on social is sharing a lot of content of like-minded organizations.

We’ve held seed schools with some wonderful partners with whom we’ve worked in their communities and they’re starting to build their social presence. We always like to post their stories and share their articles. Sharing stories of the field, if we have a training that’s happened, we’ll post about that. We’ll post articles of interest, but I’ve been having fun as someone that is still the one posting things. I’m very excited to pass that off.

It’s been super fun to do to see more and more of our partners start to share content and develop their social platforms. In this spirit of us as Global Seed Savers wanting to be the coalition builder, we don’t need to spend the time making all the content. We can share quality content with our friends. That’s a great way to spread the network and share the same messaging.

I love that you’ve figured that out. I’m not the only person that’s come up with this idea. It would be disingenuous of me to claim ownership of this, but it’s this idea of being a maven. You don’t have to create all of the thought leadership. You just have to know how to access it. People will remember that and that you helped them get some valuable information. It doesn’t have to be always something that you sit down and spend twelve weeks researching, writing and delivering.

It’s knowing that something is important, being able to share that and maybe adding your $0.2 of why you think it’s important to provide validation. We don’t always have to be in that content creation mode. We can be in that content distribution mode, particularly if we are adding a little bit of flavor to it.

That ties in with our model. We as an organization want to be able to come in and help provide, support and encourage, but our long-term vision is that the communities where we establish these seed libraries and where we do these training are locally-led. With the farmers in that community or whatever the structure is, we come in, bring some value add and then we’re able to walk away. That’s in the same spirit when you talk about sharing quality content. Don’t think that you’re the only one that can create good thoughts. There’s a lot of good thought out there. It’s a better opportunity to share that and get that cross-pollination happening with other like-minded organizations.

It’s a little bit of a blend between the inspire and bond phases, but not everyone will be ready to take action on day one. Providing them valuable information that feels genuine and comes from this position of altruism and the idea that you want to help, people pick up on that. When they are ready to take action and move into that engagement cycle, you’ll be top of mind.

I heard that you’re doing a lot of back and forth in social as well, where you’re reaching out to other organizations and responding to people. We see a lot of people miss with social media because they tend to use it as this soapbox as opposed to being a relationship builder. I heard that you’re out engaging with other organizations and answering people who post to your platform as well.

As we’re bringing on more team members to work with this process, we’re excited to maybe even initiate some of our back and forth communication with those audiences. How can we send a poll? Surveys are very archaic and rooted in all sorts of bad structures, but how can we help create that for our folks as well? We’re excited to be able to bring on more team members to help inspire and focus on that process.

A lot of times, it’s asking questions and listening for the answers that you get. Something that tends to be missing from social media at times is that people feel like they’re always the expert. It’s a matter of starting a conversation and building that relationship through back-and-forth interactions. What is your donor structure? Is it typically coming from state-side donations or is there a good donor base in the Philippines as well?

We’re starting to grow a donor base locally. A big strategic initiative for us in the Philippines is growing that local donor base and honing in on our programmatic revenue streams. We’re still 90% plus funded here in the West. We’re still primarily individual donor-funded. We do have a grants portfolio that’s growing, but grants are a tricky world. We’re grateful for all of our grant funders but also, want to move into this more consistent long-term multi-year funding. We secured our first-ever multi-year individual donor gift.

It’s a game-changer for us and a transformational gift over the next years, which is amazing. We’re very grateful to that donor. For us, it’s a sign that the time that we’ve put into relationships is leading to the right thing. We hope that that’s going to turn into more of those types of relationships to help complement the on-the-ground revenue generation and fundraising that’s starting to happen.

That’s a great topic of conversation, attempting to move people from one-time donations to more predictable commitments over some time, even if those are smaller individual donations. For example, getting a bunch of people on a $10 a month. A lot of times, it’s an easier sell than trying to get somebody to give $120. Attempting to escalate that engagement can be super effective for your organization because it builds predictability.

It creates that budgetable against cashflow that we’re all so in need of. In the nonprofit space, the big time of year tends to be at the end of the year during Thanksgiving and holiday season giving as well as people trying to fulfill an end-of-year commitment that they’ve made and they waited to the last minute. That is not going to go away.

Even during those times, attempting to get people to commit to longer-term month-over-month regular donations, getting that transition can be a game-changer for a nonprofit. When you have people who’ve raised their hands and someone who said, “Yes, put me on your email list,” that’s a hand raised. Somebody who said, “I’d like to give to your organization,” that’s a little bit higher hand raised. If you think of ways to escalate that engagement to get them to get used to donating monthly, for example, then you can go back to those donors on a fairly regular basis and ask for a little bit more commitment every month. It’s a way to escalate that.

It’s been super fun to see more and more of our partners start to share content and develop their social platforms.

The other piece that a lot of nonprofits may discount or miss is this idea of getting someone to escalate from an individual donor to a corporate donor. Letting people know that you’re open to corporate partnership arrangements or corporate donorship agreements, a lot of corporations are out there trying to do more good in the world.

We have B corp and everybody else forming. A lot of these organizations, particularly if they’re in your space are looking to do a little bit more to give back. It’s a good opportunity to take an individual donor and put in their mind that they could go their place of business or their company if they’re in a position to make those decisions and have that company come on as a corporate sponsor.

You shared a lot of potential ways to go about it. Those of us on the ground, making those things happen, it isn’t quite that simple, but it’s all about relationships. For example, this very generous individual donor that’s given us this transformational gift over the next years, I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating that relationship. There’s a good connection point. This person is very committed to our work and cares deeply about the mission, but it takes time.

It takes eighteen months to cultivate a new donor in the fundraising world, which is a scary time crunch when you’re operating in our current realities, but it is about putting in that time and those relationships. That is hard. It takes a lot of patience, but we’re sitting in this place of tremendous gratitude and excitement combined with this transformational gift. There’s also this continued groundswell for the work on the ground. We’re hoping we can marry those two.

We’ve spent a lot of time building that base, small donors and monthly donors. We’d love to still have more monthly donors if anyone who’s inspired and wants to dive in that way, but the tipping point that we’re at or at least I see with our us donors, is we’re going to want to maintain those folks, but now that we’ve received this type of multi-year very substantial commitment, that’s where we can head. That will hopefully be a door to more folks like that.

We’re going to maintain our base and frankly, COVID has required a lot of small nonprofits to dig into that base. What are the relationships that you’re going to maintain during a pandemic? It’s people that already know and love you. That’s what we’ve had to do in addition to be not the place programmatically where some grant funding has also opened up. It’s a timing thing. Every year is different, but we’re rolling into this quarter feeling a little bit of breath because we have some of this money in the bank to give us the time to do this internal work so that we can respond when we’re ready.

It takes the pressure off when you have that predictability and that understanding that you’re funded for at least a while. It lets you make different decisions. One of the things that’s interesting and endemic or baked into the nonprofit world is this challenge where when you’re asking for donations, you have to demonstrate and state your value proposition strongly.

I love your site because you and your team have done some of the hard work establishing your values, vision, and mission. I should have taken a peek at your donation page as well. One of the things that’s interesting about the nonprofit spaces is that there’s constant friction as people move up this mountain of engagement. In the for-profit world, there’s more gravity to it where people can get plopped in the top, you nurture them a little bit and then they come out the bottom and take the action that you want them to take, like buying something.

In the nonprofit world, there’s this constant pressure that people have to overcome this gravity that they’re fighting against as they move up this engagement ladder to decide on whether or not to engage with your organization and establish this idea of why. “Why should people give to your organization instead of another organization that might have a similar goal or not give at all?”

There’s this extra tension in there. It’s cool to see that you have done some of that hard work establishing that values, vision and mission because that’s the foundation of that value proposition. It’s that story that you can relate to that convinces people why they should give to you instead of giving to someone else or not at all.

On a personal note, this is what I read late at night when I can’t go to sleep. There’s a real reckoning happening in the world of philanthropy and it’s very positive. How organizations engage with their donors and maybe even more importantly, donors engage with organizations is going to continue to shift and change and that needs to happen.

To me, that all goes back to relationships. This is about building rapport with people, telling a true, authentic story, and building trust. The problem with so much of our institutional funding is that it denies the trust relationship. I’m not saying nonprofits shouldn’t have to prove or demonstrate impact, but there are lots of ways to show impact. Who’s defining what that impact is? Is it the donor or the actual people on the ground living the work?

It’s something that we’re excited about and that we as an organization have thought about for a long time but hence why the local leadership, the local revenue support, the local dynamic of what we do is so essential because that is what’s going to propel the work forward. For us, you think about this in our sector. There’s a real valid ethical debate in the seed saving the world around the world, here and the Philippines elsewhere, of the ethics of the commodification of something as regenerative as seeds.

Those are conversations that we have in our partner communities. We’re excited to see more and more farmers growing seed and potentially sell that seed, but if there is a real belief that seeds should not be commodified and be freely shared, let’s do that because that’s the long game. A short-term sale may not lead to the long-term regenerative process that seed saving is meant to bring. This is like not telling you a specific way that we do this, but it’s sharing that these are the conversations that we’re continuing to evolve and have because that model of relying on the commodification of services takes away the dignity of the partners of the work itself sometimes.

I love that you keep coming back to this idea of relationships because, in our view, marketing is all relationship building, creating a sense of comfort and trust and building that trust over time that encourages people to take action. Whether that action is to call their congressperson, donate, volunteer or do something else, it’s all built on that trust that comes over time. I love that you’re using that language. It’s fantastic to know that you’ve figured that out yourself.

Some of that’s the nature of how we started and the work that we do. What brings humans together more than food? In theory, the great connector, even if you don’t have an abundance of it, hopefully, people are sitting down and sharing some food. By the pure nature of our mission, it’s about relationships.

It’s great to see it tied back to that mission. It makes it an easier conversation to have. If it’s baked into the whole ethos of the organization, then it’s a natural conversation. It feels legitimate and authentic because it is. I did take a peek at your donation page. If you have access to that, there are a couple of things that you could probably modify on that page to make things run a little more smoothly. If you’re interested, I can share a couple of ideas with you.

We’re bringing on some new marketing comms people and planning a website overhaul, so we’d love any suggestions.

The problem with so much of our institutional funding is that it completely denies the trust relationship.

Having a dedicated team geared towards looking at this stuff every day, running A/B tests and things of that nature is where I would recommend you go with this. One of the things that I like about this page is that you’ve focused the focus on the action. There’s no way to click off to go do anything else.

Popsy is a site that we use.

They’ve stripped out all the navigation, which is important. You could probably go even further with that. There’s some stuff in the footer that you could probably get rid of to keep things focused. One thing that is not here is continuing that value proposition conversation. It’s worth exploring ways to have more messaging here that reinforces the action you’re trying to get people to take.

That sounds a little counter-productive because we’ve all been hammered in the marketing world for the last years that you want to reduce the number of clicks and any distractions at all, but one of the things that we found is that for a lot of organizations, having a reinforcement of that value proposition on the donation page can be super effective.

That’s great feedback for the main donation page. We do throughout the year some different annual like crowdfunding peer-to-peer campaigns and those pages have had a little bit more of that, but that’s a good tip. This website needs a bit of an overhaul. I’m not even talking about design. I’m talking about updating content, ensuring that it reflects the evolution of where we’re at as an organization.

That’s why I laugh about under construction because you don’t see under construction pages much anymore, but back in the day, that was a thing that you would see all the time. It’s like, “Every webpage is under construction.” They should all be constantly tweaked, massaged and monitored. If you can do A/B testing on stuff, you’ll better understand what’s working and what resonates with people. The fact that you have this in the back of your mind as something important to tackle is great.

We all like to think that we’re all unicorns here in the nonprofit sector. We’re grateful to have been able to identify some new excitement and enthusiasm in the team, but we have to temper expectations too. We like to call ourselves seed unicorns.

What are the motivations of your donors here in the states? What are they hoping to accomplish by engaging with you and helping you fulfill your mission through their donations?

I liked the way that you phrased that question. It makes me want to ask them all of that, which I feel like we do. The biggest motivation is that people feel inspired to support the people feeding the planet. The center point that we connect people on is something very fundamental, which is our sustenance. Our donors connect with that. I’m very grateful that over the years, so many of my friends and family have become part of the family as well. These are people that maybe not necessarily ever knew about the Philippines, but through those personal connections, have grown to love the people and the work.

There’s another piece to our work and that’s about justice and painting the picture of, “What the multinational biochemical corporations are doing to the world is disruptive. We’re presenting a very authentic grassroots alternative. People respond to that.” A lot of friends of mine are in the network, the very values-aligned people. We have a lot of other farmers, other seed savers and people that do this work here domestically that are like, “I feel in solidarity with the farmers in the Philippines.” It’s connecting on all those valuable points.

You hit the nail on the head when you said that you might want to ask those questions. The more insight and knowledge that you can gather around people’s motivations for engaging with your organization, the more you can have a good understanding of the kinds of materials that you might want to put out there. You attract more of the same people and the kinds of materials you might want to put out there to escalate the engagement of those involved.

Getting those demographics and psychographics can help you build personas of these ideal donors, influencers or even beneficiaries. You have a great understanding of when someone shows up whether or not they are the “right person.” It helps with your ability to message those groups and make good decisions in terms of whether or not this is someone that you want to hop on immediately in terms of engagement or if they might need a little bit more nurturing. It helps streamline all of that. At the end of the day, that ends up saving you time and money in terms of your outreach. Have you done any of those types of exercises in the past?

We have here and there. We host a big annual event. It was a Filipino brunch last 2020. It was virtual, which was great because more and more of our Philippine community could join. Something we always ask is, “How did you hear about us?” That event has grown and people look forward to it every year in our network here. We’ve evolved to it because people can buy tables, so those consistent guests always bring new friends each year, which is super exciting. We were able to make the digital pivot, which was nice. It didn’t bring in as much revenue as we had hoped, but it was a very successful event regardless.

You don’t raise as much money via virtual as you do in person for where we’re at. It’s the mode that we’re in, but it’s a good question. We’re doing a lot of board development. The groundswell of the work is taking off on the ground and that’s an even better question to ask people on the ground in the Philippines.

If we start getting new hits or partners saying, “We’d love to do seed school,” we’ll ask them, “Why do you want to engage with us?” That’s something we do in our partnership development anyway. We always meet, connect, build those relationships and learn if it’s a good fit, but that’s an interesting way to think about engaging with donors as well.

There are a couple of things I understand that are interesting. The first one is going to the numbers in terms of your virtual event versus in-person event. One thing that tends to happen is that people get very focused on the gross receipts and lose a little bit of track of the net receipts. Even though your gross may be down from virtual events, the costs of running a virtual event can be astronomically less expensive.

It was amazing. I’m reflecting on when I sent in the board report and we talked about it. It’s ridiculous how little money we spent for such an impactful, amazing gathering. That’s going to be interesting, at least in this part of the world, as we start to get back in person. There is something nice about being in person. For our event, it’s very tactile. We have a meal. We sat together and conversate, but we were still able to build that positive energy virtually and to your point, it costs such little money. It’s like, “Why not?”

The other thing that we’ve learned is that once you’ve run a couple of those virtual events, they become easier to pull off. That’s something to keep in the back of your mind and be thoughtful about because there’s an opportunity for us to get excited about gross revenue and lost track of margins and profit, especially in the nonprofit space. We tend to not think of profits too much because the anti of that is in our name.

Step away from your desk, go outside and be still in nature.

It has built a lot of bad cycles in our sector.

The other thing that would be interesting is you’ve mentioned this big donor a couple of times. Trying to, in a non-intrusive way, tease out some of their motivations, demographics and psychographics around their decision-making. Who they are and looking for people who are similar to that so that you can get a better understanding or have a little more targeted outreach even in the Philippines, how could you find a couple of people like that over there?

If you can get to those motivations, thoughts, feelings, ideas and figure out how to connect with more people like that, you might be able to get more of those people signed on as big sponsors and donors. Coming at it from that deconstructive mindset in terms of trying to figure it out and not think like, “This was a fluke and it’s not reproducible,” there’s an opportunity there to build on that momentum.

We’re excited to be at that point. To bring it back to the core of who we are and what we believe in, seeds teach us to be regenerative like that. We’ve already seen that happen. Regardless of a large donor or a small donor, it’s become regenerative. Someone hears and they tell their friend. It continues to grow. I love that. I’m certainly very hopeful that the security of having a partnership with this generous donor is going to lead to more people like her. The way to do that is to be strategic and dig in to do the work that you’re talking about. We’re excited to be at that phase.

I love the idea of regenerative opportunities and using that language, even if it’s internally. Getting that mindset of you’re storing seeds, reaping the rewards of that and getting people to become very engaged is what we call the inspire phase of engagement, where essentially, you’re going back to the well and asking them for additional help.

That helped doesn’t have to be financial. It can be sharing your story as a donor, as somebody who’s engaged in this community, spread the word, getting more people engaged and leveraging that list and all of those people who over the years have chosen to engage with your organization, to get them to bring two more people in. Even if it’s asking them to share something with their network, that can be incredibly fruitful.

It’s wonderful to be at the place where we can think about engagement points that aren’t just asking for a donation. We would gratefully accept any donations that people want to give, but we’re at a place in our life cycle where there are a lot of different entry points. That’s the way any of these movements are. I was having a conversation with a board member we’re recruiting and this particular person was like, “I don’t grow seeds. I get your mission. I’m Filipino. I care about it.” I was like, “There’s a lot of entry points to engage in this work. You don’t need to be an active gardener or farmer to get this and become an advocate.”

One of our mentors from Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Bill McDorman, teaches seed teachers and I’m one of his graduates. He always says, “Teach what you care about.” He can get up and teach all about genetics and all the technical stuff, but when I get up and talk about seeds, I tell the stories of the farmers and the injustices in our systems because that’s what gets me excited. A great way to think about how to keep donors engaged and excited is by asking them, “Why are you excited about this work? Could you tell that story?” Not like, “Give money,” but like, “I’m inspired to share about this awesome work with you.”

We touched on that in terms of having a variety of different asks, so you’re not always asking the same thing. It keeps people on their toes and gives them something unique. If the button in your email is always Donate Now, pretty soon, people stop seeing that button. I would argue that maybe you don’t need a button in your email regardless because that makes it feel impersonal, like a marketing piece.

If all you’re ever doing is asking for money, that ask will start to be less visible. You’re always keeping them on their toes like, “What are they going to ask me for this week?” It’s something interesting, new and fresh. Maybe the ask is to go plant a seed and see what happens. That might be an amazing thing to encourage people to do.

Go for a walk and look for the seeds that are all around because they’re everywhere. Once you start paying attention, they’re there. You’ll see them.

I super enjoyed my conversation with you. I love having these chats with nonprofit leaders. I’m excited about where you are going. If people want to learn more about your organization, where should they go to get information about Global Seed Savers?

We’re going to be revamping our website, but that is still a good portal. Feel free to go to GlobalSeedSavers.org . That’s a great space. It’s the same name on Facebook, Global Seed Savers , as well as on Instagram. That’s where we’re posting pictures, content and sharing articles about the work and why this movement is important.

I love having these conversations because I love talking about things, but I want to inspire action. One of the questions that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show is if you had to inspire people to take one action after reading and it could be anything from plant a tree or go look for seeds, what would that action be for people to help motivate them to get out and do something?

I would encourage everyone to step away from their computer, walk outside, be still and observe what they see. You might see some seeds or new life sprouting up. That’s what this is all about. Step away from your desk, get outside and be still in nature. That’s going to take you where you need to go.

That sounds like something I’d like to go do right after we get done.

I’m with you, Stu. I’m going to head out for my annual walk every day.

Thank you again for being on the show, Sherry. It was wonderful speaking with you. I encourage everyone to go to check out GlobalSeedSavers.org . I look forward to hearing more about how things are going.

Thanks for all your tips and advice. I enjoyed the conversation, Stu.

It’s always my pleasure. Talk to you soon.

About Sherry Manning

Sherry’s work with Global Seed Savers began when she served as US Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 2006-2008. She was fortunate enough to be assigned to the town of Tublay in Benguet Province and the loving Cosalan Family as her host family. Sherry dedicated her service to helping the Cosalan’s develop their ancestral land ENCA Farm (our founding partner), into an organic farming training center, youth environmental education facility, and leading sustainable eco-tourism destination. This critical work continued when she founded Friends of ENCA Farm (now Global Seed Savers) in 2010 to support ENCA Farm’s programs in the Philippines and build advocacy in the U.S. through her role as Executive Director. In 2015, under Sherry’s strategic leadership Friends of ENCA Farm began to expand their work beyond their founding farm and in light of this growth and success, in October 2017 they announced their new name Global Seed Savers at the 7th Annual Nourish Event.

Episode 54: Running A Sweepstake To Engage Donors With Annie Tukman From TapKat

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:50:53 GMT

Have you ever thought about generating donations by hosting a sweepstake? (Yes, “sweepstakes” means more than one. ��

This week we are talking to Annie Tukman , the Sales Director at TapKat, a platform that runs online sweepstakes for nonprofit organizations.

Sweepstakes are great for an organization because they help gamify the donation process. This can make donating more enjoyable for your donors, increase donation amounts, help with list-building, and increase overall engagement with your stakeholders.

Our conversation was a comprehensive how-to for running successful sweepstakes—everything from how to acquire prizes to how to effectively engage your audience.

Take a listen, then reach out to TapKat to set up your first sweepstake. Don’t forget to let us know how it goes!

https://www.tapkat.com/

Ask:

Go eat a delicious snack!

Go check out TapKat and set up a sweepstake for your organization.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Running A Sweepstake To Engage Donors With Annie Tukman From TapKat

My guest is Annie Tukman, and she is the Sales Director at TapKat . It is an amazing organization that helps nonprofits figure out how to run sweepstakes and facilitates that action. It creates opportunities for donation list building and overall engagement. It’s a great program. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about it before on the show.

Annie and I talked about all things Tapkat now, and one of the things that every nonprofit should know is that TapKat is there for them if they want to start trying to drive donations and build their list. It’s a jam-packed episode, full of great insights and information. We had a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it.

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Annie , how are you doing?

I’m doing great, Stu. Thanks for having me on your show.

I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. I’m excited to learn about all the great things you’re doing over at TapKat. I know that we’ve been friends with you guys for quite a while now, but I’m excited to hear more about your story and how things are going over there.

I’m happy to be here and share. We’ve got a lot of great successes, some tools, and tips to share with your audiences.

Why don’t we start off by telling our readers a little bit more about what TapKat is and what do you do for nonprofits?

TapKat is a software company, and we are running fundraising sweepstakes for nonprofits. Before I tell you more about what we’re doing, I want to stop for a second and talk about sweepstakes because a lot of the times in the nonprofit world, sweepstakes and raffles get interchanged when they are two different types of contests.

It’s important that we’re labeling them the right way because raffles are considered gambling. Raffles are regulated at a state level, which means every state is going to have different rules on how they want raffles run in their state because they’re gambling. In some states, it’s 8 or 9 right now don’t even allow raffles. They are illegal in some states.

What’s the difference between a raffle and sweepstakes so that people can wrap their arms around it?

Sweepstakes have no purchase necessary to enter into the contest. That’s different from a raffle. With a raffle, every single person who enters the contest is going to be buying a ticket. Sweepstakes have this alternative method of entry for somebody to enter into the contest. They have people who are entering with a donation.

Often in the nonprofit world, sweepstakes and raffles get interchanged when they are actually two different types of contests.

There’s no purchase necessary to enter. These sweepstakes contests are legal in all 50 states. You can cross state lines with them, which is important when you get to marketing a campaign, and there’s cashflow throughout the campaign. With a raffle, you have to segregate funds and hold onto them until the end of the campaign. With sweepstakes, the funds coming into a contest are readily available for nonprofit use.

One of the unique things about the TapKat model is that it’s also driving donations and trying to get people to participate in the sweepstakes based upon a level of donation that has a ticket equivalent component to it. Is that still the current model?

We have the free entry method, but we see 98% to 99% of folks are purchasing tickets. It’s a small pot. 1% to 2% of the tickets in the contest is free. It’s small, and there are so many benefits to sweepstakes that you get with this little change or difference between the sweepstakes and the raffle.

Are the donations still tax-deductible for people?

We are not CPA. We recommend that our nonprofits take the stance that we’re going to give the donor everything they need to take to their tax accountant. Their tax accountant can determine whether or not that donation is tax-deductible or not.

It may be different in different states. It’s what I’m knowing there.

It can be different for different tax situations as well.

Essentially, people set up a campaign. Is it donations to participate in that sweepstakes?

Our nonprofits are giving away some incredible prizes. It’s unfortunate that we at TapKat can’t enter to win some of these because they are so cool. We’re drooling over a lot of them. We’ve got a Ronald McDonald House in Denver. They’re giving away a conversion van, same with Junior Achievement of Northern Indiana . They’re doing a conversion van that looks amazing. We got Paradox Sports here in Colorado, giving away a teardrop trailer, some great cars, great experiences. All of these prizes are exciting. It’s fun for donors and us too.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of things. Feel free to back us up. What are the types of prizes that you’ve seen work well?

We have seen experiences and trips do well. We had Fargo Air Museum in North Dakota do a side-by-side, and they blew it out of the park. They did such a great job on that campaign. It’s anything desirable for donors. What we’ve seen that hasn’t worked or things that are every day, like for some reason we haven’t seen trucks do well. Any development director who’s reading can look behind them and see all the baskets from 2020, the silent auctions that didn’t sell. Those are not going to do well in a campaign like this, either.

It’s something different and unique. You customize the ticket.

Along those lines, it’s something that is unique, but we’ve also done trips to Napa Valley that have done well. It’s something to get interest from donors.

We’d like to talk about not only the engage phase but the inspire phase of audience participation. Do you have any data on ongoing participation after sweepstakes in terms of getting new donors and keeping them in the fold? Do you have enough data to be able to speak about that?

A good example is the Shelby American Collection Car Museum in Boulder, Colorado. They are on their sixth sweepstakes with us. Every year, they give away a similar prize. They’ll do a new Shelby Mustang, and they are seeing a high percentage of folks who are donating into the contest one year are also donating the next year. We’re not seeing a lot of donor fatigue inside these contests, but we’re also seeing that 14% to 22% of folks will donate multiple times in that one campaign through the duration of one sweepstakes campaign.

The nonprofits own all of the data from the campaigns themselves so they can continue to reach out to those donors throughout the year, even if a campaign isn’t running after that. Is that right?

That’s correct. I’m going to jump back to the Shelby American Collection. When they started off their first sweepstakes, they had 800 donors in their email database. It did not mean for them that they had 800 active donors. Ten of them were active donors. Throughout the years, they have built that list year after year, and now they have about 40,000 people in 6 years on that list. When they do an eBlast now out to that base, they’ll see between $40,000 and $60,000 come in for their campaigns.

That list-building component is fascinating. Are those people tend to be active other times of the year, or are they pretty much sweepstakes-type donors at this point?

That museum is a special case because almost their entire budget is run on these campaigns now. They run them annually for about 11 to 12 months. Most of the people who are on that list are donating through that campaign back to the museum.

As they’ve run more campaigns, I’m assuming that their campaigns have been more successful. Can you speak to the growth? You said you’ve run five campaigns this far.

They’re on their sixth campaign. Their first one started off at about $235,000 gross donations. It went to $357,000, $435,000, $533,000 and then in 2020, they raised a $1.3 million.

That’s some amazing growth. That is outstanding.

It’s inspiring to see what they’ve accomplished with their sweepstakes. Their nonprofit was underwater because they are a car museum that was focused around one man. For all of you that have seen Ford versus Ferrari, they’re about Shelby Cobra and GT40. Carroll Shelby used to have a big gala where he would attend, and it would bring in $50,000 or $60,000, which would be barely their operating expenses for the year and keep them going. When he passed, they needed a new way to raise funds for that museum.

Sweepstakes and raffles are no risks to a nonprofit because they are not purchasing the prize until the end of a campaign, only if they hit the minimum that they want to raise.

As with the Shelby American Collection, our nonprofits that are seeing the most success are the nonprofits that are using that data that’s coming in each year. They are running a campaign with a similar prize, remarketing to the folks that have already donated, and doing some additional marketing on top of that to bring in more funds to have these campaigns grow. When somebody does make a donation on the platform, the donor’s data goes into the nonprofit’s database. They have access to that at any time.

It’s a real list-building opportunity, as well as a donation tool. Those are the two of the core benefits that come out of running a TapKat campaign. For most nonprofits, they’re trying to build both of those items.

It’s neat and great to think about this as a way to incentivize new donors to come into a nonprofit because somebody who might not have known about a particular nonprofit but they’re excited about the prize can make a donation here. Now the nonprofit has an opportunity to reach back out to that person and inform them about their mission.

One of the things we talk about a lot, particularly on donation pages, is reinforcing the value proposition and being this idea of why should a donor give to this particular nonprofit, a different nonprofit, or no one at all. I would imagine the prize itself is certainly a huge draw, but nonprofits in the Tapkat system can reinforce all the good they’re doing and how this donation, on top of the opportunity to win a prize, is going to make their donors feel. Weaving that narrative into the structure of that sweepstakes is a valuable opportunity to get that mission out there.

We have a section on each campaign page where a donor can come on, learn about that nonprofit for a couple of paragraphs, have the opportunity to go to their website, and learn even more about the nonprofit and the opportunity to contact them.

How much do, on average, nonprofits need to invest in TapKat? What does TapKat cost, and what is the usual marketing budget for a campaign?

One thing that I love about this type of fundraising is that there’s no risk to a nonprofit. There are no upfront costs and fees associated with setting up a campaign site. If nonprofit sets up a site and, for whatever reason, they don’t raise any money, they’re not out any money either. We charge a transaction rate for a nonprofit to run a campaign with us, and that is a 10% transaction rate.

How does it works is as soon as somebody makes a donation that gets pulled out, we use Stripe as our payment processor. Their processing fees get pulled out, and the rest goes into the nonprofit account. Funds in these campaigns are readily available for a nonprofit to use. We’re not escrowing any funds. There is cash in their accounts. If they have some overhead they need to cover or want to put money back into the campaign to do some outside advertising, they can do that. Funds are there for the nonprofit.

Do you see typical marketing spend that you recommend for a campaign based on prize size or potentially on how much they’re attempting to raise?

It’s dependent on the nonprofit and what the prize is. Very roughly, I can tell you that 20% to 25% of the gross expected raise can sometimes be appropriate for a nonprofit on their first campaign to expect to spend towards marketing expenses.

Walk someone through the decision-making process in terms of the things they need to wrap their arms around, budget for, and maybe even do to create the best opportunity for a successful campaign.

When I start working with the nonprofit, we’ll talk first about timing. As we’re getting out of COVID-19 and back into events, a lot of nonprofits are wanting to host events. It’s so fun to draw the winner of a sweepstake at an event because a lot of people will have participated. It’s another fun thing to do at an event. Sometimes that timing doesn’t always work out. It’s also appropriate to launch at an event if that’s how it looks best for a nonprofit. We have nonprofits who don’t run any events and run these sweepstakes successfully.

There are a couple of options there, but timing is the first thing to look at and think about how much money the nonprofit wants to raise. If they need to raise $10,000, will they might be able to do that in two months with a particular prize? We have a nonprofit, the New Jersey Audubon . They ran these ten-day contests with us a couple of times a year and raised about $10,000 in ten days.

Are there prizes like spotting scopes and things like that? What are their typical sweepstakes prizes on a short campaign like that?

They do spotting scopes and Cape May Festival . They’ll do a trip out to Cape May. I’ve only seen the pictures, but it looks amazing.

What are the next steps in terms of getting a campaign off the ground?

Once a nonprofit has an idea around timing and how much they want to raise, the next thing to look at is prizes. Prizes are dependent on a couple of different things. It doesn’t always correlate with the nonprofit’s mission. We have some nonprofits who give away cars that are not doing anything related to cars. We have some nonprofits who want to tie prizes into their mission in different ways. The great thing about prizes is that unless they are donated, they are on consignment. Another reason why these campaigns are no risks to a nonprofit is they are not purchasing the prize until the end of a campaign, only if they hit the minimum that they want to raise.

If you had an environmental or an outdoor nonprofit and wanted to give away sprinter vans and spare van conversions. If you wanted to give it away that prize, you wouldn’t have to come up with $100,000 or whatever that particular prize might cost upfront. You can buy that on commission. As soon as you get the raise you were looking for, you put that order and purchase the prize itself. Is that how that works?

That’s right. Sprinter vans got a special clause to them because now, there’s in such high demand that a lot of these conversion companies are selling build spots. Those build spots can sometimes be a year or a year and a half away. It’s a good time if a nonprofit is thinking about doing a conversion van to find a company they want to work with.

Some of these companies will hold a build spot for them. Some of them wanted a little bit of a deposit, which might be $5,000 or something small like that. It’s not huge. If a nonprofit run their campaign for a year, and then at the end of the year, the build spots may be only three months away. It’s not as bad as waiting a year and a half for a build spot. There are other prizes like the side-by-sides, and some of the cars are still on consignment. Those will be ready for a donor at the end of the campaign. When they win the prize, they’re going to go pick up the prize, and it will be a little bit more immediate than getting a conversion van.

In terms of the nonprofit’s responsibility after the fact, are there taxes involved in this process that the people need to be aware of? Are the nonprofits potentially putting any of their donors into any strange situations in terms of viability with winning a larger prize?

This is true for a raffle as well. If a prize is over $5,000, a donor is responsible for paying the taxes unless the nonprofit chooses to cover the taxes. The taxes are 24% of the fair market value of a prize. As you can imagine, a $100,000 conversion van can be pretty high for some people if the nonprofit chooses not to cover that. There’s always a cash alternative in case somebody wins the prize and can’t pay the taxes on it or choose not to pay the taxes on it. They can get a great cash prize alternative instead.

Is the cash prize usually the equivalent amount or a lesser amount? How do people handle that?

It’s not always about the prize or the size of the nonprofit.

It’s usually a little bit less than the fair market value of the prize.

Do any nonprofits weave a cash component into the prize itself to help cover the tax burden?

The Shelby American Collection is one of those. They are throwing in $25,000 on top of the car. Believe it or not, a Shelby Mustang is a $100,000 car, the new ones. It’s a beautiful car. It’s stunning. It has 760 horsepower. I don’t know what I would do with that. The winner will get the taxes. On top of that, that cash for the taxes.

There are a couple of different ways to handle that. What happens if the sweepstakes don’t go as one had hoped and don’t raise enough to either cover the cost of the prize itself or don’t raise enough based upon what they were hoping to raise?

For all nonprofits that we work with, we recommend setting a minimum on the campaign for this reason. If they don’t raise enough money to cover the cost of the prize, we set the minimum on a prize on a campaign, roughly two times the cost of the prize. If they don’t reach that minimum, the net donations will be split 50/50 between the nonprofit and winner.

If they had a $100,000 prize, you’d set the minimum at $200,000, and let’s say they only raised $100,000. The nonprofit would take $50,000, and the winner would take $50,000.

There is always a winner in these contests. There’s never a situation where everybody’s getting a refund. There’s always going to be a winner, and that winner is going to get a cash prize instead. That happened in our several years of being in business, and we’ve only heard good things from the winners. They’re excited to get a check and didn’t get the prize that was advertised, but they did get a check.

Are there any categories of nonprofits that you’ve seen do well in this or caution to stay away from this type of engagement, or does it all depend on the prize?

There are so many factors here because we had nonprofit traveling stories run a campaign with us and have one executive director. They raised $20,000 on their campaign, which was exciting for them. We’ve seen small nonprofits that do well, and then we’ve seen large nonprofits like we’re running a campaign now for JDRF , and it’s taken off.

It’s not always about the prize and size of the nonprofit. Sometimes it can be important that when a nonprofit comes to us and want to run a campaign that has the staff time or have somebody who’s going to stay on this, do the promotion and send out the emails. It’s not something that does take. It’s not a full-time job for a staff member. This isn’t a 40 hour a week campaign. When they look at doing this, I would recommend that a nonprofit dedicate a couple of hours a week to a staff member to dedicate putting towards their sweepstakes campaign.

What are those activities typically? Is it running Google Ad campaigns, posting to social media, or is there some engagement component that you’ve seen work well once people have taken that step to donate?

The nonprofit’s marketing side looks like social media posts sending out emails to their base or connecting with sponsors. It looks like calling you guys at Relish and getting some help as well on putting together an email campaign or doing some Facebook ads. It’s like any fundraising campaign. It’s a little bit of everything that needs to be going on to have a successful sweepstake.

Do you have any tie-ins between TapKat and content or customer relations management tools where you can put people into email automation if they are getting active in a campaign?

We have on the back-end dashboard that a nonprofit will have access to their sweepstakes. They will be able to download their donor data as CSP. Whichever CRM they’re using out there, they can throw that data right into that CRM and start marketing to them.

They can do that as frequently as they prefer during the course of that campaign. There are no delays in access to data or funds. People can jump right in and use those items how they see fit.

As soon as somebody makes a donation, they’re going to be in that data set. The nonprofit will have the ability to shoot him an email or whatever they would like to do.

Considering this, it sounds like it’s pretty straightforward to get going for a nonprofit. Do they need to contact TapKat and ask more questions? What’s the typical onboarding process look like?

They can reach right out to me. I would love to chat with them and see if it would make sense for them to run a campaign. Onboarding now is pretty quick. They got to buckle their seatbelts and get ready for the campaign ride. As soon as we get a site up and have all the information we need from the nonprofit, we’ll be ready to start fundraising. It’s a quick turnaround. What we recommend is that a nonprofit has a marketing plan in place and is ready to go when we hit the live button on the sweepstakes so that they are raising funds right off the bat.

What do you recommend as part of that marketing campaign?

Marketing can be prize-dependent. We offer a lot of guidance when it does come to marketing, depending on the prize that a nonprofit is choosing to run with. TapKat does negotiate rates with third parties on advertising. We’ve got some organizations or businesses that can help a nonprofit with Facebook ads.

We’ve got different publications that nonprofits can rent lists from or online blogs that they can utilize space on there that has been successful for other nonprofits. TapKat negotiates those rates and passes that along to our customers, depending on which prize they have and where it would be appropriate to market that prize.

If they’re running a car sweepstake, you have potential access to some lists that might be valuable for them to send to people who might be interested in joining a sweepstake for a car. I know that Google for nonprofits has Google Grants , and if you qualify, it can release some funds for advertising. What’s your take on that? Are there any pitfalls or things that nonprofits need to be aware of if they’re hoping to use Google Grants’ money?

One of the things that we recommend is that a nonprofit put its sweepstakes on the homepage of its nonprofit. That’s for transparency on these campaigns. Any traffic they’re getting on their website can come on and see that sweepstake right away. With the Google Ad Grants, they can only go straight to a nonprofit’s URL. Since we host the sweepstakes at TapKat.com , the URL isn’t going to look like the URL that the nonprofit hosts their main website on. We’ve seen nonprofits have a lot of success using those grants that direct to the page. It’s two clicks. A donor will see that ad, click to their website, and be able to click to their campaign page.

We see the most success when nonprofits duplicate their campaigns annually or semi-annually.

I’m curious about how that whole Google Grants process works. Are people running ads that are very sweepstakes-oriented? What are the types of display ads that people are running? Do you know what has been successful?

That’s not directly my area, but they can contact me if a nonprofit is interested. I’ll find out and share some ads working for other nonprofits.

I had an idea, and I don’t know if you may already have thought of this or do it already. Have you started a Facebook group for TapKat’s sweepstakes nonprofits so people can bounce ideas around, hear what’s worked in the past, or what’s working for nonprofits running campaigns?

We are working on a marketing tutorial. We can send that out to our nonprofits so they have everything they need to market their campaign successfully. Through that, we would share some stuff that was working for other nonprofits that they could see. How do I send out an email? How do I create a 3×5 postcard to give out at my events and different how-tos through that?

It seems like that might be an interesting way to start to build a community around TapKat and enable some of these people who are coming in. I’m sure the first couple of years of campaigns they run will be a little less successful, but potentially their 3rd, 4th, and 5th-year sweepstakes will be successful. Building that community and facilitating those interactions might be an interesting way for people to engage in the nonprofit community and the new TapKat community.

I’ve talked with people on the show about TapKat in the past. We’re always having conversations over here at Relish with potential nonprofit partners about things that might work for them. One of the things we’ve noticed or recommended is if nonprofits have access to a corporate partner or sponsor that is well-aligned with their mission or even not depending upon the prizes, that can be a great asset to bring to the table when considering a TapKat campaign.

You mentioned that the Shelby American Museum had a decent mailing list but not 40,000 when they started. One of the questions or the concerns that a lot of the people I speak with have is, “What if my list is small?” One of the things that we start to look for is potential corporate sponsor-type opportunities to leverage either that marketing department within that corporate partner or access to their mailing list.

I know that you mentioned Paradox Sports is running a campaign. One of the things that we spoke with Paradox about was the fact that they have access to a lot of big corporate sponsors like North Face and people like that. Leveraging that asset can be a valuable component to bring to TapKat sweepstakes.

That was going to be one of my tips for the day. Some of the nonprofits I talked to didn’t think of this as including some of their sponsors who might be able to help them promote the campaign. They might even have a sponsor, especially during COVID-19, who can’t give financially in 2021, but they can give marketing dollars, give access, and do an email blast out to their base.

That can look in so many different ways. It could even be a law firm that they could send that out to their base through their email. A good example of this is AIARE here in Colorado, the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education. They did a sweepstake with Klim and Arctic Cat . Both of those companies are manufacturing snowmobiles and sleds.

The snowmobile that they did with Arctic Cat raised $214,000 in three months. That was getting Arctic Cat and Klim both supported the area in these two campaigns. They did so much promotion for them. It’s amazing to see a for-profit with a huge base, ability, and marketing team promote one of these campaigns. It’s incredible to see the results that can happen through that.

Are there any takeaways from how they approached that marketing that the other nonprofits might be able to benefit from? Are there any things that surprised you about how they handled the outreach?

They were so consistent and creative. They did a bunch of great videos, did emails, and had it on their website, but it was the consistency that I saw that was the most successful for this.

That consistency tends to be one of those things that, if you can nail that, you can start to make some big strides by committing to a specific cadence that is achievable. If you’re knocking it out of the park, you can up that game. Do you remember if Klim or Arctic Cat gave the nonprofit the prizes as well, or were they mostly on board from a marketing standpoint?

That’s a good question that I don’t know the answer to that. If they did purchase or donate them, I’m not 100% sure. I heard, and I’m not sure if this is 100% true. They’re about $10,000 to $12,000 prize. That’s another good example of something desirable. It’s not crazy expensive like a car. It raised $214,000 for a $10,000 prize.

It’s taking the time to think about what corporate sponsors you have and what they might be able to bring to the table. It’s not always about asking for a product, although that certainly could be helpful. Getting a prize donated would be amazing. However, if you can simply tap into these marketing teams, the lists, and the opportunity to spread that word, that’s an incredible way to leverage those partnerships.

I hear from businesses supplying some product that they do get asked all the time for donations from nonprofits. This is a little bit of a different way to approach one of these for-profit businesses that are not asking for a donation. It’s a way for the business to promote the good culture and the work they’re doing as a business to help local nonprofits or help nonprofits in the country raise funds.

I thought of something interesting. I’m on the board of the Nederland Area Trails Organization . I know we’ve been talking with you for a while about potentially running a campaign because we’d like to get a snow sled up here to help groom trails during the winter for Nordic skiing. You’re spot on that the machines we’re looking at are in that $12,000 to $15,000 range. They are not inexpensive, but they certainly aren’t $100,000, Shelby.

One of the things that would be interesting is even if the nonprofit was buying a prize from a company, asking that company to market as part of buying the prize, go ahead, leverage that email list, try and get the word out. You can make sure that you reach your minimums and go through with the purchase. That might be an interesting way to sweeten the deal on a prize that a nonprofit was going to have to secure themselves.

That business gets to turn around and sell a product.

One of the ideas that we had was, why don’t we sweepstakes off a snowmobile and buy two? We could get a price break because we’re buying two. We’ll put one in the sweepstakes and keep the other one. Taking it one step further and asking wherever we were contracting with to buy the actual equipment, have them promote the sweepstakes as well.

It never hurts to ask.

The answer is always no if you don’t ask. Are there any other pitfalls or exciting tips that you would have for a nonprofit that we have not chatted about already that you would like to share?

We don’t want to see a really small non-profit try and take on a $150,000 sprinter van the first year. We don’t want to see somebody not do well.

I might have touched on this a little bit. Where we see the most success is when nonprofits are duplicating these campaigns on an annual or semi-annual basis. If they are doing a snowmobile one year and doing a snowmobile the next year, they’re going to see incredible results. That’s what we see across the board with all of our sweepstakes.

Do you see opportunities to escalate? If the nonprofit wanted to dip their toes in the TapKat pool as it were or had some trepidation about how things were going to run. Have you seen success in a smaller campaign the first year and then going, “This works well,” and jumping into a larger campaign the following year? Do they mostly succeed if you’re trying to get into very similar prize types year after year?

My advice would be to try and stay inside of a category. Sometimes a nonprofit might not hit their minimum the first year, which is okay. They’re still walking away with a substantial amount of cash, and then next year they hit it, reach the minimum, give away a prize, and walk away with even more cash. I’m always happy to talk to a nonprofit about this strategy because it can look different for different organizations.

In theory or at least how we would approach this, it seems like it’s beneficial from an audience-building standpoint to try and stay in your category. For example, Nederland Area Trails Organization might want to stick in that outdoor spaces in terms of the prize. The 1st year we could do a small trailer, the 2nd year, we could do a bigger trailer, and then the 3rd year, we’ll do a sprinter van.

At least, you’re staying in that same category because the list that you’re building is going to be interested in either your organization, the sweepstakes, or ideally both as long as you’re not jumping around from opera tickets one year and airplane ride the next year. As long as you’re staying in that same zone, you’re able to piggyback on the progress that you’ve made year over year because the audience should be relatively homogenous.

That’s a good way to put it because we don’t want to see a small nonprofit try and take on a $150,000 sprinter van the first year. We don’t want to see somebody not do well. We would recommend a smaller trailer to start off with.

What are some of the more unique prizes you’ve seen come through the Tapkat system?

I’ve got a good one for you, and parents understand this. I don’t have children. It made me chuckle when I saw this. We had a school giveaway, a parking spot in their sweepstakes.

Is it for basketball games?

It is for drop-off and pick up.

How much money did they raise?

They raised about $10,000 or $12,000 on that. I remember what it was like to get dropped off at school. It was chaos. To have that parking spot, especially if you can get a parking spot for $25 to $50 for the whole year, is pretty incredible.

It comes back down to understanding your target audience. Suppose you’re running a sweepstake, trying to attract an audience to become a donor or even a volunteer, understanding the challenges they’re facing, the hardships they want to overcome, or those pain points they’re trying to alleviate. If you can come at it from that perspective where you become a solution provider for that particular challenge, you’ve done a lot of the work already.

It’s interesting to think about and put that into perspective. That might be some additional work upfront that nonprofits can do when they’re trying to select a prize is thinking about the motivations of the audience that you’re trying to reach and come up with something that’s going to appeal to those challenges or the resolutions of those challenges, at least.

It’s important at the beginning of a campaign to look at who they want to target. We do have nonprofits coming to us and saying their donor base is getting older. They’re aging out. They’re not sure what they’re going to do or how to connect with a younger demographic. I don’t want to say the conversion vans are the way to go for everything, but what a great way to connect with a younger audience and group of donors with a conversion van or something outdoorsy and fun or even Disney World. There are so many options when it comes to that.

Any other sweepstakes prizes that have come through that you can think of, or did the parking spot blow everybody else out of the water?

The parking spot was one of a kind. I don’t think we had anything quite like that.

Are people offering multiple prizes? Take the Shelby American Collection Museum, for example. Is there a single prize, or are there runner-up type prizes that are offered?

On occasion, we’ll have a runner-up prize. We have not seen in our data that that is driving a campaign and gets folks to donate more. We recommend having one exciting prize. It makes marketing so much easier. It’s hard to tell the story of 3 or 2 different prizes through a marketing campaign. It can get too much instead of having one clear, exciting desirable prize.

I can see from a marketing standpoint that that’s how that could be. Have you gotten repeat donors within a single sweepstake by adding to the prize?

We’ve had a lot of success when a nonprofit will put up a prize. Paradox Sports is a good example of this because they’ve got their trailer. They threw in a couple of some gear onto that as well. It was a great way for them to reach back out to their donor base.

They get people originally coming in for the trailer and add a fly fishing kit. It makes sense for them. There are climbing organizations, maybe a rack and rope. They reach back out to the people who have already participated and say, “This got even better. Do you want to kick back in?”

We see a lot of success with that. That has sweetened the grand place prize.

Having one really exciting prize makes marketing so much easier. It’s really hard to tell the story of three different prizes or two different prizes through a marketing campaign.

I love the idea of being able to go back to that well. Different sweepstakes have different ticket allotments per donation. Let’s say it’s $25 for 25 tickets, and then they up the prize or get people excited. It’s like that eBay model. One of the most brilliant things that eBay did was call it winning something because it taps into that part of our brains, where at the end, we’re like, “I’ve already given $25. I’ll get ten more and get a lot of my chances.”

We see this every time that towards the end of the campaign, more donations are going to come in and get bigger. Some of these contests, especially our bigger ones, take on a life of their own because of what you were talking about. It gets so exciting. It’s so fun to hear a nonprofit talk about the experience of giving away an amazing trip or a side-by-side. It’s fun for everybody.

Are there any tools that nonprofits can use on their site or that are included in the TapKat platform that do countdowns or anything fun like that that creates that enthusiasm and excitement towards the end of a campaign?

On the campaign page, we’ll put a countdown timer when it comes to 30 days. They’ll have nineteen days left. We have a presentation. If a nonprofit is hosting an event or even somebody sitting at home, they can click on the presentation and watch the numbers being drawn through our random number generator. That’s fun to see. It feels like when you’re pulling a slot at a slot machine. It’s a cool display that shows up for the donors to be able to watch the drawing.

TapKat runs all that process. The nonprofits don’t have to take care of any of that stuff. That’s great.

All they have to do is push a button, and that will draw the winner for them at the end of the campaign. It’s as simple as that.

This has been super fun. I’m excited to have spoken with you and learn more about this great system. Where can people find out more about TapKat?

Visit our website. It’s TapKat.com . Even though we have Kat in the name, we are all dog people, but we do not discriminate against cat people like you, Stu. I know you’re a cat guy.

I had a great time talking with you, Annie. One of the things I love to do at the end of all of my shows is not to have it end with a conversation but have it end with an action item because I want people to take action, go out and do something to make the world a better place, have fun, relax, or whatever it is that they want to do. After reading, what would you want our readers to do?

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell the readers to go do this, “Go eat a delicious snack.”

That sounds like a good plan. I’m going to go join you. Go get a snack, check out TapKat.com and see if sweepstakes might be good for your organization. I’m excited to see if we can get one off the ground and run for a Nederland Area Trails Organization. I’m sure we’ll be back in touch soon.

Thank you so much, Stu.

Thanks, Annie.

Important Links:

About Annie Tukman

Raise cash for your nonprofit while growing your reach and captivating your donor base!

Your development team has a huge job: raise enough funds to support your nonprofit’s mission while covering salaries and overhead costs. This means that being creative with fundraising is key for the success of your organization.

But even though most nonprofits can sense this, they continue to use the same routine fundraising tactics year after year… even while dwindling funds threaten the sustainability of their organization and their future at the nonprofit.

There is a need for fundraising that excites donors, brings in funds and can be run 100% online.

Ta-da!

In comes fundraising sweepstakes for nonprofits!

Fundraising sweepstakes are online contests where donors make a donation in exchange for the chance to win a jaw-dropping prize such as an adventure gear shopping spree at REI, a romantic Hawaii getaway for two or even a custom dream conversion van!

So, what kind of results can you expect? Well, success looks different for every nonprofit. Some organizations will raise over $1,000,000 with their sweepstakes while others will exceed their goals by bringing in $2,500. The average donation through a sweepstakes fundraiser is around $60 across the board which means all those donors who are unable to attend your high-dollar events can still participate in your sweepstakes fundraiser.

What’s in it for your nonprofit:

– There is no financial risk to your organization! With prizes on consignment and zero upfront fees, you can sit back and enjoy a few deep breaths… (which isn’t always the case for a hardworking nonprofit!)
– Your sweepstakes will attract new donors who will learn about and contribute to your mission, year after year…
– The TapKat software is completely automated and user-friendly, which means no more printing out tickets or managing paper trails.

What’s in it for your donor base:

– They get the opportunity to support your incredible cause…
– They’re entered for a chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime prize…
– They feel good knowing they’re doing their part to champion a vital nonprofit organization like yours.

I would love to take the next step with you and create a thrilling experience for your donors with a fundraising sweepstakes through TapKat!

Set up a complimentary consultation with me to see how a fundraising sweepstakes will work for your organization:

⭐️ Call me: 720.664.6462
⭐️ Email me: annie.tukman@TapKat.com

Episode 55: Keeping Your Foot On The Gas Even Through The Hard Times With Angela Forster From Tiny Studio

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:29:17 GMT

Ar e you keeping your foot on the gas?

This week I talked with Angela Forster, the co-founder of Tiny Studio. Angela and her business partner, Nancy Rice, have a women-owned business that does lots of work in the nonprofit sector.

Since both of us are in the design world, our conversation naturally touched on design trends. We also talked about remote working challenges—and even our mutual love of opera!

The biggest takeaway from our conversation was remembering—even in hard times—how important it is to stay consistent and “keep your foot on the gas” with your marketing spend. It’s crucial to keep at it—even allowing your tactics to be more creative and experimental, if you can. (Experimentation can help you find new and interesting opportunities to be successful.)

This was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it.

Link:

https://tinystudiollc.com/

Action Ask:

Reach out to a nonprofit and figure out how to share your expertise with them.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Keeping Your Foot On The Gas Even Through The Hard Times With Angela Forster From Tiny Studio

My guest is Angela Forster. She is one of the Cofounders of Tiny Studio . She and her business partner, Nancy Rice, have this cool women-owned business that does a ton of work in the nonprofit and for-profit spaces. One of the things that we talked about, which is super important, is the idea of being consistent, keeping your foot on the gas and letting your creativity drive things.

Even when things aren’t going as well as you had hoped or as effectively as you might like, there’s always an opportunity to create. Some of the things that come out of that can be super important. We both are in the design world, so we had some great conversations about opera and design in general. You’re going to love this episode and I hope you enjoy it.

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Angela , how are things?

It’s a good day. I have the house to myself. Everybody’s off and running. My studio, which has been mostly quiet in a normal year, has become very populated.

The challenge that a lot of us have been facing in the last couple of years is how to manage all that. My wife and I live in an 800 square foot house or little cabin up in the woods. We’ve tried to work through the challenges since I’ve brought the business home as well.

Nancy and I are both used to working out of the house. We built our business with the idea that we didn’t want to have to pay extra for brick and mortar. In that way, we could be more generous with nonprofits and passion projects but we’re not used to all this company while we work out of the house. We’ve had to do things like buying noise-canceling earphones because if you’re a parent, that parent neuron in the brain is always paying attention. If you’re a pet parent, you’re always paying attention to that. Having to create a little bubble down the hall and close the door is becoming a little bit more important.

Both of us were wrangling critters here right before our call. It’s always something.

The noise-canceling has been key and a good microphone has saved my bacon as well.

Technology can be our friend in that regard, for sure.

I came from technology, so I understand the importance. When COVID hit, I was used to having a lot of clients who were in other states. I was used to video conferencing. I wasn’t used to starting a relationship with a video conference. That one has been a little more challenging because you have to read people’s body language differently. All of a sudden, I realized that I had some skills of art directing people on a monitor that came from the studio, being in those marketing programs and telling people recommendations of what to wear, where to look and how to compose when you’re on camera.

As we lost a lot of business, Tiny Studio did a little bit of a hustle and started giving seminars on presentations. We started working a lot for our nonprofits to give them a better presence on the monitor. When competing with all these different people for people’s attention, they would stand out more in information graphics and get a solid slideshow, deck or PowerPoint, whatever you want to call. It became more of a trend. I noticed that we’re getting more requests for slide presentations and things that accompany that when you’re in-person, you may not need as a deliverable is becoming more important in this tele-mediated world.

Be mindful of your message and audience.

Slide presentations used to be a big deal. They went away for a while and come back with a vengeance. We have a couple of clients who are in the presentation space. One is Demoflow . They have a cool software package that allows you to do very seamless transitions between Zoom, screen sharing and sharing multiple things in sequence. They call it a buyer enablement tool, which is very challenging.

They didn’t market that well. They didn’t talk to their branding people.

It’s a term that hasn’t gotten a lot of traction. It’s a little challenging to say but it’s starting to get some traction. It is coming from this idea that you’re enabling the buyer and their journey versus the salesperson. At the end of the day, those two desires collide but reframing that conversation from a buyer’s perspective is what they’re hoping to help achieve so that it works more effectively and enables the buyer to understand what’s going on seamlessly. I didn’t intend to make this a pitch for Demoflow.

I’m finding that people who are uncomfortable in a room where you’re interacting with people throw them into a red record button and a microphone. It’s like deer in the headlights. It has become more of a skillset similar to writing your resume and cover letter and presenting digitally seamlessly. It has been important for a long time but it’s becoming imperative as people are putting down different boundaries of wanting to come into an office and public space or not and then simultaneous presentations among different people.

I came from the world of visual communications. You can kill an amazing lecture with repetitious, over worded and too many detailed slides. There’s a great book called Presentation Zen . I recommend that a lot to my clients, especially the nonprofits, to read ahead of time, not to get myself out of the middle but to remind them that a big effective part of communication is knowing when you fill in with a visual and when the verbal takes over.

I don’t mean to get off on a tangent here but a pet peeve of mine has always been PowerPoint presentations that either people go crazy with all the facts or they sit there and read them. Your slides support your presentation. They are not your presentation. I’ve been in meetings where the presenter is reading the slide to me. I’m like, “I can read. Why don’t you kick this over to me and I’ll go back to my desk or wherever it is? I would rather read through your presentation as opposed to having you read it to me.”

It’s funny because we have a client who wants a quote deck. She’s like, “I would be needing a deck.” We’re like, “Why do you think you need a deck?” She does yoga therapy with people experiencing PTSD and addiction. We were discussing it and it was important to explain to her that a deck is not a leave behind.

A deck should be your cheat sheets and bullet points that keep you on a topic as you’re talking fluidly. You make another one that is your “digital lead” behind that has all of your notes embedded in it. When somebody was curious as teaching in elementary and middle school, they’re all using slideshows for their report projects. It drives me nuts because to speak to your effect, they’re being inculcated to putting their entire text on these slides. I’m like, “Good luck when somebody tries to train that out of you.”

It’s a challenge, for sure. Good presentation skills are something that many business situations, whether that’s a nonprofit or for-profit business, having that opportunity to craft that story and present it well is a real plus.

That’s where it’s important to work with somebody who comes from a creative background because they know that gestalt of text and image, how much of a story is told by an image, how we culturally understand an image and how much of the story is steered by a caption, title or a simple paragraph. That’s a different skillset if you’re trying to speak briefly.

When you got somebody’s attention and you said, “You’ve got ten minutes. What are you going to show me?” You have to let a lot of that stuff speak for you. Whether you show the qualitative and express the quantitative or reverse that, you have to be more tactical in how you present to people because they’re not idiots. Give them a little bit of a story to finish themselves and put the dots together.

Storytelling is such a huge component of marketing in general. It bridges that gap between communications and marketing. It’s important to be able to quickly and succinctly hook people in. Think of Hollywood blockbuster-type movies. A lot of them start in the middle of something crazy going on and you’re immediately hooked. There is not a ton of setup.

They throw you in there into something very important. There are ups and downs, not being afraid to share both sides of that equation. If you think about a good movie, there are parts of the movie that are scary, sad or anxiety-inducing. Other parts are celebratory, happy and fun. Creating that up and downflow is a part of that storytelling process.

I’m working on a poster for a film. It’s an interesting design brief because it’s supposed to look like a film poster for a film that has been produced but the film has only had one segment to show to investors. The audience is not the general public but potential investors. It’s a film about war. It’s supposed to be a dark comedy. They wanted to have the bloody knife, dead body and everything on the poster so that there was no mystery.

The words published are perish or the word deadly. I’m like, “You need three elements to finish the sentence.” You don’t have to spell it out so much. That strip away, at least one of those variables because people will finish in their brain and want to have that moment intellectually. They want to engage with some of those moments that they have to complete. It’s a bold, italics, underline and extra-large to draw point.

When everything is important, nothing is important. It’s the idea of bringing everything above the fold. We need to focus on one thing because that’s about how much attention span people have.

That’s what I like to discuss with the clients. What is the very first thing you need to engage? As a designer, we look at the next thing and then the third thing. If the title, subtitle and pictures are as big as the logo, there’s no priority of reading and discovery that occurs.

You don’t give people the opportunity to breathe. It’s all right out in front, shouting at you. That doesn’t allow them to absorb any of it and figure out which part they need to pay attention to.

To play the devil’s advocate, if you’re going to be that loud and bombastic, make it a message to the right audience and be mindful of your message, who’s your audience and what you are trying to achieve. All of those calls to action are different. If you’re trying to get people to wake up to inequality or something and maybe I do want everything crashing out of the page or off the film at once to say, “This can’t happen anymore.” Maybe I’m trying to get people to come to the same conclusion I’m coming, so I’m going to take them down the garden path to a certain entrance. I’ll be a little bit more mindful, thoughtful and a little more subtle in my design approach.

Tell us a little bit more about what you are up to there at Tiny Studio.

We are tiny. We used to be a collective but for lots of reasons, we lost the person who was more of a production person, the person that was more of a PR person. As it turns out, Nancy and I were able to become a little bit more precise in what we offered. We’ve become a lot more powerful as a result. Nancy comes from more of a print background, marketing brochures, book design, letterhead and things that wouldn’t typically go to print. She has redefined herself and used COVID as a way to reeducate to do more digital on-demand printing.

Nobody is giving up brochures anymore but you still design a PDF set and accompany a project or a product. She works more in that realm. I can cross over with that because I came from a background of working in PBS, where the art department did everything. I tend to position myself more in the world of production, art direction for television film, video, website design and set design because I came from the world of print as well.

I can understand how that gets translated into these other spaces and vice versa. If you want a catfight, you throw out a project that is a logo before it goes into either of those spaces. We fight over it tooth and nail. Every designer’s favorite job is a logo. It’s the most challenging, difficult and brilliant problem to solve that a designer has.

It is certainly the first thing most people notice when they engage with any organization or business. It’s that brand mark.

Designers solve problems and help tell stories.

It’s essential. You get the energy, culture, environment, mood and lifestyle. All of it is captured in the most minor amount of forms. That’s not easy. That is every designer’s best, wonderful and happy place. It’s hard to explain to people why those solutions take so long. Sometimes, you get lucky so don’t think that the Nike mark being done in two seconds is replicable. It’s usually 40, 80 or 90 hours to get something down to that mark with the color, placement, positive-negative space and the topography that feels like it belongs within the culture of that business or nonprofit.

Nike’s story gets dragged out all the time. At the end of the day, there was a lot of fortune that went into the timing of that. They were hitting the market with a product that was very well accepted, where one could make the argument that perhaps the logo didn’t have a lot to do with the success of that product.

We don’t even have to explain what Nike means. It has become so synonymous. Years ago, I saw data that the Nike logo was the most popular tattoo on the planet. If you want to talk about somebody in the importance of investing in a logo, you think about that indelible of a global brand.

How do you at Tiny Studio work with nonprofits? What’s your way of engaging in that space?

Nancy and I engage with nonprofits in two different ways. We have a policy of giving back to very specifics. On our books would be women’s shelter, children’s shelter, literacy programs and ways that organizations support public schools and smaller nonprofits. In those projects, we will donate time. We will say, “We will give you twelve hours towards this read-a-thon that you want to create a whole look and feel for because the money is going to go to this literacy program.”

Sometimes, we’ll work very specifically but we tend to put an hourly rate so that it’s understood by both parties the buy-in, time and commitment. We find that it gives the nonprofit a measuring stick. If they say, “Can you start it all over again?” You could say, “We’ve got two more hours. Is that how you want to use those last two hours?” It allowed us to be able to put some boundaries on the relationship but also provide the nonprofit an understanding of how much time goes into certain things. The other way we engage with nonprofits is we have a nonprofit rate.

That would be more of a larger scale nonprofit that typically comes sometimes with grant money. They have a marketing aspect of that grant and will reduce our rates to help them accommodate their goals but those goals will require more time, commitment, research, investment and lots of things. We have learned to interact with nonprofits by providing them some cues or ways to be more strategic with their money. Some of those things would be, “Before we meet, we will talk about this project. Can you come to that meeting with all the background data we will need, like competitors and nonprofits who do that and other examples?”

The more a nonprofit brings us all that back end research, the easier it is for us to accommodate their budget. When we get a project, we can’t be the experts in those fields. We may have an idea about some of those audiences and goals but they know their audience better. They have the data access that tells us, “We’re trying to target this group.” If they can show us visuals or tools other nonprofit uses, we take that and say, “You have saved about ten hours because you have given us what we would have taken the time to research.”

We take that one step further and we have an intake form that collects the initial basic information that we need to get a project started. That form gets sent out as soon as we’re going on the project. We ask that it be filled out 48 hours prior to the intake or the kickoff meeting. In that way, we have a chance to read through it, start to do some of that research and look at some of the competitor space or things of that nature, also see where they might be missing some things. We needed to track it down during our kickoff call.

That is such a good suggestion. We have met with clients, interviewed them and given them a design brief to fill out. They almost always groan and moan because it’s a long line of a business report or plan. I love the thought that you’re asking them in advance to present that so that you can check out all those and see the differences. In your intake form, do you ask them who their aspirants are, their equals and who they don’t approve of?

It depends on the project. If we’re doing a strategy first exploration, then those would come at a later date if we were having that roll into a big website or design project. We asked different questions for different types of projects but if we can get to who your competitors are, we do a lot of client interviews to try and help get to differentiation and core statements about our clients. We might ask for those upfronts mostly to make sure that we’re starting to get those collected so that we can hit the ground running after the kickoff meeting.

When I was a younger self, I was so worried about asking questions because I had this knee-jerk fear that it would show a lack of my education or experience. How wrong I was. Years ago, I realized the strength was that I was an expert in some areas but I couldn’t be an expert in everything. By assuming that I needed to be, I excluded some pretty important people in that question inquiry. For example, I was helping a PBS station in Utah design a set design for a public affairs program.

Even though I’m in Denver, we thought that the best way to build a team was if I physically flew out there for a couple of days and met everybody in the studio. I saw some of the ways they filmed. I learned how they unfolded and did things. I could see how quick a turnover or small or large the studio was, not by seeing things on the floor plan but smelling and touching it. I ran into a sound engineer and said, “I’m working on a new set. Can I ask you a question?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “Let me ask you this. They’re building the set from scratch. If you had any input, what would be some of the things you would want me to pay attention to when solving your set?”

He said, “I have never had somebody in the world of visual ask me about sound.” I said, “You got to mic the thing. I know well enough to know that audio is imperative.” He said, “That’s wonderful.” Somebody designed and he went off on this whole story because no one bothered to ask him. It’s like the lighting guy. I said, “These are the colors I want to see when they’re lit.” He said, “If that’s the case, you need to go darker and more saturated.” I was like, “That’s good to know.” I didn’t have to come with 100% of that knowledge. Instead, I could invite those people to help and buy into the solution.

When you empower those people to be part of that decision-making and feel like they have some ownership in the end product, they tend to do a better job.

That’s the difference between when people ask if I’m a decorator or a designer. I’m like, “I’m a designer. We solve problems and help tell stories. We don’t tell people to put more pillows on something.” The question is, “What are you trying to do? Who are you trying to do it with? How are you trying to get there?” We will work with copywriters and photographers and help you achieve that in these other forms.

There’s a great book called Who Not How . Many inquisitive people and entrepreneurial types tend to leap to, “How am I going to get this done?” If we can remove the howl from a huge chunk of the things that we come across daily and figure out who we know that could get that done, a lot more can get accomplished. It allows us to stay focused on those things that we are the who in regard to.

That might be a perfect way to interact with nonprofits because they’re always thinking about, “We can’t do that. We have to do it in-house.” That makes sense if you have skills and talent in-house but a lot of times when it comes to very specific deliverables, it’s the who. You don’t have it in-house. Unless you’re talking people, who tend to have more than 50 employees, then they might have an in-house marketing department, communications department or design team. It’s very rare that an actual nonprofit unless it’s a design-based nonprofit and designers without borders or something.

Nonprofits have a unique opportunity to leverage altruism out there and get somebody on board, either at a reduced rate or even pro bono. I’m not suggesting that the nonprofits should go out and try not to pay everybody. There are opportunities out there to get some people engaged. It can either do it more quickly because they’re more seasoned. That saves time, money, investment and all of those things or they can leverage those opportunities.

One of the things we talked about on the last episode was how to look at your corporate partners as a nonprofit and see if there’s an opportunity to leverage other assets. Everyone tends to think of corporate partners as people who bring money to the table. That’s the start of that relationship but they can also bring talent to the table or a giant mailing list and things like that.

We are working with the city of Englewood. I’m not sure how you would position a city but we’re working with them on a couple of public events. Us being Tiny Studio, once we brought the city on board, we had their ability to get permits, provide a venue and do all things they got excited about. We can go to some of the local businesses and say, “We’re doing this steam roller printmaking event with a touch a truck event with the city to celebrate being a community.” The next thing you know is these corporate entities in Inglewood are ponying up $500 here and there. It’s providing this great public experience.

A person-to-person relationship gives you an immense opportunity to leverage success.

I find that when you work with nonprofits, if you ask, “Can you help us?” It doesn’t tell the story. You could say, “It has been a rotten year. We’re creating a celebratory event that is going to bring families to the community because people polled and said they wanted more outdoor events for families. We have created a touch a truck event. Most people don’t think about the salvage yard being a public entity. Why don’t you bring your trucks on over?” The next thing you know is we have this great relationship and the city is partnering with people they didn’t even know. We’re excited about partnering.

It was supposed to be this simple steam roller printmaking event after school led out on a Friday afternoon at a light rail station. The city has gotten so excited that they’re going to have the backhoe, front hoe, city sweeper and every big machine out there. It’s not a steam roller anymore. It’s going to be doing some printmaking with the community. We’re excited. That was going to be amazing. We didn’t have any work coming in for a long time, so we started to create these events that once money was available, we could pay ourselves back. We created two events and this is one of the events that we’re able to enact and pay ourselves in arrears.

Being consistent is an opportunity for most businesses and organizations out there. We saw in March and April 2020 a real retraction in people’s activities. There was so much uncertainty. It’s certainly understandable that people would be slamming on the brakes and trying to navigate what is a real big unknown. Throughout the rest of the pandemic, it feels like those organizations who keep their foot on the gas and stay consistent with the outreach at the very least.

Maybe you have to cancel some events and things of that nature, which is completely understandable but at least staying consistent without reaching and keeping in touch with your donors and letting people know that you’re still here, you care about them and there are still things going on in producing good content and valuable information that can help people in any way. If it’s mission-aligned, that’s great. If it’s mission adjacent, that’s okay too. Make sure that you’re continuing to try new things and put stuff out there. That consistency paid off for a lot of people in 2020.

We live in Englewood, Colorado. When the time came for considering where we should align when we try to figure out new business, we looked at the Englewood Chamber versus Denver Chamber. Englewood is 300,000 something people and we realized we would have more opportunity to leverage our success, which was a person-to-person relationship versus the $99 logo or the pre-made template online. What we had to offer was probably better experienced in real-time. We became involved with the Englewood Chamber of Commerce, long story short.

When COVID hit, they felt sorry for themselves for about three weeks. They had to cancel their annual event. They began to ask questions of all of us businesses and they started to produce content to help all of the businesses. They became the go-to if you wanted to know what restaurants were open and what gift cards to buy to help businesses stay in business when they were shuttered. There are nonprofits, a small office of 2 people and a board of directors of 4 who became a leader to the point where the city of Englewood was starting to copy some of their blueprints.

They finally had to say, “You steal our ideas, so we’ll partner together.” They became even more important for some of us smaller businesses because we don’t have a brick and mortar. We did not qualify for any PPP. When the chamber and the city came back, interviewed and say, “How are you doing?” We’re like, “We didn’t qualify. We’re two women-owned business, but we don’t have a brick and mortar design space. We did that so we wouldn’t have to prioritize family over.” The city partners with the chamber and there’s a $2,000 grant for home-based businesses.

They were pretty amazing that they were able to do that. Once they partnered with the city, they had access to the city’s marketing department, which came with people who could do social media, Instagram, create videos, do the banners and layout the banner ads for Facebook. Leveraging a couple of comments back, sometimes that barter is worth so much more than a $200 check if you can get $5,000 worth of marketing help.

I’m sure the city of Englewood has a much larger audience than any individual business has on social media.

The city has done a spectacular job of hiring people with a variety of jobs skillsets. The minute you say, “I want to do this touch-a-truck event.” I show some pictures in my deck in my slideshow. The next thing you know is all the people in the marketing department get so giddy because they know there’s a story. They can see how photogenic it is.

They know how colorful the poster could be and how celebratory it can be before it even has a name. When we were pitching that project, we went first to the marketing people. With their buy-in, I could then go to the city and say, “Your marketing department said that they could support all accesses.” We went to the city, the chamber and local businesses and grew from there.

The city originally said, “Why don’t you do it in the driveway of a new restaurant?” I said, “A steamroller needs as much place. We’re going to need 4x8s and 3 of those. We can do three prints. We’ll do a trip-ish. We’ll give it as a gift back to the city. It will be a zeitgeist of people coming out. I’m acting as project art director and production designer on this.” He’s like, “We’ve got access to the parking lot for the light rail. If we do it on Friday, we can at least provide the driver and we’ll cover the insurance.”

I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I got the printmakers, artists and the people I know that will get excited about this. I already know that data.” I got a note saying, “Forget Friday. It has gotten too big. The police and the fire department want in. We’re going to have to do it and close down this whole street.” I’m like, “What?”

I’m excited to hear how that turns out. It sounds amazing.

I got another project when COVID hit. Like you said, “How do you make yourself still valuable?” Tiny Studio didn’t have any projects and nobody had money. There’s a huge trend for things like TikTok, Twitch, Instagram and Twitter. We were all getting so tired of staring at monitors, especially with those of us watching our kids who were spending eight hours a day on a computer. They’re not even getting paid for that type of stress. We started thinking about tiny galleries, much like this one woman out in Portland, Oregon, who has gotten a lot of press on.

Instead of a little free library, we’re like, “What if artists in the school communities could have a gallery where they could show their work, so parents don’t have to go online and look at Instagram?” I’m so old school because those real tactile things are hip. In that project, we got the museum of outdoor art involved talk. They’re sponsoring and helping sponsor, along with a couple of other people, the construction of a three gallery environment that will be attached to every elementary school in Englewood.

Each school gets to curate its exhibitions and invite its community of parents and guardians to a pub exhibit. The STEM teachers are all excited because they can use their 3D printers and have the kid who gets the best designs have a place to publish and present. That’s another crazy project that we created during COVID so that we would have an opportunity to make a logo. We were making projects for ourselves so we could learn some new skills and refresh some skills. It’s like a musician that still needs to practice. If there was no work, we were making work for ourselves.

We did some similar things where we looked at the landscape. It’s like, “I would rather be busy doing something than doing nothing. If I don’t have client work, I can create a podcast or write a book.” I did both of those things in 2020.

That also stemmed from wanting to be creative and take an opportunity to learn a new skill or expand on a given skill.

The show came out of having conversations with a lot of people. Some of them were not ready to take the next step and start a project or didn’t have the resources to do that but I’m still having those conversations. It’s like, “Why don’t we put those out there and make them available so that other people can learn from them?” It also allows me to hone that craft and continue to provide some benefit for others that are struggling.

Nancy had a couple of projects come through a door, which was on-demand printing for book publishing and they disappeared when COVID hit. She took that retreat time to focus on that and brush up on learning more complicated French verbs. She delved deeper into illustrator, which is a real nut and bolts technical skill. My weakest link was topography as a painterly solution. I could use it in a certain lot of ways very successfully.

I spent six months doing hand topography and hand lettering, taking that to be able to create something with more value to a client. Even if I wasn’t going to hand letter, I would know better about when hand lettering was appropriate for a solution. Nancy became more strategic about being able to tell clients like, “That’s too small of a run. These are the numbers. This is what it costs. Maybe on-demand is cost-effective at this point.” We made projects for ourselves, delved a little deeper within our skillsets, sat through some tutorials and attended a few podcasts or webinars on things.

Make projects for yourself so you can learn new skills and refresh old ones.

It has been interesting. Consistency is the key. If you’re a musician, which is certainly an industry that got hit pretty hard in 2020, you still need to practice, get out there and play music. It was fun to see a lot of those people coming up with creative ways to continue to reach an audience. I had spoken with someone. This is a major recording artist but there were not going to be any concerts. This artist put on a concert on a gaming program like World of Warcraft. I can’t remember exactly what it was but it was something so out of the ordinary and it worked.

There were five million people who showed up to this concert early on during the onset of the pandemic. That was a much wider audience than they would have been able to get in front of in a single event in any other way. It’s leveraging the ability to scale and come out of the confines of a local situation. It is by being creative and continuing to come up with new ideas. Not all of them are going to be home runs but if you get enough base hits, you can get to where you’re trying to go.

I love when you talk about being creative within your discipline. I interact a lot with the University of Denver still. I used to be faculty in the School of Art and Art History doing design, media theory and practice. I had a student who was graduating. She was feeling so sorry for herself, “What am I going to do? This has hit and I’m just graduating.”

I’m like, “You’re graduating with a degree in creativity. Get a double major in theater and film. This is life. This is our World War II. We’ve got it much better. You can still produce and create content. You can still develop your portfolio and be creative. I was seeing things like the simultaneous broadcast of concerts live from the Milan for Easter in the Milan Cathedral.” About two months later, she sent me a nice note saying, “Thank you for kicking me in the rear. I was able to put together these things. I am working in Iceland in an animation department.” I was like, “Take me with you.”

Years ago, the Met Opera recognized that they had an opportunity to reach a much broader audience. They started recording and broadcasting live shows in theaters. Additional things occurred that prevented that from continuing to happen during the pandemic. They did switch that to a Met channel where you could go in and watch recorded performances. My wife and I went to a bunch of those and that’s the revenue that the Met they’re performing anyway. It’s probably not that much more expensive for them to go ahead, shoot it and get it out there in a wider distribution channel.

I’m going to go non-sequitur and say as a person from the world of TV and film or at least as an art director, those poor Sopranos and Altos are having to learn how to act because, before, when the audience and the frame were fixed and the distances were such, it didn’t matter if you were attractive or not or if you looked sad or joyful. You had to sing with those inflections. Now, the camera is up to your nose and you’re in HD. I’m wondering how that’s going to change the character of what it means to be an opera performer.

I’ve seen live opera in person as well as broadcast. It has changed a lot in general. If you’re close to the stage, you’re not wanting to watch someone sing. You want to watch them do other things at the same time. It has evolved. It would be interesting to go back and look at opera from many years ago and see if it has changed a lot.

Technology is constantly changing the way we create visuals and stories. What aspects that we have used to accommodate that may have those benefits will stay and those that were not so beneficial will disappear or be put in place of? For example, telemedicine. Is it a good idea? No. You can’t control your lighting and the video. How are medical professionals supposed to assess certain degrees? I see it as triage when you call the nurse line and he or she says, “You should go in.” I could see that but having a physician diagnosed via that, I don’t know that it will work.

Me working on teams across time zones with a video and the ability to quickly share my monitor prevents me from having to fly over to Singapore. All these ways ecologically make more sense. The footprint and the quality of life make more sense. I will be curious in the world of marketing what goes forward from this point on. Like after World War II, ballet and symphonies came back. All the things that were destroyed obliterated came back like live performances and everything. I’m keeping an eye on that.

It’s going to be an interesting few years as we juggle this live virtual synergy. One of the challenges that we’ll see throughout the next couple of years is how to hold a live event that has in-person in-distance components. I was on a call and they were talking about an in-person event coming up. They asked the group on the call how people were feeling about that. Some of them were all gung-ho, ready to go and wanted to get back in the room with a bunch of other people.

Other parts of the audience were a lot less certain about whether or not that was something they wanted to do. Not only did they not want to travel but they also didn’t want to be in proximity to others at that time. The challenge is how to navigate both of those audiences and not exclude one or the other. How do you put on a live event that is also compelling remotely?

A lot of nonprofits are struggling with that because they have this desire to do in-person events again, which has been their bread and butter for years. They want to get back to that because it’s what they know but they have to navigate that like, “How do I put on a live event that’s fun, live and also enables people to participate remotely?”

I’m thinking about a couple of examples. One thing that comes to mind is when the city of Englewood asks all the parents, “Would you go in person or not?” 50% said yes and 50% said no. They lobbied the teachers. 50% said yes and 50% said no. They couldn’t figure out a way to make home learners interact with classroom learners and the teacher be able to facilitate both, so they split. They had the online class and the in-person class.

As they navigate, I’ll be very curious to see their events. Can you make a hybrid event or is it more complicated because you have to have two presenters, one who’s constantly fielding the questions of the live people? Don’t tell me you’ve got people calling in and sending in texts. They have a whole department monitoring and telling when to interrupt the speaker. It was impossible in education, given the tools of the time, for a teacher in a physical environment to connect with students on the monitor.

I’m watching the Chamber of Englewood do the same thing. 50% in the world are comfortable and vaccinated and the other 50% were like, “I’m not comfortable.” Some people were like, “I’m out of practice. I have not seen big groups of people. I don’t know how to interact with that.” They haven’t been able to figure it out. I’ll be curious. When you do that, you let me know.

I’ll keep you posted.

That’s a $1 million idea. My next million-dollar idea was going to be drive-thru art galleries.

One of the guys on our team had performances. He does close-up magic like card tricks, coin tricks and all that stuff. His forte is close-up interaction. He and his troop put on a drive-thru event where people drove up. They stayed in the car and had different things set up all along this route. You got to watch somebody juggle for a while. You drive up and watch James do some magic from a safe distance, close enough that you could see it. You drive down this block and see a whole bunch of different things. They did a neat job of putting together this whole show and experience around that.

The city of Englewood did an outdoor shadow puppet. I must be a frustrated art director because I turned my carport into all things that we’re one way in one way out, but it never occurred to me to do magic tricks. That would have been brilliant. We’ve done art openings where people were allowed in one way out the other. We’ve done sales to raise money for a local nonprofit shelter but a magic trick is awesome. You have different stations.

All of our experiences are going to become the Piggly Wiggly of whatever. We’ll go in one door, march our way through and go out the other door. I’ve seen people get creative. It has been very inspiring to watch people figure out and come up with ways to work within the safety protocol but still be able to do something fun.

That’s where being creative outside of the box thinker is like the rubber hitting the road. 2020 has taught a lot about resilience, creativity, the importance of question asking, being willing to go with a plan A and then being comfortable with a plan B as more information comes out or something changes. Being a creative thinker has been one of the three things that got me through this the most. Having a dog and a family was the other two.

Being creative, continuing to fuel that juice and staying consistent are three big components.

Engage yourself because we need personal connections now more than ever.

I’m not sure I answered any great questions for you, Stuart but I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate your brain. I love brainiacs. That’s the one thing in my body that’s not falling apart at this point.

It was super fun to talk with you. How can people find out more about you and what you guys are doing at Tiny Studio?

We are on Instagram and Facebook . Our web address is TinyStudioLLC.com . We’re trying to figure out the whole social thing like Facebook because my mom uses it. Instagram is probably where we’re more productive in terms of what’s going on under the hood at Tiny Studio. There is always something going on because we’re both creative people that if there’s no project, we make them for ourselves.

I love having these conversations and I also love action. If you could have our readers take any action after reading this, what would you have them do?

I would have them reach out to a nonprofit of their choice, something near and dear to their heart and figure out what do they have to offer. Tap that nonprofit and say, “I am a great X. I would love to donate twenty hours of my time for you. How would you like me to do it? I can do this or this.” The action would be engaging yourself because we need those personal connections more than ever.

I also try to remind people that people think differently than if you were raised in the ‘70s or ‘80s like I was. You say, “Is it best to connect with you with LinkedIn, phone call or a video conference?” Nonprofits have taken such a big hit that if you don’t have the finances to help them out, give them your skillsets.

Nonprofits could turn that around the other direction, reach out to their audience and see if there are people within their groups that have certain skills that they need some help with.

We tell a client that all the time, if they’re a nonprofit, “We can do this for you but this would be something that if you have an intern, we could coach an intern to do. That would be better for your budget and your time and an intern’s time. They need that experience.” We’re always trying to remind clients to take advantage of who is already in their world that has these offers.

I had a great time talking with you. I’m excited to hear what’s in store for Tiny Studio as we move forward. Thanks so much for being on the show, Angela.

It’s my absolute pleasure. I appreciate you inviting me. Thank you.

Important links:

Tiny Studio
Demoflow
Presentation Zen
Who Not How
Annie Tukman – Previous episode
Instagram – Tiny Studio LLC
Facebook – Tiny Studio LLC

Episode 56: Remain Relevant By Running Online Events With Dave Jensen From Encompass Event Group

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:12:06 GMT

Are you hosting an event this year? If not, you should consider doing so. (Within the bounds of safety, of course.)

On this week’s episode I talked with Dave Jensen , the CEO of Encompass Events Group .

Their company helps nonprofit organizations put on live hybrid and remote events. They offer support and production services to help organizations knock their events out of the park.

And listen—if you don’t know how to run an online or hybrid event, but want to, then this is the show for you. Dave and I go over a lot of great stuff, from how to start your first online event to how to make your hybrid events engaging.

Recently, I had the pleasure of doing a virtual tour of Dave’s studio. Encompass Events Group has done a great job of adapting to the online world of events and they really have the skills to help you up your online or hybrid event game.

I think there are two main takeaways from this episode.

First, flip the script: make your audience the main attraction at the event. Get them participating or highlight them to make things feel like “not just another Zoom call.”

Secondly, do something . Even if you host just a small event, it can help you stay relevant to your stakeholders and front-of-mind.

You are going to love this episode.

Link:

Compass Event Group

MobileCause

Action Ask:

Just do something. Even if it’s a small event and 100% online, do something to remain relevant.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Events don’t have to be in-person to be impactful.

Remain Relevant By Running Online Events With Dave Jensen From Encompass Event Group

My guest is Dave Jensen. He is the CEO of Encompass Event Group . They are a cool organization that puts on live hybrid and remote events for nonprofits and other organizations looking to knock their event out of the water in terms of really bringing their A-game. I had the pleasure of doing a virtual studio tour with Encompass Event Group not too long ago.

They bring some great technology to the table to enable you to up your game. This episode is jam-packed with information about events. If you are planning an event or have been putting an event off because you don’t know what to do or handle this whole hybrid, in-person remote thing, this is the episode for you. I am excited about all the great information here, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here we go.

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How are you doing, Dave ?

I’m doing well. Thank you.

Tell us a little bit about Encompass Event Group, where you are the CEO.

Encompass Event Group is a live event production company. We specialize in working with nonprofits, corporations and event agencies. We do mostly technical design and deployment. We keep our finger on the pulse of all of those three industries and try to create comprehensive solutions beyond technical design.

You guys gave me a great virtual walkthrough of your studio. Some cool technology that you bring to the table in terms of supercharging a presentation, an event or even a weekly endeavor both on and offsite, correct?

Right. Doing the virtual studio demo with you was fun. It opened up many people’s minds to the possibility that events don’t have to be in-person to be impactful.

It’s interesting to see how people have adopted all the new technology. We’ve all been forced to figure out how to present and be more effective in this virtual setting. It’s cool to see what you guys are doing down there to spice things up and make presentations and events more interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the technology that you bring to the table, as well as some of the tactics that you deploy?

From a technology perspective, we work under the mantra that all events are the same. Whether they’re in-person, virtual or hybrid, we take the same approach to everything. We use the same checklists and the same processes for everything. It’s just how we deliver them and maybe the venue that we’re in. We might be in a studio versus a ballroom or an arena, but the event is still the same. It’s just about the message that our clients want to communicate. From an equipment perspective, not a lot changed. It was pretty fun. It’s been interesting to see how much in-person and virtual are similar.

It’s all about the message in the story. That’s one of the things we talk about a lot with clients over here at the show is that you need to nail your account down and make sure that you have something compelling that gets people’s attention that draws them in, gives them some anxiety, builds attention, releases that and then does that over and over again. Events are similar if you can create a structure that encompasses or at least wraps its arm around that idea of storytelling and keeping people amped, but not full throttle all the time. That’s part of the plan, right?

Right. The emotional rollercoaster that you try to create.

Do you do that with events as well? What are some of the things you’ve seen work well?

The message that organizations like yours help clients craft is that emotional rollercoaster. We just utilize technology to try to enhance that. For in-person events, that can come down to lighting and music and that type of environment. The videos that we’ll playback to sometimes are emotional and energetic. We play those same things for the in-person crowd. For the virtual setting, we still have those same production techniques and capabilities. We’re not going to play with the lights in your living room, but we’re still delivering that same experience to the virtual crowd.

The walkthrough that you provided was pretty cool. You had a studio setting. It looked very professional. There were big graphics behind the speakers on these huge monitors that you have. It felt news roomy, at least in the demo you shared with me. You also leveraged just the power of that higher level of production that brings a lot to the table in terms of an event like that or a presentation of that type where multiple cameras can move between those different shots. It ups the sensation that one gets when being presented in that fashion. Are lots of people able to take advantage of that at your studio?

For sure. A lot of the in-person production companies have a studio environment of some sort. Some of them are just popups in their warehouse. Some of them are more traditional, formal studios like ours. As an industry, something that production folks have learned is that we need to help people create compelling content, whether that’s the story or the technology that drives it.

Sometimes, stories need a little bit of help from technology to keep people engaged. We’re distracted by the phone ringing, the dog barking, the TV and the refrigerator. We have a lot more to compete with. These events have to have more of a broadcast or a television-type feel. You’re going to see that carry forward, not only in virtual and hybrid events but in-person going forward too. You’ll see a lot of these same broadcast-type techniques carry forward.

Can you give us some examples of how someone hosting an in-person event might leverage some of these broadcast ideas?

In the past, for nonprofit organizations, a lot of events were podium parades. Your MC had come up and introduced a speaker, and then they come back and introduce the mayor. They were just podium parades. The way broadcasters do it if you watch any sports or the news or anything, they break things into segments. Those segments have intros, and then they have bumpers between everything.

You put a little bit of entertainment. Honestly, whether it’s entertaining or a commercial, it’s a mental break to ride that roller coaster, get up, get back off for a minute, and then get back on it. Building your program in segments, even for in-person events, will be a thing, splitting it up with videos, adding motion, graphics, just things that give you that mental break where you can sit back and enjoy it instead of being on your toes the whole time.

I’ve certainly attended my fair share of events in terms of the podium parade. There weren’t smooth transitions between speakers all the time. I could see how having the ability or the opportunity to have a split stage and change the focus back and forth as you see in any newscast would be an interesting thing for organizations to consider as they’re building out their event, their program as well how that’s all staged.

Something that nonprofits didn’t embrace before the pandemic that corporations have done this forever felt split stage right and stage left instead of putting everything in the middle. On stage right, you do all the presentations. On stage left, you do panel discussions, fireside chats or the things that can break your attention. Moving it from set one to set two as we do in a studio, that can be a lot more powerful than maybe you’d realize on a CAD drawing. When you’re actually in person, and one side of the stage goes dark and the other side all of a sudden has people over there, it’s pretty fun.

I can see how that would be just a really interesting way to transition. You could theoretically do live switches. While everyone’s attention is focused on stage left, you could change stage right up a bit for the next segment.

That happens all the time. People notice it, right?

Exactly. It’s super interesting to think about how to improve our in-person leveraging all of the learning that we’ve gotten over the past year for sure. I’m interested in the idea. We’ve had this come up a number of times. As people are transitioning back to in-person, a couple of things are going on. One is that not necessarily everybody is comfortable attending an in-person event. A lot of people have gotten used to the fact that they don’t have to go to in-person events, or at least they believe that to be the case. They’re itching for an opportunity to stay remote. What are some of the techniques that people might consider to do a hybrid event?

In this transition period, a lot of states are opening up. We’ve had a lot of folks that that’s 100% their concern, “What if my participants, either attendees or presenters, don’t want to participate in person?” Something that we learned by doing the studio and the remote stuff has been presenters doesn’t have to be in-person.

We have an event coming up at one of the big hotel conference centers in Denver that half of our breakout presenters are remote. We are just putting them on a virtual platform and letting them do their presentation just like they did from home. On the general session stage, we’re planning to roll in three vertical monitors for panel discussions.

Like in our studio, you can have 2, 3 or 5 local guests and 2 or 3 remote guests. The same goes for outbound. The difference between a virtual event and a streaming event is just based on the platform. In a lot of cases, we want it to be engaging on the remote end as well, chat, Q&A or polling. For nonprofits, it’s a big deal to do your donations and bidding through the same platform that you’re viewing and attending on. That virtual event platform from an audience perspective is going to be a real key thing to focus on for organizations.

What are some of the platform opportunities or ones that you’ve used, particularly for the nonprofit space? That sounds intriguing and amazing to facilitate and enable donations right within the same platform that everybody’s viewing. What are some options out there for people looking for that kind of technology?

There are a bunch of them, but our favorite so far has been MobileCause . Their pricing is just right in line with everybody else. It’s a percentage of the money that’s donated or collected there. There’s no upfront cost to build it. What we’ve liked about MobileCause is the layout is great. It just looks like a high-end version of YouTube. The audio and video are prominent right there. There are options for meters that show you how close you are to your goal and where you are in your silent auction versus your live auction, that type the thing.

With MobileCause, you can remove all of those things. Let’s say you have that heartstring video you want to play, and you don’t want any distractions. You can remove all the bidding functionality from the overlays of the video and let the video do its thing and when you’re done with the video put all those overlays back on. MobileCause has been one that our clients have gravitated toward and liked.

I appreciate that that technology exists. That’s a big challenge for people. That’s exciting.

I agree. It’s not something that we ever had to do before. Most of our nonprofit events were in person. The silent auction happened in the pre-function area. The live auction happened right in the event space. It’s on a platform. Most of these platforms, including MobileCause, were around before being virtual.

You could always bid on your phone. It handled your registration and all that type of stuff. It still does all that. The great thing is, when we come back to in-person and hybrid, the event in-person, people can bid on their phone. The people at home will do the same thing, and there won’t be a significant delay. Everybody will participate together even though they’re not together physically.

That sounds like a great way to bring those two groups together and allow some participation from a remote standpoint. That’s another concern that a lot of nonprofit leaders have is, “If I have a purely virtual event or a hybrid event, how do I engage those people who are not in the venue effectively?” MobileCause sounds like a great tool to add to one’s toolkit to help facilitate that.

It’s a great thing. Depending on the size of your organization, you can manage that internally. If you’re a smaller organization and you don’t have the bandwidth for that, you can always outsource it to your technical partner. You have that option either way. Scalability is a big deal especially coming out of a pandemic, your event scalability, your audience scalability, your technology, and how that’s going to scale with you. Those will be really big concerns for organizations.

What do people need to think about that team to run a hybrid event? What are you seeing as a bare minimum to more recommended team assistance?

In the last year, the bare minimum has been prerecording the majority of the event, whether that was your keynote or maybe your executive director. Pre-recording a lot of that content, any videos you wanted to play, and running those back live. Let’s say the executive director, the organization representatives can be online, moderating, answering questions and managing auction items, that type of thing.

From a really small perspective, pre-recording everything, you could do it a month or two in advance, in a studio or your own facility, whatever your budget allows and your expectations will be. You could do all of that a month ahead of time, get it all bundled up, and then play it back on the event day as though it was live, it can be produced as though it’s live.

From the big picture, what we’re seeing coming back in 2021 and 2022 is what we considered the hub-and-spoke. It was modeled after the airline industry. Having a hub location that your in-person audience will be in, but then hub-and-spoke either viewing locations. They could be bidirectional participatory big locations that they view from there.

All events are the same, whether they’re in-person, virtual, or hybrid.

Somebody can also maybe make a presentation from those locations. On a big picture, you could have an event in Denver and then spokes in Boulder, Chicago, Dallas and Estes Park. Some of those could be viewing only or bidirectional. Budget-wise, you’re talking maybe a $5,000 investment versus a $150,000 investment. The span is pretty large.

You broke up just a smidge, but I got the gist of it. Could you go back and talk a little bit about the hub-and-spoke again one more time? It’s such a great concept.

On the larger end would be a hub-and-spoke type of model. The hub, let’s say your event is in Denver, and you have an in-person audience, and you’ve produced it just like you produced in 2018 and 2019. The spokes could be viewing locations. They could be bidirectional where they’re viewing and presentation locations.

In a viewing location, you would gather in a country club, a hotel, or maybe even someone’s home and just view and participate on your own. In a bidirectional spoke location, you would view, but you would also have a return feed coming back to the hub. At any point, the hub could throw it to another location for a little bit of that.

You could have viewing parties. If smaller groups wanted to get together, participate and watch the event, they could get together at those spokes. A spoke could be an individual user’s place to present or perhaps participate from a viewing capacity. That’s an interesting way to conceive of how to expand that reach and broaden your ability to get in front of people and engage.

There’s a revenue opportunity there as well. Those spoke locations could be hosted by a corporation, an attorney, whatever your audience is. Those could be hosted locations and become revenue opportunities as well.

You could expand your sponsorship tiers to have the ability for somebody to come in and sponsor the main event or one of these spokes. That’s a cool idea of how to bring in sponsorship and additional revenue. Are there any other pitfalls or other things that you would want people to consider before doing a hybrid event?

We’ve learned that there’s such a big marketing component to a lot of the events that all of us do. To market that properly, you have these opportunities with studios or even to shoot in your own facility or to record somewhere outside of the venue that you’re going to host at. You have a lot of social media and email-based marketing opportunities. That’s a big thing that we as an industry overlooked in the past. Some people were sending graphic-based announcements. You can do all that with video or audio and motion graphics. That’s how you’re going to get a lot of people’s attention and remain relevant in the nonprofit space.

I like that idea. There are certainly some technologies out there that help facilitate that. There’s one called BombBomb . That allows you to record these really short videos and send them via email. Instead of just sending a follow-up like, “Thanks for meeting with me,” you can record a quick video as you’re walking back to your car and send that, and leveraging all that technology that allows people to have something that stands out in this unique seems like a great option. When you bring people into this studio or record live, you often have a goal in mind of one major content asset with a bunch of residual stuff that helps support that. Is that the way that you tend to think about a recording session?

That’s definitely how we’ve approached it. My background was in broadcast sports for a long time. Between maybe the pregame show and the postgame show, we would record the marketing segments for the next day’s show. It’s not that unusual to repurpose the studio, change the graphics in there really quickly and record some other things, and then change them all back to the show that you’re doing. That’s not unusual. You can even do it in your own office or your facility if you don’t have a technical partner that’s taken care of that stuff for you.

One of the things that we’ve heard people have a challenge wrapping their arms around is this idea of, “If I have to book the studio for an hour, but I only want to create these 5, 10 or 15 minutes,” or whatever the number is in their head of material, “What am I going to do with the rest of that hour?” Coming at it from the idea that you can build out this library of stuff that can be used in a variety of different ways, across a variety of different channels as you’re coming into the studio and have a plan for how to effectively use that time to get a whole bunch of materials that you’ll be able to distribute across a whole host of channels is a way to wrap your arms on that.

One thing to think about is if you involve an organization outside of your own, that hour of studio time gets tightened up as you get used to the studio, as they get their mic checks and everything done, that hour gets chewed up quickly. For full disclosure, most studios do half days and full days for that reason, so that people don’t think, “I’m going to come in and get an hour of content.”

Usually, it’s a 2:1 ratio. It all depends on the experience of the crew and of the client. That’s something to be aware of. Repurposing your content, recording specific versions and generic versions, that’s a great way to do things. Sometimes, you can even repurpose some of the content, take out some of the stuff that makes it specific to this event, and you can reuse it year-after-year on occasion. Keeping some of that evergreen is a good idea too.

Those are great techniques or tactics to think about in terms of wrapping your arms around a recording session. The 2:1 ratio is absolutely a great metric to keep in mind if people are considering going into a studio to get some materials recorded.

Even on something like a podcast, if we’re looking for an hour of content, we’re probably going to book this for 1 hour 15 minutes or 1 hour 30 minutes. That’s a technology thing. Even Zoom call is the same thing. If you want an hour-long Zoom call, people will show up five minutes late and need to leave for five minutes early. It’s just a good rule of thumb may be in life.

It’s true. I have learned during this show that I need a few minutes upfront, and then I certainly need a few more than a few minutes in the end to record all the residual stuff that goes along with the show. Any hour-long recording usually turns into 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes. We’ve discussed live events a little bit and hybrid events. What are some things that you see are fairly common mistakes, challenges or places where there’s room for improvement in a virtual type of event setting? What are some of those things that, particularly nonprofits you see fall into over and over again that people can be aware of so that they don’t fall into those same traps?

The biggest pitfall that nonprofits have faced is not having an event because they didn’t know what to do. They just said, “We’ll just wait.” They’re losing relevance. They’re losing their financial ability to support the important things to them. The biggest one is to do nothing. Early on in this, at least, some groups may be their technical expectations weren’t up to par for what their audience expected. Maybe they lost a little bit of traction with their audience by delivering a subpar experience.

The first one is to do something. The second one is to make sure you do it right. It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy. It can happen from your own facility. It must be right. If the brand of your nonprofit is somewhat of a brand of excellence, then everything you put out needs to be that way is well. That’s the biggest thing. A Zoom call isn’t going to cut it.

There’s a tendency to think, “I know how to use this piece of technology as well as costs associated.” The quality can go way down if we’re not careful. It’s good to hear what people can do to spice things up. Are there simple things that people can employ that aren’t super expensive to raise the bar on a virtual type of event?

Like we talked about at the beginning, you want to have this rollercoaster, and you want to split things into segments and give people this mental break, certainly Zoom calls and all that stuff. We’ve realized that we don’t want to sit for 90 minutes and just listen. Segmenting things into different production blocks doesn’t cost anything. That takes a little bit of thought.

A virtual event platform from an audience perspective is going to be a real key thing to take note of.

You can also learn a lot from watching other nonprofits’ virtual events and seeing what they did, and whether they used a technical partner or not, you can still borrow that process from them. If you saw that nothing was over fifteen minutes and that there were walk-away breaks at 30 and 60, borrowing any of that production style doesn’t cost anything. That might be the biggest tip.

Are those some of the numbers that you would recommend people try and stick to is fifteen minutes or less, and then breaks at the half-hour, an hour?

From personal experience, that’s what I like. If the content is great, you don’t want to interrupt that. You don’t want to break the flow. If you’re in the middle of your auction and there’s a scheduled break coming, you don’t want to stop that. To plan them in for the right time. You don’t want to go 90 minutes and then have your auction and have everybody get up and grab dinner real quick right as you’re getting to the auction.

What do you think about the idea of a breakout video? Are those effective in terms of really chopping things up? Do people tend to lose focus because they go from this live thing to this recorded thing?

From my perspective, any of those breakout videos would be a good thing to put as a mental break, say, at your 15-minute mark, but not at your 30 or your 45. You should have a video playing, maybe testimonial videos or something that’s not critical to the event but is supportive of the event during the walkaway breaks. They should be made clear that this is a video, and this is a break. You need to define and make it clear to your audience which is which. There are still things happening on the screen. This is break time.

That’s great advice. There was an event that I participated in that had a long semi-testimonial video they wanted to play during the event. The duration was too long. That’s what made it feel like it dragged. I can see how effective those things could be if they’re teed up correctly if there’s a compelling reason to go to video either to give somebody a little bit of a mental break or allow it to stay there for those people who don’t want or need to get up during a walkaway break. What are some of the newer trends that you’re seeing coming out in either in-person, live events or some of the virtual stuff we’ve been talking about? What are some things people should have on their radar as events continue to evolve?

Events are going back to in-person. From our experience, it’s more quickly than we expected. As much as they turned off, they’re turning right back on. We expected a trickle back. They won’t be as well attended either. Everybody needs to plan to hybrid for the next years. It expanded the reach of most nonprofits so much. It should stick around forever. A trend that I see happening is trying to include the remote audience in the live in-person portion of the event. You see on some of these Tony Robbins Facebook videos that are coming out that 2000 virtual attendees show up on the LED display.

Incorporating either to your technical design or into your RSS feed, on the ticker on the bottom of the screen, maybe hashtags, social media stuff, virtual platform and your in-person technology. You really do need to focus on not just that in-person show, but including the remote folks in the in-person show as well.

That’s an interesting idea, if only just to let people know how broad everything is. If you’re at an event and you’re like, “This might only be all that well-attended.” If you can at least demonstrate in some fashion how many people have come on remotely to attend the event, it raises the bar in terms of people’s excitement who are live. I could see how that has a two-way positive effect.

You hit the nail on the head.

Let’s go back to the live event. As you’re seeing those coming back into play and favorability, what are some things organizations can consider putting in play for a live event that may be out of the ordinary or you’ve seen get some great engagement going? There’s always music, special guest speakers and things like that. Are there any unique things that you’ve seen work to a really good effect?

We’ve had some really fun success with the stage right, stage left concept we talked about, actually doing remote stages around the in-person facility as well. Maybe a presentation from the lobby where you had your step-and-repeat red carpet entrance. You could do a segment from one of the VIP donor tables where it was actually at their table.

The host has left the stage during a video or however they left the stage. They end up at that table and do a segment from there, maybe even a nod to the award shows during the pandemic. How they had to transition from doing these theater-based stage shows, and they had to go out to the man on the street, the sidewalk. This type of concept would work with a nonprofit.

It’s really interesting that you mentioned that. As you said that, I was like, “You always see this stuff like backstage, they cut to the red carpet, people still coming in or whatever it is.” There’s some remote feed type of scenario where you’re allowing people to have a little bit of a change of scenery, as well as get to a place that maybe they didn’t expect to be able to go.

It allows you to do a stage switch, buy a little time, or do whatever you need to get something else teed up. That backstage stuff is really interesting. I remember when the Met Operas first started broadcasting their shows. They were doing simulcast in theaters. My wife and I used to go to those all the time. It was great because there are always act breaks.

When you’re at a live event, you usually get up, stretch your legs, grab a drink or go to the bathroom. They’re typically fifteen-ish minutes long. The Met would fill those with backstage stuff where they would interview someone from the design crew who would go backstage with a camera and show you around. They would talk to some of the talents in between acts. It just brought this whole other level of interest to the show. I can see how that same approach at a live event could be super effective.

For the folks that stayed in the room, what an inclusive experience to get to go backstage age and have that experience. Even if it’s part of the planned event, it’s that mental break, “I’m not so serious. I don’t have to be on the stage.” It’s still the right message, but mentally, I’ve got to escape for a moment.

Even just that change of venue a little bit gives people a breather. You’re not looking at a stage setting. You’re looking at something different for a few minutes. What’s happening with budgets these days in terms of events? What do people see? If somebody wants to put on a hybrid event, are there certain budget figures? What are some of the things people should consider when starting to plan their event?

A lot of people thought that virtual was going to be less expensive than in-person. We didn’t have the venue cost. We didn’t have the trucking and travel cost, all that type of stuff. A lot of people realized that studios just replaced the venue. If you did any swag or pre-event mailings of any sort, like bottles of wine or DoorDash dinner deliveries, any of that type of stuff, but the budgets were pretty similar.

If people were budgeting on a per attendee basis, I don’t think it’s probably changed that much. If you are serious as you are about the in-person event, the budget per attendee is probably going to be about the same. From a technical perspective, it’s a little bit more expensive. You still have the cost of the in-person. Even if it’s scaled-down, it doesn’t scale proportionally. You do have the virtual platform and the production that needs to get out to that. Production-wise, the cost is probably a little bit higher for a hybrid. On average, your per attendee cost will probably be pretty close to the same as what it was pre-pandemic.

The biggest pitfall nonprofits have faced in the last 15 months is not having events at all. They are slowly losing relevance by doing this.

That’s a great way to think about it. That’s something I hadn’t considered is just breaking it down into a per attendee. If you can increase your reach, you can probably bring those per attendee costs down a little bit. Considering the ability for a hybrid or a virtual event to scale outside of your local area, there might be some ways to get some benefit back there.

I watched a seminar. There was an event planner in New York City that their client said, “We don’t want to spend $100 per attendee. We want to spend $15, but we want to widen our scope. Instead of New York City, we want to be national.” These numbers are arbitrary. They brought in was something like twenty times the revenue by decreasing their cost but increasing their reach. That was a little extreme to make those swings that drastic. Even if your cost goes slightly up, increasing your reach by threefold, that’s completely doable.

It’s interesting. I had a guest very early in the show. They’re a nonprofit that works with teacher groups in education. Typically, their model prior to the pandemic was sending people to places. A school district would hire them to come in, create some curricula, and help elevate the ability for instructors and teachers to be able to do a better job with their classwork.

One of the things that they found immediately was that, “We can retool this to be virtual. The cost to the school district is a lot less. They don’t have to fly us in and put us up in a hotel.” They were able to reach a much more diverse and broad user group. Some of these smaller school districts in very rural places who, before there was no way to afford to bring these teams in, could afford to host these virtual trainings.

It completely opened up their ability to scale in the audience they could reach. If nonprofits can think about that in the same fashion, even if you’re a very local nonprofit, there may be some people remotely who have an interest in what you’re doing. Making sure that you create opportunities through hybrid or virtual events to reach that broad audience can be an incredible way to expand your mission much farther than you ever thought. What are some of the cooler things you and your team have done in all three of these spaces in-person, hybrid and virtual? What are some out-of-the-box thinking that you’ve helped facilitate over the years?

Our most fun, most interactive and engaging in-person nonprofit event, we set up the ballroom. We had everyone enter backstage, which is shocking to see scaffolding and the back of the drape. We used little closed pins to keep it closed. To see that thing instead of seeing the lights, the drape and the haze in the room, and then walking around the outsides and getting that presenter’s perspective. That was the most interesting in-person experience that we had set up. It was just flipping the script a little bit there.

For virtual, it’s been really fun to work in a studio environment and embrace our broadcast roots. A lot of us at our company have a broadcast background. To embrace our broadcast roots and produce a television show, it’s fun for the talent, executive director and the host to go through that process. That fun and energy comes through on camera and in the program. The fact that you’re in a formal studio comes through. It’s not necessarily the studio environment. It’s the person’s reaction to being in that studio environment that’s fun.

I love the idea of flipping that narrative. That’s such a great concept, particularly for nonprofits. It allows you to tell that story where the people participating in the event in terms of the guests who are coming. You make them the center of attention and on stage. It allows you to tell that story that they’re the real focus of attention here.

We all go to these events. We’re awed by the talent up on stage. We do this with storytelling a lot. If you can make it to where your donors and your volunteers are the actual heroes in the story, and the nonprofit is just this facilitator of what’s going on, that can be an incredibly powerful mind shift that happens where get people on board with what you’re doing as an organization. Bringing them onto the stage is a cool way to do that.

That was fun. If the type of budget that you have, being able to put camera positions in the audience or do the remote stage that’s maybe out in the center or do a thrust off the stage so you’re out in the center and more in the round. I completely agree with you. The audience-inclusiveness is a big deal, especially in nonprofit events.

I’m trying to wrap my head around other ways to handle that. That’s a cool way to handle that where people get to feel like they are part of the inner workings of the organization and everything that it does.

The red carpet experience is fun. To come into the ballroom and expect to be entertained, that’s what we expect. If we can change that somehow and make it a little bit more emotional or more surprising, just like in business, we want to be a disruptor. That’s what we want to do for events as well.

I love that idea. Have you seen anything work well in terms of revenue drivers? There are various revenue games that one can play, paddle racer, things of that nature. Those tend to be pretty standard. Have you either come up with something different there? Have you seen anything that nonprofits have done during events that have worked well?

I don’t know if co-branding will be the right term, but finding alignment with another organization. Sometimes we have seen some nonprofits that complete each other. If yours is local, but another one is based nationally, but the national one wants more of a local presence. There are some ways with your fundraising abilities, one can leverage the other.

Another thing is co-branding. GEICO commercials are the best at this. The little GEICO lizard is talking about a movie that’s coming out. GEICO doesn’t sell movies, but they’ve co-branded with whatever the movie chain was to drive revenue on both. You’d have to be a little creative with co-branding and driving that revenue from a different source, but it could be a really fun way to drive more revenue and be engaging.

The biggest pitfall nonprofits have faced in the last 15 months is not having events at all. They are slowly losing relevance by doing this.

It seems like you could sell sponsorship space, for example. You could do little raises during the event. I’ll just use a paddle racer as an example. If you could get a corporate sponsor for that paddle racer, this next five minutes of revenue is being matched or sponsored by a corporate donor. That way, you can bake in some guaranteed revenue. I like the idea of trying to bring two things together to help support both causes at once. That’s a cool different way of thinking about it.

We see a lot of that, particularly in auction items, say, a ski trip or tickets to a sports game. If it gets down to two bidders, they say, “We’ll give you the next week. You can auction two of these.” To your point, to do that with corporate backing instead of private backing, that’s a great opportunity.

Those are all fantastic ideas. Anything else that nonprofits or even small businesses should be considering as they’re looking to produce an event?

We’ve learned a lot about scaling, using social media and taking advantage of the little opportunities that maybe we all took for granted before and didn’t take advantage of creating compelling content. The storyline matters. The technology behind it matters. If your brand is important to you and to the folks that support your organization, then the way you present that material does need to be pro. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it must be technically correct. Leveraging overall technology and platforms to meet your audience where they are, whether that’s going to be in an arena, a ballroom or on their couch. Keeping that in mind, meet them where they are. It’s not our place to tell them where they need to be.

Everybody needs to plan hybrid events for the next year or two. Also, try to include the remote audience into the live portions as well.

If people are looking for help with running an event, where can they find more information about your organization? How can you help other organizations bring their A-game to their next event?

Whether it leads to a partnership or not, we enjoy having conversations and understanding the challenges that nonprofits or businesses, or any of these groups are having. If there’s a way to solve it, we’d love to. If not, we’d like to be at least be aware of it and develop more solutions as it goes forward. You can find more about us at EncompassEventGroup.com . All of our social is on there, all of our contact info, and a lot of company info on there too.

I encourage everyone thinking of putting on an event to go check it out. See how Dave and his team can help bring your A-game to your next event. I have had a great time chatting with you, Dave. One of the things that I like to do at the end of every show is think about what actions people can take. I’m sure we’ve inspired a lot of thinking here. If you had people take one thing in after reading the show, what would you have them do?

The biggest takeaway for me would be to do something. We have a couple of nonprofit partners that didn’t do anything in 2020, and they’re not planning to do it in 2021. That’s an unfortunate mistake. Make any effort to have an event. It could be 100% online. It doesn’t have to be a big revenue event, but just to remain relevant.

I would encourage everyone to put an event of some sort on their calendar and give Dave and his team a call if you need some help. I’m looking forward to getting out and getting to some events. Thanks so much for being on the show, Dave. I’ll talk to you soon.

Thanks for your time.

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Another great episode of the show. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. You can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you’re there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you’d like to read to back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That’s it for this episode. I’ll be back for another great episode of the show.

Important Links:

About Dave Jensen

I’ve engulfed myself in the world of live event production for just over 30 years. From directing on television trucks in the depths of stadiums to lighting up massive LED displays for national entertainment tours, I bring unusually high-expectations to every event.

As the CEO of Encompass Event Group, I work with the best techs, manufacturers and … most of all … clients in the industry! We partner with agencies, corporations, and nonprofit organizations by becoming their internal technical production department. I’m proud to lead a team that fully embraces our Client Promise:

We promise to INTEGRATE with your team from the first phone call to the last truck driving away. We promise to provide FLEXIBLE solutions for staffing, equipment, and budgetary challenges. We promise to be ORGANIZED and follow our proven and transparent process for successful events. We promise to be your go-to EXPERT for all things technical now and in the future.

I value the close relationships that develop between clients, vendors, and other industry partners. If I’m already lucky enough to work with you … thank you! If not, I’d love the opportunity to learn about you and/or your business.

Episode 57: How To Build Partnerships And Expand Your Mission With Mike Reichert From Wild Bear Nature Center

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:47:34 GMT

O n this week’s episode, I talked with Mike Reichert, the Director of Operations at Wild Bear Nature Center in Nederland, CO.

Wild Bear Nature Center has an ambitious plan to educate people about nature by building a new facility down the street from where I live. (They’re currently running a big capital campaign to raise the necessary funds.)

They’ve been active in Nederland for over 27 years, making avid supporters out of the local community and businesses. Drawing on this history to engage partners in the area and expand their reach will be key to reaching their ambitious goals.

We discussed using those partnerships and building trust to expand their message and get more people involved and engaged.

WBNC is doing some amazing things for the local community and beyond. Check them out on this episode!

Link: https://www.wildbear.org/

Action ASK: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Pick up trash on the trails!

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Listen to the podcast here:

How To Build Partnerships And Expand Your Mission With Mike Reichert From Wild Bear Nature Center

My guest on this episode is Mike Reichert and he is the Director of Operations at Wild Bear Nature Center here in Nederland, Colorado, which is down the street from me. Mike and his team are building an ambitious plan to educate and bring more people into nature. As part of that, they’re building a new nature center here in Ned. They’re doing a huge capital campaign in order to try and raise awareness and raise funds for that construction.

We talked about ways that they can expand that message and get more people on board, drive more revenue, build more relationships through leveraging partnerships. We talked about a whole bunch of other stuff that was the main thrust of our conversation. I had a great time talking with him. I think that Wild Bear Nature Center does some amazing things here for the local community and beyond. I would encourage you to check it out. I hope you enjoy the episode.

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Mike, how are you doing?

I am doing excellent.

Me too. It’s a beautiful day up here in the Nederland area. I’m assuming you’re in locally.

Yes, I live in town and I also work in the town of Nederland.

Fantastic. We’ll tell us all a little bit more about Wild Bear Nature Center and what you guys are up to?

Before this show, I was helping the check-in about 40 kids for our summer camps that we run for ten weeks from the start of June 2021 until about the start of August 2021. It’s an incredible place, very happy, positive, welcoming kids into the facility and getting them out into the forest so they can explore, learn and play. That’s our whole thing.

Wild Bear was started in 1995 by Jill Dreves, the Executive Director. She also lives here locally. Prior to Wild Bear. She was an elementary school teacher, started this organization with $500 in her savings account and it’s grown year over year. Surprisingly, during the pandemic, it’s grown exponentially. We doubled our full-time staff. We’re in the design phase to build a net-zero nature center within the town of Nederland. That’ll be a destination for locals, the front range, families and tourists.

It’s going to be incredible. I was contemplating the other day that I think it’s going to be one of the sought-after destinations and all of Boulder County because geographically, we were between Estes Park, Boulder and I-70. There aren’t any learning facilities in that region. Wild Bear is open seven days a week. Aside from a few major holidays, free visitation to anyone who wants to come in. We were all about inspiring local community engagement with the environment and trying to teach people to be better stewards to the earth so that generations to come can enjoy the wilderness that we get to enjoy in Nederland and the surrounding area.

It’s a great facility. Our bread and butter, our kids’ programs and our summer camp, especially but we offer all-ages programming, which we think is unique in Boulder County. For example, we have a free bird walk for adults and families. We participated in the Nederland town cleanup and we got volunteers to walk around town, pick up trash, bring it back and care for the environment.

We’re growing our programming. Like I said, we’ve grown through the pandemic and we hired an amazing Education Director who has huge ambitions. For example, we did six separate kids’ programs throughout the day. She’s as ambitious as Jill and I are and passionate and wants to see a Wild Bear grow now so that when we “graduate to our new facility” we’re ready to go and we have robust programming and it’s full and it’s exciting. We’re getting people outdoors.

I’m excited to hear that you’re expanding, particularly after the challenges and being able to get people back in person and showing them all the great things that are available in terms of wildlife, exploration, and getting kids and adults out into the wilderness. We’re excited about this new center that you guys have started to develop right around the Mud Lake Area.

In fact, I’m on the board of the Nederland Area Trails Organization. We helped build some trails on that property for you guys a couple of years ago for nature walks. It’s going to be fun to see how that all comes together and how you can get that unique, exciting new facility up and running. Is that the main thrust of your outreach now, trying to fund the construction of that new facility?

Yes. It’s an amazing, incredible thing. As I said, we hired Michelle Witte from California. She’s originally from Colorado and has big ambitions. We have total trust in her in what she’s doing. It’s allowing Jill and myself to focus on the fundraising piece while also interjecting into the programs when needed to give guidance and things like that. It’s funny.

I’m the second most seasoned employee at Wild Bear and I’ve only been there years. It goes Jill, 27 years, lifelong dream and passion. I was living in Nederland and was fortunate to find a part-time opportunity at Wild Bear years ago and I loved it so much that when someone left the organization, I said, “I would love to do this full-time because you have the freedom to be creative. You can move the needle and make an impact.”

We all talk about think globally, act philosophy locally. In Nederland, there are ambitious sustainability goals for the entire town that is built into our mission and our belief system. Jill was on a bunch of envision 20-30 committees. I work for the town as a subcontractor. My title is beautification specialists and it’s because we love where we live. We feel very fortunate. Prior to working at Wild Bear, I spent most of my time in Boulder because that’s where my full-time job was. I didn’t realize the magnitude and the amount of people who, pre-pandemic, came through this little town from all over the world.

You’d have people visiting from China and the Nederlands, especially. That’s always a funny one to see pictures in front of the police cars because it says Nederland. Again, we’re small and local but we can have a global impact by the people who wander in our doors, which is incredible. The thrust of our goals now is focused on the new nature center. A lot of people don’t even know we exist, even though we’ve been around for many years.

You’re tucked in there in the mall.

I always called the strip mall and people wandered in. They’re like, “What is this place? Where am I?” They don’t expect a concrete parking lot to have this homie nature center that also integrates arts. We love to talk about how arts and sciences collide and nature inspires art and all of those things. It’s going to be incredible when we’re on the facility right at the corner of the Indian peaks wilderness. It’ll be less chaotic because you’re in the forest. Families are going to hang out more when you’re in the parking lot of the strip mall. It’s so busy and we make it work but it’s not ideal. We’re chomping at the bit to get out of there even though it’s been a great home for many years.

We expanded to a bay next door because we increased our staff. We needed more office space and it’s a dual-use office space, an art lounge. There’s a need in Nederland for artists to have a place to go and create. We love that and so we have this eco arts lounge that’s going to have pop-up galleries and weekend hours. It’s still in the works but it’s going to be incredible. I learned that Boulder County has one of the top five concentrations of artists in the entire country.

We’re hoping by providing more things for all ages that we draw people up from Boulder because we’ve had a lot of challenges over the past years, not to mention the pandemic but Boulder Canyon, prior was closed from 10:00 to 2:00, Monday through Thursday. You’re trying to get school groups to come up and participate in programming. We were isolated to only Fridays. Once the Canyon is free and clear, once the pandemic is hopefully under control, people are going to seek us out, I think. It’s exciting times.

You have a lot going on and you’ve weathered some serious challenges over the last few years. I know you built a new website. What other activities are you engaged in to try and raise funds for this new facility?

Prior to my employment, we weren’t engaged a lot in the Boulder Community. We’re well-known in Nederland, obviously and a few people in Boulder have either heard of us or have sent their kids to our camps. We’ve reached out and we’ve joined the Boulder Chamber to expand so that people are seeing our names. We were going to try to participate in a bunch of the Boulder Farmer’s Markets but they’re not having organizations participate this season. It’s more of paid vendors and nonprofits but in the past, we’ve done Boulder Farmer’s Markets. We’re doing the Nederland Farmer’s Market. We’re doing one of those a month. We’ll be there. We hired a local architecture firm to design the building, Arch 11 Boulder and they have an office in Denver as well.

The principal architect used to live in Ned. His kids came to Wild Bear, so we’re engaging companies in Boulder to start talking about us to their constituents hopefully. We’ve hired Studio Tectonic to give us advice and guidance on our professional exhibits because now everything is done grassroots. You mentioned the challenges we faced.

We were fortunate that during the pandemic, because we’re a licensed childcare facility, we were encouraged to stay open. We had hired our Education Director, Michelle, five days prior to the pandemic shutting everything down. She got here excited for what was to come and we had to close for a few months but then we reopened. We safely operated our summer camp during the pandemic.

I give kudos to all the people involved. It was not easy but Boulder County was very supportive. The grant funding was coming through. One thing that we learned of thought is going to launch us forward. We applied for the Social Venture Partners catapult initiative. They are a group of people and organizations and companies in Boulder that we had to apply for.

It was very competitive. Lots of interviews, lots of Q&As, that type of thing, and we were selected. I don’t know how many but I know it was very competitive. It’s three-year guaranteed grant money but they also give pro bono services to help us where we’re falling short in some of our activities. As you said, we’re doing so much. We were able to expand our staff but we’re still piecemealing things together as best we can. We’re excited about their pro bono services because they said they’re going to help broaden our reach in the Boulder Community. That’s exciting for us. We’re getting ready to have a press release sent out, then we’ll start working with our partners to grow the organization even more.

It sounds like you’re doing some grant work. Do you have access to any of the GOCO Grant stuff or does that fall outside of your area?

No, we have applied for GOCO funding in the past. We partnered with the town of Nederland on a grant proposal. We weren’t selected but we have some current grants, especially capital grants that are in the pipeline. One in particular in Boulder County is called the Worthy Cause Grant. It’s where they take a portion of tax dollars and support nonprofits. We’re hoping that’s going to be a large six-figure gift that will launch us forward. We’re being aggressive with the new nature center. We want to break ground this fall. Construction in Nederland is difficult because of the weather.

We have this tight window. We have a local contractor who has also offered his services pro bono, which is about at least $250,000. We’ll see when we initially did our estimates prior to the construction costs doubling. Again, with nonprofit fundraising, you have to ask people and hopefully, someone out of kindness and generosity is able to provide. We’ll see if maybe a lumber company comes through and cuts those costs.

Do you have corporate sponsors or partners in that regard? I’m trying to get a feel for what assets you have that we could maybe help guide you to tap into in terms of expanding that reach. One of the things that can be effective is going after big fish, as opposed to a whole bunch of little fish. I think it’s a two-approach for sure. We want not to exclude the little fish but if we could get access to assets from someone large, whether that be funds or potential reach, that can go a long way to being able to expand or elevate your message to a larger audience. Do you have corporate partners that you work with at all that might have access to large email lists?

A little bit. Eldora , the local Ski Resort, is a huge supporter of all the nonprofits in Nederland. They’re awesome and their larger company is Powder. We’re trying to talk to the owners of Powder but the local people who run outdoor are very supportive. That’s a big one. They help promote one of our fundraising events, the Back Country Film Festival.

They’ve provided their facilities when we didn’t have any snow to do our Snow School Program. We were allowed to go use their Nordic Center for snowshoeing, which was cool because winter sports are expensive and a lot of kids don’t get a chance to see a Ski Resort. We’re lucky that it’s fifteen minutes up the road. They’ve been a big one. One of the big fish that is on my radar is Google.

They have a facility in Boulder .

It’s growing and I’ve seen their name on some other like the museum of Boulder. It has a creative space and it’s sponsored by Google. I think it’s the Google Garage. We love low tech, so to speak. We’re trying to disconnect kids from technology so they can reconnect with nature but also, technology is a part of our lives. We have to embrace it as well. I’d love for them to swoop in and put their name on it to maybe give back to the community to say, “We understand. We’re coming in. We’re helping Boulder grow and we want to give back to something like this that is going to impact a lot of people.”

We’re trying to disconnect kids from technology so they can reconnect with nature. But also, technology is a part of our lives. We have to embrace it as well.

It’s my understanding that a lot of those guys have built or bought homes in the Nederland area as well. The Ned Community has some Google people in it, for sure.

I’m trying to think if there are any others. We do work with a national organization out of Boise, Idaho. They’re called the Winter Wildlands Alliance . They sponsor snow school. That is their program. That’s a great partnership as well because there are no snow school sites all across the country. I remember the first snow of school program I went to. Explaining to kids that this can be your job.

We work with the CU Mountain Research Station. They bring in scientists, volunteers and interns from CU and tell kids like, “This can be your job coming out here and digging in the snow and finding out what’s happening underneath.” I remember a kid being like, “What? I could do that for a career?” I was like, “Yes.” Opening kids’ eyes to things that they might not be thinking of are special.

A couple of ideas here. The first one is Google has a nonprofit program and you can apply for a Google Grant and if you are successful in your application, they will give you up to $10,000 per month of Google Ads that you can run. Getting involved with that program could potentially create opportunities for you.

One of the things that we’ve seen work well is running sweepstakes. There is a company called Top Cat . I’d be happy to make an introduction to Top Cat for you. They run sweepstakes programs for nonprofits. Essentially, that’s one of the reasons I was asking about corporate sponsors is if you can tap into the mailing lists, so the email is from some of these large corporate opportunities, particularly Eldora. I don’t know if CU could open up their system or not but Winter Wildlands Alliance might be interested in doing that.

You can tap into Top Cats systems in order to bring in donations for a sweepstakes run. It does a couple of things. One, it brings in those donations but you also get access to all the data, so all of the new people that would then be built into that list. Those might be some opportunities for you and you can use those in conjunction with one another. You can create Top Cat sweepstakes then use your Google Grants to drive traffic to that and to increase awareness. Those are two ideas that I would recommend looking into for your organization in order to try and broaden your reach and supercharge your donations.

We did apply for and got a G-Suite for nonprofits. We were approved for Google Grants. Again, that’s where small organizations and teams and still operating day-to-day and trying to do this huge capital fundraising. We’re trying to figure it out on our own and that’s where I’m hoping someone through this SVP grant and program that we were awarded that someone there takes the reins with it and get that going. It’s time-consuming when you don’t know what you’re doing, get it going and you spend a couple of days and you’re like, “I still haven’t. I have all these other things,” but the Top Cat thing seems cool.

We have reached out to the local REI store but a lot of those places are very particular in what they carry and they’re running programs that are very similar to what we’re running. I don’t want to call it a competition but essentially, it is when they’re having a snowshoe event at Brainard Lake. That’s what we’re doing on our property at Mud Lake, but I will say the locals they’ve been very supportive. They let me come in and talk to their staff and they let us a table there one time. They are very supportive. It’s like if we have a field guide and we want them to carry it, it’s not approved but the Patagonia Store locally has also been supportive. We love Patagonia because they changed their mission statement a couple of years ago that, “We’re in business to save our home planet,” which we love.

Each of the local stores allowed the employees to choose the nonprofits in the area that they’ll support. I’ve tabled at their store before to promote events. They’ve donated lightly worn gear to some of the families that great don’t have as much winter gear because like I mentioned, it’s expensive. Anything we don’t use, we distribute to some of the other local organizations here in Nederlands. We’re all trying to help each other out but those are great sources. I’m going to look into that Top Cat for sure.

Let me know if you would like an introduction. We’re friends with those guys. A couple of other things there that you could potentially look into and one is, you’re probably aware that Patagonia is a 1% for the planet partner. One percent of the planet has business partners. For example, my business Relish Studio is a business partner for 1% for the planet. One percent of our revenue goes to environmental causes but they have a list of certified 1% for the planet nonprofits. Those are the people to whom these businesses donate their funds to make up their 1%. If you’re not a 1% nonprofit partner given your environmental slant, I’m sure that you could become one very easily. You might check out the 1% program as well.

For sure, I’ve seen that on a lot of things and it’s on my radar. The other organization that we would love to partner with because I believe the director is lives in Nederland, POW, Protect Our Winters . We want to build a partnership with them. We became a leave no trace authorized partner as well. We’re going to be pitching that more. Again, we always go back to grassroots. As we mentioned, people come through Nederland but they don’t know we exist because we’re tucked away.

Our goal because of this ambitious staff we have is to meet people where they are. To go to, say the Hessie Trailhead and talk to people prior to them heading out onto the trails to remind them, “You, being here has an impact positively or negatively. We want to swing it to the positive side.” Providing something small that they can take. Hopefully, when they come back through Nederlands, they’re going to be like, “Let’s stop at that nature center.”

We want to tell people, “You being here has an impact, positively or negatively. We want to swing it to the positive side.”

The other thing that you mentioned you were having some challenges getting your ad words campaign set up through Google. You might look into Energized Colorado . We’ve been a mentor at Energize for the last years or so. This was a program put in place by Governor Polis and his team at the onset of the pandemic to provide opportunities for small businesses and a nonprofit would qualify as a small business to gain access to mentors and people who can volunteer some of their time to help perhaps get your ad word campaign set up. You might check out Energized Colorado as well and see if they can hook you up with somebody to help with setting up those campaigns for you.

Google also, when you set it all up, you can request that but I haven’t heard back. I have to follow up but you basically say like, “We could use some support. It goes out to whoever they partner with.” Maybe it’s like a university where they have expertise in that and they support you but I hadn’t heard back yet. I know it probably takes a couple of weeks and somebody’s availability has to be there.

The takeaway is, as you’re trying to attack this phase of engagement where essentially, you’re trying to attract people and get them into your systems and into your mailing list and enable you to build those relationships. Leveraging all of those assets and not necessarily thinking about what dollars an organization might be able to bring as a partner with you but also what are the additional assets that they might have that you could tap into. Mailing lists, internal marketing teams, product opportunities in terms of donation of products or even services rather than money. Keeping your eyes and ears open for all of those opportunities that can help expand your mission and drive awareness.

I liked the idea of Eldora. You mentioned that they are incredibly supportive of local nonprofits. They are trying to foster a lot of community in the Nederland area and they do have access to a rather large email list that they could leverage potentially. When you’re having conversations with those guys, talking with them about the ways that they could expand that positive effect that they’re bringing to your organization, whether that be tapping into the broader Powder assets or even within that Eldora not tiny email list. Basically, trying to figure out ways to enable you to get your message out there more effectively.

They’re great. It’s funny because three of the past four winters, I was a part-time employee at Eldora. I know not only from my introduction with Wild Bear but then I’m standing there in the retail shop selling goods for them and I’d see the marketing guy and the executive. They’ve tapped into the community. Part of Nederland, there’s the downtown development authority and one of their executives. He’s on that board. I happened to work as a subcontractor for the town. Again, it’s that small town where these dots are easy to connect. They supported the food pantry, teen zinc. I’m blown away by the number of nonprofits in Nederland.

It’s about ten of them and there are only a few thousand residents but their play it forward initiative was cool. We were a recipient of some of the funding from that. They want to see Nederland thrive because without the town. Maybe they aren’t as successful but I know from working up there and talking to visitors. I would always mention, like, “Did you stop in Ned and check out any of the shops or restaurants?” “Only passing through.” That’s the challenge in the wintertime for all the businesses in Nederland. It’s a slow time and people aren’t looking to stop and hang out.

The other thing you might look at and this isn’t a huge well but it certainly is an opportunity. I know that there are a number of businesses in the Nederland area that do roundups and things like that. ACE does one. Busey the brewery, they’re in town. They have a program where they select a nonprofit every month, I believe and any purchases of a specific beer, they’ll donate $1 per beer to that organization. There are certainly a lot of very philanthropic and helpful people in the Nederland area. Leveraging all of that networking that you’ve done and all of those connections that you have is a viable way to get out there and not only bring in revenue but bring in awareness.

It’s funny you mentioned that because again, being around for many years in Nederland, Jill has formed some incredible partnerships. I could probably list in one way or another how each business in Ned has helped us in some way, shape or form. When we have our enchanted forest fundraiser in the fall, usually every local business sponsors it or donates something. During the town cleanup, New Moon Bakery donated coffee and pastries.

Were already a part of the ACE Roundup, they usually do that for us in September because that’s when our fundraiser takes place, Crosscut Pizza . We provide coloring sheets to do them for the kids who are sitting there. We put our list of programs on the backside with a word search. While they’re doing the word search, the parents see the list of programs and the coloring sheet. Not only that avenue of promoting Wild Bear but they have been a cash sponsor as well.

Shan and Peter are great.

Jesse, who works there, has a kid who will hopefully come through Wild Bear. We now have people sending their kids to Wild Bear, who Jill said were original Wild Bears and so it’s starting to be multi-generational. The Caribou Room , with the new facility that we’re going to have right across the street from them, we’re building that partnership and hopefully going to use their parking lot when we have overflow. At the same time, it’s going to put them on the map for people who don’t know about their amazing facility.

They helped us cohost our Back Country Film Festival, years prior and gave us a break on the facility. Great people, great facility. The town of Nederland, we have great partnerships with. We also have strategic donation boxes placed throughout town. Mountain Peoples Coop , there’s one at the register there. I can’t remember what other businesses we have them in now.

That’s great. It sounds like you’re doing a lot of the right stuff. What’s your email lists look like in terms of how many kids have come through your program? How active are you with your emailing?

It used to be very irregular. It would be Jill and I like, “We got to get a newsletter out. It’s been a couple of months since we’ve sent anything out.” As we got some funding to expand our staff, we now have a dedicated social media manager. She’s been great about making sure that we’re posting at least daily. The email list, making sure that we’re sending a newsletter. We worked with Walden Hyde in Boulder, a marketing firm that helped rebrand us, redesign our website, stepped us up by a notch. They looked at what we were doing because we have so much to say that sometimes it gets overwhelming with the amount of copy that we have in our newsletters.

They helped us pare things down, be real strategic. I think our email outgoing list is a little over 4,000 and hitting them with a very specific thing like our volunteer event or the beginning of the month, “Here are all the programs that are coming up. Don’t miss out on all the exciting things.” That’s where we are. We use constant contact, which a lot of organizations do, which is nice because you can get feedback on how many people engaged with it, click rate, open rate, unsubscribe rate, which is always interesting to see, like who unsubscribed. Somebody who would always want to know what we’re doing but I get that. That’s where we are with the email campaigns.

One of the things we’ve been recommending and doing ourselves is being consistent. That would be the first thing. Try to get something out very regularly. When you’re sending an email out, there are some tricks and things that you can employ that will help with engagement as well as open rates and things like that. The first is trying to provide something of value. Instead of having a newsletter, for example that has nine different things that you’re trying to educate people about.

Feel free to send out an email about some animal that was seen on the property and how exciting that was. A little bit more about that animal, for example or a flower that’s blooming now to have people keep their eyes open and have it be a short and quick like, “Did you know this was blooming this week, maybe go out and try and find some and send us some pictures.” Try to get engagement. Try and get back and forth. Give people a little bit of information about that animal or that plant that’s interesting.

If you can do that and get very regular about that, people start to get excited to see what’s the newest thing that’s going to be coming through. When you do it, also strip out all of the HTML stuff. Make it feel like this email came from somebody in your organization. In fact, you could circle through the people in your organization and have them be the center.

Use constant contact, obviously but make it come from a person. When you do some of those things, you make these emails feel very personal. People start to feel like they have a real one-to-one relationship with you and your organization, as opposed to being another person on a list. Those are a couple of email tricks that you could maybe take advantage of to improve your engagement on that particular platform.

That’s great advice. Every time we’re going to send one out, we always have a quick brainstorming session of, “The subject line is so critical. What are we going to write in the subject line to catch their attention?” That it’s not going to get filtered into spam because that happens pretty regularly.

Subject lines, if you can use their name or even use the word you in the subject line, that tends to help. Open rates, people like seeing their name and if there’s an email that they’re scanning their inbox and it says, “Here’s a new nature tip.” I’m more inclined to pause on that email and potentially open it than if it said, “Here’s a new nature tip.” The other way that you could do that is you could say, “Here’s a new nature tip for you.” That also reinforces that this is something special for them.

That’s great advice. I’m going to pass that along to our social media person.

I think that coming up with a calendar in terms of what you’re planning to do in terms of your outreach, whether that be email, blog posts or Instagram or Facebook. I know you’re on Facebook and Instagram as well and YouTube. A video goes a long way and there are ways to take and capture video and turn that into a blog post that you could then send via email that you could then also chop up for social. Figuring out ways to do something once and use it a variety of different times, particularly for nonprofits who are busy, they don’t have huge staff. Those are ways to help get a lot of juice out of a single item.

That’s great tips like you said, you nailed it on the head. It’s regularity and coming up with a schedule to make sure that we keep them engaged without those big breaks in between.

Once a Wild Bear, always a Wild Bear.

It’s a challenge. I face this. I’ve started doing a lot of the communication stuff for the Nederland area trails organization. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with something new and fresh on a regular basis. If you can create a calendar and create an intention and a commitment to doing something on a schedule. If you didn’t overreach, you could start to get comfortable with that schedule and it makes it easier to add another one but figuring out what you’re going to commit to and sticking with that. In the other pieces, you don’t always have to be the creator of the material. If you can bring information to people’s attention, it’s called the being the Maven.

If you can supply people with information, that’s essentially as good as being the person who thought it up. If there is a great article that you found on Leave No Trace, for example, that’s even from Leave No Trace if you can say, “Here’s a cool article about how to reduce your impact as you’re traveling through our wilderness areas, from Leave No Trace,” and link out to the article. Basically, give a little bit of information about why you think it’s important. If you’re getting the people the information that they’re interested in, that can be as effective and powerful as coming up with it yourself in some capacities.

Especially as things start to ramp up, I’m excited that we’re now a Leave No Trace partner because people are coming into the nature center who are not from Colorado and even people who are from Colorado. It’s not at the forefront of everyone’s mind or it’s like, “I’ll pick up that bag of dog poop when I come back,” and inevitably, you forget.

Making people know that even a banana peel on the ground is impactful in a negative way because that isn’t a normal thing that would happen here if it weren’t for this human walking by. It’ll break down but between now and then, an animal’s going to get ahold of it anyway. That’s what we are. We are an educational institution and we want to educate the public. The number one question for people coming from out of state who are a little hesitant is usually, “What’s there to do around here or where should I go?”

That’s the whole reason to circle back to the new nature center. It’s why we need that facility is because then we give them that first step into the wilderness where they’re feeling safe and comfortable. Maybe that first step turns into 1 mile, then that mile turns into a significant hike that leads to a fourteener. That progression is what we’re excited about.

How can people find out more about Wild Bear?

We have a web presence it’s WildBear.org . All of the information of our programs and our mission and our staff. There’s a little bit of teaser video on there of the new nature center. Our history is on there as well. You can find us on Facebook , Wild Bear Nature Center. We’re on Instagram , also Wild Bear Nature Center. We don’t utilize Twitter too much. We’re at all, I should say.

If people want to sign up for our regular newsletters, there’s a way to do that on our website as well. There are plenty of volunteer opportunities. We’re open seven days a week, so there are ways to get involved inside the nature center, community outreach. We’re always looking for new board members. There are a plethora of ways to be involved in Wild Bear. We always say, “Once a Wild Bear, always a Wild Bear.”

I would encourage anyone coming through the Nederland area to look for the train and the carousel of happiness and Wild Bear Center is right there next to those two very obvious landmarks. They’re right in the middle of the town. I can’t believe it’s been almost an hour. This has been such a fun conversation.

I’ve enjoyed learning more about Wild Bear. I liked to end all my shows with action. I love having conversations and talking with people but I ultimately want to inspire people to get out and do something. If our audience read our conversation and were wondering what they could do to be a better steward of the planet, what would you recommend that they do?

I always go back to the three Rs, reduce, reuse, recycle. The first thing, reduce, meaning hyper-consumerism is rampant in our world and think about reducing the amount of stuff that you feel like you need to buy, reusing things. Find a second purpose for the plastic bag that was given to you from the grocery store. In our maker’s space, we love reusing toilet paper rolls for kids’ crafts, those types of things and recycling what you can. As I’ve been working at Wild Bear, another action, composting what you can, reduces methane gases in the atmosphere tremendously.

One thing that I always do, no matter where I am, whether it’s in Nederland or Boulder or back visiting my family in Ohio, when I see trash on the ground, I pick it up. My mom always taught me somebody’s got to pick it up. If you’re walking past it and you have the ability to pick it up and dispose of it in the proper way, that goes a long way. Those would be my pieces of advice.

I agree. I love it. Thanks so much for being on the show, Mike. It w as great talking with you. I’m excited to see where you guys head with Wild Bear. I will make sure I say hi at the Farmer’s Market.

Thanks so much, Stu. It was great. My first show experience was excellent.

I’m glad you had fun.

I’ll shoot over some stuff to you here in a little bit.

Sounds good. Talk to you soon.

Thanks. Take care.

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There you have it, another great episode of the show. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. You can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you’re there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you’d like to read-to-back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That’s it. I’ll be back for another great episode of the show.

Important Links:

About Mike Reichert

Experienced Non-profit Director. Passion for the environment and for making positive change. Skilled in accounting, grassroots fundraising, management, non-profit development, and marketing. Strong community and social services professional with a Master of Arts focused in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.

Episode 58: Sharing your Passion With A Wider Audience: PR and nonprofit outreach with Maya Brook From Slow Food Denver

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:29:04 GMT

Are you crafting a conversation with all of your audiences?

On this episode of Relish This, I talked with Maya Brook , the Executive Director of Slow Food Denver, an organization that helps educate people about their food sources and encourages them to seek out food that is produced using sustainable practices and is available to everyone.

Their motto is “We believe in food that is good, clean, and fair for all.”

During our conversation, we discussed the different avenues that Slow Food has created to support and promote its mission including its kids program, Little Sprouts, that helps children learn how to cook and creates a passion for good food at an early age.

We also discussed Maya’s background in PR and how organizations can do a better job teeing up messaging and outreach to capture the attention of a wider audience and how to properly frame your story when sending out PR materials. The key is to ensure that you are creating the right content for the right audience in the right medium.

Finally, for those of you who are looking to move into an Executive Director role (or if you are searching for an ED), we finished our conversation about the ED hiring process and how Maya prepared herself to successfully land her new role as Executive Director of Slow Food Denver.

This was a fun episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Link:

Slow Food Denver

Action ASK:

Ask questions, grow your own food, try new things!

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Listen to the po dcast here:

Sharing your Passion With A Wider Audience: PR and nonprofit outreach with Maya Brook From Slow Food Denver

My guest is Maya Brook. She is the Executive Director for Slow Food Denver . Slow Food Denver has this great program that is encouraging people to look for good food that is fair and clean in the way that it’s grown. They want this to be available for everybody. Their programs are great. They have a program for kids. It’s called Lil’ Sprouts , where they teach kids how to cook some of these fresh foods. It’s a neat program.

Maya comes from a PR background. We talked a little bit about PR and how organizations can tee things up well to take full advantage of a PR campaign. We also talked about this executive director hiring process since she has gone through it. There’s a lot in this episode for everybody. It’s so much fun to learn her passion for good, clean and fair food. I encourage you to read it. I hope you have fun.

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Maya , how are you doing?

I’m good. How are you, Stu?

I’m doing well. It’s a beautiful day up here. I’m in the mountains of West of Denver. It’s pretty hot down the hill.

When you said beautiful day, it is pretty but it feels like 105. I don’t know what it is out there.

That’s a lot of heat to be bringing to the situation. I hope you are staying cool. I know you guys are doing some great things at Slow Food Denver. We would love to learn more about what you are up to.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be on here. I started with Slow Food Denver back in April 2021. A lot of it is brand new to me. It has been exciting to learn more about how the organization is focused internationally, nationally and locally. We focus Slow Food Denver more on the Denver Metro Area. In a nutshell, our mission is, “Good, clean and fair food for all.” That encompasses quite a lot.

We work for food that is delicious and good for everyday life, and advocate for joyful connections with food to the community in place. The clean part of the mission goes into working to protect our natural resources for future generations and also promote food that’s local, seasonal and sustainably grown. The fair part of our mission is we work to build local cooperation and global collaboration. Also, I’m advocating for the dignity of labor all the way from the field to the fork. It’s all around.

Are you tackling food deserts and things of that nature? Is that part of your mission?

Yes, we also work for that. We have a program called Lil’ Sprouts . It’s cooking classes for young children in elementary school. We try to focus on areas of Denver that might be considered food deserts and areas where access to affordable, fresh and healthy food is not that easy. With our Lil’ Sprouts Program, we are able to teach kids about all the abundance of amazing fresh fruits and vegetables. They learn how to cook with different ingredients that are available to them too.

I’m excited to hear more about that program. Are you working in the schools? Is this something that you run independently of the public school system?

We work with the schools and are also independent. Lil’ Sprouts is also available. We started it during COVID as an online option as well. For example, my son loves their online cooking classes. They do it through Zoom with different instructors and menus. They work together in an age-appropriate way. He is able to do that from home. It’s a nice way for my son and young children to connect to the food they are eating. It’s menu items that the whole family can enjoy. It’s not like teaching the kids to make mac and cheese.

Our mission is good, clean and fair food for all.

The first time my son took the class, they were learning to make bruschetta. He doesn’t even like tomatoes, but once he took the time to make it, he ate some of it. I ate a lot of it. We also focus our Lil’ Sprouts Program on the K-5. We are going into Denver Area schools. A lot of times, our weekly classes will incorporate the school garden if they have one. We are planting, harvesting and preparing the food in a seasonal cooking class. The schools we work with are not required to have a garden in order to participate. With the food desert, we want to make sure that all schools and children have access to this curriculum.

It’s getting kids excited at an early age, particularly about that preparation piece and how you can transform something that you didn’t normally think was great into something amazing by adding a little heat and spicing it up a little bit. That’s a cool program to get kids interested in at an early age.

That was part of my interest in being involved with Slow Food Denver. It’s the aspect of making sure that children know where their food comes from. They are trying it straight from the garden with fresh fruits and vegetables. Nothing is wrong with applesauce, but you still want a child to see, touch and taste the crunch of the apple and, if possible, pull the carrot from the earth and eat it. We are making that connection to our land.

Denver is pretty fortunate that there are quite a few community gardens and urban farm-type opportunities to get everyone involved in that farm-to-table approach.

That’s one of our focuses too. For example, we partner with We Tend to Grow. We work at Civic Center Park together to create volunteer days with our volunteers. We Tend to Grow is fun. We do it all summer long every other Thursday. We are able to talk, laugh together and harvest good food. Through Grow Local Colorado’s garden beds at the Civic Center Park, then we are able to help people who are food insecure in our own community and have more access to the fresh local produce. We are making sure that the same wonderful, fresh food goes to everyone.

I like that you are bringing multiple agencies with similar goals together to supercharge those results that you are trying to achieve. How did those relationships develop? I know that sometimes nonprofit leaders and organizations have a tendency to combat those agreements or arrangements. How did some of those partnerships come together?

It comes back to the vision of Slow Food in general. All of the Slow Food is that we are helping to cultivate community and connection. In order to cultivate community and connection and help provide food that’s good for people who grow it, the planet, and the people who eat it, you need to be working with other organizations.

I like that it’s a component of your core values in your mission. It allows for that at the onset. It’s not a competitive piece. It’s, “How can we all do more good here in this space?”

We want to collaborate and work together. We reached out to organizations all over the Denver Metro Area. In turn, so many reached out to us. It’s a wonderful thing to see.

I noticed on the site that you have several stakeholder areas that you talk about in terms of people being able to get involved. You are a nonprofit. Donations are a key component of your revenue stream. You also have opportunities for volunteers and interns to join the program. What are you doing to get the word out for all of those different action items?

In the past, Slow Food Denver has not done a ton of PR outreach with communities. That’s one thing that I’m going to be focusing on because we do need to get the word out more about all the wonderful things that we do and how people can get involved, work with us and help us. We do have events every year. That helps get the word out.

We are having an event in the summer and planning a fall dinner event. In those types of events, people bring friends and then the friends are interested. That helps spread the word in our volunteer events too. We often see that somebody will come to one of our gardening volunteer opportunities and then they bring a friend. It builds a little bit with word of mouth too. That’s certainly one of the things we need to focus on and the challenge we have.

Have you engaged with a PR firm? Are you trying to handle that in-house? What are your plans on that piece of the pie?

My background is in Journalism and Public Relations. That was one of the items that were discussed during the hiring process. They are excited that I have that background. That’s going to be something that I can handle and focus on.

I won’t provide any recommendations in that area for you since you certainly have that covered. Could you share some ideas or things that other nonprofit leaders might want to avoid as they are trying to embark on a PR campaign?

There’s one thing because I was on the journalism side. Remember that journalists are people too and approach them individually. Being on the other side, you can tell when it’s this mass press release that is sent to 100 people. Instead, I found it to be successful in having a specific email. Make sure that you have read the editor and reporters’ work so you can say, “For your column on X, Y, Z, this would be perfect.” It goes such a long way if you can be specific with them that they know that you read their work or paper.

A good old-fashioned phone call is so successful. We forget that sometimes with all of our emails. It’s amazing what a phone call can do as well. The other piece is inviting the media out. If you are a nonprofit that does work locally, invite the media out so that they can see firsthand what you do. You don’t need to sell the story. When they see it firsthand, they will do all the selling and talking that you need to for them to be there and witness the change that’s happening.

I love that as advice. We all too often feel like we have to pitch something. Maybe it’s easier to get someone out there to check it out for themselves. That’s a fantastic insight there. Any other tips that you would have for an agency or organization that’s looking to try and get their story out into the press?

Whether we like it or not, social media is here. Especially depending on who your target audience is, it’s important. We are excited we brought on a new communications coordinator. She is pretty new out of college. The reason I’m excited about that is that she has all these different ideas and insights into social media that I don’t have and be a little older.

She right away said, “We need to join TikTok. We need to be doing Reels.” She came up with these ideas I wasn’t thinking of. It’s great to listen to the younger generation when it comes to social media. Things that I have noticed myself that’s great is interactive social media. It’s having contests, whether it’s a poetry contest or giveaway of some merchandise you might have or tickets to an event. Creating a community on social media is important too.

I know that’s an area that a lot of us who didn’t grow up with social media are a little challenged to figure out, particularly as new platforms keep rolling in. Depending upon who your audience is, being involved in those more youthful social media channels could be important. As you guys are engaging a much younger audience in the Lil’ Sprouts Program, making sure that they have a place that they feel comfortable going to access that social media stuff is important.

We have such a big mission of good, clean and fair food for all. It’s important for us to look at the audience and make sure there’s a certain audience who is going to be interested in coming to a farm dinner and excited about volunteering in the gardens. Some audiences are going to be much more excited to be conversing with us on social media in that aspect. It’s important for us to stay aware and build for each audience because there are so many in the Denver Metro Area.

Everyone has their own way of getting and sharing information. Being a part of as many of those that you can handle is key. When you are engaging volunteers, are you finding that email is one of the better ways to get engaged? How are you bringing people into your programs on a volunteer basis?

One neat thing is even though Slow Food Denver is a small organization because it’s part of Slow Food USA and Slow Food International , people do come to us a lot, and that’s one lucky thing. We have people who might move here. They were involved with a different Slow Food in a different city and then they reached out to us. They have lived abroad. They come back, find they are in Denver and look us up. That’s one way. That’s a fortunate situation that we had to be part of something that’s so big. The other way is people coming to events. A friend of a friend comes to an event and they get excited. Maybe somebody’s child takes a Lil’ Sprouts class at their school. There are all these different channels and ways that we tend to reach people.

We work on supporting anti-racist slow food community and society.

The multi-channel approach is super effective. Social media, as it started, everyone was on Myspace and then that went by the wayside. If you have put all of your proverbial eggs in one basket there, you can get into trouble. Creating a variety of ways for people to engage is important. Keeping in mind, you need to be able to do those things well. That is one of the balancing acts that is a big challenge for any organization out there.

I’m new to Slow Food Denver. What they are saying is that their biggest challenge is, “How can we better engage the community that they do have a community?” We would like to expand it. It’s better to engage the community we have and share our calls to action because our mission is so broad.

Are donations and grants your primary revenue streams? Do you have other mechanisms by which you get revenue into your programs?

It’s mostly donations and grants. Grants are big for us. Donations, whether it’s individual donations around Colorado Gives Day, we have events and donations there. Also, in Lil’ Sprouts, we offer a ton of scholarships for our Lil’ Sprouts. Any school that requests scholarships, we donate all of our services and time. In other school districts with families who are able to afford our program, they do pay for it. That is also partly a revenue-generating stream.

You mentioned that you were able to transition that from exclusively in-person to more of a virtual scenario. It sounds like you are going back to either a blend or at least partial in-person.

A blend seems to be a good way to do it because we have people who are busy parents like me. Honestly, an online class is easier for some people. We saw that it works. We are going to keep up with that. There are also a lot of people who want to be back in person. We are also going to honor that as well and do a mix. In the fall, we have in-person classes at schools again. That will be nice.

The Slow Food organization is worldwide. I’m thinking about the Lil’ Sprouts Program in particular. Scaling to be able to provide to a worldwide audience might not necessarily be part of your mission or plan as you don’t want to stomp on other Slow Food organizations. Do you feel like the move to online has enabled you to grow in the state? Are there other Slow Food divisions or entities that are operated elsewhere in the state?

We still try to be heavily Denver Metro Area-focused. For example, there’s Slow Food Boulder . There are a couple of Slow Foods down the South Area too. Colorado is pretty well covered, which is amazing. I haven’t heard about a lot of collaboration with Lil’ Sprouts in other areas. That’s a great idea. I’m going to bring that up to our board because I love that.

We have spoken with a number of organizations on the show who had a very in-person approach to the way that they interacted with the general public. Some of them have done a remarkable job, both transitioning and achieving that awareness that they got. This enabled them to scale rapidly and reach audiences that they might not normally be able to reach.

For example, one of my guests on the show is part of an organization. They instruct teachers on how to better engage and be better teachers. In the past, they had been brought in by school districts to do those trainings in person. A lot of the time, the cost associated with that was so high that they weren’t able to go to more rural areas. With the pandemic, they quickly shifted to virtual.

They were doing these trainings virtually to the same school districts that they normally didn’t. They said, “This is saving us a ton of money because we don’t have to send anyone there. We can now open this up to a lot more people based upon the fact that we can do it virtually and keep the costs down.” It was a remarkable shift. I could see how you could increase your visibility and benefit statewide, for example, by being able to do some of these things virtually.

We were able to expand who we reached with our Lil’ Sprouts Program. We found quite a lot of moms who were looking for something during COVID, for example. It was a different audience than we have worked with in the past. That was exciting because before, it was more heavily focused on classrooms. There were some afterschool programs too. It was neat to see that we were able to be reaching more people. We could keep going with that and then expand further.

The one neat thing is I know of one young student in particular that the mother had lived in Denver. They had since moved to Kansas, but she still was receiving our emails. She was still able to have her son do the Lil’ Sprouts Program that he loves so much in person. Now, he is virtual in Kansas. We weren’t specifically trying to do that, but that was a neat story. I know the mom had told me she was so thrilled that he was still able to be in Lil’ Sprouts.

Do you have any similar programs for adults?

We don’t but it’s something that has been discussed. I would love that. Over the years, there has been a one-off cooking class here and there but not a specific program. We need to have a Big Sprouts cooking class with a much better name. We had talked about that. Some of it is the capacity with staff. Maybe it’s down the road because I could see that being a popular thing.

We were chatting a bit about the opportunities to pivot into some other service lines or the ability to get revenue through maybe adult classes or things of that nature. It sounds like that’s something you have considered. It might be something that we can look forward to in the future.

I was brought on in late April and then our communications coordinator in June 2021. There have been a lot of staff changes. We are growing. I love the idea once we all get caught up to expand. I know that we have talked about it before. I would sign up. It would be fun.

What events do you put on? What does a Slow Food Denver event look like?

With COVID, we had one virtual event in the fall of 2020. Instead of doing an in-person dinner, we had people pick up their dinner. It’s similar to some other organizations. That was successful. Part of Slow Food is connecting with other people through food. We were missing that. The first event was on June 21 in-person to show everybody our new office space at McGregor Square, mix and mingle again, and enjoy slow wine.

There’s a bunch of wine that has been classified as slow wine. We have people make sure that it’s certified, sustainable, fair for the farmers who grow it and clean. We have a whole book on Slow Wine . People are able to enjoy slow wine and see our new space at McGregor Square. In September 2021, it was farm dinner. We are eating fresh food right from the farm with local chefs. We try to focus on good food for our events.

I had never heard of slow wine before. Tell me a little bit more about that.

It’s almost like a certification program through Slow Food. It’s the same idea. Slow Food believes that wine, like food, has to be good, clean and fair for all. Rather than tasting wine and saying if it’s good, it needs to also be clean and fair for farmers all the way through and sustainably grown.

When you mentioned slow, clean and fair, tell us a little more about the fair piece. What is Slow Food Denver doing in that arena? How do you get that message out there to farmers or even workers who might want to find a place to work that is aligned with your practices?

Mostly what we try to do is build local cooperation and then also global collaboration while respecting workers’ rights and laws. We are also advocating for the dignity of labor from field to fork. It depends on what bills are up, where you are living and how we are able to support that. It varies from year to year. It’s also looking at the food that is grown, farmers, restaurants and local CSA. You mentioned you were a member of a CSA. It’s looking towards that, knowing where your food comes from and helping advocate that to our members.

You can’t lobby because you are a 501(c)(3). Do you have action items in terms of your membership to support certain bills that are going through their local governments to rally support for things that you like and maybe have the members express their concern for things that aren’t aligned?

When communities can grow their own food, when they have access to fresh and healthy food, it also means a stronger, healthier, happier community.

On our social media, even if it’s not just local Colorado, we will post different action items for our followers. Slow Food International and Slow Food USA will come out with different stances on different items and ways that you can support, whether it’s signing something. Whatever those types of action items are, we always share them with our members.

What are some of the ways that you stay in touch with your membership? Is it email or social? Are there any other ways that you found are particularly effective in getting people to take action or donate more?

We have such a big mission to fulfill. We have to be clear about what we do, how we do it and why people should get involved in a way that is easy for everybody to understand. It’s such a broad mission through our events. Whether it’s in-person events, like dinners, wine events or having people come out to the garden with us, we try to explain what good food is. Farmers need to have the support necessary to pay living wages and offer employees benefits. They need to be empowered with knowledge and resource to choose healthy soil and utilize practices that place emphasis on long-term results versus short-term productivity sustainable farming.

We are explaining that to people so that we create members, volunteers and supporters who understand where their food comes from and why it’s important. If you go and buy organic food, it stops there. You are not focusing on local or understanding beyond, “It tastes good and it’s organic, but why is sustainable and local food important?” We try to build those connections through our events.

There are many moving parts and components to the food ecosystem. Everything from how seeds are sourced to how they are fertilized, I don’t think most of us probably think and consider the soil as part of that process and then what fair labor practice is being put in place. You are starting to see a lot more fair-trade stuff. Organic is a term that everyone is very familiar with at this point. It’s great to see how you are tackling that entire production system all the way from the seed to the end-user in terms of the person that it’s going to feed.

It’s about becoming more aware of what you are eating, why it’s important and from everything to our environment to the people who grow it, to your own health, eating it.

Are there parts of that system that are more challenging to address than others? I know cost tends to be one of the factors, particularly when we spoke a bit about food deserts where there’s no access to either fresh or food sources that meet the Slow Food criteria. What are some of those other challenges that you see that disrupt that system?

It’s making sure that it’s accessible to everybody. Organic isn’t this label that is a privileged type of label or type of food to get. It’s beyond organic. It’s sustainable and local. It doesn’t need to have the organic seal, but it’s focusing on food that is sustainable and those other people who might not even think that they can access it in an affordable way actually can.

Part of that too is our partnership with Grow Local Colorado . We are trying to help them with our group of volunteers to promote local food, community and economy. For example, Grow Local Colorado has eleven gardens throughout Denver. They are fully volunteer-driven. We value our partnership with them. They deliver produce to over a dozen organizations that serve those in need. That goes to our mission of fresh and healthy food for all.

It’s collaborating with people who are at least aligned in order to spread that effect to reach as many people as possible.

There’s one thing that you see too. When communities can grow their own food, when they have access to fresh and healthy food, it also means a stronger, healthier and happier community.

We go to the Nederland Farmers Market. That’s where we pick up our CSA. In years past, they have held it away from town. It’s still pretty much in town, but it’s out by the reservoir. They have moved it right downtown. It’s amazing to see the engagement and community aspect that comes into this. Certainly, there’s more stuff there than food.

People are selling candles. There’s usually a band and people talking about organization stuff. The fact that food is bringing all of these people together and seeing that happen in this smaller space right in the middle of this community has been fun to see. Food does start those conversations and bring people together. It’s cool how you guys are doing that.

The farmer’s markets are so amazing. I love that the pickup for CSA is a more central location because you are right. Where I pick up my CSA is in this parking lot. Only people who are picking up their CSA are going to see it. That’s a nice model.

They are tying all that stuff together. It’s effective and fun to see. People are there with their dogs and food trucks. What are some of the ways that you are hoping to expand your program? You are a new ED. You probably have some big ambitious goals here over the next couple of years. What are some of the things that are on tap for Slow Food Denver upcoming?

It goes back to our biggest challenge being, “How can we better engage our community and clearly share our calls-to-action around our very broad mission?” For me, it means getting the word out more. It’s more PR and focused on the local media, knowing who we are and that we are around. More events and consistent communication with the donors that we have are going to be important. It’s more face-to-face.

Slow Food Denver has been doing a great job at this already with partnerships, but you can always grow and reach more people and communities. Slow Food USA created its equity, inclusion and justice manifesto. It was right around the Black Lives Matter that was happening in May or June of 2020. They made a commitment, not just Slow Food Denver but all of Slow Food USA, to have a commitment to equity, inclusion and justice.

That’s another goal that we have as an organization and me as an Executive Director of Slow Food Denver as well. It’s taking the time to listen, learn and reflect, “What are the best steps towards action moving forward? How can we continue to create a good, clean and fair food system for all?” Start in our own community and work on supporting the anti-racist Slow Food community and society. That’s also a big mission when you think about that. It’s looking and understanding the role that we bring to racial equity and how we can break that cycle that has allowed a lot of racism to live within our food system.

It’s interesting how many places that negativity can affect and get in there. That’s great that you have made that part of the international mission to focus on that and be able to start to improve the way that we all interact with one another.

Listening and learning are important from the communities that are affected themselves to ask the leaders within the community what they need and how we can work together. It’s making an effort to make sure that the partnerships that we have are broad. We are not just working with one type of organization, but we are out in the community and looking at all areas of the Denver Metro Area.

It’s interesting how many times we tend to jump to conclusions that we have a solution. One of my guests does work in Haiti post the earthquake that happened. What his organization does is do research, get on the ground and spend time with the people in the community to get an understanding of what the needs are as opposed to going in with the assumption that they know what the needs are.

One of the things that he used to see was sending tons of bottles of water or something to someplace. People get pretty excited about that. They think this is something that would be helpful, but if it’s not needed, then that goes to waste. It can contribute to additional challenges if you have got all this stuff in the way of the things that you need. It’s listening and taking the time to ask, “What is it that you need?” It’s making sure that you are talking to everyone to get a good understanding of that as opposed to one person who has declared themselves the leader of the pack. Taking that one extra step to help you can be valuable.

We try to focus on surveys and asking the parents and students at the schools that we work with lots of questions after our Lil’ Sprouts Program, “What worked? What didn’t? What can we improve?” We always get wonderful ideas. On a very small level is our way of asking and not just telling. Even with new menu items, we want to respect different cultures and the food.

When the children are cooking meals that are important to their own culture, it’s how important that is for them rather than our instructors coming up with menus that they are familiar with. It’s within different cultures and menu items that we might not personally have ever heard of. It’s making sure that we are open, listening and communicating that.

From getting the children’s hands dirty from tasting food right from the earth, it’s pretty neat to see.

That’s one of the things I love about the CSA stuff. Back to that piece, you are always getting something new that you have never even heard of before. We’ve got garlic scapes. I have never even seen this before. I was like, “What do we do with this?”

Kohlrabi was in our CSA. I had to look it up and even understand what it was. It reminds me of children when I show my kids something they are not familiar with, a new vegetable or fruit. That was how I felt when I saw that kohlrabi. I’m like, “What is this? I don’t know what this is.” I was tempted to put them in the compost. I’m doing my research and figuring it out. It’s the same with thinking about that aspect with my children too, like giving them time to taste it. Maybe they are more comfortable if you put a little olive oil and salt on their pumpers because it brings out the flavor more. It’s being patient with children too when you remember that a lot of this food for them is granted.

We take that for granted as adults. I look back and think about all the things that I used to dislike. Part of it was that I grew up in the ’70s. That was an era where a lot of things were being delivered canned because that was how you did things. I remember very distinctly disliking tomatoes. Beets are another one. As an adult, I loved both of those things. It was probably weird. I’m sure my tastes changed as I grew older.

Kohlrabi is a great example because I remember my wife and I got a CSA that had that in it. We were like, “What is this thing?” She looked it up, found out a bunch of different ways to cook it and made something delicious out of it. It’s always fun. Encouraging and engaging people to be able to explore food is such a powerful tool. It’s great to see how you are doing that.

It’s a big challenge, our mission of good, clean and fair food for all. When you take it in your local community step-by-step and audience-to-audience in different ways for people to get involved, you see the joy on volunteers’ faces after you spend a day harvesting vegetables. They know that it’s going to go towards communities that might not have access to fresh fruit and veggies. We try to end a lot of our volunteer days with a simple salad brunch type of event afterward. It’s that connection between food and people. The joy that people have from getting their hands dirty and tasting food right from the earth is pretty neat to see. Little children all the way to older adults, it’s that common joy of food.

It’s also good to demonstrate how the food that we get in the supermarket, be it organic or not, is very curated in terms of its look and feel. You most likely won’t find a two-legged carrot in the supermarket, but in your garden, you are probably going to see some of that stuff and demonstrate how different things can be and still be good.

I still remember I’m always buying baby carrots. They are dipped in bleach, even the organic ones. They have no flavor. When you grow carrots or get them with the stems on from your farmer’s market or CSA, they are sweet and delicious. My kids pick them. They don’t wash them off. They dust off some of the dirt and dive right in. They love the carrots. If you gave them a baby carrot, they might eat one. Even from a young age, you can taste that difference. What I was drawn to by Slow Food Denver is how they want everybody to be able to have that fresh, amazing carrot. It’s not just going to be a focus on a privileged thing to have fresh food access.

I want to ask one more quick question about the process and your experiences being hired as an Executive Director. I know that there are a lot of nonprofits out there that are looking for people to fill those roles. I’m on the board of an organization that’s looking for an ED. My understanding is it’s a little tough out there. There are not a lot of people who are either ready or available to fill those roles. What were some of the things that, as a hire that you might recommend to nonprofits who are looking for a new executive director?

For me, the work has to be part of the draw. Making sure as you are in your search that it’s somebody who has a passion for your cause is going to go a long way. Also, it’s being able to pivot if you need. Slow Food Denver, for a little while, was focused on finding a full-time executive director and then changed their mind when they saw that there were difficulties. They thought, “If we make this into a part-time position and then can also hire a coordinator at the same time, we would still be getting everything that we need, but it would be from two people instead of one.”

For Slow Food Denver, it has worked out well in having people. I’m so happy to have a coordinator to collaborate and work with. It brings more vision and eyes to the organization. That was a neat way that Slow Food Denver was able to pivot. It also opened the doors for somebody like me. I also have three young children. For me, part-time was what I was focused on. The mission is connecting and making sure. You could get somebody that had a passion for something completely different, but if they don’t have a passion for the work that you do, it might end up feeling more like a job rather than working on something that gives meaning to you.

I had been an Executive Director be fore this for an organization that worked with children with cleft lip and palate. Before that, it’s with children on education in Africa. For me, the connection has always been a passion that I have had for organizations that work with children. It makes me feel like my job is not just a job, but I’m making some very small difference in the world. Having an organization, make sure that they find somebody with that passion and drive.

It’s a cultural fit and mission fit. Be flexible and think outside of the box in terms of what you are looking for. That should open things up a little bit more. How can people find out more about Slow Food Denver?

We want people to become members of Slow Food Denver and support the work we are doing to transform the food system. One of the best ways to get involved in starting with would be to visit our website, SlowFoodDenver.org . On our website, you will see events coming up and different opportunities to volunteer and get involved. Also, the Lil’ Sprouts Program will be up there and all of our social media links, which are very active. We are on there every day. There are lots of ways to see.

People need to get out there, cook and eat with friends and family. Try growing your own food. Even if you are in a tiny little apartment, you could get a very small little container tomato plant or grow some fresh basil or herbs. It’s supporting restaurants that are supporting local farmers. Ask questions about where your food is coming from.

Normally, I ask my guests at the end of the show. I say, “I love having conversations and talking about things. If they were to have the audience do one thing after reading, what would it be?” You beat me to the punch there. It’s like, “Grow your own food and ask questions.”

The thing with Slow Food Denver is that our mission is not just about Slow Food Denver. It’s this wide array of support. That’s why I had to get that in there about our farmers, restaurants and food systems.

I love that you beat me to the punch on that action item. Thank you so much, Maya, for being on the show. I had a great time talking with you. I’m very appreciative of you helping stay patient during our technical challenges. I look forward to hearing more about how Slow Food Denver is changing the way that people approach their relationship to food.

Thank you so much, Stu, for having us on. I’m honored I was able to tell more people about Slow Food Denver.

Important Links:

About Maya Brook

Experienced Executive Director with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit industry. Strong business development professional skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Public Relations, Event Management, Editing, and Journalism.

Episode 59: Manage And Fuel Your Organization’s Growth With Goodworld Co-founder Richie Kendall

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:04:30 GMT

My guest today is Richie Kendall, the co-founder of Goodworld, an AMAZING tech stack that helps organizations (both nonprofit and for-profit) manage and fuel their growth. Richie’s platform combines many great features in one platform, making it easier to coordinate your outreach for maximum effect.

In my opinion, nonprofit organizations could especially benefit from using Goodworld to have all of their events, social giving, and rounding up campaigns all in one easy-to-view place. This would help to reduce costs and cut down on time wasted learning multiple platforms. Richie and I had a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it.

Link:

Good World Now

Action Ask:

Educate yourself on where the world is moving. Encourage your leadership and workforce to engage in ritualistic good to provide the time and space, perks and incentives to have a stronger connection.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Manage And Fuel Your Organization’s Growth With Goodworld Co-founder Richie Kendall

My guest is Richie Kendall. He is one of the cofounders of a cool organization that has this tech stack for nonprofits and purpose-driven for-profits. It’s called Goodworld . You should definitely check it out. This episode is packed with some cool information. They built this platform to try and help nonprofits solve a couple of problems. One is juggling platforms and having so many tools that your costs are through the roof. The time that it takes to learn and understand how to use all those tools is high.

Also, your data in that situation is all over the place. Goodworld helps solve those problems. This is a great episode for both purpose-driven companies looking to expand their CSR as well as nonprofits. It’s looking to bring all of those activities, events, social giving, and rounding up under a single roof. This is the episode for you. I hope you enjoy it. Richie is great. Here we go.

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Thanks for joining me, Richie .

Thanks for having me, Stu.

I’m excited to hear more about what you are up to over there at Goodworld. It sounds like you have some cool things going on with essentially a tech stack.

We fancy ourselves a social impact operating system, but we got started as an app that turned into an all-in-one fundraising toolset.

You work with nonprofits. I know that you have a for-profit component to your systems as well. Why don’t you run us through what your systems help people achieve?

I will back up a little bit further and give the windup on how I worked into this space and how we got to be doing what we are doing. I grew up in Colorado as a studio artist. I got into digital pretty early on. I was taking on some clients as early as high school and doing things like graphic design and identity work. Nonprofits became my first tranche of early partners. I found a heart for working with nonprofits because of all of the amazing stories and work that they were doing. As someone who lost my father to cancer very early, I was confronted with those existential questions as young as 6 and 7 years old. I always pursued a life of purpose.

In a changing landscape, the technology accelerating at an extreme pace and sometimes it’s hard to really see the forest through the trees.

When I started a film career after college, about eight years after editing, writing, and producing, I had been moonlighting for these nonprofits doing websites and logos. After that career, I decided, “Why not go all-in on my nonprofit work, take everything I have learned, deliver that as a form of visual storytelling expertise consulting, and build up a client list?” After about a year in with my new creative agency called Cheerful Inc, I bumped into someone who became my business partner who had started the first technology that lets you round up the change on your purchases for charities.

We decided to go in together and build the company out as Cheerful Giving. We white-labeled that technology for the nonprofit sector and got some pretty great clients and brands going within the first two years. We ran a B2B sales model selling that technology into the nonprofit space. By the end of 2019, we were an all-in-one fundraising solution for the nonprofit sector. We were acquired by Goodworld which I’m the Cofounder and Chief Experience Officer.

That’s an interesting story. I’m very sorry to hear that you lost your father at a young age. I know that is hard enough when people are older. I want to acknowledge that. That must have been a real challenge.

The strength of my mother translated into the strength of a family. We pushed through. We may be all the better for it.

I commend you for taking that experience and turning it into something incredibly positive. It sounds cool what you have built. Tell me a little bit about the types of nonprofits that your systems tend to work best for.

We do work with nonprofits of all shapes and sizes, but the size depends on the partnership in some ways. For some of our larger nonprofit partners like American Cancer Society, Amnesty International, YMCAs, and things like that, it’s usually more on the innovation side. Not only were we the first-mover in creating an app and platform that lets you round up the change on your purchases, but we were also the inventor of a tool called #donate. That lets an individual on Facebook and Twitter simply type the word #donate into a comment field. When you do that, that creates an instant donation. It gets the nonprofit and all of the donor information. It’s a very social pile-on way to raise funds through your social channels.

With our larger relationships, they are pretty focused on our more innovative tools that reach younger audiences. With your smaller nonprofits and even your mid-market, we act as a multichannel all-in-one fundraising toolset that helps them consolidate their platforms, get all of their data into one place, streamline their operations, and run predictable and successful events, peer-to-peer fundraising, team fundraising and more.

I’m on the board of a couple of nonprofits. There’s always a struggle with what tools to put into place and how to make sure that they are focused on those things that matter the most. One of the things that I have seen happen is this challenge with juggling so many different tools that not only do your costs go up quite significantly, but you also have to learn all of these different systems. I could see how having everything under one roof would be a real benefit to a lot of nonprofits out there.

We feel for those nonprofits, especially in a changing landscape where not only is the technology accelerating at an extreme pace, but there’s a glut of information, consultants, and different toolsets out there. Sometimes, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. I likened it to preparing good meals. It’s not that you don’t have more than one tool or ingredient. That’s all very important, but having different platforms is like trying to cook out of multiple kitchens simultaneously. If we can get all of the right ingredients in the right kitchen with the right vision, then that’s how you are going to scale your efforts most effectively.

I love that analogy. That paints a pretty compelling picture. If you had to prepare the spaghetti in one kitchen and you are cooking the sauce in some completely different kitchen, that’s not particularly efficient.

Nonprofits, like for-profit businesses, are in the business of optimizing their business model. They need to stay focused on their mission and programs. They can’t be over-exercising themselves on technology and management.

I’m curious to hear a little bit more about the #donate platform or program. How does that work?

It’s a little bit of magic. Back in 2015, we created this concept. My business partner, Gayle Pfeiffer, got to pitch Obama, who saw a huge opportunity in it right on the back of the ALS challenge. When we saw this huge social media spike, even considering how much money that campaign raised, it was less than 2% conversion on donations. We saw that as an opportunity to make the social donation processes frictionless as possible.

It was right at the beginning of the #trend. We realized, “If you could create a hashtag that would enable someone to trigger a donation automatically and they wouldn’t have to complete some long online form, this could be a huge save in this space.” It was a layer that we were able to build on top of Facebook as an app.

If you can get all of the right ingredients in the right kitchen, with the right vision, that’s how you’re going to most effectively scale your efforts.

We built it on top of Twitter as well in terms of retweets. If you type #donate into Twitter, that will trigger an automatic response from the page that will provide a link to add your card the first time. Once we have your card on file, then anytime you type #donate moving forward, it will simply trigger a donation of the amount you include. #donate$100 will draw right from your card.

If I’m responding to Save the Children’s post on Facebook, for example, and I type #donate$100, will it kick off a donation of that amount to that organization?

That’s correct. You will get a receipt right in your inbox. Save the Children will not be subject to the data hole that Facebook is. They will get your information about your donation in real-time.

That seems like a cool system. You said it works on Facebook and Twitter.

Since Instagram doesn’t include any linking in the platform, we have a Swipe Up on Instagram, but it’s not quite as magical as the #donate.

A lot of people out there will be excited to learn more about that system. Do they need to sign up with you, the nonprofits themselves, or it just works?

It’s very easy. You go to GoodworldNow.com and enroll with us. With a couple of clicks, have your Facebook and Twitter managers connect Facebook and Twitter. Now, your social feeds have those magic powers.

I would encourage people out there to check that out, particularly those that have a solid follower base on those two platforms. That seems amazing.

Animal rights, welfare shelters and rescues do particularly well. As you can imagine, cute animal pictures go a long way. It’s powerful how much funds you can raise with more emergent relief needs.

When people are paying particularly strong attention to what is going on out there, I could see that being a real benefit to drive donations during those catastrophes or other types of urgent events.

The cool thing is that the influencers can also link their accounts to us. You have some powerful voices in your corner. Having your influencers link up to us, anyone can type or retweet #donate to that influencer account and it will go straight to your fund.

If an influencer is connected with a particular charity and they connect their account, then that charity is the beneficiary of the #donate platform. That’s some creative thinking. I’m excited to see where you are going with that because that’s some good stuff. Tell us a little bit more, particularly about some of the other technologies that are associated with the Goodworld platform.

Roundups are a great place to start because that’s where I got my start in the technology sector. I had been working with these nonprofits and understanding some of their pain points operationally. I was servicing them from a creative point of view. What I was learning is that there was this shift happening in the way that donors are engaging with philanthropy in general. I got the bug for helping crack that nut in understanding, “How can we get younger people, Millennials and Gen Z, involved in causes?”

This was around the time that some of the investing and savings tools began to emerge. The Keep the Change Bank of America platform lets wrap up your transactions for your savings accounts. You get this whole slew of Acorns for investing, Cash App, Robinhood and now the whole ecosystem of investing tools out there. We thought, “If you can do this for investing and savings, why not be able to support a cause you care about?”

With a couple of third parties, we use our Stripe payment processor for payment processing and a platform called Plaid , which lets you link into well over 9,600 financial institutions across the country. We were able to allow donors to track their everyday purchases and automatically round up every purchase they make for a charity. Roundups are a mainstay for us. We are seeing a lot of applications, not only in the nonprofit sector but also it’s being used by businesses and their employees to create giveback cards and perks when you buy lunch or make a business transaction.

What is so powerful about this is it’s a recurring revenue stream with a very low barrier to entry. If you round up a little bit of change every day, it makes a big difference and up to $20 a month in spare change on your transactions. If 100 people are rounding up their spare change, that’s $20,000 a year in recurring revenue. That’s a game-changer for small nonprofits.

In a way, brands are becoming more human, and at the same time, humans are becoming more like brands.

Do nonprofits that want to participate in the roundups program is a separate engagement? Does that come with all the other great tools that you provide with your services? How do people get engaged with that platform and program?

The beauty of our offering is we keep it very simple. We have the entire base platform completely free for nonprofits. There are no upfront costs. If you want to leverage any of our tools, aside from a couple of special tools and support levels, it’s free. All we do is encourage all donors to tip when they are completing their transactions or signing up for recurring revenue. A nonprofit of any shape and size can get access to a full-donor CRM, roundups, #donate events, auctions, peer-to-peer donations and more, all for no upfront costs.

What is your revenue model? Is it purely tip-based in terms of people who are engaging with that nonprofit?

Our free tier is fully tip-driven. If a nonprofit prefers to have what we call a fully-branded platform that is more of an insulated database, not a part of our shared free ecosystem, then that starts at $99 a month for the whole base of tools. You are giving pages, forms, spare change and a few others.

People are fairly familiar with the AmazonSmile program, which donates a percentage of each transaction. Rounding up is something that can be a lot more powerful in a lot of ways because of how that works from a mentality standpoint. A lot of times, it could be a bigger percentage than even what AmazonSmile is doing. It’s cool that you have that as an option for nonprofits for people to take advantage of.

I appreciate you identifying that. We are less in the business of creating frill streams. We are putting cutting-edge tools and technologies that are higher retention, higher engagement, and more usable in the hands of nonprofits as a part of their primary toolset so that they are not just signing up for a million platforms and seeing the money trickle in without the insights. That’s why we want to get them a world-class stack so that they can truly build out an engaged community rather than stretching themselves thin across a whole variety of tools.

What were the biggest challenges that you saw in the nonprofit space that your technology sought to fix when you first started building that out?

The first thing we identified when working with nonprofits is they have too many platforms and their data is all over the place. The only way that you are going to be able to cultivate a community is by creating a cohesive message and communication strategy and also offering a value proposition in a way that feels fresh that communicates your mission and is not just a banker’s errand.

By bringing all the tools into one place, we are truly empowering development directors, associate directors, and even database managers to identify the highest-value prospects and deliver triggered content at giving levels where people are expecting it. I’m not going to say gone are the days of direct mailing or anything like that. Those are still quite strong streams for that Gen X and older audience, but younger people don’t respond to those channels. They are looking for mobile-forward experiences, creative auctions, events, and virtual experiences in the light that are going to meet them more where they are.

I love that you brought that up because one of the things that we have seen comes through some research that an organization called NextAfter has done. Tim was on the show. They do some amazing things with data. One of the things that they have seen is one of the reasons email continues to be so effective is because the main donor base continues to be Boomers. They have money earmarked for donation-based activities. They are hoping to make a difference as they are entering retirement in that phase of their lives.

Having a platform, program, and system in place that enables you to continue to do those activities and show up very strongly with that demographic of Gen X-ers and Boomers but also start to play effectively in those younger generations’ playgrounds and where they show up is a great way to diversify your income streams.

I believe what it also will do is to help organizations that have a long-term plan and focus be able to engage with those younger audiences and keep them as donors and engaged volunteers for the rest of their lives. Recognizing that the younger generations interact vastly differently and coming up with a solution for that is such a strong play for many nonprofits.

The train has left the station. It’s not that you can’t catch it. We truly are in a moment of a generational transformation in the way individuals interact with not only causes but technologies on the whole. That window of capturing younger audiences is closing. If you don’t make a move towards digital and understanding the landscape there, then you run the risk of a cliff ten years away, where you won’t have an audience that knows who you are and what you are doing.

It’s interesting that you mentioned that, too, because I know that you have a for-profit play as well. There are many companies out there that are starting to recognize that younger generations want to engage with brands that have more of a purpose-driven component to their businesses. Tell us a little bit more about what Goodworld does for the for-profit sector as well.

We have seen all this transformation happening in the nonprofit industry. It’s somewhat a function of what is happening in the economy across the board. You have a younger generation entering the workforce. In a way, brands are becoming more human and at the same time, humans are becoming more like brands. We are putting ourselves out there with The Truman Show-style on the internet.

We believe that brands that will pioneer the future are brands that invest in their workplace and culture, take a stand on important social issues, and command an audience and a consumer base that cares about making the world better by voting with their dollars. We have always had it as a part of our vision to build an ecosystem that is three-pronged.

In too many ways, capitalism is pulling our strings when should we should really be putting our values forward in our everyday transactions.

One is the consumer or donor-level pillar. One is the nonprofit sector that is making change happen at scale in impacted areas that affect our daily lives. You have this brand or company’s pillar. When you bring those three pieces together, it’s a recipe for a virtuous cycle of incentives. As consumers, we want to see a better world. We want to interact with brands and experiences that put the all-stakeholder approach to the next generation economy at the forefront.

Nonprofits are looking to heal our communities, heal the planet, and create alleviation to some of the world’s most pressing challenges like hunger and social justice issues. You have got brands that are still in that mode of needing to build loyal customer bases. There’s a way to connect all three of those things. We think that partnering on impact is the way to do it.

If a brand can take a portion of their budget or philanthropic commitment and create programs for their employees to engage them in creating a better culture that has a higher purpose that is more productive and profitable, that’s good for them. That will translate into happier customers who are partnering to create a better world. The nonprofits get to be the beneficiaries of all of that to do the hard work of solutions-making. We see ourselves at the nexus of that triangle and believe that’s the future of an economy that is equitable, diverse, and solves problems.

You have hit the nail on the head there, in a lot of respects. We do live in this ecosystem. We have the opportunities as a for-profit, nonprofit, donors, volunteers, and consumers. It’s all of those different hats that we wear as people to advance things and create a positive impact wherever we go. As we choose to interact with brands, we have that ability to say, “Here’s what we want to see happen.” When brands can authentically get onto that corporate social responsibility train, it makes the world a better place. It’s cool that you have some tools in play that can help with that. What are some of the things in your stack that are helpful for for-profit brands?

Maybe one thing I would love to deal with is the idea that there can be quite a bit of noise and even virtue signaling in the consumer landscape. There are trends that incentivize brands to maybe take a stand on an issue to avoid some shareholder pain or reputational alleviation. At Goodworld, we are in the business of helping them authentically engage in the future that is better for everybody.

One example would be a very sustainable way to engage their employees. It’s something we call Payroll Giving , which enables an individual to take a small part of every paycheck, deduct that from their paycheck and give it to a nonprofit of choice. Across an employee base, that makes a massive difference. Another thing that we offer is roundups for employee cards. Whenever you connect the card every time you buy lunch, you can round up the change on that purchase.

A big concept that we are offering brands is something that we call GiveCards . It occurred to me that if we could take a large corporate commitment, let’s say it’s a $100,000 philanthropic budget. Instead of writing a big check to a single nonprofit with a press release, we cut that commitment up into tiny pieces. We offer it as social credits to employees and consumers.

What happens when you give someone a gift and allow them to choose where the money goes is you turn the cycle and make it a give-first experience. If I got an email that says, “Here’s $25 to give to the charity of your choice after a tough year of COVID,” that’s going to mean so much more than just reading that my employer wrote a big check to a legacy institution. Now, I’m a part of it.

I like the mentality there. It gives people not just the feeling but the ability to create their own change there.

Ultimately, what is powerful about this is it’s a multiplication scheme. When a big brand or even an influencer makes a large commitment and spreads it across a community of people, the more people that touch the money, the more opportunities there are to add, match, increase and spread those dollars. If I dropped $100,000 on my employee base and 2,000 people touched the money and we nudged every person who redeems to chip in a little, you may have turned $100,000 into $300,000, $500,000 or $700,000.

There are a couple of other things that are interesting. Relish Studio is my business. We are a 1% for the Planet partner. One of the things that I know that they have been able to do is to get people to sign on as the 1% as individual donors and then get their businesses to do a match on what they are giving. Essentially, they doubled their impact. Particularly, if the business that you are with has some commitment like that, many businesses do have donation matches or charity matches. They give for volunteer hours and things of that nature. There is a big movement in CSR that you are tapping into there.

The other piece that’s interesting, and I don’t know a ton about this, but I have read a little bit about it. A lot of times, the corporations like the press that comes from giving a giant donation to a marquee nonprofit, the amount of goodness that a small nonprofit can make with a fraction of that money is astounding. It’s amazing to see what good can happen when you take those large donations, facilitate the opportunity to break those up, and give to some smaller organizations. A small organization doing some solid local work can make a $10,000 or $100,000 donation go far away. For some of those large organizations, a $10,000 donation is a drop in the bucket. It’s cool that you are facilitating that opportunity.

It’s about the democratization of philanthropy. It’s moving away from that elitist model into a true upvote economy. If big brands that have the means to make philanthropic commitments are ready to understand the philanthropic DNA of their employees and customers in a new way, they are going to be way out ahead of their competitors. They are going to be able to work on not only problems that the world is facing, but they are also going to create a meaning-filled community around them that’s going to stick with them over the course of decades.

It sounds like for-profit businesses would need to sign up for your tool as well. Do they take advantage of the full stack with that CRM and all of those other mechanisms? Is it focused on a few of the giving opportunities?

Every partner is different. It’s why we offer à la carte technology. In some cases, you will have an organization that knows exactly what they want or the specific use cases that their employees are going to be interested in. Maybe it’s peer-to-peer fundraising. They want to offer their employees the ability to create fundraisers and goals over the course of the year or another organization is pretty focused on some cause marketing efforts, where they want to enable customers to make donations for a specific campaign or impact area.

There’s a more human algorithm to be achieved in this economy where people have gotten so caught up in the incentives of the technology utopian culture.

We have customers that will come in for one tool. Maybe they want to plant trees on behalf of their employees and send them an end-of-the-year holiday card or they want to run a campaign for a special-giving milestone, where they give away a bunch of money, nudge their customers to take some other action or redeem some discounter promo code. There’s a whole myriad of ways you can engage with our toolset. We purposefully architected it for max flexibility so that different brands can engage with the tools in different ways.

I like how flexible the systems appear to be. I haven’t used the system yet, but I’m certainly going to check it out because it seems like an incredible opportunity, both for-profits and nonprofits, to leverage the power of people’s desire to give and create more opportunities there to drive donations and engagement.

I would be happy to give you a personal demo anytime, Stu. I’m happy to send along any resources that your readers may be interested in, whether it’s getting-started tutorials, case studies, or insights that we have come across in the space.

What are some of the trends or next things that you see popping up in the space? What is on tap for you?

We are excited about the intersection of commerce and impact. We are putting some partnerships together that are leading the way on eCommerce integration so that when you are buying a pair of sneakers, you can have the brand trigger a percentage of your purchase towards an impact area of your choice, whether that’s planting trees, providing meals or any other cause area.

We are excited about this democratization approach. Internally, we call this Project G-Force because we believe that there’s a more human algorithm to be achieved in this economy. We have gotten so caught up in the incentives of the machine and the mother-techno utopian culture. In too many ways, capitalism is pulling our strings. We should be putting our values forward in our everyday transactions in how we relate to one another as professionals, colleagues, friends, and members of the same community.

The big grandiose project of our business and the movement we are leading is to bring humanity back into the machine. We think there are going to be so many opportunities to do that with the right partners and leaders taking control of this Capitalism 2.0. We are excited to be meeting people who are leading that charge.

You are spot-on in terms of some of the trends that we are seeing. I will use Amazon again as an example. The fact that one of the world’s largest retailers has a component that allows for charitable donations through its platform is indicative of a more than insignificant shift in attitudes. As you see more and more companies, Walmart is moving toward putting solar on all of their buildings.

There’s increased attention to the idea that we need to try to do a little bit more than just make money. You are certainly onto something. It’s great to see how you are tackling that from a tech standpoint, not only to satisfy those needs but also to engage with new generations that are very much aligned with that idea. At least, that’s what all of the trends are demonstrating.

I admire the conversations that you are leading, Stu. It’s an alliance of humans who are going to get us back on track in terms of a values-first world. It has been an honor to talk to you. I’m sure it’s the beginning of our long rapport.

How can people find out more about what you are doing? What is the best way for them to get in touch?

They can go straight to our website and reach out. If you are part of a nonprofit or business that’s looking to do good, it’s GoodworldNow.com . You can sign up for free and get access to a whole glut of resources. If anyone wants to reach out to me directly, they are free to connect with me on LinkedIn, @RichieKendall or @Goodworld . You can reach me via email and I will respond at Richie@Goodworld.me .

Thank you so much. I love to have these conversations and encourage everyone out there to go and check out all of the great tools that you have developed over there. One of the things that I have been trying to foster on the show is the opportunity for people to take some action. It’s great to have these conversations. It’s awesome to get inspired and think about things. At the end of the day, if we can facilitate and get people to do something to make the world a better place after reading the blog, I’m all for that. I like to end the show with a question. If there was one thing that you would ask the readers to do after reading our conversation, what would that be?

It’s beyond continuing to educate yourself on where the world is going because it’s incredibly important to have the wherewithal to participate in a fast-moving landscape. If you are mid-level or leading a small organization, nonprofit or otherwise, encourage your workforce or leadership to engage in some ritualistic good. When I say ritualistic, I mean that when employee birthdays come around, make a program where you provide them with a charitable gift to go to the cause of their choice. Create time and space for volunteering. Offer perks for good community-focused work. We have to create the incentives, time, and space to have a stronger and more resilient American community. I will encourage everyone to create that space and make that intent.

Thank you so much for being on the show, Richie. I had a great time talking with you. I can’t wait to see what you are up to next.

Me too. Have a great one.

I will talk to you soon.

Important Links:

Episode 60: Reframe and Remaster Your Messaging To Thrive with Douglas Spencer of Spencer Brenneman

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:31:09 GMT

What message are you trying to share with your stakeholders?

On this week’s Relish This, I chatted with Spencer Brennan , the founder, and CEO of Boston agency Douglas Spencer . He and I met on an online group called Nonprofit.ist that enables those working in the nonprofit sector to connect with other nonprofit and purpose-focused experts.

Spencer helps mission-driven clients reframe their focus and remaster their messaging so they can thrive in any environment.

As you might imagine, he knows all the ins and outs of messaging—and we had an amazing talk about the complexity of crafting messaging that works. We also talked about the challenges most of us face when trying to get our message across to the masses.

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There’s a lot to get out of this conversation. Hope you enjoy it!

Links:

Spencer Brenneman

Nonprofitist

ASK:

Pause and think about one thing about your work and what you know that others might not understand. Then take that thing and share it!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Content marketing has to be dynamic, useful, and consistent with everything you do.

Reframe and Remaster Your Messaging To Thrive with Douglas Spencer of Spencer Brenneman

Our guest is Douglas Spencer. He is the Founder of Spencer Brenneman , which is a cool content shop out of Boston. What they do is they work with purpose-driven companies and nonprofits. They help them remember their message so that they can thrive in any environment. He has a great methodology for this. He and I met during an online networking opportunity called Nonprofit.ist . We had a fun conversation. All of our conversations have been around content, how to leverage it, ways to get that message out there and be consistent. This is a great episode for any organization. You can get a lot out of this discussion that we had. Douglas is a great guy. I hope you enjoy the show. Here we go.

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Douglas , how are you?

Stu, I’m great. How are you?

I’m doing well. What is going on in Boston?

We have had a very rainy summer and we are about ready to get bombarded with some intense heat. We are having a good old summertime.

That sounds fairly normal for Boston. We have had a fairly wet summer thus far up here in Colorado as well, which I’m grateful for that. We are starting to get a lot of smoke from the Dixie Fire out in California. I’m sad for all those people, animals, and forest lands that are getting hammered out there. I’m happy that it’s not close to home just yet, so far in 2021. We have knocked on wood.

It’s hard to complain about the weather when you see what is happening around the world in Greece, the Dixie Fires, and all sorts of places. It’s hard to complain about a few days of steady rain.

I don’t know if you have ever been to Colorado but it is amazing how quickly Coloradans will turn on the weather when it’s not perfect. People will suffer through a day and a half of rain and then they start complaining. It’s like, “Come on, guys. We need the moisture. Let’s not complain.” This is going to be a little bit of an interesting show because we are both going to interview each other for our perspective shows. Both shows will be the same. What is the name of your podcast?

My podcast is Messaging on a Mission . Stu, thanks for having me on yours, and thanks for being a guest on mine all at the same time.

People focus so much on the day-to-day that they lose track of the big picture.

It’s my pleasure. I get to guest every once in a while. It’s so much fun to be on the other side of the equation from time to time. It will be fun to see how we can tackle that together.

For all the readers, we are operating without a net. We are winging this and let’s hope it’s entertaining.

If our first conversation together holds true, I was entertained at least. I had a good time talking with you. I’m sure that we will dig out some fun marketing and purpose-driven stuff for people. You are one of the Cofounders of Spencer Brenneman . Is that accurate?

No, I am the only Founder. Spencer is my surname but because it’s rather generic, I added my mother’s maiden name, which is Brenneman. My business is called Spencer Brenneman. We help mission-driven organizations take a step back and rethink their focus. Also, they can find exactly the right messaging framework through, which they can connect with everybody that is important to their success, from their employees to the people they help, to their donor base, to any regulatory authority that they have to work with. Anybody that is instrumental in making them successful, we help them find the right message to bring their mission home.

We look at that whole ecosystem in terms of all of the different places in an organization or business, whether that’s a nonprofit business or a for-profit business. All of those touchpoints and places that one can have an influence in the world is broad. You can talk to vendors about being purpose-driven. Your employees and your internal culture are a big component of that, even the people you choose to work with or other business owners. By taking that approach to business, there are a lot of opportunities to change the world.

Tell us a little bit about your business.

I’m one of the Cofounders of Relish Studio . It’s a digital marketing agency here in the Boulder Colorado area. We like to say we help good people do great things. We look for businesses, both in the foreign and nonprofit space, who are seeking to expand their mission to help, thrive, get found online, and build relationships through digital marketing. We have been around since about 2008 and are going strong. It’s funny. We tend to blow past these milestones in our history. We will be thirteen years old in September 2021. It’s a lot of fun.

You started it not the best time to start a business if I can remember 2008 correctly.

We have seen cycles in our business and it feels like election years are always challenging. We went ahead and launched during an election year. I don’t know that we thought things through very much. We took that run-before-you-walk approach, which I know a lot of entrepreneurs do. It’s not what I recommend for our clients here at Relish. We winged it like what we are doing here with the show but it has worked out so far.

Starting with a strategy is something that we do. Going back to vision, values, and mission and making sure that those things are all aligned and everyone knows what direction we are all rowing is important. Many business leaders say, “Let’s do this thing and then figure it out along the way.” Having a plan is better but we have managed to make it work.

I’m guilty of that sometimes myself, even though I counsel my clients to do the opposite. That’s part of being a human being.

I know you have a pretty interesting way of getting to that messaging methodology. Tell both audiences a little bit more about that.

We have a methodology that we call ABC, Ask, Build and Connect. The first one is asking a lot of questions. It’s both qualitative and quantitative. We will do online research when we can or other types of research or use any data that the organization might have. We also ask a lot of questions. I don’t mean to be dismissive but it almost turns into a therapy session sometimes where we try to get people to step back and think about, “Why is it they do what they do? Why is it important to them personally? Why is it important to the broader population to the world to the people they serve? What is that why? Why is this work important?”

I distinctly remember one time. In particular, we were working with a client and going through a workshop. I swear I could have seen across his face, him falling in love with what he did again. He had been in the business for many years. A light bulb went off and it helped reconnect him with his original passion. That too is normal that we focus so much on the day-to-day. We lost track of where we started and where we wanted to go. It’s always about trying to make the squeakiest wheel quiet. When we focus on that, sometimes we lose sight of the big picture, which is what our methodology tries to do. It tries to bring people back to where they started or at least bring them to the place where they should start from this moment forward.

I love that approach. I could have used that perspective back in the early phases of Relish. We found ourselves in exactly that spot. In that 2014 and 2015 zone, we started feeling like we were working for the business as opposed to running the business. It was like, “If I’m going to be doing things that I don’t want to do, then why am I taking on all this other entrepreneurial stuff as well? I could just go get a job.” That was when we took a step back and said, “How do we approach this from a position of purpose and come at marketing and at what we do from that angle?”

That’s when we became a 1% for the Planet partner. We joined a couple of other organizations like Colorado Outdoor Business Alliance here in the state and said, “We have an opportunity to craft this business how we want. If we don’t want to wear ties or work on Wednesday afternoon or whatever it is, we are ultimately in charge.” I love that more and more business leaders are embracing this idea that you have the opportunity to create an influence culture.

I go back and forth between saying we and I because even though I’m the only person here, I do have a team of freelancers and contractors that feels like we are all together. I’m not crazy, at least because of that. If you see my pronoun confusion, that’s where it comes from. We had to shift in 2020 during the pandemic because, before that, we were helping pretty much anybody that we thought we could. About April of 2020, I started thinking, “What do I want to do? Do I want to help organizations that are trying to make as much money as possible or organizations that are at least trying to solve some problems that we all face? “

It became pretty clear that that’s where my heart was at. I came from the for-profit sector. I worked at a large corporation for many years. I learned so much during those years that I got excited about the idea of passing that on to people that wouldn’t necessarily have access to that thought process or those methodologies or approaches. That’s why we shifted in 2020 to focus on mission-driven organizations.

What are you doing to get in front of mission-driven organizations? It’s not one of those things that you can search for in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Are there any things that you have tried that have worked well to make sure that you are able to connect with those types of people?

Much like you starting your business in 2008, I feel like I have restarted my business in the middle of a pandemic and a global recession. One of the ways before the pandemic that we would find new businesses is through networking, going to events, and talking to people. In 2020, that’s all but dried up. That has been a real challenge. What we have done is dialed up our content marketing. We are focused on trying to produce content that’s relevant and useful to folks and getting in front of them.

We have a newsletter we do every month. We post quite a bit on LinkedIn . We have dialed up our Facebook presence for those folks that are more Facebook-oriented than LinkedIn-oriented. It’s all about the content to remind folks that, first of all, we are here. Second of all, we do have expertise in the area and we can help them with their problems. Most importantly, it’s to get in front of them and try to help them, even if it’s through the read of a blog post or a more formal relationship.

I know that we met at the Nonprofit.ist event. There are still opportunities to do some networking. Clearly, we live quite a few miles apart. It’s not like we were able to meet in person but I believe we were in a breakout room together, and then followed up and jumped on a call. There are ways to continue to build, make those connections out there and leverage all of that because we were the same way. One of my KPIs in fact was, “How many networking events did I go to every month?” We saw that those tended to turn into conversations that then led to partnerships and revenue-driving activities, which is what we are all after at the end of the day.

Let me ask you a question about content because we had talked a little bit before about the role that content plays. It’s pretty important in my business. How are you advising your clients to think about content when it comes to furthering the messages behind their missions?

That’s a whole episode in itself, I’m sure. One of the things that we look at is if you have three main things that go into your online presence, thinking about your website, content is the primary thing that you need. You need that material to put into a website, first of all. One of the things that we see with Search Engine Optimization or SEO is that content is starting to become what the search engines are looking for. Where back in the day, you could maybe spoof the system and get better placement through some SEO techniques, which you can still do and there’s a place for pure SEO work.

One of the things we always recommend is to start with the audience and make sure that you are writing for your audience. You are creating valuable information and materials that people are going to have a good time and enjoy, and get something out of reading, watching or listening to. You can make some tweaks. I’m sure there are some SEO experts out there who would probably see some gaps in this philosophy. Ultimately, if you create great content, then that’s the thing that’s going to create the opportunity to build those relationships.

We see those three pillars as overlapping. You need a website to put content into. You need content for your website. You need content for SEO and your website needs SEO. Those things overlap, and then there’s a whole bunch of other stuff outside those three pillars. It’s everything from email marketing to inbound or content marketing, paid advertising, and social media. All those things also rely on content but they fall outside of that main foundational stuff that pretty much every business needs.

This popped in my head as you were talking. I get the feeling that we are almost like back at the beginning of the web when people started having web pages. Everybody had to have a webpage but they made it, and then they didn’t touch it for months. I feel like some organizations are thinking that way when it comes to content, “We will put some content up, and now what?” It’s got to be something that is dynamic, useful, and continues to speak to their audiences in new ways. To your point about the other pillars, it’s got to be consistent with everything, all those other media from email marketing and all the other stuff.

People aren’t thinking about the content the way they need to. They think about it in terms of, “I should do that.” It’s the same with SEO. I don’t think a lot of people understand SEO. I’m no expert and I hate writing for algorithms. We had a client that wanted us to write for the search engines and it was hard. Correct me if I’m wrong. You know way more about SEO than I do. At the end of the day, it’s not even useful because even if the search engine does find it, you have got your prospect reading it, and is it connecting? It’s probably not.

The search engines themselves are getting smarter every day. They can tell the difference between something that has been written for a person versus something that has been written to help them feel good. That’s getting harder to spoof. We always start with content because people have relationships with people. You may feel like you have some relationships with a brand if there’s some brand that you love if you are a Chevy guy or whatever it is. At the end of the day, there are people running that show. It’s people-to-people, even though we use terms like business-to-consumer and business-to-business.

Another thing that we have tried to help our clients and do it ourselves is to look at how you are positioning your organization in the story that you are trying to tell. We have moved quite a bit toward the idea that if you can always put your customer in the hero seat of that story where your business or organization is the guide in that journey, create opportunities to express empathy and demonstrate authority for sure. If you can use you and your language as much as possible in your content, that tends to help start and build those relationships. People don’t necessarily want to go to a cocktail party and talk about me for 45 minutes. They want to hear how they fit into that story.

The thing that we all forget sometimes is that all the decisions we make are emotional. We use analytics to justify the emotions of what we want to do. If buying cars was about getting from point A to point B, everyone would be driving a Prius but that’s not what it’s about. We buy specific cars because it’s safe. We want what we want.

When we do this type of content marketing, it’s using that you and putting yourself in the audience’s shoes but it’s also trying to make them feel something at the same time. One of the things that’s great for the client bases that you and I have is that that’s slightly easier. It’s hard to get people excited about private equity software but it’s a lot easier to get people excited or feel something about helping kids that have been victims of child abuse.

Something that we have been exploring quite a bit is in the nonprofit space, for example. If we are speaking about an organization trying to get people to donate their time or money to help fuel a cause, that standard marketing funnel idea doesn’t necessarily hold true in a for-profit relationship. If there’s a thing that I want to buy, let’s say it’s a new bike and I have decided that I’m shopping for a new bike, you can start to get numbers.

Understand by creating awareness, and then broadening the reach of that awareness, that when you throw people into the top of that funnel and give them something valuable, eventually, they are going to come out at the bottom of that funnel, a certain number of them, and purchase that bike. The reward for that decision comes after you have collected the money from that person. There’s always this thing that’s going to help ease that friction of paying for a physical thing, deciding to buy a bike.

However, in the nonprofit space, it’s not a funnel. It’s like a mountain. You constantly have to battle this friction that people have because most people don’t wake up in the morning and say, “How can I give away some of my money or time?” The reward comes before you have collected the funds, for example. You have to continue to motivate people. There’s an additional volume of friction.

It’s not easy in the for-profit space but it’s not just throwing numbers at the top of the funnel. It’s continuing to battle that friction all along those decision paths. You have to also combat the idea of, “Why should I give to this organization versus another organization or not at all?” You could make the same statement for a purchase. However, it’s a lot less friction.

With bikes, for example, a lot of smart folks that are in that business try to create a community around a particular type of biker just as not-for-profits are. It’s almost like, “Come join us on our mission. Come be part of the solution.” To your point, that’s when you get to the transaction element of it first. It’s creating that community first, bringing them, and then closing the deal. Where the other way around, it’s usually trying to keep them there in a community that you then help create.

The community-building aspect is huge. That’s how we look at marketing. It’s all about relationship building. It may be an easier relationship to build where I need lunch and there’s a restaurant there. That’s not as challenging of a relationship to create because there’s a big need and a relatively low-cost solution to the problem. It can be you need to try to get people over months and months to feel like they are part of this thing to get them to take an expensive action.

Your employees have to have the same messaging with each other and with the people they interact with.

A car is a decent example where you have a high price point item and you need to get people on board with this thing that’s going to make them cool. When you first mentioned cars, I was like, “A car in and of itself isn’t cool. It’s the perception or the story that we tell ourselves about that car. That’s the thing that makes one car or another, whether that’s a Prius or Lamborghini, “Cool.”

I have a question. What we are talking about can be simple but it’s intimidating. I’m thinking about content in these ways. I’m thinking about building a community and having a multiple-prong approach to connecting with your folks. It’s intimidating for a lot of leaders in both for and not-for-profit. The people you work with, how do you make them feel more comfortable about taking that leap?

One of the things we do is we like to start with a strategy. That for us can be a fairly robust exploration into where they are trying to go. We try to get goals established and look for that value proposition. We will do a lot of research in the early phases where we are trying to get an understanding of not only who their audiences are but what those people think about the organization in terms of, “What were the motivating factors that caused them to pick this particular organization?”

It’s an interesting exercise because a lot of times, when we ask our clients upfront, “What are the things that create the opportunity for you? Why are people purchasing from you versus somebody else?” We are trying to get to that differentiation statement. A lot of times, it’s incredibly far off from what we hear from the clients themselves.

There’s a fairly economical exercise that almost everyone can do. If you have testimonials or reviews, you can go through those reviews and start writing down the adjectives that people use to describe the business that they were reviewing. From there, you can start to see patterns and trends and tease out the idea that communication was the thing, not how clean their equipment was.

Starting from that strategy piece, getting that due diligence, and doing those exercises to get a good feel for what the customer journey is, that’s the first step because then we have a plan and we all know what direction we are rowing. It’s a lot easier to create content itself but also create compelling content if you know what is motivating the people who are going to be reading it. That exercise in creating that framework is one thing that helps ease that anxiety around content creation.

Setting goals, I was talking with one of my friends about this. As people, we like to push the envelope. We like to say, “I’m going to do twenty blog posts next month.” It’s like, “That’s great. How many are you doing now? Let’s try and establish something achievable and realistic.” Also, what tends to happen is when you miss the first three, you are way behind after the first week. We tend to think that any miss on the goal itself is a complete failure as opposed to looking at how much we did get done.

For example, if I have set a goal to do ten blog posts in a month and I do nine, the way that our brains work is we tend to think of that as a failure as opposed to a pretty huge success because you’ve got 9 out of 10 blog posts out there. Creating consistency is helpful both from an audience standpoint and an SEO standpoint. It’s helpful to get in the rhythm and be able to see how well you can accomplish recreating content. It also helps you create a bundle of material that then you can bring into specialized pages.

HubPages are something that we have started to create. We’ll come up with a topic and then link out to all these other things that the customer has written over the years or created that help support that HubPages’ goal. Creating content itself, if you can get started, and then set an intention and stay consistent with that, are some of the things that we would recommend. How are you handling that pushback when clients aren’t excited about their content journey?

It’s tough because a lot of people we work with spend their days doing some important work. It’s hard to make the case that giving me a half-day to talk about what makes them different is a better choice than helping someone with their life or solving some hands-on issues, which isn’t always the case but sometimes that is the case. It’s trying to get them out of there in everybody. One of the things that I always talk about is that all of us forget what others don’t know because we spend so much time in our heads that we forget that, “Doesn’t everybody know that we are going to be moving in a year? I guess they wouldn’t know that, would they?” We forget what is inside our heads alone.

This is where the ask phase comes in and is helpful. We help them step back and think about the people they are trying to help and bring along with them, the work that they are trying to accomplish, and remind them what the rest of the world doesn’t know. Once they realize that, “We have to tell them. If we don’t tell them, then they are never going to figure it out. We are never going to get X, Y or Z done.” By helping get them out of their own heads for a little bit and think about what is out there and what is not out there, does typically motivate them to get behind this idea of strategic messaging in the execution.

Differentiation is hard. We are constantly bumping up against that with ourselves as well as others. That’s why great organizations like Spencer Brenneman and Relish exist is that we are able to bring an outside perspective. Most people are fairly humble and they don’t like to brag. A lot of us were taught at an early age, “You are not supposed to brag about yourself and whatnot.”

It’s hard to get to differentiation and having someone on your team that you bring in to help you get an outside perspective to say, “This isn’t easy for everybody else.” Whatever it is that you are doing, whether that’s helping feed hungry kids or selling widgets, it might be something that’s hard for the vast majority of us. When you do it every day, you think, “That’s not that big of a deal. That’s just building websites or whatever.” It’s like, “Most people can’t do that.”

It also bears repeating that you can’t cut your own hair or at least you shouldn’t. That’s what we do. We go in and help people do the things that they can’t do themselves. They could but the outcome would be pretty horrific. We go in and try to help them out.

The last time I cut my hair, my mom was very much displeased with that particular effort. You said it well. It’s how in our heads we get and being able to have someone help you step outside of that and help you figure out what that value proposition or differentiation statement is. That’s an investment in your content that can go a long way because it allows you to stay on message. I know you talk about staying on message quite a bit. How much do you focus on that with your clients?

That’s constant. That’s not the whole point. That’s one of the main elements because consistency is important across all the different channels, media, and people that are talking. We alluded to this at the very beginning. I’m passionate about the idea that no matter what you do, your employees have to have the same messaging with each other and with the people they interact with that you do in your more traditional marketing. Consistency is massive.

In our build phase, we try to help organizations hone in on those 3 or 4 things that make them relevant and competitively differentiated from all the other options that people have. It’s somewhat tough when we work with some not-for-profits because they think, “Competitors, that’s for-profit. We don’t have that.” We try to come up with the 3 to 4 things that make that organization who they are. It’s almost proof points to put up against their why, “Why what they do is important? How do they do it differently than everybody else?”

If you focus on those 3 to 4 pillars or articulations of what the organization does, it’s easy to stay consistent because you are not pulling from 100 different places. You are pulling from 1 of 3 to 4 places. As long as everything wraps up to 1 of those 3 or 4, not only is your message consistent but it helps keep your strategy on focus or on point because you can ask yourself if someone throws up a new idea like, “Does that fit into 1 of our 3 or 4 points of differentiation?” If not, probably it’s not what your organization should be doing.

I had one client say to me that one of the things that she got from working with me is she got the permission to say no to things. We all together came up with a very clear structure for what her message was that aligned with who the organization was. That’s why we call it a focus and messaging framework. That gave her a framework through which to make decisions that kept her and her message on focus.

You really can’t cut your own hair. You can’t do everything yourself.

I remember an exercise that I can’t remember who taught it to me. It was a sales-type exercise. If you came up with 4 or 5 questions or things that you were looking for during a sales process, it created a target. Let’s say you have a target with five rings and you start asking these questions and getting answers to these questions. If they were on target, then you would move one step in. If you’ve got 1 of the 5, you would be one ring in. 2 of the 5, you would be two rings in.

If you could get to 5 of the 5, that was a very highly targeted perfect sales opportunity. If you were only getting 1 or 2, it was probably something that you may want to pass on. Having that and understanding what one’s core values are, whether you are hiring, or even bringing in a vendor or targeting a client, knowing what those items are that make up your ideal partner is important.

Whether they are social entrepreneurs or anybody that starts or runs an organization, the great thing about them is they are typically idea people. They’ve got all these great ideas but the bad thing about them is they are idea people and they’ve got all these great ideas. Folks like that, we need them but they also need someone to say, “Let’s think about this. Let’s not try to do everything.” I’m a big fan of saying, “I can do anything. I just can’t do everything.” Let’s think about what it is that we can do and more importantly, what it is we should do. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, going back to that whole haircut thing.

I don’t know if you have ever read Traction or not. It’s a book by Gino Wickman. It’s also called the Entrepreneurial Operating System . In that, he creates a framework for every organization. Most organizations could benefit from this structure. You have the visionary and that may be the founder at the early stages. That person may be the general manager during the early phases where they are wearing a lot of hats.

At some point, you need to allow that person to continue to be that innovative thinker and then insert an implementer like a COO type of person in between that top role and getting things done. Those of us who are always thinking of new things to do, I call it the shiny squirrel syndrome. We are constantly coming up with some brilliant new idea that maybe is not so brilliant. It might be incredibly brilliant but if you are constantly chasing those ideas around, your team will never get much done. It’s an interesting way of thinking about how to segment those roles to make sure that people stay on target.

Until the universe decides to help us see clearly what are good ideas and what are not, we are going to have to think of some other way to sort them out.

That’s what a good CEO will help do is to say, “We are going to put that one over here for a while. That one is worth moving some things around or at least getting it into the queue for the next 30-day sprint or whatever it is,” however your particular organization works.

What is it you love most about what you do?

I’m the type of person who loves helping people. I love to serve selflessly in a lot of respects. The reason we moved to this purpose-driven idea was I was working on a project on a Memorial Day weekend. It was gorgeous out. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon on a Sunday and we were working for one of our nonprofit partners. I was hammering away on some projects that needed to be done shortly after the holiday. I stopped and said, “I’m not mad about this.” It’s helping people figure out how they can become their best. We do a good job at that with the strategy-first model. If I can continue to help people do that every day, that’s what gets me out of bed. How about you?

It’s pretty similar. I love seeing people get excited about what they do. I alluded to this before. I love helping people fall back in love with what they do because people get so focused on the day-to-day. I love getting people excited and helping them realize how great they are doing, and even how great they can do the potential that they have.

I don’t have the skillset to keep people from being sick, comfort someone who has been through a trauma or save the planets through specific means but I do have the skillset to help those people who do all that stuff do it better and talk about it to more people that matters. I’m honored to have the opportunity to help people who are helping us all.

That’s sounds amazing. I love that approach and I agree. There are certain things that we can do and can’t do but if we can leverage those skills or talents that we have to enable those other people who have other abilities to be their best, that’s a win for everybody. I enjoyed our conversation again. Thank you for bringing me onto your show and being on my show. I appreciate it, Douglas.

Thank you for bringing me onto your show and being on my show.

It’s my pleasure. In my shows interestingly or at least I hope it’s interesting. I love having conversations but I’m also a man of action. I want people to take what they have read or had something to do at the end of reading my shows. If there was one thing that you would like the Relish This audience to do after reading our show, what would that be?

I would like everybody who is reading to take a second and pause. If that literally means hitting pause on your phone or whatever, feel free to do that. Hit pause for a second and think about one thing about their work that they know but not everyone else might understand. Take a minute and think about something. Find something that is going on in your head that would be beneficial for everyone else to know but it never occurred to you to talk about it.

Take that thing and share it. Helping spread that knowledge around would be maybe even the next step there. We need some content around it.

I like to end my show with a question called Crazy Town. What is one of the craziest asks that you have gotten from a client? How did you manage to either talk them down gently or make it happen?

I did have a crazy sales meeting one time where my business partner and I were in a sales meeting. This was the pre-legalization of recreational marijuana here in the State of Colorado. We were in a sales meeting talking to a guy about his project and he had nothing to do with that industry. He opened up his desk drawer, pulled out a pipe, and asked us if we wanted to smoke during what was for us at that time a very serious sales meeting. That was one of the crazier sales meetings that I have had. I will have to get back to you on the request.

What did you do?

You can do anything but you just can’t do everything.

We both respectfully declined but he went ahead and partook. We did not win that contract, which I don’t know if that was because we were reluctant to smoke with him or because it wasn’t the right fit or something. Who knows?

That’s another conversation if we do this again, which I hope we do because this has been great. We could talk about the cannabis industry and everything that goes into branding and messaging around that. As that’s starting to gain traction across the United States, I heard that even President Biden is starting to soften his point of view on the legalization of cannabis. That could be a cool conversation.

We have a little bit of experience in that space. We had some clients very early on, which was an interesting time in that industry. We could have another conversation all about that. That would be fun.

We don’t have to bring up pipes. We can do it as is, although it is legal in Massachusetts as well as Colorado, we wouldn’t be breaking any laws.

Thank you again for having this conversation with me. I had a great time.

Me, too. Thank you again for having this conversation with me. It has been fun.

I will talk to you soon.

Take care.

Important Links:

About Douglas Spencer

Douglas Spencer is founder and president at Spencer Brenneman, LLC. He has more than 20 years of branding and marketing experience, working with professionals from around the world in verticals such as financial and professional services, tech, higher education, healthcare, and not-for-profits. Before starting Spencer Brenneman, LLC he was Vice President, Global Head of Brand Management for Thomson Reuters. In that role, he guided the migration of the multiple Thomson and Reuters businesses to form the then-new Thomson Reuters brand. He is also the author of Do They Care? The one question all brands should ask themselves, continually, a book that shows leaders how they can create meaningful connections with everyone important to their organization’s success. A life-long volunteer, Douglas is active in Boston’s not-for-profit community and once served as the Board Chair of a $100 million community health and research center.

Ep 61: Rethink Your Nonprofit’s Revenue Streams With Regeanie Corona From Advancing The Seed

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:03:59 GMT

When you’re trying to scale and grow, it can be daunting to think about all the moving parts that need to fall into place for your organization to reach the next level.

Fundraising, messaging, outreach, hiring, infrastructure—all of these compound to create a lot of stress.

That is, if you haven’t mapped out a plan. On this week’s episode of Relish This, I spoke with Regeanie Corona, the Founder and CEO of Advancing the Seed.

Regeanie excels at helping organizations supercharge their revenue streams to enable predictable growth.

A lot of our conversation focused on mindset and how everyone—no matter whether they work for a non-profit or a for-profit—should have an entrepreneurial focus. After all, that focus is what allows you to look at alternative revenue streams, to seek investments instead of handouts, and to create a stronger donor base.

Regeanie has created a program called “10 in 30 Days,” a checklist and accountability program that shows you how to generate $10,000 worth of revenue in just a month. This is great for organizations who are just starting to build a strong financial foundation, as it really provides an understanding of how to generate revenue quickly.

This is a fascinating show with a LOT of information about how you can take your organization to the next level.

Links:
regeanie.com
1 0in30days.com
@regeanie on socials

Action Ask:
Sit down and create a list of everything you can do to monetize your organization then make a commitment to do one of these in the next 90 days to bring more revenue to your organization.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Rethink Your Nonprofit’s Revenue Streams With Regeanie Corona From Advancing The Seed

My guest is Regeanie Corona. She’s the Founder and CEO of Advancing The Seed , a great organization for nonprofits that everyone should look into, both nonprofits and for-profits. She does coaching to help people understand how to stay on track and how to fuel their growth and make sure that they are expanding their mission as much as possible and as quickly as possible. She has a cool program called 10 in 30 days, which is this checklist. You should go to 10In30Days.com to check this one out. It’s a checklist on how to generate $10,000 worth of revenue in the first 30 days. Read this episode. There are tons of great ideas here. I had a good time talking to Regeanie. I hope you enjoy the show.

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Regeanie , how are you?

I’m great, Stu. How are you?

I am doing very well. I’m super excited to have you on the show.

Thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here. I wish I were in Colorado with you. I have friends and a business partner in Colorado. Every now and then, I get up there to Fort Collins.

I was in Loveland, which is South of Fort Collins. That Northern Colorado zone is changing a lot, but it’s a great place to be. Since I was fifteen, I’ve lived in Colorado and have been visiting here since I was two or something. It’s a great place to call home. It’s a glorious day here. Where are you located?

I am in Southern California, about 12 miles outside of downtown Los Angeles.

I had a friend. He still has a place in Playa Vista, which is by the airport out by the South of Venice.

It’s out toward that Malibu area.

I get to go out there and visit him every once in a while. SoCal is a fun place to be as well.

Usually, very warm weather, but we don’t get to experience seasons as much, which is sometimes a little disappointing for me.

I was there on a business trip in January one time. I was staying in Brentwood. There’s a boulevard there. I decided to quasi-trail run down to the beach and back. I want to say it was 55 degrees that day. It’s a fairly cool day by LA standards. I’m from Colorado and it’s wintertime here. I was like, “This is glorious.” I’m running along in my shorts and t-shirt. I saw a pack of cyclists coming up Brentwood Boulevard there or whatever that Boulevard is that runs East-West. They were in full winter gear. I was laughing. It’s all perspective and it’s so funny.

We didn’t hop on the show to listen to me talk about my fun weather experiences. I’m excited to have you on the show because I know that you specialize in helping nonprofits expand their mission and drive fundraising and thrive and survive. That’s what this show is all about. I’m very interested to hear about how you got started in this space and how you help nonprofits out.

I came out of an information technology career. I spent 25 years in the IT field. Seven of those years toward the end, we’re in cyber security and managing operations around a data center for Los Angeles county. It was pretty exciting. It was something that I thought I loved until one day, I woke up and felt like I was unfulfilled. Long story short, I came out of that career and went into, first of all, volunteering my time to help small nonprofits. I figured I wanted to help. I looked at how I could take my background, expertise and knowledge and apply it to the nonprofit space. I quickly started learning that for small and startup nonprofits, there were a lot of challenges that they were facing and I wanted to help.

I started providing pro bono services initially, which ultimately moved into the consulting space around how to become sustainable. One of the first things that I recognized was that people were always asking this question, “Can I have a profit if I’m a nonprofit?” It’s an interesting discussion. You’ve had one on your show before, but it’s such a huge discussion point because many nonprofits don’t think of themselves as businesses. One of the things that I preach constantly and others do as well is that you are a business, a tax-exempt business.

It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to have business models and strategies in place to help you drive revenue consistently. Otherwise, like other businesses, you will experience negative cashflow and you will fall into disarray. That was one of the things I got excited about. How can I help in this area and how can I use technology to help others drive towards revenue goals and automate some of the things that they’re doing? It was a mixed bag of things that I was able to do, but all with this end goal of helping small and startup nonprofits get closer to not the revenue but consistent revenue month after month.

I know a lot of the things that we talked about on the show are differentiation of revenue streams, trying to find ways to add a product to the mix of ways that you can bring money in, grants and corporate sponsorships and individual donations, either micro or macro. All of those things come into play and it’s assembling all of that stuff and doing what’s right for your organization that helps drive that revenue. I think that mindset shift is important. I’d love to hear more about how you’ve helped people overcome that profit is a dirty word mentality, which certainly is prevalent in the nonprofit space.

You have to shift your mindset and think about yourself as an entrepreneur.

It is prevalent in the nonprofit space and it’s interesting. When I work with leaders, part of the coaching that I have to do is mindset coaching. The first couple of sessions were focused on mindset versus the business aspect of running your nonprofit. As you’ve said a lot of times, leaders will think that profit is a bad word. It’s a dirty word. Somehow, you’re not supposed to go out and look for ways to bring in not the revenue that you need but to create reserves.

One of the things that I try to always do is to remind any leader that’s running a startup. I always call them to phase one nonprofit because they’re either starting out or they’ve been there for a while, but they haven’t figured out this piece of consistent revenue. Those phase one leaders, usually they’ve been somehow taught to believe that only donations and grants are the way that they can bring in revenue.

I usually start there. We talk about entrepreneurship, small business, how a small business runs and then we talk about social entrepreneurship. You’ll hear me say that I’m a social entrepreneur versus a nonprofit leader and that’s because I like to look at what I do in others as nonprofit leaders do. We’re coming into a business and we are innovating in a way where we’re bringing solutions to social problems. We still have to generate revenue to support the mission, the work. Regular businesses have to do that as well. If we don’t know who our market is and who we are serving. In the nonprofit space, we have two primary customers. We have those that we’re serving, but we also have those that are sponsors, donors and guarantors. They are part of our market as well.

Understanding that helps us to be able to speak to them in a way where they can determine whether they align with what our mission and cause is. I always work with leaders to help them understand that they are salespeople. I used to say, “I’m not a salesperson. I hate sales. I don’t do sales,” but that’s not true. We are selling all day long. The difference is we’re selling a social impact mission and everything that goes along with that, but we’re still selling. We have to understand what that language is, who we’re selling to, what markets we’re going to interact with, and what platforms or channels we are going to use to speak to them. That’s where it gets exciting for me because technology comes into play with that, so you can automate things.

Facilitating the ability to scale requires additional revenue above and beyond your employing team. It’s helping leaders figure that out. I love the idea of the mindset shifts and how you use different languages to reframe something that may have an itchy connotation to people. You reframe and rename it. I love how you’re doing that, particularly with the social entrepreneur. That’s a fantastic way to create a new relationship to what one is doing.

It’s interesting, Stu, because it’s almost like creating a bit of a paradigm shift in the way that we think about and look at nonprofits. When I would talk about nonprofits, there are certain reactions that I get. I am sometimes around multimillionaires and billionaires that are entrepreneurs. When I would talk about nonprofits, it was almost as though it was a dirty word. “Nonprofits always have their handout. They’re looking for charity.” That was the thing that helped me to start reframing how I spoke about nonprofits. Initially, I thought, “No one’s going to want to hear me in the nonprofit space. They’re going to shoo me away and tell me, ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about,’” but I’ve been an entrepreneur for years.

I realized very quickly that there isn’t much difference, but you have to be able to shift your mindset and think about yourself as an entrepreneur. You’re running a small business. Even when you look at multiple income streams, how can I not bring in donations and grants and sponsorships, but how can I bring in earned income? Earned income is an important part of the puzzle. Earned income, generally, you can apply that anywhere in your organization.

I usually recommend that you put in an earned income stream so that you can apply it to your operational budget because most grant funding opportunities want to support programs, not operations, not overhead. In order for us to function, we’ve got to pay for overhead, salaries and taxes. Those fixed costs may not be directly related to a program or project. Having earned income gives you the freedom to go out and do those things and pay for those things without worrying about it.

I’m on the board of a couple of different nonprofits and one of them seeks out grants regularly. Both of them do. One of them is a little bit more adept at securing grants than the other. The one that has had success with grants, you can’t use it for very many things. There’s a specific application that this grant can be used for. Being able to free up some of that revenue allows you to be more nimble and take advantage of opportunities when they arise and grow. If you’re barely covering your expenses and maybe dumping everything back into the program, it doesn’t afford you either that safety net that’s handy to have during certain times of our lives or be able to aggressively make capital investments or other moves that would benefit the nonprofit and the mission that you’re trying to fulfill.

In the nonprofit space, it’s called restricted funds. When those restricted funds come through, it is difficult for the organization to have flexibility in using the funds. I’ve had customers where they’ve gotten into trouble with those restricted funds because they needed the money badly in other areas of their operations and then they thought, “I’ll go back and replace it later with more income.” They didn’t get more income in order to replace it. They’re on the hook for reporting what they did with the funds to that grantor. I’ve seen some nonprofits get into trouble with that. Looking at how to diversify your revenue streams becomes important. When we are running for-profit businesses, those are the things that we’re looking at. How many streams of income can we have?

The other thing is looking at your skills and expertise in-house to create a program that you charge a fee for service? As long as it is related to the mission of your organization, then you can do that without getting taxed. If it’s unrelated, then you get into this area of unrelated income and the IRS will tax you. Even in those cases, sometimes it’s worth it to create that unrelated income business. When you get into that, you’re looking at possibly starting another business under the umbrella of the nonprofit.

I could see how that’d be beneficial to create that fee-for-service opportunity. There certainly have been some people on the show that had that as a component of their nonprofits. What are some of the other creative ways you’ve seen nonprofits add a revenue stream?

I have seen and have done this within my own organization. If you have any level of coaching within an organization where you’re coaching, let’s say, underserved kids or young adults. We work with young adults quite a bit. You can create coaching programs within your organization and those coaching programs can help other individuals who need those coaching services but have the ability to pay. I encourage this a lot. Other leaders to look at digital marketing options.

For example, if you create a leadership summit and you invite other nonprofit leaders in your specific area of expertise in to speak and there are individuals that will benefit from that, you can charge a fee for them to attend that summit. It can be a virtual summit or an in-person summit. That’s a great way to bring in funding, but it’s typically not something nonprofits look at but digital marketers and businesses online. That’s what they do all day long is to create those types of programs.

It’s funny now that I’m thinking about some of the things that I’ve participated in both through Relish Studio , my business and a couple of the nonprofits that I’m involved with. It’s like, “I can see how putting on that event.” For example, a 1% for the Planet Summit, which is something that we’ve attended several times. Putting on that event has a cost associated with it, but there’s also a revenue stream because you’re charging for people to come and listen to all the great speakers you’ve brought into the building. We’ve also done training with another nonprofit organization that does trail building work. There was a fee associated with that as well.

It was very small, but there was some revenue coming in there with them sharing that expertise. In fact, Relish Studio built a website for stepping up stewardship, which is a wing of the volunteers for outdoor Colorado. That’s all about expanding that mission of trail building by selling the IP that VOC had built up over the years in terms of how to successfully run and manage a team of volunteers on a trail project.

Looking at how to diversify revenue streams is really important.

Those are a few ways that I’ve seen this in action, which is cool. Now that you get me thinking about it, it’s neat to think back about other ways people can inject revenue streams. Selling merchandise is certainly one that I’m sure is very successful, particularly for larger nonprofits or nonprofits who have a strong following.

I do not remember the name of the organization, but there is an organization out of Colorado, I believe Denver. It’s called the Women’s Bean Project , which is amazing. Those are examples of social enterprise nonprofits where they are earning income and they’re also doing things like putting people to work with some of that income that they’re earning, which is amazing.

In fact, Tamra Ryan , the CEO of Women’s Bean Project, was on the show back in about December 2020. That was when we were able to chat. They have a cool program where they’re helping women who’ve been incarcerated come out of the prison system and be able to integrate effectively back into society. They did this through this amazing idea where I think the founder invested $5,000 in dried beans. She had this idea and was like, “I’ll go buy however many tons of dried beans.” She started this project back in the ‘80s. It’s a cool organization.

It is and it’s an amazing idea. You see more and more organizations that are starting like that. That is where I believe social entrepreneurship comes in because you’re looking at creative and innovative ways to disrupt the typical status quo of how nonprofits operate and what they do. You can also have a social enterprise as a for-profit business. We see that all the time with companies like TOMS shoes.

You can always commit to giving back like TOMS or any of the 1% for the planet people out there. I know you mentioned fee-for-service. I spoke with Ryan O’Donoghue from First Descents , an organization in the Denver area that had a particularly strong ability to put together adventure trips. They were doing it for young adults with cancer and expanded into any life-threatening illness. They recognize that they have the ability to put together these adventure trips. They spun up a for-profit business that dumps all of its profits back into First Descents that puts together adventure trips for people who want to go do some crazy ski adventure or sailing adventure or whatever. That’s another great example of out-of-the-box thinking around that fee-for-service piece.

I think that it opens up the opportunity to do much more as an entity that wants to transform lives make a difference on the planet and with people. When you have that flexibility of operating in the business world, I tend to lean towards having that social enterprise as a nonprofit. That allows you to straddle the fence because you can go after grants. You can continue to have your donor base and build your donor base, but then you also have that additional option of having the earned income, which can come in multiple forms.

I’m not sure why they chose to set things up the way that they did. These are very expensive adventure vacations. I’m sure that they’re very much talking about First Descents and getting additional donations to those programs during those vacations. It’s a neat way to approach it. I love the creative thinking that goes into some of these things. It’s fantastic.

I love it too. I can sit and listen to those kinds of stories and testimonials for hours. I get excited because there’s so much possibility. You have so many individuals out there who have these ideas and want to help others. They’re not sure how to do it and sometimes this is the answer. You can combine your passion and experience with wanting to make a difference in the world and have a greater impact on business and take it into the marketplace. You can do some amazing things.

Before we started recording, you were talking about your program that you have an approach to kickstart people’s immediate fundraising and enable them to turn that switch on and create recurring fundraising opportunities. What are some things that you take people through to discover how to start generating? I think you mentioned $10,000 in the first some period of time. What does that program look like?

We call it 10K in 30 days. It was something that was birthed out of my own challenge with my own organization. I started my organization Advancing The Seed , in 2015. We started serving individuals in January of 2016. I never intended to run the organization. It was my goal to sit on the board and support it, be a champion, and help fundraise for it. I hired other great individuals but they were the wrong individuals to help move the organization forward. My husband and I made an initial investment into the organization, and the burn rate each month was high with staff.

Before we knew it, the investment dwindled. I woke up one morning and I saw it happening, but I was also out doing other things. I was consulting and I kept thinking, “This is going to fix itself.” It was a huge mistake early on. Within the first twelve months, literally, all of the investment had dwindled down to about $1,000 and everyone that was working for us said, “We quit. There’s no more money. We can’t continue.” It was myself and my sister there helping. I found myself having to quickly figure out how do I raise money to keep things afloat and keep the doors open?

I came up with the strategy to raise funds in 30 days. It seems simple to me and we mapped it all out. We put it into play. In about two and a half weeks, maybe three, we had raised a little over $12,000. It was even a surprise to me, I admit, but there was a very strong key in the strategy that helped to exponentially grow the donations quickly. That’s what I teach in 10K in 30 Days . For your audience, anyone who might be interested. I have a checklist and I’d love to offer that to your audience.

I’m sure that’d be super helpful. There are a lot of people who, I think, the readers and have been on the show who are in that phase one, is what you called it. We would call it the build phase, probably of their growth. They’re burning through what cash they may have put into the program or they’re a little bit stuck. I know that I have a couple of people with whom I would love to share that link. Thank you.

The great thing about it is it’s also very repeatable and when you do it once, you realize, “First of all, this is not that difficult to do. Second of all, I can do it.” When you succeed at doing it, it gives you the confidence to put it on repeat and do it over again. You get a little more creative in how you do it because this is using donations and how to leverage other contributions with those donations to quickly get you to the goal.

We call it $10,000 in 30 days, but you can apply any number to it. You could make the number lower or you can increase the goal. Make it $20,000 in 30 days. It depends on how committed you are to following the steps and applying the strategies, but it’s been proven over again. The feedback that I always get is, “This is so easy. Now that you’ve said it, it almost seems like something I should have known and now I’ve done it and it worked. I can’t wait to do it again.” That’s what we want to hear. That’s what we want to see.

Is there a type of nonprofit that you’ve you find your work most effectively with in terms of a certain segment of the nonprofit space? Maybe it’s that phase of their growth that they’re in.

It opens up the opportunity to do so much more as an entity that wants to transform lives, make a difference in the on the planet and with people when you have that flexibility of operating.

I can tell you that I love to help those starting and small nonprofits get a jump on how to be successful and how to bring in consistent revenue. I am able to do that with my online programs and the coaching program that I have, which is a group coaching program. My goal is always to get them to the point where generating consistent revenue. They’re growing. They’re starting to look at scaling and positioned to work with me one-on-one through coaching and help build them as a leader.

In terms of industries, I have an affinity and a love for helping young adults and youth and anything related to training, knowledge and providing resources that will help those individuals get a leg up on how to go out. Either start a career that can be upwardly mobile for them or start a business where they create opportunity for themselves and begin to build something that can create jobs and opportunities for others.

My love is there for various reasons. I love to work with organizations that are doing that work, but I’ve worked in public health and economic development. I’ve worked with hospitals, local cities and county governments. I come from the government. That’s something that I tend to be able to help navigate very easily. I tend to be a little bit in multiple sectors because I tend to also believe very heavily in collective impact.

The collective impact model came out of Stanford University and their social innovation area. It’s this space where you have multiple businesses, multiple sectors and industries that come together. They look at the commonalities between the things they’re trying to do individually and how they can have a collective impact, which is usually much bigger than what any of them can do individually? Even if they’re a fairly big entity, they can generally draw more funding to support that. I come from that space of supporting collective impact, so I tend not to see myself working in one particular niche or industry as it relates to a type of organization.

That’s super helpful to know. I’ve done quite a bit of business-type coaching over the years in terms of working on my own business. It is interesting when you dive in. It’s like, “This is applicable to all sorts of different businesses.” Similarly, a lot of times, as entrepreneurs, I know one of the things that you tend to see in that space is that people feel like they’re the first person to come across this particular problem and all alone, knowing that there are solutions to this and other people have navigated these same waters in the past. That can be all that one needs to overcome those challenges. It’s good to know how systematic a lot of this stuff can be.

It can be and I think it’s important for nonprofit leaders to recognize, just like you have for-profit leaders who hire coaches to help them accelerate and get to a goal faster, that they need the same thing. I know that I’ve worked with coaches and I don’t always work with coaches that seem to fit the norm. If you’re a nonprofit leader, you think, “I need to hire a nonprofit coach.” A nonprofit coach is definitely good because they can help you get to the goals you would like to get to specific to your nonprofit faster.

If you bring into that mix someone who is a for-profit or maybe a digital marketing coach. You might think, “I don’t need that person,” but the reality is you do need that person because they can bring perspectives that you never thought of that can be applied to the nonprofit space. It goes back to what we talked about almost the entire time. It’s how do you get to consistent revenue month after month? It’s disrupting what has been the status quo or the norm for nonprofits and how they do business and look outside of the box. These are the ways that we begin to look outside of the box.

What are some of the most common opportunity gaps or challenges that you see nonprofits struggling with as they’re ramping things up and starting to get some traction? Are there things that a lot of people experienced that you are like, “I’ve seen that before and I know a way around that one?”

There are a few, but there’s a couple of big ones. One tends to be around finances and budgeting. I see a lot of startup nonprofits make the mistake of not being regimented with their financials. They are not making sure that from the very beginning, they’re creating the financial foundation that they need to show that they are fiscally responsible so that they can then bring in the grants and the donations that they’re looking for at higher levels.

That means understanding the financial reports. Make sure that you are generating financial reports, you’re reviewing them. Make sure that you understand how much it takes to run your business and its true cost. Even if you don’t have the funds to support the true cost, if you don’t understand the true cost of running your business, it’s very difficult to bring in the funds that you need so that you can pay the salaries and cover the operational costs and all of those things.

That’s one big area around budgeting and finance, which gets you closer to bringing in the revenue you need once you get that locked in. The other thing that I see quite frequently is this fear of bringing in technology either because you don’t understand it or because you feel like you have the time to run it. I understand that, but I think that it’s very important to start with some very basic things.

I had someone ask me, what do I think is one of the core items that you need? Besides something to manage your finances, people who are running nonprofits also need to make sure that they’ve got a CRM. A Customer Relationship Management tool gives them so much ability to look at who they’re interacting with, bringing more people into their mission and cause. How to segment their traffic and how to speak to each of those segments in the correct way that’s going to get the response and the action that you’re looking for because your call to action can be very specific to that segment but you can’t do any of that if you don’t have someplace to manage that. A CRM tool helps with that.

It’s half of a joke, but people ask about CRM tools or we ask them what they’re using and they aren’t using one. They’re trying to juggle multiple spreadsheets, etc. The not completely joke that I tell is the best CRM tool is the one that you’ll use. There are lots of opportunities and lots of options. We’ve had several people on the show who have CRM tools but ultimately commit to leveraging. Even the most rudimentary power of one of those tools can transform how you are able to stay on top of all of the moving parts that come with running any business, including a nonprofit organization.

It is important to capture those email addresses and when you understand that piece, you can begin to level up and graduate to things like getting the $10,000 Google Ads Grant, which you can then leverage. For my organization, I’ll be totally transparent and candid. When we first started, I thought, “I’m a tech person. I know how to do this.” I went out and got a Google Ads Grant. First of all, it was complicated trying to understand what to do with it.

Second, being able to formulate the right verbiage to bring in the traffic we were looking for didn’t know how to do it. Ultimately, we lost that grant. Fast forward, we ended up being able to get that grant reactivated, but now, we know what to do with it. We’ve outsourced that work so that someone who knows what they’re doing is on top of it and they’re doing it for us.

We’re bringing in traffic to the tune of 800 or 900 individuals a day on our website and we’re converting at 3.3%. It’s huge. I was shocked. I was sharing this with the team. I was looking at the conversion numbers and the norm. I was happy when we got to 1% because that’s the norm, 1% to 1.5%. When we moved to 3.3% something, I thought, “This is amazing.”

You can combine your passion and your experience with wanting to make a difference in the world and have a greater impact with business and take it into the marketplace.

Aside from the management piece, which certainly has either time or some investment, it’s a very beneficial program that I think many nonprofits fail to take advantage of. It can be a real game-changer, particularly in the early phases of one’s organization in terms of driving awareness and hopefully repeat revenue.

It goes back to any type of grant, even something like the Google Ads Grant, where it’s not cash in hand but it is equivalent to. It has about cash value. You have to be ready. If you’re not ready to go after those opportunities, if they fall in your lap, you’re not going to know what to do with them. That creates greater stress, greater problems and you feel like, “This doesn’t work. Everyone says it works but it doesn’t work.” It’s understanding the building blocks, where I start, and how I continue to build up on that so that I’m moving from startup to growth to scaling.

I think that every journey begins with one step mentality. In general, people tend to fall into the trap of looking at the entire thing at once instead of all of the small little pieces that need to happen. They are getting caught up in, “I have so much stuff to do. How am I going to get it all done?” It’s like, “Pick one piece of it and get that done, then move on to the next piece.” It’s challenging. I know that I find myself struggling with that all the time as well. It’s not uncommon.

There are always a thousand things to do or that you could be doing, but that’s where having a coach and planning and understanding where you’re trying to go and having someone hold you accountable to the most important things that you need to work on this week or month or quarter to get you there. It can be helpful for any entrepreneur out there, whether you’re a purpose-driven entrepreneur or trying to make as much money as you want or trying to do some real tangible good in the world. I have found coaching to be incredibly beneficial over, whether it’s a big athletic goal that I’m shooting for or a big or even a small business goal. Having someone hold me accountable for the things I’m attempting to accomplish can be super helpful.

It’s been extremely helpful for me and it has helped me to think on a grander scale. That’s what we should be able to do as leaders. We should be able to define what we’re good at, set goals, where we are operating in our genius zone. Delegate those things that we aren’t good at or we shouldn’t be spending our time on and lead others, whether it’s volunteers or outsourced vendors, come in and be the team to do those things for us so that we can operate in our genius zone. Also, we can move the vision forward because, at the end of the day, that’s what the leader of a nonprofit is there to do. A coach can help you sometimes see what you can’t yet see yourself.

It brings us full circle back to the revenue discussion at the start of our conversation. If you don’t have those reserves or the predictable capacity to know that revenue is going to be able to be generated, then you can’t take advantage of things as effectively, even like hiring a coach. It’s good to keep in mind and be constantly assessing ways to help bring in additional monetary resources to help run your organization. What move things on top for you? Is there anything exciting coming down the pike that you’ve seen changes in ways to run organizations or anything unique that people should be aware of?

Something that’s new for us at Advancing The Seed, we started out as an organization where we were doing training and development and coaching in-person, primarily for young adults. We partner with other entities that have workforce development programs. We bring in an element of training and coaching that they may not have internally. With the pandemic, like so many other businesses, we had to implement virtual solutions. Now, the benefit that we had was that we were already putting virtual solutions in place. We have a learning management platform called the Success Learning Academy.

We are now focusing our attention on taking quality training programs and democratizing education, if you will. Not everyone has access to the funds to pay for a $500, $600 training course that could help to accelerate them in a job that would allow them to become more marketable, more upwardly mobile. We’ve been shifting our focus around how do we build our virtual solutions in a way where they can be accessible by anyone around the globe, with the common denominator being a smartphone.

Anyone who is under-resourced, how can we make this available to them so that they have access to the same resources that someone like you or myself would have access to. At the same time, looking at how we partner with other businesses to make that same training available as a platform for employees or individuals they work with at a corporate level and they’re paying for access to the platform.

Part of that is when we discuss that with other corporations and we’re selling that solution, they are not buying a learning management system with corporate training material. They’re becoming part of a greater solution to help serve young adults. That is allowing us to partner with other companies and employ young adults as paid interns. It becomes this ecosystem where we’re now making money with the tool that we use to serve our demographic, our population, but then as a result of that, we’re also now able to bring in individuals and give them on-the-job training and pay them through internships.

I love the idea of ecosystems. I use that analogy a lot because we all live in an ever-expanding ecosystem within an ecosystem. Being able to facilitate that engagement that then escalates to other opportunities for people is a cool way of building that program so that you can have the widest impact.

It’s exciting for me, especially coming from a tech background and a training background and bringing those two things together, looking at how we can create learning paths in tech, business, and entrepreneurship and making those available to individuals. Looking at how we can build other programs around that, like accelerator programs, things that are a little more hands-on with an actual coach through group coaching. That’s the space that we’re beginning to operate in and we have a vision around and how do we build that out and make it available to everyone.

If there’s one thing interesting or good that’s come out of all of the challenges that we’ve all been facing, is this additional level of comfort with tech and being virtual because it has allowed a number of organizations to expand their reach dramatically where they initially ran very in-person type programs that required hands-on. A lot of people have gotten very creative about how to move that to a more virtual scenario or more virtual setting. It delocalizes their reach where before, they were either having to travel to physically be someplace to help bring information or outreach. Even nonprofits who have that teaching component as part of their mission can expand that almost worldwide if that is in service of that mission.

Also, almost instantaneously. I’ve talked to a number of small nonprofits that have now expanded their services internationally because the limitations that they had doing in-person have been lifted. There are different things that they’re dealing with and trying to make sure that they’re keeping those people that are in their programs engaged and that they are delivering programs in a way that still brings transformation. I don’t want to call it a challenge, but that’s the opportunity that you face with virtually delivering programs. Besides that, you open up a world of opportunity in who you can reach.

It’s pretty amazing when you think about it. I had a guest on the show earlier in 2020, BSCS . They are a science learning organization that does teaching to other educators. They come in and help provide teaching services to other educators. In the past, they were very limited because they had to travel to places. The ability to afford them was constrained to very large school districts. They were only able to reach urban areas, for example.

As they were forced to move to virtual, they recognized that that opened up pretty much any school district to be able to access their programs and help their science teachers expand on their ability to bring great services to the students. That move, that embrace of technology, enabled them to expand to basically anywhere in the country. I think that they serve the US. It’s been pretty cool to see that stuff take place and have people embrace that and run with it.

You have to be ready. If you’re not ready to go after those opportunities, if they fall in your lap, you’re not going to know what to do with them.

It’s awesome. It also brings to mind why we were n’t doing more of this before because it wasn’t that we couldn’t. It was that we had a social construct around how nonprofits were supposed to deliver services that limited our perspective of how we could deliver services.

Regeanie, I have had a great time talking with you. How can people find out more about you and your coaching services and how you help nonprofits supercharge their fundraising?

They can definitely go to my website at Regeanie.com . You can find me. My handle is Regeanie on all the social media platforms. For that free checklist, as a gift to your audience, they can go to 10In30Days.com .

I’m excited to hear how people can get in touch and help either kickstart or supercharge their growth. I like to end each show with an ask. It’s because I love having conversations, but I also love taking action and want to inspire people to do that. The question I ask is if you have finished this into the show and had a good time, what would you want people to do after reading the show to have a better day or fuel their growth or make the world a better place?

I would love to see nonprofit leaders sit down and create a list of everything that they can do to monetize either a product or a service and make a commitment over the next 90 days to put in the effort to monetize one of those things off of the list and to generate at least $1,000 from it.

I think that is a fantastic thing for anyone to do because we all have something that we could figure out how to sell instead of either giving away or keeping to ourselves. I would encourage everyone reading this to take that and go take some action. Regeanie, thanks again so much for being on the show. I had an amazing time talking with you and let’s stay in touch.

Thank you, Stu. I enjoyed it. I appreciate it.

It’s my pleasure. Talk to you soon.

Take care.

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There you have it. Thanks for reading. If you would like to learn more about how to apply the audience engagement cycle to expand your organization’s mission, there are two things you can do. Now, you can go to MissionUncomfortableBook.com to download a copy of my book. While you’re there, you can get your purpose-driven marketing score to see where you can unearth some gold for your organization. If you’d like to listen to back episodes of the show or sign up to be a guest, go to RelishStudio.com/podcast . That’s it for this episode. I’ll be back for another great episode

Important Links:

About Regeanie Corona

As a social entrepreneur and business strategist, Regeanie uses her technology background, business knowledge and experience in the nonprofit space to assist other entrepreneurs and professionals who want to multiply their impact in the world through businesses focused on social innovation and applying the 3P sustainability model focused on people, planet, and profit.

She is leading the way in demonstrating that it is possible to build businesses around social impact and not only make them sustainable, but profitable as well. Regeanie is leaving her mark on the world by making sure other leaders are equipped to build businesses that truly make a difference in this world.

Episode 62: How To Successfully Launch A Product On Amazon With Luke Tierney Of Eco D2c

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 05:29:43 GMT

I don’t think it’s news that Amazon dominates the online selling game, both here in the United States and around the world. You don’t get to be a $1.75T—yes, that’s trillions of dollars—by slacking. In any case, if you’re launching a consumer product, a little knowledge about how to market it on Amazon can go a long way.

On this week’s episode, I talked with Luke Tierney, the Founder and Director of Eco D2C a firm that helps eco-brands bring their products to market—primarily on Amazon.

Our conversation focused around the challenges and processes around bringing a product to market, the factors that go into a successful launch, and how to develop marketing around eco-brand awareness to sell more products in this quickly-expanding sector of B2C sales.

But here’s something else we discussed—Amazon isn’t just for selling your product. The site is also used by millions of people a day as…

A search engine.

See, many consumers turn to Amazon first for product information, reviews, and pricing comparisons. Then they eventually purchase in-store or at another site online. This makes having your products on the service something to consider—even if you have no desire to sell millions.

If you’ve ever wanted to launch your own eco-product, this is a great conversation to listen to.

Hope you enjoy it.

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Link:

Eco D2C

Ask:

Buy and re-up

Find 1 thing and shift to an eco-conscious brand.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

How To Successfully Launch A Product On Amazon With Luke Tierney Of Eco D2c

Thanks for coming to relish this and reading our show. My guest is Luke Tierney, the Founder, and Director of Eco D2C . That company helps people who make eco products get found on Amazon and maximize their potential on that platform. They do work with other eCommerce platforms but Amazon is the elephant in the room, as it were. We had a fun conversation about bringing a product to market, some of the challenges that are associated with that, and some of the great things that people are doing out there to help drive eco brand awareness and sell more products.

It’s getting increasingly important to be on Amazon. It’s working almost as its own search engine at this point, and Luke and I talk a lot about that stuff. He has a great company and cool service that he provides. You are going to enjoy the show. If you are thinking about bringing a product to market, you should check this one out. Here we go.

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Luke, how’s it going?

It’s going great.

I’m excited to chat with you. You have a cool business that helps eco brands get positioned and sell on Amazon. Tell us a little bit more about that.

My company is named Eco D2C , direct to consumer. What we do is help brands that sell physical products sell online. To give some examples, if somebody has an organic food or beverage company, or maybe they make a line of ecologically friendly cleaners, or perhaps they have an ethically sourced apparel line, we help them sell their physical products to consumers on the internet. The most powerful channel to do that in the US now is Amazon. We also do Facebook and Google Ads but the vast majority of our work is on Amazon. We are digital marketers for the good guys.

That’s awesome. I know that Amazon has become one of the main “search engines” that people are using. They go to Amazon to search for information at this point, particularly for consumer goods, so it’s certainly, at least in the States, the elephant in the room in terms of commerce at this point. How did you get into this?

To go way back, I worked for environmental nonprofits in and out of college, and then when I was in my early to mid-twenties, I started my first company. It was a school and we were like, “We need students. How do we get them?” That was what differentiated us. There weren’t a whole lot of people with our business looking for students online. We had a couple of guerrilla marketing tactics, and then that stretched out to some other methods. That was my trial by fire, so to speak.

After that, I’ve gotten more involved in various kinds of digital marketing, continuing to work for myself. A couple of years ago, I started getting heavily involved in Amazon. Anybody can get up and sell something on that platform, and what was compelling about that versus on eBay is I saw a lot of individuals and small groups having success doing this.

Whoever discovers you and has the best experience will most likely convert to be your client.

I know a guy who had some success early on with bamboo sunglasses. I found a manufacturer that could produce those, and then he shipped over however many units to the US, put in online, and he knew what he was doing with marketing. That’s one tiny example of how straightforward it can be. I’m skipping over some pretty important pieces here, particularly getting the product from A to B but compared to years ago, it can be a low threshold to enter here, so I thought, “This is clearly working for a lot of people selling all kinds of different things. Why not use this marketing channel for people who are making products that are better for the environment or healthier for people?” I had always wanted to circle back to the environmental angle from a for-profit business standpoint, and it all came together with Eco D2C.

I like the approach where you are taking and vetting companies for their eco-friendliness, and that’s part of your program. How do you handle companies that have a whole line of materials, and some of them are eco-friendly and others aren’t? Is that someone who you might choose to work with or do you have to be 100% eco-friendly?

We like to see certifications in these things but we are not exclusive that you have to have this bulleted information to work with us. There is a certain amount of taking our client’s word for it but one of the things that help is having the name that we do and being involved in the natural product space, which is certainly where I’m the most active. I’m proud to say that upwards of 95% of our book have been natural brands, and the work that we’ve gotten that is outside of that has been, at the very least, might be some innovative exercise equipment or something that’s not

Would we do help sell roundup? No. Would we work for tobacco companies? Probably not. They are not on our list of partners that we want to have as a business. Some brands come to us, and they are certified Fairtrade or certified organic. Certifications cost money. If you are just starting or you haven’t gotten around to it, you might not have all these things under your belt yet. It depends on a case-by-case basis but we have worked with some brands that are real leaders in their space, and I’m proud of the work that we have done with them and the way that we have been able to scale their sales.

It has enabled a lot of people to carve out a portion of the marketplace and be able to survive at least in those early phases of development. If you are having to build out a whole eCommerce platform, it’s pretty amazing to be able to tap into that stuff, so it’s nice that the opportunity is there for people and that people like you are enabling them to do that.

I wrote a book called Mission Uncomfortable , and it’s marketing for nonprofits book. I was chatting with someone who was like, “Is it up on Amazon?” I was like, “No.” I was vending it through my site. I was basically giving it away on my site but he said, “Put it up on Amazon and see what happens.” It did not take me that long to get it up there, and I’m sure that having a team like yours behind it would start to fuel some sales.

This was starting to happen when I was getting more heavily involved in this space but it certainly is the reality now. Amazon is Yelp for your products at this point. To throw a couple of stats out there and put context, somewhere between 38% and upwards 40% of all eCommerce sales in the US are on the marketplace. It depends on what particular study you are referencing there but it’s a juggernaut of a thing. Everybody was already starting to take Amazon extremely seriously because people had been making a lot of money on the platform but when the pandemic rolled around, and stores started closing, things exploded all over again.

It was already on a serious upward trajectory, and then things got only more intense. It all depends on the kind of business you have. We play in Facebook and Google spaces as well but the reason that we focus on Amazon as strongly as we do is that that’s where we see the best results for our clients. It’s where the most bang for your buck is likely to be if you have consumer product goods.

Ultimately, my allegiance is not to Amazon or their marketplace. My allegiance is to help companies that are making better products sell, and this happens to be the most powerful channel digitally if you sell consumer goods. That’s where we are going to be focusing for some time to come unless something very dramatic happens.

Alibaba moves over to the US.

That’s interesting. You can go on AliExpress. You can get things from Alibaba here. You could count on one hand the players I could probably move into Amazon’s market share but that’s one of them. It will be interesting to see what this landscape looks like moving forward, and I do think it’s going to be more varied. I don’t fear an Amazon singularity behemoth for sure. At the end of the day, we are going to be where we see the most opportunity for the companies that we work with.

What’s the process for a company that is trying to get on Amazon through you? What are the things that they need to tee up to be ready to work with you and your team?

Amazon can be an expensive platform to be on. There are some minimalist ways to use the platform. Advertising entirely depends on how you do it and what you define as expensive. A large budget for one brand might be a drop in the bucket for another. If you are signing up for a plan to sell on the platform, it’s $40 a month plus the cost of services, the time it takes you to try to optimize your listings, launch them, and learn the platform or the cost that it would be to hire somebody like us to do it for you. That cost is quite small compared to the cost of advertising.

Amazon is the most used search engine for product research. I, myself, was doing this before I even realized that this was starting to become consistent consumer behavior. I could be at the grocery store, for instance, and I might double-check Amazon for price and reviews if it’s a new product to me, and I want to see if the product is any good. Everybody is doing that. The last stat that I heard for this was 2019, so I’m sure it’s much higher by now but 26% of in-store shoppers were checking Amazon for reviews and price comparison.

That’s why you should consider being on it even if you want to do it super minimally. At the very least, you are collecting reviews. People can go and research your brand. It’s social proof. People know that you are legitimate enough to at least be on the platform. The first step is to set you up and get you launched in an optimized way as possible.

I don’t want to go too far into methods of researching Amazon SEO and review strategy. I don’t want to bore anybody to tears who might not be super into the jargon-y stuff but we want to make sure that your copy is super sharp and is keyword-optimized. We want to make sure that your images are optimized and are the kinds of creative that are going to draw customers in.

If somebody discovers you however they discover you, whether they have read about you online, they were targeted by an ad, in a store or found you in a market, whoever is discovering you are going to have the best experience possible and be the most likely to convert. They are going to learn everything that they need to know as to whether or not if they are going to make that purchase. It’s like launching a website.

Anytime you launch a product, you need to validate your messaging.

I was about to say it. It sounds a lot like optimizing a website.

You should think of Amazon as your second online storefront. The 1st is your website, and the 2nd is Amazon.

Are you helping with setting all that stuff up or are you taking products shots and everything for clients?

We are not a creative agency. We are data nerds. We lean on our partners for their creative, and then we will give recommendations and examples of like, “This is what good creative on Amazon looks like. We think you should go out and maybe get some of XYZ.” You are going to need somebody to guide you in creating that content but we don’t do photography or those things. We take the brand’s existing assets, and then we make the absolute most out of it.

That’s great. Have you seen people in the nonprofit space leverage Amazon in a similar way in terms of differentiating their revenue where they have brought products into play? Is that something you have seen work well?

It could. If they have physical products to sell or even merge, it’s not a bad idea to put them on the platform. I can’t say that I have seen it as a large trend with nonprofits, probably because I’m not in contact with that many nonprofits that have physical products to sell but there are a lot of mission-driven companies that have a presence on the platform. Think of Patagonia, Tom’s of Maine or any of the brands that we have worked with.

As far as the nonprofit space goes, I would very much welcome the opportunity to work with a nonprofit trying to get launched on the platform and help them figure out a strategy that’s going to be effective for them because their goals are probably going to be way different than your typical for-profit company. We will make the platform work for you and not get sucked into this rabbit hole. If you are selling a physical good, then there will be a way to use this to your benefit.

Are there any pitfalls that people should be aware of? I have a couple of friends who have big food brands. Whole Foods is part of Amazon now but one of the things that they have talked to me about is how it can be a blessing and a curse to get placed into a major retailer like that because potentially if you don’t take off quite as quickly as they thought or even if you take off too quickly and can’t fulfill, you can lose that spot. A lot of times, it’s very hard to get back once you have lost it. Is Amazon working in a similar retail fashion or do they not care about performance?

Your performance is going to determine your organic rank on Amazon. It’s similar in the way that Google will rank you depending on how relevant you are and how much traffic you are getting from certain queries. The difference on Google is people are asking a question that they want to answer, and on Amazon, people are looking for a product to buy. To put that in the context of your retail question, with retailers, it’s tough because you have to maintain a certain velocity or they drop you.

You will never be dropped from Amazon’s platform unless something goes wrong. There’s always “shelf space” for you, the unlimited catalog. Stock-outs do affect you. First of all, you are not making any sales but also, you start falling in organic rank. You are going to have to have some patience for your ads to get back up to the level they were before. It doesn’t how long a stock out is. If it’s for a day, then this is less so. If this is a couple of months, then we have some work to do to get it back. It’s not like a right-hand snapping back. We can talk about stock issues if you want to.

There are a bunch of common pitfalls I would say that brands fall into. There are things that are inventory-related and not having it when they need it and not being optimized. Sixty-nine percent of customers will bounce, as in they will leave if a page doesn’t have enough information. In that, there’s an opportunity on Amazon to do your brand justice and convert.

You can also scare people away. If your listing is bad and it doesn’t have enough information, someone might buy it thinking it’s one thing, and then it’s not quite that, so they will leave negative reviews. I wouldn’t suggest launching on the platform if no one is going to look at it. Monitor the thing for a very long time.

If no one on your team is going to be managing it.

It doesn’t have to be super high maintenance. You just have to be on top of it. If your Amazon’s metrics are fairly demanding, if you have a late shipment rate that’s too high, you are getting too many complaints or things are broken all the time because they haven’t been packed effectively, then Amazon can pretty much drop you. This is the other common thing. People underestimate how buggy the backend can be. Amazon is growing at a breakneck pace.

The experience for customers in Amazon is super smooth, and it’s not that way for sellers. Anybody getting involved in the platform should be forewarned that Amazon might have a rollout. Certain things might go wrong, and then you have to fix them. If you have a website, you are going to have to do updates. You won’t have to do updates on Amazon. You are just going to have to keep an eye on to make sure nothing weird is going on. It’s less maintenance than a website but it’s good to have somebody on hand that you can call and be like, “This thing is going on. Can you make sure that everything is shipshape?”

Have you seen certain product types do better on Amazon than others? If someone is thinking of launching a brand or getting into this space, are there any categories that you would recommend people either avoid or embrace?

It depends on how you are positioned in your space. You can get into a competitive space and rock it or if you get a niche that has a lot of opportunity for growth and if customers don’t resonate with it not as much as you think they should, then things can easily get more complicated. I wouldn’t say there’s one space I would stay away from. There certainly are categories that require more documentation to prove that you are legitimate. If you are selling a health supplement, you are probably going to have to submit some evidence showing the governing bodies that are important and have been deemed to be safe for the public.

I wouldn’t say there’s one space to stay away from. I would highly encourage people. There are some pretty cool analytical tools out there to get some data on what a space looks like before you launch. We use Helium 10 , for example. It’s the name of the software suite. There’s a free demo version of it. An example here is you can use one of their tools called X-ray to get estimates of your competitor’s revenue, and that’s pretty unique. It is an estimate, so don’t take it to be more than what it is but it can show you which of your competitors are owning a space.

Food and beverage have been two of the fastest-growing categories in Amazon for the past couple of years.

There’s so much customer data on Amazon if you know how to tap into it. You can tap into their views and see what the biggest complaints among customers are. You can see what they praise in products. You want to make sure that as you try to differentiate and as you launch in the platform, you are using the language that your customers are using and that you are solving their actual pain points. All this is a long way of saying that, “If you know how to get the data, and there are some pretty straightforward tools to use, you can get a lot of interesting data points that can help you make some important decisions as to how you are going to launch on Amazon, what your strategy is going to be, and what’s possible for you in this brand.”

We have started doing that, where we look at customer reviews, both for clients as well as for client competitors, to see what the problems are that people care most about because if somebody is leaving a review, it’s probably the thing that that’s most pressing to them that they are talking about, so when you go and start to look for opportunity, those customer reviews can be super helpful. That’s Amazon’s bread and butter.

If one is launching a brand or trying to come up even with marketing copy, reviews can be a great place to start to figure out exactly the problem that your customers believe you are solving for them as opposed to what you believe you are solving for them. Oftentimes, those are very different things. We come into the market thinking, “I help people do this,” and when you start looking at reviews, it’s like, “They think I help them do this other thing more frequently, so maybe I should talk about that more.”

Anytime you are launching something new, you have to validate your product and the messaging. There are a lot of different ways to use different channels for that but Amazon has a unique opportunity for you to get a lot of data ahead of time, so you at least know the sandbox that you are about to play in. To give you one example that illustrates how it’s going to use well, there’s a contact that I have where I interviewed him for a blog a long time ago.

You will find a lot of people that do this but his entire business model is going and looking for opportunities in different niches in which there are a lot of traffic, sales, just 1 or 2 leaders, and not too much competition. He will go and mind reviews and see what customers are missing, and then he will go make that product. One of many examples in which he did this very successfully was with a cash box.

He’s looking for locked cash boxes. A leading product has thousands of reviews, and most of them are enormously positive. He sourced from the negative reviews, and a common complaint was that if this thing got tipped upside down or tilted, the top level of the cash box intermingled. They had become loose. He found a manufacturer to make a mold in which that was not a problem, and he knew how to market on Amazon because he had done this several times. It ended up being an enormously successful product for him. You can go and see what people are asking for and see if there’s an option there, and if there isn’t, make it.

Amazingly, we can do that these days. It seems like it’s so less complex to bring a product to market these days.

There are a lot of like, “What was his marketing plan? How did he go about finding the manufacturer? How did he do prototyping?” It’s a step-by-step process that one can go through to see if this is going to work, which is unique. However complex it is now, within very recent memory, it was much harder.

I do a lot of shopping in the eco-space, and it’s great to see how much easier it is to find those products these days than it used to be both in the retail space as well as on Amazon and online. It’s great for smaller manufacturers because it used to be dominated by Procter & Gamble or whoever. Now, there’s an outlet for these smaller businesses to start to get a little bit of a foothold.

That’s what our whole ethos is at Eco D2C in helping eco products. Not to get too pitchy but it’s what gets me excited about the space. You don’t have to hit a certain threshold that just stays on the shelves. There are other avenues to reach your consumers in a more direct way and to have a bit more flexibility with a cost that is not quite so cash-intensive at the outset. It would still cost. It’s a different cost but you are paying for data so you can validate and optimize. There’s an awful lot you can do in the space if you know what you are doing.

How does your model work? Are you taking a percentage or do you have a monthly fee plus percentage? What’s the working relationship look like for someone reading who’s like, “I have a great eco product idea, and I would love to have Luke help me out?”

It depends on what we are being tapped for. If we are launching on the platform, for instance, or launching it off to my store and optimized listings, that done right is largely a one and done. It’s not like other spaces where you have to constantly be thinking about refreshing your copy. You might want to do depending on your sales data certain indicators.

There are cases in which it’s helpful to touch up your copy but for the most part, if you do it right and you are launched, you will be okay for quite some time. That’s just a project cost. That depends on the number of products and skews we are launching. If we are doing ads, that’s a month-over-month retainer, and it depends on the size of the budget we are managing. On the low end, it’s a flat fee, and then if there are certain thresholds over what should be, it is a percentage. We have some different tiers. It depends on the size of the budget.

This is going to show my ignorance a little bit but are advertisements on Amazon like a promoted type of situation or is there something I’m unaware of as a consumer when I’ve gone to use Amazon that I’m being advertised to?

That’s exactly correct. If you go and do a search for anything on Amazon and you see sponsored, then that means that it’s a paid ad. There are different ad types you can do. Video has been a big thing that was rolled out a while ago that continues to evolve. There are ads on the Amazon platform unless you start getting into much larger budgets, and that’s a whole other conversation.

It’s called DSP. There’s probably not too much reason to get too far into that but unless you get to a certain size in which you are spending tens of thousands of dollars in your ads budget, and we do work with brands that do exactly that, there’s a larger strategy to discuss. Unless you are getting to the level in which you are dropping money on something like that, then pay-per-click ads are at different places around the Amazon platform.

What are some of the trends that you are seeing in the eco-product space? Are there any things that stand out that you are really excited about?

Food and beverage on Amazon have exploded. It has been one of the fastest-growing categories in Amazon for the past couple of years. Even pre-pandemic, and then that put gasoline in that fire. Within the natural product industry, food and beverage have a pretty sizable chunk of that industry as a whole. It has been one of the most prominent and fastest-growing sectors within it, so it has been exciting to see that increase in search interest and consumers who want mission-driven brands. That’s not just in food and beverage. You find that in a lot of places now but that is only increasing as time goes on.

Start making your company more environmentally friendly.

Some spaces matter more than others. People will care more about the food they eat and the cleaners they use, and sometimes, the clothes that they wear as well as how it’s sourced. Being a brand that values sustainability is pretty much always a plus but it might not be the largest thing on the customer’s mind depending on what product you have. Electronics is one where that’s very nice but a customer is going to question like, “Is it going to be as good as my X headphones?” Food and beverage especially have exploded but a lot of spaces have as well.

One of the things I have been seeing, and maybe it’s because I have been shopping for it quite a bit more, is we have always been fairly sensitive to the packaging that we use. Amazon has done an okay job of this as well in terms of bringing in more eco-friendly, less plastic packaging. That movement in the eco-space seems to be picking up as well, where products that were normally packaged in plastic containers are now coming in with a wax paper type of packaging. That’s a place where people could make some moves for sure.

Amazon has a lot of room for improvement on the packaging side. It will be a box within a box surrounded by a plastic kind of deal, and that’s pretty common. With the corporation the size of Amazon, I would wait to see it to believe it but they have publicly made a lot of pretty big commitments as far as the year that they are going to be carbon neutral. I’m not sure if they have made a public commitment to this but I know for a fact that they are looking hard into electrifying their delivery fleet. They are making moves to be a more environmentally friendly company for sure.

You can filter on Amazon now for brands that have a climate-friendly badge. If anybody out there wants to make sure they are getting something eco-friendly in Amazon, the way that works is that you have to have certain certifications to get that badge, and that’s how that is. They have partnered with Fairtrade and some of these other certification bodies.

There are a lot of possibilities on the very near horizon if they execute on any number of the things they have mentioned or have committed to publicly. Packaging is one of these problems that I very much look forward to being solved. It will, but in general, I know finding reliable eco-packaging has been a challenge for a lot of the brands that we have worked with. If you have compostable packaging and your product is on the shelf for too long, then it will compost. I’m not trying to say that all compostable packaging is like that. I want to be careful not to speak in too broad terms here but it has been a challenge for a lot of founders and founding teams that we have known.

It’s making that move and starting to get that traction. This is just one of the products that I know that we have purchased is dish soap. Instead of coming in a plastic container, it comes in a paper milk carton style container, which reduces some of that waste, which is part of that single-use waste, at least from a plastic perspective. It’s cool to see companies making moves like that. I hope that trend continues because we need it. You are completely spot on saying that Amazon couldn’t do a bit better. Hopefully, they are going to continue to make strides in that direction.

I don’t have any specific examples to reference now but being somebody who gets a lot of Amazon news, I do see these things come through every now and then. It sounds like they are working on some good things, but then again, when discussing a corporation of that size, whether it’s Amazon, Facebook, Google or anybody, you want to see it.

I know you need to bounce to get on another call here, and I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me about all of this. What you are doing is great. Enabling eco-friendly brands to elevate their exposure is a fantastic mission. How can people find you if they are looking for assistance in this space?

Our website is EcoD2C.com . Also, feel free to send me an email. It’s Luke@EcoD2C.com . It’s pretty straightforward. We also have a contact form on the site. We intentionally position ourselves as an educational resource about digital and multi-channel strategy in general, so if anybody has any questions, please feel free to reach out.

I would encourage everyone to do so. If you can put a little fuel behind that initial launch, and then be able to tap into your expertise to keep things moving in the right direction, people will be able to experience some great results. I love having conversations like this and learning more about all of these great opportunities for people to succeed in the world and spread the eco vibe but one of the things that I also want to do is inspire action, so if people who read this episode were to go out in the world and do one thing after reading this, what would you have them do?

I’m going to keep all the political and social issues aside. I will keep it focused on something product-related that everybody can do. There are certain products that I use daily that if I replace with one eco-friendly option, then I know that I’m supporting the shift towards more eco-friendly products. The reason that renewable energy is coming down so much is that people are using it, and the longer we go, and the more money is in it, the more efficiencies we gain and the better it gets.

The same thing comes around in terms of natural products. Toothpaste is a simple example. Every tube of toothpaste that has ever been made is still around. I’m not even going to mention any brands that we have consulted, but in general, you can get little toothpaste tablets or get eco-friendly dental floss that doesn’t have plastic in it, and these are toiletry examples. If there’s something that you have to buy and re-up on regularly, I would find one thing, and then shift to using a different brand that is eco-conscious. Your dollars are going to help us make this transition. Little things like that will end up going off a long way.

I love that. It’s something that I have been trying to be more conscious about. In fact, you mentioned dental floss. I was like, “I’m throwing away a lot of plastic every time I run out of dental floss,” so I bought a bamboo dental floss holder thing where you can buy the refillable piece that has a cardboard tube that it uses instead of plastic. It’s achievable, people. Go out and find one thing that you are about to buy again and swap it out with something eco-friendly. Thank you so much for being on the show. I hope that you have a fantastic rest of your day. Let’s stay in touch.

Thank you so much, too.

Important Links:

About Luke Tierney

Luke helps natural products and other ecologically minded brands scale their business with ecommerce – chiefly Amazon. If you have a product that is better for the world, he makes your sales throttle with direct to consumer channels and digital marketing. He lives to scale companies that are changing the world by remaking the way we make things.

“Luke’s work was key in our Amazon growth for the past 10 months. His expertise in listing optimization (including copy and images), ad spend, backend keywords, and his patience in dealing with Amazon’s Seller Support helped our sales go from 0 to 100 and our Amazon presence to really be felt. We wouldn’t have had it any other way and are extremely pleased with the work Luke did for cleancult.”
– Luis Santiago-Bartolomei, cleancult

“Luke brings exceptional knowledge and experience to the table, as well as a strong dedication to our company and our success. I strongly recommend his services and believe him to be an asset to any organization.”
– Kelley Matthews, Clear Intentions

Episode 63: Telling Your Story At The Intersection Of Marketing, Branding, And Sales With Suzi Bahnsen From Apple And Arrow Sales

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 05:00:48 GMT

In the for-profit world, Sales and Marketing are two sides of the same coin. They work hand-in-hand to build an organization. In the nonprofit world, however, these two components of brand building and stakeholder engagement get a bad rap.

But do nonprofits actually sell ? Of course they do. Whether some component of your organization drives revenue through selling, or your ED is simply out drumming up donations during the giving season, at some level every non-profit depends on sales and marketing.

My guest on this episode of Relish This is Suzi Bahnsen , founder of Apple and Arrow Sales . They help organizations and leaders navigate the intersection of marketing, branding, and sales. Suzi and I met when she was working at Boulder, Colorado’s Small Business Development Center. She has a long history working with nonprofits and small businesses to improve their sales and engagement, and it was great to reconnect with her.

We had a vigorous discussion about storytelling and how to use marketing and branding to get your message across to your stakeholders, how to develop a solid marketing and engagement strategy, and much more. This was a super fun episode. I hope you enjoy it.

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Apple and Arrow Sales

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Telling Your Story At The Intersection Of Marketing, Branding, And Sales With Suzi Bahnsen From Apple And Arrow Sales

My guest is Suzi Bahnsen and she is the Founder of Apples and Arrows Sales , which is a new business that she’s founded to try and help people navigate marketing, branding, sales and the intersection of all of those things. Suzi and I met a couple of years ago when she was working for the SBDC. They’re a local nonprofit part of a bigger organization.

She was working for Boulder SPDC and was putting together classes for local businesses. They had me come on as a speaking guest. It was great to reconnect with Suzi. She’s an amazing person. She has a lot of great insight and information about marketing and sales and how those two things overlap. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff that I think you’re going to find fun and interesting. Suzi is great. I hope you enjoy the show. Suzi, how are you doing?

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

I’m excited to have you on the show. We met back when you were with the SBDC in Boulder. You were doing some cool stuff to bring webinars to people during the pandemic and had me on as a guest a couple of times.

People love you. You did such a great job.

It was super fun. It was great to start working on my teaching chops a little bit. That was something that the SPDC was doing a very good job of, but you have moved on to a cool new business that you’ve started up from scratch called Apple and Arrow Sales.

It’s my third business. I used to own a marketing and design agency on Pearl Street called Launchpad Interactive and then I had a business called Turn Left. That was a fractional CMO business where I’d go and help people with their tech stack and helped them to assess their internal and external resources. I get sales and marketing to work together. They pop out like Mary Poppins of marketing. I used to call myself. That was a blast.

I’ve done this dance of marketing leadership, sales and having my own thing. I love the entrepreneurial spirit. Apple and Arrow Sales are my newest venture. It’s about helping empower people to price appropriately, scale their business, evaluate their sales strategies and their brand and help them to live that life that they want to live. It’s fun to be at a place where I can make choices to work with people. I want to see the effect. I want to see them enjoy their life, have great clients and bring some good in the abrupt.

Let me a little bit more about what you do there and who you’re looking for over at Apple and Arrow?

I created two online courses. One is called Badass Branding , which is a DIY branding class, and then the second is called No Apology Pricing . I originally started thinking this time I would work with women. My brand is like this magenta and black, in your face poppy, “I’m going to work to help empower women.” During the pandemic and the last few months of 2021 particularly, I’ve had some people come to me that have been in business. They’re not women necessarily but need help.

I look for people that want to grow, that maybe have something great that they want to bring in the world, whether it’s a service or product, but they’re lacking that sales background or that marketing know-how. I love to work with people that need to work with an agency or they’re trying to build their marketing, brand platform and work with them before they start to make sure that they have done their market research and due diligence. They know who their target is so that they can be in more control and a better client to people like you, agencies or freelancers.

Embrace the entrepreneurial spirit.

They’ve done that legwork and thought things through and they know where they want to go and where they want to take their business. It’s an open book, my background. I did a lot with a technical company and I’ve worked with everything from natural food to green building to start-ups. I have consulted hundreds of entrepreneurs over the course of my career.

I love those heart-based companies, these passion brands. There are people that are at a tipping point, like maybe they’ve been in business for a decade and they’re ready to scale. They don’t even realize that they’re selling something that doesn’t have high margins or they didn’t even want to sell it in the first place, but they ended up going down this path. That’s where the money came in.

The apple for this brand represents what you want and that might be more time to travel, spend time with your kids, take care of your aging parents, make more money, scale or whatever. The arrow represents alignment and focuses on that direction. It’s a fun poppy brand. I think at this point in my career, I want to help people and bring some love, that a-ha moment or that feeling of people being heard or giving someone space to express those vulnerabilities, concerns and help them get past them. It’s more about that than the industry this time.

The quicker that we can all get to be able to do the things that we love and have those kinds of employment or entrepreneurial opportunities to get us excited. That’s where we do our best work. It’s in those spaces where we’re passionate about it. It sounds like you’ve found yours.

Particularly now I think that people realize the world has changed on us and got a little bit pear-shaped. A lot of people worked hard. If they had a business, they might have survived and grown. They may have gone off to do their own thing and realize that life’s so short, precious and fragile. It’s time to be clear on what you want and go for it. I see exciting times. The flowers that grow after the burn. I dig that and why not?

One thing that you mentioned that I’ve latched on to in the last several years is the idea that we can all lead with purpose and you don’t have to have an eco brand or a nonprofit necessarily to have a purpose-driven business. It’s cool to see how the marketplace is shifting. It’s being driven a little bit by circumstances and quite a lot by some of these up-and-coming generations who are demanding that of the brands that they frequent and use. You’re seeing a lot of brands that historically, maybe, haven’t thought that way. They’ve been pure profit first type of people who are starting to reconsider how they approach business and I’m hoping that that’s a movement that continues to gain steam and continues to grow and blossom.

I always like to keep up line statistics and see where marketing is and what the marketing trends are. I’m pretty sure it was either 71% or 72% of Americans are looking for that purpose-driven companies. It’s their expectation now that businesses are going to have something that they stand for, giving back to and it’s not whatever product or service that they’re selling. I think that’s a good thing. In my first contracts, when I had my agency, if they wanted to work with me, they had to do something for the community.

I didn’t care what it was. It was like, “Whatever you’re passionate about, whether it’s a rescue, kids, food, or whatever it was, but you had to do something. If you didn’t have a lot of money to give, maybe you invested your time, did a silent auction, or whatever it was.” It was a part of my value system as an agency and it taught these businesses also that there’s altruism in it. You can convey that these were what you stand for as a brand and help that nonprofit or that purpose, whatever that purpose was like. Help them get the word out that they’re available. Have you ever made any of those farm-to-table dinners out and there in unincorporated Boulder?

I haven’t done those, but I am on the board of GoFarm Colorado , which has a harvest dinner every year and they’re a lot of fun.

I would like to do one of those. I love that stuff. I went to one and all of these organizations have come together. They were doing introductions about like these and it was like the Watershed Center was part of it. It wasn’t the farmer and it wasn’t the person that was making whatever delicious cocktails they were making, but it was also this water conservation. I love it when they have bees. They help people help the bees and all that stuff. Build a community around purpose and it gives a good feeling.

It brings everyone together and it’s interesting because it does help people feel at least some of the money that they’re spending for a service or product is going back to a good cause. It’s has a slightly dual effect and that it’s doing some good, but it’s also creating opportunity. More businesses will probably at least hopefully start hopping on that bandwagon.

It’s one of those things where with all the shakeup from COVID-19 and all of the businesses that had to readjust, I think that there is an opportunity to tell that story now differently to bring it back into the fold. Stuart, you did some sessions for the small business development center in that series. Remember we were talking about people that had popped up their online presence event. In the beginning, you can talk about what’s going on with your employees and you can talk about what’s going on with your hours or are you shutting down? Now, what do you talk about?

You have your presence up like, why not talk about how to get involved? What are your values as a business? Nonprofit, for-profit, whatever, where are you now and how are you fitting into the ecosystem? It’s a great thing to share and people are interested in hearing about that. Down to the individual that you effect, I think that’s important. Has your employee done something nice or kind? Did you help out a family? Are you adopting some charitable giving that you weren’t doing before because now you’ve moved on to the next thing? I think that people find a lot of heart in that.

Storytelling is interesting and I think people get hung up on having the perfect story or having to come up with the big idea themselves. There are so many ways to share stories that bring value to your particular audience that people don’t always consider. They think, “I need to write a blog post. I need to craft the social media thing and I don’t have any great ideas now.”

Frankly, there are so many stories going around and you brought up a couple there that are great storytelling fodder in terms of what are your employees doing? Maybe one of your employees does trapeze performances on the weekend and there’s a story. That’s something that you can bring to the table, talk about and it demonstrates that you support your team and you have interesting people on your team. It doesn’t always have to be some big tome of information that you’re bringing as long as you’re bringing value to the audience. Do you have any other ideas around storytelling that you’d like to share?

Some of it could be funny or little humor to tie in. Storytelling is personal and some people are naturals at it. I was looking at my dog and he’s a good example. I don’t post that much on social. I tell people to do things and then for me, it’s like, “Oh God.” I don’t know how many pictures in my thing where I’m like, “I’m going to post that. That’s going to be great.” I psych myself out, but I have no problems posting something about my dog because he’s a rescue dog and he’s my heart. I love him and he’s part of my brand and part of who I am. It cracks me up that he’s snoring next to me.

He’s the easiest thing for me to talk about and for some people, it is their animal, mascot, or event that they’ve done. I was talking to a couple of women and one of them was telling me the story about her son. He’s autistic and epileptic. He had to go get the COVID-19 shot and he had a big issue. It didn’t work out and it was very traumatic. I don’t know if it was Walmart or Walgreens, but one of these bigger chains, but this one guy took the time to work with her and he made a party. He blew up balloons, had little toys and made this party event for this child that was having a hard time adjusting. I’ve told that story three times now.

I’m the queen of, if I hear somebody that’s doing something good and they’ve done something that made someone’s day better, I like to tell those stories and repeat that brand. It’s what makes you feel good about anything that’s around your business and it doesn’t always have to be about the product that you’re selling or the service that you’re providing.

Here’s another good example. Somebody reached out to me. She sent a message and it said, “Personal favor.” It’s a work colleague. She was asking strong women to write an inspirational message for a relative of hers who was going back to grad school who had four children. She had a tough road, but she was pushing to go back and get her Master’s degree. I loved that she did that and she reached out to help her family member.

I had to write a note for this person I’ve never met, but that’s put some goodness out in the world. It made me feel good about her organization and as an individual. It had nothing to do with the organization that she works for. It had everything to do with that connection. It made me feel good because it’s a strong woman. I was like, “You think I’m a strong woman?” I got a little eco snack from the invite, but this ability to help someone made me feel good about her and the organization. They’ll probably get some more money from me.

We talk about creating relationships all the time. I think with nonprofits and for-profits, ultimately, marketing is about relationship building and sometimes that relationship is pretty short-lived. It’s fairly easy to get over a hurdle. For example, if you’re purchasing some small ticket item or it can be something that you need to nurture over time in order to get somebody to take that next step to volunteer, donate or buy a larger ticket item.

Sales has changed so much over the years but you still have to learn how to face your fear of sales.

At the end of the day, people certainly buy from businesses, but there are always people at the end of those transactions. When any organization can let that shine and demonstrate that they’re there and they have cool things to share, whether those be very business-specific, interesting information or something fun and friendly that creates an opportunity to grow a relationship. Whenever one is struggling with what content to create, get back into the last few days and think about some of the conversations that you’ve had. See how those could help brighten somebody’s day or bring them a little taste of something that they didn’t know about.

That connection with relationship building and also being honest about where you are in your space, I think that’s important. We’re in marketing and marketers always talk about the upside. I used to laugh about when I first started my business. You always said, “Everything is great.” It doesn’t matter if it is or not. Everything’s great like, “I’m doing well, I’m busy, whatever.” I think that now there is also some storytelling in the vulnerability of sharing. You’re not alone in some of your emotions, too and trying to give somebody some uplift.

It’s the human piece that goes a long way. Even as a part of imagery like sharing pictures and video, I think that that helps to sell a business. If you’re trying to raise money, whatever that might be, people are so visual, but I also feel telling a story, like writing a card, goes a long way these days. My office mate, Lisa, has a box of cards that she printed off from Canva. She’ll write this gratitude note and I always had good intentions of doing it because I love the idea of it all. She’s great at mailing stuff.

It makes someone’s day and makes them feel so good. I thought of you. I just want to say I’m grateful that for whatever. Not like I asked you for something, you gave me something, “I was thinking of you. You were on my mind.” It could tie back into whatever you’re doing, like, “We did this thing. I thought of you.” It’s not for the sale, but it’s for the relationship. It’s the, “Thanks for being you or thanks for what you did and I remember you saying something that made me feel good one time,” or whatever it is. That’s a good story, too. It makes people feel something. I like going back to those roots.

I think that there are a lot of things that we let fall by the wayside because they’re not new and they’ve been done for years, but a personal note is something that can go a long way. At this point in time, they are fairly unique. It’s rare to get a handwritten note of any kind. It’s certainly a technique that people should keep in their back pocket. At one point, I got away from this because I forgot about it a little bit, but one of my weekly KPIs was to send out 3 thank you cards or 3 handwritten notes to clients or people that I’d talked with and it can make a difference.

Even for people that don’t want to mail something, if you go back to some social channels and reach out on LinkedIn or whatever for no other reason than you were on my mind, that seems to stick to it. Have you ever had a friend that’s like, “You’re so busy or whatever?” It’s like, “I never want anybody to feel I’m so busy.” It’s almost the opposite of when I was in my 30s.

I want it to be so busy. Now, I’m like, “No, until here and until the present.” I want people to know that I’m listening and more than ever now that those little tokens mean a lot. Also, providing the space for people to be heard and listened to a little bit goes a long way. That’s a relationship-building thing that’s effortless. It doesn’t cost a thing.

It doesn’t cost anything to be present. We are here anyway. Those are great things for people to keep in mind. Relationships are two-way streets and I believe that a lot of salespeople fall into the trap of always be selling. That’s the whole Glengarry Glen Ross thing. Always being present would be a better motto for people because there is so much that you can pick up on, learn and be able to share that if you are authentic, present and not trying to get to that next quota, sales goal or whatever it is. There is a lot to be said for being there and present. People remember that particularly in the fast-paced world that we live in.

If you can remember a little bit about their life and what matters to them, I think that goes a long way. Sales have changed over the years and I’m working on a book. It will be by July 2022, but hopefully before then. It’s called Facing Your Fear of Sales and it’s a guide to helping people overcome those doubts and uncertainties like imposter syndrome, not asking for what you want and all of that.

It ties into selling something that you feel like selling as a service to someone. You’re providing something that you know is going to help their day be better, whether that’s a pair of shoes that’s going to make them smile or whatever it might be like some tool or service that’s going to help them in their marriage or whatever it might be. A tincture that’s going to make them feel lofty. Whatever it is that they’re selling but doing it in a way that I know is going to be good for you.

It’s authentic and it’s like not that pushy salesperson. It doesn’t carry as much weight anymore, but what does carry weight is the follow-up. Those little touches that you and I have been talking about with those relationships build and notes like, “I’m reaching out and see how you’re doing,” or, “How’s your business going,” or “I know that your daughter is graduating,” or, “I know that something in your life changed and I wanted to check in.” That’s a great way to do business development. You have to keep track of it.

If you had a CRM system or some way to manage your customer relationships so that you can keep on top of it, as we all get busy and distracted, I think that those are key ways to be top of mind. I’ve been on both sides of the selling fence where I’m the one that’s signing the purchase order, I’m the one asking for one, and the people that I liked got my money. They were stuck with me. If there was a good salesperson, they had to stay true and stay with me through the whole process. They couldn’t sell me and leave. That was the payment.

It’s not included what I asked them, but they got that sale because they did a good job. They heard me, made space and I’m very clear, particularly when I was in corporate. It’s like, “Here are my problems and my budget.” Giving it to you on a platter, but those that listened, had some kindness, caring, honest about it and taught me something went a long way. I would say that the teaching part is also an important piece and also goes into storytelling and relationships. Anytime you can teach someone something, share information, stories or whatever. I think that’s a win.

We’ve been using Loom a lot, where if someone asked me how to do something, I’ll go do it for them, but also record what I did, so they have an understanding of how to do it themselves next time if that’s what they would like to do. It’s a great tool and it’s very inexpensive. I think it’s $7 a month or something like that, but it can be used in a variety of different ways to create differentiation and personal touch.

A lot of times after sales calls, I’ll record a Loom message and you can embed it in your email. It’s something that stands out. It’s a little bit unique and special. People like it when you can take a little bit of a special touch or add a little special touch to how you engage and interact. It stands out. It’s like Lisa and her gratitude cards. It’s doing little things like that and that’s where I think that any business leader, whether that’s a nonprofit or a for-profit business leader, there are opportunities to do those types of things every day.

For example, one of my good friends owns or is one of the founders of Skratch Labs and they do an amazing job of getting orders out the same day. Even if you place orders late in the day, they have a company policy to try and get those things out by the end of the day. Oftentimes, I’ll order something there right in Boulder, but if I order some of their product, I’ll get it the next day without even having expedited shipping or anything like that.

One of the little things that they do is they add a personal message of preorder. It’s short and it’s like, “I hope you enjoy the drink mix,” or whatever it is. It does create that personal touch that I think a lot of places potentially miss out on because they’re trying to hurry too much or they don’t think that it matters.

It’s a little thing. It’s like that surprise and delight. Remember, we used to always talk about surprise and delight. It’s like, “I love that little note.” It doesn’t have to be much or a little. Sometimes people send out a little sticker. It goes a long way. I love the Loom as a tool to reach out and do a quick little video for email.

I’ve been telling some of my clients about that because I was these new things and to your point, it doesn’t cost much. You can record a personal message even or maybe your handwriting’s not that good. When you’re thinking of somebody, you can send them a quick, “I was thinking of you. I wanted to let you know what’s happening. Here’s where I’m at. I’m thinking of you and that time we talked about whatever.”

A lot of times like people will be like, “What’s the big idea,” or, “I have to do marketing.” They have this huge idea of what marketing is and sometimes it’s so subtle. You hit them at the right time when they were like, “Now that you’ve reached out, I do have something going on,” or, “That’s so cool that you did that.” It’s authentic. It makes you feel that on the receiving end, it’s good. On the flip side, it doesn’t cost you much to do little things like that. I think that’s super cool.

You were asking about examples of stories. I read about Southwest, so I fly Southwest a decent amount domestically. They’ve been getting such a backlash because they’ve been canceling flights. The whole travel industry, like airlines, has been hit. It was an article about the CEO of Southwest. The flight attendants and the pilots were complaining because they were frustrated, tired, treated like crap, overworked and everything. He did two things. He said he was sorry. He apologized to his staff. I love the I’m sorry, like, “I’m sorry that this has happened and it’s been handled this way. I’m sorry.” That made me feel good about that brand.

In marketing, pick what you’re comfortable with, don’t pick everything and, then just dig a little deeper in that instead of trying to be everything to everyone and live on.

The second thing was he cut the flights. For me, I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the fall. Are you cutting back flights? What does that mean for me? It might mean that I have to pay more or whatever.” I’m okay with it because he’s treating his employees well. He said he was sorry and that made me feel good about that brand. I’m telling you the story now, I remember it and I don’t remember a lot of it, but it was good. A simple I’m sorry goes a long way.

There was a New York Times article about the whole airline industry and how challenging things are, particularly for the flight attendants who are taking a lot of the brunt of people’s frustrations. It’s unfortunate that that’s happening right now. They’re short-staffed and overworked. Flights are delayed and people are angry. Flight attendants and pilots have to work extra time. Maybe not pilots.

They may have a little bit more ironclad rest protocol, but certainly, that industry has been hit hard by all of this. The CEO taking the time to acknowledge that there’s a problem and apologize for what he may or may not be able to control that’s affecting that and offer up tangible solutions, I think that those are the steps that are required to create good PR for those of us who are paying a little bit of attention to the actual situation. Perhaps even bad PR that people are going to be upset that there aren’t more flights available or the flights are more expensive. At the end of the day, taking that time to notice and respond, I think a lot of companies out there would either pass the buck a little bit or ignore the situation, hoping that it would go away. There are opportunities for storytelling there to educate the public on why they’re making those types of decisions.

It does affect your mindset and there are clients that will appreciate that, like me. To your point, there are other people that might not be so happy because of the less flights. With all the agro people that have been flying, maybe that’s not a bad thing that they could have a different airline because these people have been beaten down. Branding, marketing and Biz Dev it’s all emotion-based.

There’s something that’s funny that I read the other day about Steve Jobs and his attitude was that a home run is better than two doubles. I wrote a blog post about this. I’m sure if you go back to my blogs in late August, early September of 2020, you’ll see a post about this because it’s a daily stoic thing that I read. It came back up again. In any event, he believed that a home run was better than two doubles. I see where he’s coming from in that respect, but I also think that we shouldn’t begrudge the two double and base hits.

The little things like that are certainly easier to get. It’s a lot easier to come up with a few base hits than it is to figure out how do I hit one home run. They also can be effective and those base hits can turn into doubles or turn into triple. You never know what’s going to happen. Being consistent, trying to keep communications going and being present are the qualities that every business should fall back on. Particularly when they’re struggling to figure out how to afford some of the home run stuff that they might like to do, because typically, home run things can be a little more costly than consistency day after day.

When it comes to a home run versus a couple of doubles, or however you get to the end score, it depends on what your value system is too. Do you want to kill yourself to get to this? Are you going to burn out or is it a marathon where you’re trying to be present, keeping moving, keeping those goals in mind, being in alignment?

In the end, you look back and you’re like, “Look where I came from.” If you’re burning out your staff, that’s such a big deal right now. The turnover of people and that YOLO movement, the whole, you only live once thing, people are changing. You have to keep all of that in mind. The day-to-day of people’s lives is not the same anymore as it was.

Are there any trends or any things that you’ve seen coming up in your space that our readers should be keeping an eye on in terms of storytelling or sales changes in the way sales are being made? Is there anything, in particular, that’s exciting to you right now?

I do like that Loom, little short videos and email to tell a story. Video to me is still hot. I have been thinking about more of your assets being your own and trying to push things out on YouTube more because it’s the second-largest search engine, like Google. If you find some cadence with that or podcasts, I think podcasting is great, but I think that conversions with YouTube have been going well and Instagram too. Instagram people are feeling good about brands and their stories on that.

I would say that the human touch coming back into the fold and not asking for things but sharing and telling stories is top of mind and recommended. People’s attention and focus are so short and it keeps getting shorter it seems. I feel that clarity is going back, even if you’ve been in business for a while, and looking at your brand and messaging.

What solution you’re providing and making sure that’s still the solution your customers need, it’s a great time to do it. I think fall is a great time to readjust the skirt. It’s like, “Go.” I don’t know about you, but people were getting out this summer. It’s like the summer was like a blink of an eye now it’s gone. Now it’s like we’re coming into colder weather and everything. It’s time to tell some stories.

Video is not going to go away. There are video shorts. I’m not a TikTok person. That’s not my jam, but you see that YouTube is now doing those short videos. I think that for people that weren’t living on TikTok, I think that that’s coming into play is putting out these short spots on YouTube. That’s going to be hot. I don’t know what the heck happened to Clubhouse. That came and went in a blip.

You couldn’t get away from it for a minute. You’re the first person that mentioned Clubhouse.

Every time I do a marketing class, I change it. I always change the content because I’m like, “What’s hot now or what’s relevant now? How’s that going to help the audience?” I was looking at an old presentation and by old, I meant several months ago. It was like one picture of Clubhouse. It’s like, “No that went away.”

I like blogs, podcasting, YouTube or website as your assets. Holding those and using social as that distribution piece. Not using that as like, “That’s where I’m putting on my content.” Using it as the connector to bring people back to your website and knowing that your website has an intention. You probably live and breathe this with your company, but many people are popping things up and they don’t know why? They feel like they should.

It’s like, “Don’t do things because you feel like they should and don’t pick channels because you feel like you have to but pick things that are going to be a little bit more comfortable.” If you like to talk and you don’t like your cell phone video like as an example, why do you do YouTube? Maybe you like to write, podcasting or short little Loom videos, even if it’s screen grabs or something you took on your iPhone that you want to share, I think that those things go a long way.

I think inviting people to events and making people feel exclusive like they thought about it also goes a long way. I don’t know if you’re seeing this too, but I’m seeing a lot of these events again, like these trade shows and concerts. They’re starting to pair back again. Here we go with a variant and all of that. It’s like, “How can you still feel real and in touch?” Maybe popping up some networking event with like-minded peers.

I’ll give you an example. Lisa and I have this group that she started called Women Who Rock and it started off with seventeen amazing women, just getting together at the studio, having a nice dinner and wine and then talking about change and what do people need. How can we contribute to the greater good as a group? Now we’re extending that. Each person can invite someone and like trying to create something.

It’s great to be human, to be present, be connected and it’s also great for networking and all of those things too. To me, that is secondary, but it’s valid because it’s that connection that people haven’t had in the last couple of years, like meeting new people of like-mind in a fun setting. I think that those types of things are also cool.

There are so many options out there and one of the things we encourage all of our partners and clients to do is to make sure that they don’t spread themselves too thin in terms of thinking that they have to be on every single channel that’s out there. Coming at that from the perspective of where does your ideal client or your audience participates in information gathering and social activities.

You can really build a community around purpose and it just gives a good feeling. It brings everyone together and would scale your business up.

You certainly would like to show up there effectively, but also think about what you do well. As you said, “If you’re not comfortable on camera, come up with a little different plan. Do something that works for you but also reaches your audience in a way that’s going to bring value to them.” I’d much rather see somebody do one thing well than seven things marginally.

We tend to overextend ourselves because we think, “I’ve got to be on all of these social channels,” and then we don’t do anything. I’d much rather see people be great at one. If you find that you’re knocking that out of the park and have the capacity to do another channel, add another one but thinking that you have to come out of the gate with eight amazing presences is hard to get done.

From a leadership marketing where there’s a gazillion tag for all kinds of marketing like that whole, some people like LinkedIn and they’re B2B. They post, share things and that gets out there too. I think that still has a place for sure. I’ve had people come to me and they’re insistent on wanting to do paid advertising until LinkedIn ads. They have some decent traction, I suppose, but at the end of the day, you’re right. Pick what you’re comfortable with, don’t pick everything and dig a little deeper in that instead of trying to be everything to everyone and live on channels that are noisy to begin with.

I was listening to a podcast. It was Dean Jackson’s More Cheese Less Whiskers Podcast , which is what inspired me to start this show in 2020. I started this one in late September of 2020. One of the things that Dean was talking about on the show was you have three things that we want to get done and let’s call it Marketing Scheme, A, B, and C. You can try and multitask.

Let’s say each one is going to take nine hours. What you could do is tackle the first one for three hours, start tackling the second one for three hours, the third week you tackle the third one for three hours, and then you go back to the first one and you do your next round of three hours on that one, you moved to the second one, and you moved to the third one.

At the end of all of this, you’ve invested all this time, but if you were to focus on one thing, if you did number one first and did the 3 hours, 3 weeks in a row, that one will be done and we’ll be making you money. You move to the second one and do that one in completion. Now you have two out there making your money. The third one, you tackle that third, you put your nine hours into that, and now you have all three done. Instead of waiting the 27 hours or whatever, my math is on all of that to get all three done at once, you can take advantage of getting those incremental wins and making sure that you’re not multitasking and focused on one thing at a time.

If you’re looking at channels, if you can embrace one channel, get it up, running and get it humming along, it can coast and continue to make you a little bit of money or bring in eyeballs or whatever it is that you’re hoping to do therewith significantly less effort than if you’re trying to get 3 or 4 going at one time.

I would say trying to build your email list or something that is an asset to you that it doesn’t matter if the platform changes. It’s like you have that as a connector. I think that’s also something that’s nothing new, but something forgotten. It’s not as sexy. It isn’t, but it has high conversion and is cheaper than some of these other activities for sure. I still think that if somebody that’s like brick and mortar, for example, or somebody that has a space like Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), it’s still pretty effective too. I would say.

I think the local purchases are a big thing right now for small businesses, particularly brick and mortars.

It’s amazing to me that people forget and that’s another thing. You have to invest your time to have that up and the keys to it to have as much information as possible filled out. It’s going to help with search optimization and it’s something that’s for people that have restaurants and things like that it’s a given, but like for organizations, it’s still a value.

If you’re a local business or organization that does work locally and maybe even tries to get donations locally, Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Businesses) is a huge component of your success. Continue to fine-tune the algorithm. They also continue to fine-tune the display and at this point, the first organic search typically falls into about the eleventh thing on the page. Their paid ads up top and there’s usually a local pack which has 3 or 4 results in that section. You’re starting to see big brands come in and swoop up the first couple of positions of organic. The first legit organic small business type opportunity tends to show up well below the fold. Getting up into that three-pack can be a night and day difference in visibility.

It’s like, “Did you think of this?” I said, “It’s not new, but it’s still good. A keeper.”

If people were interested in learning more about what you do and what you can do to help their businesses thrive, where would they go to find out about you?

They can go to my website, which is AppleAndArrowsSales.com . Anybody can schedule a fifteen-minute talk with me. I’m happy to chat and give some advice to anybody that needs it. You can find me on LinkedIn at Suzi Bahnsen. I would say those are two great ways. I have to get my Google My Business page up. That’s on my list. You will be able to find me that way, but those are the easiest ways to reach out and connect.

I would encourage everyone to reach out. I always love hanging out with you and getting to chat. I think that you’ve done so many cool things and you’re helping people out. It’s fun to fun to reconnect here on the show.

I’m ripping you back into this digital marketing course that I’m putting together for the SBDC. We’ll be working together, hopefully, this fall of 2022, as soon as I can get it out there.

I would be excited and thrilled to be a part of that. I love having these conversations, especially with wonderful people like you, Suzi. One of the things that I want to do is foster action. Reading and getting a bunch of good ideas is always great, but I want people to take action after reading this blog. If there’s anything that you would have people do after reading, what would you have them do?

From a human standpoint, I would say, say something nice to a stranger because everybody needs to hear something nice during the day. Also, if you haven’t found a non-profit or a charitable source to give to, get involved, be part of your community and be connected.

I would encourage everyone to go do both of those things. Thank you again for being on the show. It was lovely talking with you.

Thanks for having me.

I’ll talk to you soon.

Important Links:

About Suzi Bahnsen

Episode 64: Hone Your Message To Reinforce The Work You Do With Stephanie And David From SJMA

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 01:19:14 GMT

As you’re probably aware, I’m a big fan of protecting Colorado’s open spaces. You may know Relish is involved with 1% for the Planet, but I think it’s also of interest that I’ve chosen to live deep in the forest of Colorado’s Front Range. It’s fair to say environmental stewardship is engrained in what I do.

That’s why this episode of Relish This was so much fun.

I got to chat with two people—Stephanie Weber and David Taft—who work with the San Juan Mountains Association .

The organization was started in the Durango area, and since their inception, they’ve expanded their reach. Now they preserve and protect forests with a solid ambassador program, education program, and volunteer program. All of these initiatives help people who are enjoying the forests understand the importance of protecting these pristine locations.

SJMA now impacts more than half of Colorado’s wilderness areas!

This episode focused on helping SJMA hone their message and expand their reach and engagement with stakeholders. Through social media, email, and general community networking, we look at strategies and ways to answer the question, “How do you reinforce all the good you are doing?”

This was a fun conversation with a group doing some real good for Colorado’s public lands and forests. I hope you enjoy the show.

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Link:

SJMA

Action ask: Get involved in your own backyard to protect public lands.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Hone Your Message To Reinforce The Work You Do With Stephanie And David From SJMA

This episode features two great people from San Juan Mountains Association . They are doing some great work touching over half of Colorado’s wilderness forest areas with their influence and benefit. They have this great organization down in the Durango area that started as a focus on the San Juan Mountains and the forest down there to help preserve and protect a lot of that area from use. They have a cool educational program, ambassador program, volunteers and donors. They are doing some fantastic stuff.

We talked a lot about ways that they can help hone that message, show up more effectively to people who know them and expand their reach through social media and email. There are some good gold nuggets of information that we were able to unearth. This is a fantastic episode. I’m excited to share it with you and I hope you have a great time reading it. Have a good one.

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Stephanie and David, how are you doing?

We’re doing great.

Thank you both so much for joining me on the show. I’m excited to learn a lot more about your organization and what you guys are doing there at San Juan Mountains Association . You’re both in the Durango area. Is that correct?

We are, yes.

Is San Juan Mountains Association headquartered in Durango?

Our offices are based out of the public land center, which is the home base for the San Juan National Forest. At this point, we have staff spread from Monte Vista over to the furthest West and up to Montrose. We’re looking for a new staff person in the town of Norwood as part of the Norwood District for the Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests.

I was fortunate enough to do some work on Grizzly Peak Trailhead with the Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado , which is over in your zone by Lake City. It’s a gorgeous part of the state. It’s one of my favorite places to be. I grew up in Gunnison. I have been fortunate to spend a little bit of time in the San Juan’s down there. It’s an amazing country. I commend you for all the work that you’re doing to help preserve things. Tell us all a little bit more about what you do there at your organization and how you’re helping to protect those forest lands and public spaces.

San Juan Mountains Association was born out of a community effort to be more involved in caring for public lands. A lot of that started out with the idea of conservation education and providing visitor information. A lot of the folks who are on SJMA staff are front desk folks in public land offices. We started with the San Juan National Forest here in Durango and we also have folks in Dolores and Pagosa Springs. We have been expanding our partnerships with other forests and with the BLM as well.

Another component of that is with our conservation education. SJMA merged with Durango Nature Studies right before everything shut down due to COVID-19 in 2020. That strengthened both organizations’ environmental education efforts. We start young. We start with preschoolers and kindergarteners through elementary, middle school and high school, believing that when we are exposed to the natural world, we learn to understand it.

From that understanding comes appreciation and from that appreciation comes the desire to protect it. That sums up a philosophy that carries through everything that we’re doing with San Juan Mountains Association. The area where we have grown is in some of the stewardship efforts and Dave, being the Conservation Director, can speak to that in much more detail.

SJMA started their stewardship and field conservation programs through the volunteer program, primarily through the San Juan National Forest but also working with the BLM and the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. That also expanded beyond San Juan to the Rio Grande over time. Our flagship volunteer program is our Volunteer Ranger Program, which started as our Wilderness Information Specialists, in which volunteers would suit up in a forest service uniform.

They would go through our extensive training, learning about not only forest service policies and regulations but also getting schooled in the Leave No Trace principles. That’s the main route of the program. We’re sharing and spreading a way of doing things on our public land that protects values and ensures that they are available for future generations.

Beyond that, we do a handful of group stewardship projects every year and National Public Lands Day projects. It will be trail work or campsite clean-up. Going from there, we moved beyond the volunteer stewardship programs to manage several crews. We took on the Wilderness Monitoring Program for the San Juan National Forest for the Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness.

We had a crew of four for a lot of years. We bumped it up to six. That crew, they do not only the wilderness monitoring, which is setting the baseline for the wildernesses but also doing trail work, public contact and all that important boots-on-the-ground work that needs to happen if we’re going to effectively monitor these spaces.

2021 is our first year with our Forest Ambassador Program. That’s more aimed at your front-country visitors. It’s very heavily focused on information, education and establishing that land management presence at some of the busiest trails on San Juan. We have about ten ambassadors working over the course of the season, doing that day-to-day public outreach, educating the public and ensuring that people that visit the forest are doing a good job of visiting respectfully, having a great time and knowing how they can enjoy these spaces in a sustainable way.

You guys have a lot on your plate. That’s a whole bunch of different areas of focus there in terms of outreach or tools in hands. It must be very daunting seeing how many more people are visiting our forests. There’s an increase in the overall impact. What are some of the biggest challenges you have been facing over the past several years in terms of being able to expand your mission or at least keep up with the additional visitors?

I can jump in here since I have got a few years with the organization under my belt. In terms of rising to the challenge of helping manage the additional visitation, we have done a lot of work establishing new partnerships and roles within the land management agencies that we work with. That has led to some productive outcomes as far as raising funds and adding additional programs that are supported by whether it’s the agencies or private interest foundations. It has been a challenge keeping up with the staffing and ensuring that we’re keeping our administrative fortitude on par with those additional staff and programs. That has been something that we have been working hard to make sure that all the nuts and bolts are in place and keeping the wheels on.

Is that mostly a revenue challenge or do you guys see both? It all comes down to that. Being able to get that message out there, has that been part of that hurdle?

It is both. I came in as the Executive Director on May 1st, 2021. The organization has grown so considerably. When I came on May 1st, 2021, we had fifteen folks on the payroll. By the end of May 2021, we were approaching 40 and we peaked for the summer at 45. Most of those by design are seasonal employees. We will be contracting and we are contracting now. The idea in our efforts is we recognize that the demand for public lands and recreation on public lands isn’t expected to drop anytime soon. How do we sustain the staffing that we have had in 2021 and be good partners with our public land agencies? Sustained funding is very much part of that equation.

Also, the ability to clearly message what our successes have been and how big our role is, it’s a tough one to get across effectively. We all know that we all have very short attention spans these days. To share with people the magnitude of impact that we have had is tough unless you start dialing in visuals, infographics and sound bites to the point where people can absorb the information. For us to say we have 45 staff is pretty meaningless.

For us to say we have partnership agreements with a national forest that covers half of the state’s national forest acreage, that’s a pretty impressive number. There are 11.4 million acres of national forest in Colorado and SJMA has agreements with agencies covering 5.7 of those million acres. Learning how to frame information in a way that can make people go well has been something we’re working hard to do.

That’s a challenge. Nonprofits and for-profit organizations alike are constantly trying to figure out how to reframe that differentiation and how to create a value proposition that resonates. You’re not alone in exploring ways to retool or expand the ways that your messaging can positively impact your ability to connect with people. A lot of times, we look at your differentiation as a challenge of trying to get people to understand why you do what you do matters.

From a nonprofit perspective, that can be a little bit of a head-scratcher as you attempt to position yourselves in the position where the donors or constituents become the heroes of the story. You simply take a back seat to that and help guide them to being able to see themselves in that light. Positioning themselves as that key hero in what’s going on is a real challenge. A lot of times, we try to think of it in terms of a seven-second hook that gets to the answers to three questions, “Who is this for? How does it make their life better? How do they get it?”

In the nonprofit space, that becomes a little bit of a challenge because the beneficiary isn’t necessarily the donor at the end of the day. Figuring out how to frame that in a way that makes the donor or volunteer understand where they reside in the story that you’re trying to tell can be super effective in how you start to craft those stories on pretty much every page of your site and everything that goes out.

I love the phrase, “How do our donors and volunteers become heroes of our story?” That’s great.

It can also become a fun challenge. It’s telling that same story from a slightly shifted perspective. It’s coming at things from that way where, even if you’re highlighting volunteers, creating opportunities for case studies that reframe that narrative is pretty important. One of the things we see with nonprofit organizations is there’s always friction in terms of people’s desire to take some action. In the for-profit space, that’s usually buying something or signing on for a service.

In the nonprofit space, there’s an amplification of that friction. There are multiple frictions that people bump up against as they are going through that journey. Most of us don’t wake up in the mornings thinking, “How can I give away some of my money or time today?” We’re much more strongly motivated by things that we get as opposed to things that we give. If you can fine-tune and get that story dialed in where it eases that friction, people are taking this uphill journey in terms of wanting to participate or give away some of their hard earned time and money. Creating opportunities to reduce that friction all along that process is key.

I love your thoughts on how we navigate and message with a lot of folks who are moving here from out of state. For many, this is a silver lining to COVID, the ability to live where you want to live because you can work remotely. In an area like ours, we have seen tremendous growth. Lots of folks from out of state or other parts of this state are coming here simply because the San Juan’s are gorgeous. Why not live where they can easily go play? We’re messaging to some of those folks coming in to say, “You’re moving here to take advantage of the things we’re trying to protect. Be a partner.” I would love your thoughts on that.

It’s a clear value proposition. What most of the people that are moving here recognize is it is the key motivator, ensuring that there’s effective communication. To clearly iterate that is an effective and potentially important facet of our communication.

There’s that educational component that comes into play where people may have done things a bit differently where they came from or they may not understand the effects. I’m thinking about off-trail travel above treeline, which is a little bit of a tongue twister there. People don’t understand all of those impacts when you have such a short growing season and how simply walking off the trail can create a negative impact on the vegetation in those areas.

It comes down to education, which comes down to an awareness that there’s a problem. That can be the first step. How are you guys doing that now? All of these programs are designed to do that. When you’re covering 5 million acres of forest with several thousand trailheads probably, what are some of the techniques that you have been using to get that message out there?

I would love to say we have some effective forest ambassadors. They are, but they are limited to the San Juan National Forest, not GMUG or the Rio Grande. It’s a challenge to be sure. Leave No Trace is pretty much part of everything we do with the visitor information. We mentioned the folks at front desks of public land agencies are very well-versed in Leave No Trace principles recreating responsibly. The forest ambassadors and our wilderness crews are instrumental in that. That is a small part of what is needed but the part that we are playing in partnership with our federal land managers.

It’s a big challenge to get in front of many people that are dispersed. David, can you speak more about some of the educational programs that you have put in place?

I have mentioned that the main thrust is the outreach by our staff, ambassadors, wilderness crew and volunteers. We try to make sure that each of those receives pretty regular training and updates as far as messaging. The main gist of it is to get our staff and volunteers in a room so that we can practice and become more familiar with the messaging that we’re trying to convey. We do focus those efforts pretty heavily on the best bang for your buck areas.

Everybody who has ever been to San Juan is aware of Ice Lake, Chicago Basin and the fourteeners down there. We put a lot of emphasis on those couple of zones while COVID has put a brief damper on it. What we like doing is setting up a little base camp where we can base both our staff and volunteers right in the meat of it. Right in Chicago Basin at the base of the three fourteeners and then right at the base of the Ice Lakes Trailhead, it’s our two primary spots that we like to put the heaviest emphasis on our outreach and education.

A big part of it is always getting our volunteers and staff comfortable enough with the messaging that regardless of who comes at them, they are going to be comfortable engaging in that conversation. To do that, we try to make sure they get plenty of face time with agency partners who we think are the best source in a lot of ways for getting our educational messaging nice and tight.

We teach them all how to do trail work so that they can grab a tool and head out in their uniforms. That gets people chatting with them easily. Everybody wants to talk to the person that’s out clearing a drain or building a little rock stair because those are the people that it’s so easy to open up with. That’s always been my first choice when it comes to how we are going to create an easy setting for which people to engage with our staff and get that educational message out.

When we are exposed to the natural world, we learn to understand it. From that understanding comes appreciation and from that appreciation comes the desire to protect it.

The folks at front desks of public land agencies are well versed in leave no trace principles, recreating responsibly, and the forest ambassadors and our wilderness crews are instrumental in that.

One of the things I love about your site is that it does have information about some of these places. Maybe they want to go on the Alpine Loop or something. There’s information there about that adventure. There’s a good opportunity for your site to show up in terms of being available as a resource for people to get trip planning information. On top of that, there’s the impact in the stewardship component.

One of the things that a lot of nonprofits have a little bit of a challenge with is asking for people to help out with some things that are a little less traditional. Volunteering or donating tend to be things that nonprofits and their teams get pretty familiar with being able to ask. Even sharing a tip, message or a piece of information would help get to a different audience.

One of the things that social media has done is it allows us to be pretty well connected, but it has created a situation where we’re starting to get more boxed into our own little groups. The social media channels tend to show you information that is aligned with other information that you have liked, shared or have even read.

I’m thinking about out-of-state people. They may never even get this information put in front of them. There might be an opportunity to create little business cards or little tips that people could share on their own social media accounts to get that stewardship stuff out into a different audience than it might normally be shared with. That might be an additional ask that you make of your volunteers, ambassadors and everybody else.

It’s a familiar concept. I worked at Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado back in 2015. That year, they kicked off an app. It was the Stepping Up Stewardship app or something along those lines. Part of that was sharing. That’s a good way to amplify the message and potentially hit some audience that we wouldn’t otherwise get in front of.

My business built the Stepping Up Stewardship site for VOC back in the day. It is more tooled toward other trail-building organizations. They are trying to share their volunteer coordination and trail-building and intellectual protocol with other trail-building organizations. There was also a phone app that the VOC had that was more tips and things like that.

I know Leave No Trace does a pretty good job of this with some of the cards that they hand out that you can carry with you or put on your backpack with a little carabiner that gives out those tips. It’s any of those things that people can feel like it would be interesting or cool to share that they could get along the way, like having your ambassadors offer to take pictures with people if they share it on social media. Little things like that get that message out there, particularly to a more diverse group, would be some of the things that would be beneficial.

In addition to popular hiking trails, we have had a couple of ambassadors stationed along the Alpine Loop, which if you’re familiar, it’s a popular OHV system that goes from North of Silverton, Animas Forks over to Lake City and back around. It has become incredibly busy. In fact, people using Waze or Google routing will often see backups.

It’s not anywhere else on our highways. It’s just on that Alpine Loop, which makes me wonder how fun that can be sitting in traffic, but that’s okay. It’s still beautiful. Our Alpine Loop Ambassadors have done a phenomenal job interacting with, reaching out and connecting with a lot of these OHV-ers, which are frequently from other states and going to backcountry use. It has been phenomenally successful and we’re proud of them.

It’s great to see some signages. I come over Cottonwood Pass on occasion when I go over to Gunnison and there are some good signages there about staying on the trail. They have done a good job of creating OHV byways. I know that’s big in Silverton for sure. Figuring out ways to not only get those people more educated about the impacts and how to keep these areas pristine and still enjoy them but also get them to share that information is the piece that would be interesting. It’s a matter of figuring out what some of those sharable tidbits would be. Ask to see if people will help spread that message out to their networks when they go back to Texas or wherever they may have come up from.

They have been receptive to that. You’re going to find exceptions to every rule. For the most part, they have done a good job of absorbing this data trail message, the Leave No Trace message and sharing that with peers. There’s room for improvement because we need to protect these places for generations to come.

I know that you have also done a good job of diversifying that in terms of being able to purchase maps and things like that through your site. Is it mostly grants? Is it still donations? Where’s the bulk of your revenue coming from?

The bulk of it is from the agreements we have with our federal partners for complete transparency. The next largest piece of the pie would be from grants and our retail outlets. In addition to providing visitor information, we’re also able to sell maps and guidebooks at each of the public land outlets where we operate. There are fourteen of those throughout the Rio Grande, GMUG and San Juan National Forest, so that helps. Donations and memberships still comprised the smallest piece of our pie, but we’re working hard to expand that piece.

The diversification pieces are something that we see a lot of organizations either be nervous about adding or be anxious about how to even do that. It’s great to see that you have expanded a retail component. That’s blown out not just from the website but you do have opportunities for brick and mortar sales as well. In terms of the federal component, which you said is probably one of the bigger revenue drivers for you, are those guaranteed funds? Do you have to fight for them every year? How are those structured?

It’s a little bit of both. The nice thing is we enter into five-year agreements. That’s nice to know we have been with each other for at least five years. The second part of that is, with anybody dealing with any government budget, nothing is guaranteed. We are constantly seeing what they have to allocate in our direction. There’s tremendous variability in what we receive from those agreements. Fortunately, they have been strong supporters and we have done fine.

We would love to have a foundation through an endowment that helps stabilize those fluctuations. We can plan from year-to-year. We were finishing up 2021. We have had somewhere between 20 and 25, depending on who is working part-time and who stepped away for a while. The forest ambassadors and wilderness crew are out in the field at any given time. We’re not sure we can have that number in 2022. It would be nice to have some certainty from year to year as to how many folks we know we can have as land stewards out on the forest.

That’s due to the fluctuation in federal money and grant money donations coming in. I know that there are some fairly large landowners down in your neck of the woods. Do you have a program in place to try to engage with or get in touch with those people? Isn’t it Ralph Lauren or somebody who has a big chunk of land in between Ridgway and a road that goes over to Telluride?

There are people who have some resources that we would love to tap into. Let’s say we are working on a plan. Isn’t that the eternal nonprofit management message? The growth that we have experienced puts us in a position where a lot of this is even conceivable and so much has changed. You have put forth a number of great ideas and suggestions. How to message and broaden the support for what we’re trying to do is very much a part of our work now.

It would be nice to have some certainty from year to year as to how many folks we know we can have as land steward out on the forest.

From what I’m seeing, you’re laying some pretty good groundwork here online. It looks like you’re active on Facebook and Instagram as well. Those are our two social channels that tend to get quite a bit of traction. Unless you want to start playing in trying to capture youth opportunities, at which point you might want to look into some of the more up-and-coming social media platforms like TikTok.

However, that is mostly going to be one of those where they are going to recommend up in terms of, does either desiring to go to these types of places and then asking their parents to take them there or something of that nature. It feels like you’re probably playing into the ponds in terms of social. What are you doing with your email campaigns or email programs? Do you have a pretty robust email list at this point of past donors, volunteers and interested people?

We do. Now that I think about the numbers and then the number of people living in this area, there’s plenty of room for growth. Our email subscription list is about 3,600 folks. The struggle I have and I would love your thoughts on this too, Stu, is we’re all bombarded with so many electronic newsletters. We got at one point this summer where our eNews was fourteen pages long. We’re doing a lot but we have to have it more concise. This is where my biggest struggle is. Facebook and Instagram are doing a pretty good job of messaging the eNews so that it comes to everybody’s inbox. They want to see and scan it. How we get them to absorb it is a struggle I wrestle with constantly.

There are a few things that we have seen work relatively well with email. I don’t know exactly how engaged those 3,600 people are, but that’s a big enough list to make some things happen. There are a few things about email. The first thing is one of the reasons we are still excited about email is that Boomers tend to use email quite a bit and continue to be the largest donor base that’s out there. That generation is there. It’s starting to get older. They want to create opportunities to do some good with some of the money that they may have available. They tend to be a pretty good donor resource, which is why email is still a very viable engagement tool.

A fourteen-page newsletter you have identified is probably not ideal. Sending out something giant and robust like that every once in a while isn’t a bad plan. I will test it if you have that much material. I would put it out there and see what happens. Look at your click rates and open rates. One of the things that we have been both doing internally and recommending for our nonprofit partners is to consider all of your interaction as very value-based and attempting to provide information that’s not just asking for things all the time but it’s providing real, tangible value.

These could be everything from how to camp effectively in bear country, things to do and look for that are perhaps a little bit off the beaten path in terms of side trips off of the Alpine Loop, if that’s an option, places to stay or places to get lunch while you’re on your tour. It’s things that are value-adds that aren’t just about nagging people to stay on the trail, pick up their trash and do all those things that we want them to do.

It’s also narrowing down those emails to a single value-add. Instead of sending out one fourteen-page email, how can we get maybe ten smaller emails out of that so that there’s a very specific thing going on in that email that somebody can learn, share or pass on? It’s even hard to share a newsletter if there are some specific parts of it that you want somebody to dive into. It’s hard for people to share that because it’s embedded in this larger format.

The other thing that I would consider is segmenting your list and asking people what they are interested in, “Are you interested in camping tips, volunteer information or other items that might be in that fourteen-pager?” Send more specific emails to those people based upon their identified interests.

That’s a great idea and we have been looking to do that. Hopefully, now that we’re coming off a pretty intense summer season, we’ll be moving more towards that. That’s a good reminder that we need to head in that direction. I like the idea of value-based messaging. I can see a lot of ways to go with that. Dave, that’s got your brain spinning too.

There are some good potentials that break away because now we are growing as an organization to several different elements. I have heard from volunteers myself that there are certain things that they are really into and certain things that they are lukewarm on. We could have higher engagement by providing that content that keeps them hooked.

It’s all about delivering value, whether that value is that your organization helps protect these open spaces and natural spaces that we all love so much or the value of explaining to people how to build a drain in a trail. Not everyone would need to know that necessarily, but if you had that message sent to the right audience, you would certainly position yourself as well in terms of staying top of mind when they are out looking for an organization to engage with.

You would probably have your volunteer segment and donor segment. You want to ask everybody every once in a while if there’s a volunteer project coming up, if they would be interested in coming out and supporting that, and if they can’t come out, if they would be willing to donate some funds to help buy everyone lunch. If you can frame it in terms of how these efforts are tangibly used to benefit the San Juan’s and beyond, that’s where people will get excited about it.

It’s not just, “I’m donating to this organization. I don’t know exactly what that is going to accomplish.” It’s like when organizations say, “It takes $1 a day to feed and buy books for a student in this zone.” There’s a very tangible outcome to that support. Figuring out ways to message that can be super helpful. David, do you have problems reaching out to new volunteers? Do most of your projects fill up? How is that part of your program working?

In general, we have good volunteer engagement. We have done a fairly good job both of establishing a volunteer base and putting ourselves out in the community in ways that can attract new volunteers as well. In particular, I have noticed an uptick in volunteer interest as we have done a pretty concerted effort of expanding our online efforts, whether that’s social media platforms or emails. Being consistent with it has drawn a lot of interest and then by having folks in the field especially. Having those ambassadors out there, they are constantly referring new volunteers to us. You can’t put a value on good quality human interaction.

One of the facets of being in a small community is it can either be really easy if you know the right person or really difficult if you don’t, just to build relationships.

I’m on the board of a trail-building organization over here in the Nederland area. When we’re out building, people stop and ask us questions and thank us. It’s a huge opportunity to get them more involved by offering to let them know when our next trail-building day is because most people who use the outdoors do feel like there’s an opportunity there to give back and they may not be doing it. There’s this sense of guilt that pops up.

Fortunately, there are ways to alleviate that guilt by volunteering a little bit. It’s letting people know how rewarding it is to hike on a trail that you may have built a little section of, even if it’s just a small section. I’m wondering if there are opportunities to get out into the local hotels, restaurants and even ski areas. You have a couple of pretty amazing ski areas down in that zone with Silverton, Wolf Creek and Purgatory.

A lot of the ski areas are starting to want to educate their users a little bit more than they perhaps have in the past, particularly with climate change. It’s being able to give somebody something to do if they are visiting Purgatory in the winter to go ski and planning to come back in the summer. Putting that bug in their ear that they might be able to donate half a day to building some trail, picking up some trash or doing something that gives back a little bit might be another opportunity to get in front of some of these people.

Those service vacations can do wonders. Another area there that we have had success and also an opportunity to do even more is workplace projects. It’s inviting a corporation or business to do some employee bonding through this project. David had some good examples of success stories there, which we would like to capitalize on further.

You probably have a lot of experience from your time at VOC with that. I know that they have big corporate days and will put together these decent-sized parts of projects that some of these local corporations will come out and put people on.

A big part of the programming at VOC is something that I would like to add here. We have done a bit of engagement with the local business community. It has been nice to build some relationships. It’s helpful for the fundraising side of things as well and having those relationships in place. There are tons of room for growth as far as corporate engagement.

I’m wondering if there might be an opportunity to do roundups with some of the ski areas or dedicate some volunteer time on your pass as you’re buying a pass. There are all sorts of creative ways to try to get people to feel like they have an opportunity to give something back. It doesn’t have to just be time.

It’s great to spend some time outdoors working in nature and doing those types of things, but some people have a little bit more money than they have time. Giving them options is something that can be key in terms of getting engagement and getting people involved. Are there any other things that you have considered that you tried that didn’t work quite as well as you would like or you have been thinking about but don’t know exactly how to pull the trigger on?

I’m going to toss that one to David to see if he has anything because, four months into my tenure, there are still a lot of things ahead on my to-do list and not my, “I have tried this. Let’s figure out plan B.” David, how would you handle it?

One of the things that do come to mind is what we were talking about in terms of establishing the relationships to move forward with some of the corporate engagement. One of the facets of being in a small community is it can either be easy if you know the right person or difficult if you don’t to build that relationship. We have made some progress in various ways. There are some big fish in the community that it would be great if we could figure out what that access point would be, whether it’s a particular type of project or a particular person that holds the keys to that gateway.

I’m going to go back to the rounding-up opportunity. That doesn’t cost the organization much. There’s probably a little bit of accounting work and then a little bit of training in terms of getting their people to start asking for that. At the end of the day, they don’t necessarily have to match anything or do any donation themselves. They are merely asking people if they want to round up to the nearest dollar or even tack on a donation if you give them a line item in their system that is, “Do you want to donate $5 to your organization to the SJMA?”

That creates an opportunity for awareness as well as revenue. Those are some of the things that can be effective. One of our local breweries is called Busey Brews . They had a brew for the whole month of June and a dollar for everyone that was purchased was given back to NATO. They were putting in on that. Every month, they have a different recipient. They instructed their staff to ask if people wanted to round up or make a small donation to our organization during the month of June. It generated revenue and a nice little chunk.

I know that our local Ace Hardware also does roundup days. They give you the opportunity to round up year-round. They will pick a different organization from time to time to be the recipient of that. Every transaction that comes through there, it’s at most $0.99 and at least a penny. If you figure out how many transactions go through, you figure that average is $0.50 on every transaction can start to add up.

Our local Ace Hardware does the same thing. I’m writing notes. David and I will regroup after this for sure to implement some of these great ideas.

I have enjoyed our conversation. I’m very excited to see what happens next or what comes next for you. You’re doing a lot of great work down there in a huge swath of land that I don’t get down to as much as I would like to. I come to Silverton once a year and travel through that zone as much as I can. How can people find out more about the SJMA?

The easiest way is through our website, which is simply SJMA.org . We have got a Facebook and Instagram presence. Both of those, if you search San Juan Mountains Association, should pop up pretty readily. What else am I missing, David?

Those are going to be the easiest three and we’re pretty good about updating all three of them. If you’re feeling particularly excited about the cause, it’s easy to hop on our eNews. If you scroll to the bottom of our webpage, there’s a spot there where you can sign up. Other than that, we also do a monthly column in The Durango Herald if you’re looking for some highlights. That’s called the Stewards of the Land column.

I would also encourage people to make sure that they are looking for your ambassadors and volunteers out on the trailhead during the summer months while they are down exploring the beautiful mountains in the San Juan’s. I love having these conversations, but I also like to spur action in trying to get people to do something after reading our show. If there was anything that you, Stephanie or David, would want people to do after reading, what would that be?

I’ll throw a little plug here. We have got a National Public Lands Day event in conjunction with the BLM office over on the Dolores River. You can find details for that on our website.

Since it is National Public Lands Day and hopefully, many of your readers are spread across the nation, figure out how to get involved in your own backyard to protect public lands or some of your favorite places. We all know it does take many hands to take care of even the wild places. Get involved wherever you may be. If you’re in our neck of the woods, we would love to have you volunteer or be a member or otherwise engage with us.

I appreciate both of those ideas. The more that we can get people out and about enjoying our public lands and then giving a little bit back to them, the better off we’re all going to be. Thank you guys both very much for being on the show. I had a blast talking with you and learning more about San Juan Mountains Association.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Have a grea t day.

About Stephanie Weber

About David Taft

Two videos…

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 04:02:51 GMT

In case you hadn’t seen these (and also for my friends at Adventure Film ), here are a couple of must-see running movies from Joel Wolpert:

Geoff Roes: Slogging to the Top

The Runner in Winter starring Anton Krupicka

GAMBLING IS ILLEGAL AT BUSHWOOD

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:17:05 GMT

Well, this weekend's activities took me to The Summit Course at Cordierra in Edwards which proceeded to kick my sorry ass and let me know that I am not only a poor excuse for a golfer but a bit of a fish-out-of-water when it comes to hangin' with the social elite. I was deemed the first person to sport a chain wallet and earrings (gender: male) to grace the links at Cordierra and am certain that I would have been booted from the joint post-haste had I not been among the company of aforementioned "social elite". It was like caddy "day" at the pool in Caddyshack. Without the boobs and Baby Ruth, of course.

I shot about 150 (if you don't count the 73 Mulligans) and managed to donate about 36 balls to the surrounding wilderness. I am definitely no Danny and try as I might, I simply couldn't bring myself to "be the ball". I did carve some wicked divots, however… so the groundskeeper is assured a job for a few more weeks at least.

After doing my damnedest to bring shame to my family (both Ma and Pa are excellent golfers), I took in the new film Blue Crush which is not going to win any awards (unless, of course, the Academy is adding "Best Fat Man in a Speedo" or "Teeny-Weeniest Bikini" to their agenda). Which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad idea…

020819 | monday

GAMBLING IS ILLEGAL AT BUSHWOOD

A MEASLEY $62 MILLION

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 04:16:12 GMT

020827 | tuesday

The IMDb reported today that (gasp) last weekend was the worst summer weekend for film viewage in over 4 years. Shocking? Hardly. (And yes, I know I just said "viewage". I make up words, get used to it.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have entered that time of year (once again) where the major studios release only the worst of the worst. So what do they expect? I suppose late summer/early fall is relegated to the distinction of crap-central as far as film goes because audiences have their minds on other things: back-to-school hell, packing that one last vacation into the Labor Day vacation-fest, belly-button lint removal. Who knows…. The only film released this time of year I can recall that warranted any attention whatsoever was last year's Hedwig and the Angry Inch (a fine film by the way, rent it today!). So studio execs are crying in their martinis over last weekend's paltry take of $62 million? Boo hoo. You want people to show up to your films? Try releasing something that merits our spending $9 ($22.75 once you toss in the 'corn and cokes). Until then, don't get your checkbook in a twist when we all hit the beach or Target instead of the local megaloplex. (And, in case you were holding your breath… stop. Not much appears to be on the horizon as far as decent film goes but I'll keep you posted.)

A MEASLEY $62 MILLION

THE STEVE PHENOMENON

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 04:13:28 GMT

020902 | monday

Steve's come in many shapes and sizes. Some worthless additions to the world of cinema actually make it to the big screen (undeservedly so... see last week's rant) while others, like the vastly underrated and misunderstood Cold Blooded never see the dark of the theatre. These (on both accounts), I prefer to call Steves. Straight To Video.

There have been a number of films over the years advertised in the cineplex which I have dedicated myself to see. If that were only possible. Many of these, like the aforementioned Priestley vehicle, simply disappear into the cinematic ether. Only to resurface in the local video store months later and begin to gather dust. Many suck. Others are gems. Hey, no one ever said movie watching was easy.

The latest potential abomination to skip my local theatre was The Salton Sea starring Mr. Hit or Miss himself, Val Kilmer. Is it good? Don't ask me, I am still waiting for it to make its cinematic debut on my television. Doubtful, however. Something about the trailer for the film intrigued me nonetheless. So one of these days, my beloved Netflix will deliver said film to my mailbox and I will proceed to waste yet another two hours.

CHASING THE DOLLAR

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 04:11:02 GMT

021020 | sunday

Hollywood will do anything for a buck. Witness the latest news that soon, movie viewers will be treated to a sequel to Ocean's Eleven: Last year's crappy remake of a crappy original. (Read my review here .) The American public will never cease to amaze me for allowing itself to be force-fed mindless tripe. Honestly.

Take the original. A half-assed excuse for the Rat Pack to go to Vegas, drink themselves silly, and get paid. Ok, certainly stranger things have happened and, with the presence of Frank and the boys, one wouldn't have to be a psychic to see that the film would do more than simply survive at the box office. But a good film? Hardly.

Fast forward to 2001… a new group of hipsters, a somewhat (actually, much) weaker story and even better box office results. Movie-goers ate it up. Critics were, for the most part, appreciative of the effort as well and, as usual, producers are clamoring for the "next" Ocean's Eleven. Soderberg et al, not wishing to disappoint the public (or miss an opportunity to make a trunk-full of cash) will deliver the updated product, replete with a full ensemble of "flava de jour" casting and the requisite "To Be Continued?" ending at some point soon. And the public will eat it up. And Hollywood will earn its buck. Just watch out for Beneath the Planet of the Apes: II..

IT'S OFFICIAL

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 03:58:27 GMT

021030 | wednesday

Now the antics of Jolie and Thornton are pretty much common knowledge and few would say that they acted normally throughout their brief coupling but this is really above and beyond. "Don't be so tough on her. Give her the benefit of the doubt." I can hear you all say. What I failed to mention is that Maddox is ONLY THIRTEEN MONTHS OLD !!! I am not making this up. Sometimes, this stuff just writes itself.

Now, I have really been trying to stay on the up and up. Don't cater to the lowest common denominator. Don't partake in the trafficking of sordid Hollywood gossip but please; I am only human and this story is so damned funny I felt that depriving you of its bounty would be nothing short of criminal. Thirteen MONTHS !!! Holy cow. I swear. Just when you thought the wackiness had peaked along comes this. Too, too good.

Angelina Jolie is completely nuts. Not that this is the biggest news to ever hit the streets but the IMDb reported recently that the Ms. Ex-Billy Bob is relieved to know that her adopted kid is not going to enter the film biz. Apparently, he has settled on a career as a professional soccer player and has even selected the team for which he will play (Liverpool, in case you were remotely interested).

IT'S OFFICIAL:

How to Fine-Tune Your Marketing: Focus on One Tactic at a Time

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 04:19:52 GMT

At one point in time, I read a lot of business books.

I started to notice, however, that most of them said the same things. They just framed their advice differently.

And it made me think about when I was learning to Telemark ski back in the day.

I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time on the slopes and in the backcountry with Luke Miller, a pro Telemark skier with K2. Luke was (and still is) a fantastic skier, and he was patient enough to give me a LOT of pointers over the years.

There were many lessons to be learned on my journey to becoming a better skier, and one of them is that you may have to hear the same piece of advice 9 different ways before it clicks. There are a lot of different ways to tell a skier to keep their shoulders square to the fall line and not ski past their hands as they make turns:

Visualize a string attached to your belly button pulling you downhill.

Or that you are holding a beachball in your arms.

Or that you are shifting into 3rd gear after you pole plant.

Or even that you are carrying a cafeteria tray full of food and you don’t want to drop any of it.

What’s interesting is that so many of the same “tricks” are needed to find the one that resonates with you.

And once you have found it, my experience is that you have to work that tip until it’s fairly ingrained before you add another item to work on.

Then you work that new tip geared toward a different part of your performance until the first trick falls apart. When that happens, you work tip A until it’s back in action (which typically takes a lot less effort this time around), then go back to B. Rinse. Repeat.

It works quite a lot the same with business. If you try to do all the things at once, it takes a lot longer to master them than if you focus on one item at a time.

So get comfortable with one aspect of your business or marketing for your business. Add a second item. Go back to nurturing the first. Rinse. Repeat.

Business growth doesn’t come from doing everything at once—it comes from building, layer by layer. If you’re ready to focus and make real progress, start by dropping us a line. Let’s find the cue that clicks.

Start with a Plan: How Running the Leadville Trail 100 Made Me Better at Business

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 04:21:04 GMT

In 2007, I ran my first 100-mile race, the Leadville Trail 100, without much of a plan.

I started running in the summer of 2006 after having a tough start to my 05/06 ski season due to being pretty out of shape. I didn’t want to repeat that in 06/07, so I started dryland training that summer to prep.

I was enjoying myself and, knowing how my brain works, decided to set a goal to encourage myself to keep running. I picked finishing the LT100 as my goal for 2007.

(The wisdom of that particular goal could certainly be called into question.)

Long story short, I didn’t really have a clue how to train for an ultra. Certainly planned what I could, assembled a great crew of friends to support me, and did what I thought I needed to do to put myself in a position to finish.

Without a coach, going on anecdotal information about how to train and run 100 miles, and with a tendency to overdo things at times, I found myself a bit broken 6 weeks before the race with a knee issue.

I did end up starting, but dropped out at about mile 72. And I was wrecked for weeks afterward.

3 years later, I ran it again.

This time, I took a different approach. I had a coach, a plan, a training schedule, and the right support to get me across the finish line. My last 8 miles (mostly uphill) were faster than my first 8, and I was back to running again the next day and finished the Denver Marathon in 3 hours and 8 minutes just 3 months after finishing the LT100.

Why am I sharing this seemingly non-business-related information on LinkedIn?

Because my experience running Leadville made me a better businessperson.

It taught me that starting with a plan helps you get to where you want to go.

That consistency is an important part of one’s success.

Engaging with a coach can help you avoid injury and stay on track.

And that I can accomplish a lot more than I ever thought possible.

You don’t need to run an ultra to understand the value of a solid plan. If you’ve got a business goal and want a clearer path to get there, start by dropping us a line. We’ll help you map the route.

Local Seo Why Local Focus Is The Way To Win

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 04:23:04 GMT

If your business is looking to attract a local audience (in any capacity), then investing some time and attention to your Google Business Profile is a potential winning tactic (and one of the best assets you can leverage to drive local engagement).

Your GBP is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. But if it’s outdated, incomplete, or not actively managed, you could be missing out on valuable traffic, leads, and visibility.

At Relish Studio, our Google Business Profile Optimization service ensures your listing works at its fullest potential and helps you get found, build trust, and grow your local presence.

When your profile is properly optimized, you can:

Increase local visibility and rank higher in the Local Pack

Build credibility by showcasing reviews, FAQs, and accurate information

Drive more traffic—both to your website and your physical location

Gain a competitive edge in your local market

Why leave opportunities on the table when your profile could be attracting more customers every single day? Let us help you keep your profile active, optimized, and working hard for your business.

Your profile shouldn’t be a set-it-and-forget-it tool. If you’re ready to turn it into a powerful local marketing asset, get in touch by dropping us a line. We’ll help you make every impression count.

You Need a Plan: Marketing Planning for Focused Effort

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 03:03:30 GMT

Whether you are running marathons, racing road bikes, or stopping pucks – creating a framework for your training matters.

If you treat each training day as a race and don’t have a purpose for each day’s session, you’ll find yourself plateauing quickly – leading to discouragement, boredom, and fatigue.

When I hit the ice, I have a goal in mind. Better puck tracking. Improved recovery to the post. Controlling the puck. I try to focus on practicing one or two items per session vs. trying to master “all the things” at once.

When I ran marathons and ultras (and raced road bikes), each day had a focus in mind. Mondays were usually easy efforts. Tuesdays are focused on speed work or sprints. Wednesday was devoted to longer interval work. Etc.

Instead of trying to build top-end speed AND endurance at once, each day was tailored to work on a single facet of the sport. And gains were made.

The same can be said about your marketing.

When you haven’t identified your motivations (your “why”) and tackle your marketing without a plan, people notice (or don’t notice YOU, as the case may be). Trying to appeal to everyone all the time is a recipe for disaster. Marketing without a plan is rarely effective.

That’s why we developed the Relish GPS: Growth and Purpose Strategy.

This program will take you from confusion to clarity with your marketing and craft a roadmap that helps you get where you are trying to go – so you can do more of what you love most (working with great clients on gigs that fuel your mission). Or just riding your bike.

If you’re ready to stop treating your marketing like a guessing game and start training with purpose, we’d love to help build your roadmap. You can kick things off by dropping us a line — let’s get you moving in the right direction.

The Goalie Mindset: Nowhere to Hide

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 06:12:50 GMT

There’s no place to hide when you are a goalie.

I hopped back between the pipes last November after over 30 years not playing in the net.

Not only have playing styles changed (stand-up goaltending was still a thing the last time I played and “butterfly” was a somewhat derogatory term), but the equipment for everyone on the ice has improved markedly, making the game a LOT different.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is what it takes to hop in the net and let people half your age (or younger) blast frozen chunks of plastic at your head.

When you are a goalie, every mistake is magnified. Whistles blow, play stops, the other team celebrates, and the focus is on you – the person who let one in.

Other players make mistakes all the time. Errant passes, missed shots, broken defense… but the play goes on.

And as a goalie, I’ve learned that mistakes aren’t the end of the world.

Sure, getting scored on (often multiple times per game when you are first starting out) can be disheartening.

But like everything, you have to take things one shot at a time.

That last one… it’s in the past.

Time to move on to the next chance to shine.

Whether you’re in the net or leading a team, mistakes will happen. What matters is how you reset. If you’re ready for a fresh approach to your brand or strategy — one shot at a time — drop us a line . We’ll be in your corner.

Shop Locally: Ditch Amazon and Support Small Business

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 06:12:48 GMT

I’ve always been a big fan of shopping locally whenever possible.

Living in a cabin in the woods can make that a bit of a challenge.

So for years, we relied on Amazon Prime to help save us trips to town, which lowered our carbon footprint.

But with Amazon ‘s recent history of poor employee relations, Jeff Bezos ‘ kowtowing to regressive policies, and a general desire to support more grass-roots organizations, we made the move to ditch Prime.

And it feels pretty great!

Here’s another benefit… Many of the items you purchase on Amazon are available directly from the vendor. And a lot of the time, they offer discounts for going direct. This means you put more money back into their pockets (they often pay hefty fees to sell on Amazon), you don’t put more money into Bezos’ already ridiculously over-stuffed bank account, and you can still get free shipping!

Reevaluating where your dollars go is a powerful move. If your brand is shifting toward more values-aligned practices and you want your digital strategy to reflect that, drop us a line . We’re all about helping conscious companies thrive.

Abundance vs. Scarcity

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 06:12:46 GMT

Have you recently lost a big contract?

Did you miss out on a business opportunity?

It’s pretty standard to frame this from the perspective of scarcity (what you have lost), but you can take a different perspective.

Reframe the experience through the lens of abundance.

Instead of a loss, consider the time you now have available to serve more aligned or more profitable clients.

Or go for a bike ride.

Either’s good.

Losses happen — but so does growth. If you’re navigating a shift and want to refocus your brand or strategy toward better-aligned opportunities, drop us a line . We’re here when you’re ready.

Site Launch: Nano Fixation

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 06:12:45 GMT

We launched a new site for one of our partners this week.

Nano Fixation Inc. is a new venture here in Colorado focused on technology that helps precious materials and rare-earth minerals work more effectively as catalysts for a variety of industries. This tech will not only help reduce the impacts of mining but also extend the life and effectiveness of materials used in a variety of industries like clean energy and pharma.

Nano Fixation aligns with our mission to help good people do great things for the planet, and we’re excited to show off the new site.

Check it out at nanofixation.com .

We love working with partners who are creating real impact. If you’re building something that helps people or the planet—and needs a digital presence to match— drop us a line . Let’s do some good together.

Lean into Your Values

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 06:12:44 GMT

I had a call with a prospective client yesterday.

They asked about our commitment to DEI in the current political landscape.

I told them this:

“The only things I am changing about our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are to stop using the acronym and to be louder about our commitment to living the values it represents.”

Bigots have appropriated the “DEI” acronym to hide behind it as a perceived negative. When one leverages the actual words the acronym represents, it makes it way harder to hide behind.

When you hear: “That’s a DEI hire.” “DEI needs to go.” “DEI is bad.”

Respond with, “Really? What part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion do you oppose?”

Embrace our differences. Diversity is healthy (for ecosystems and cultures). Equity is just. Inclusion is love.

Now’s not the time to go quiet—it’s time to go deeper. If you’re looking to build a brand or workplace grounded in real values like diversity, equity, and inclusion, drop us a line . We’d be honored to stand with you.

Clarity Over Cleverness: Refine Your Core Message

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 06:12:27 GMT

Clarity beats cleverness every time. Unless you are an established, VERY well-known brand, you have to ensure that your core statement is clear and concise. You have <10 seconds to buy more time with your audience. Don’t blow that opportunity with word salad.

What is this? Who is it for? How does it make their lives better?

It’s tempting to get clever with your messaging—but clarity wins business.

If you’re struggling to define your core statement or want a second set of eyes, drop us a line . We’re here to help you get your message right.

Scams Are Rampant: Protect Yourself from Scammers

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 06:12:26 GMT

Scammers are getting more prevalent.

Last month, I was contacted by an individual claiming to be “Mike Eldrich,” who was interested in engaging with us for a web project.

He stated that he was starting an Auto Body business in Florida and needed help with building out a site, SEO, etc.

My bullshit detector went off immediately for a number of reasons:

I’d seen a similar ploy used in the past, and this one leveraged an almost identical approach.
“Mike” didn’t seem willing to have a conversation, never answered all of my questions, and didn’t appear terribly concerned about pricing when I tossed ballpark numbers his way.

I went through the motions with the request anyway.

I was curious if my gut was right, needed to build out some new proposal templates anyway, was curious what the scam actually was going to entail, and wasting a bit of “Mike’s” time seemed entertaining, at least.

In the end, I was right. “Mike” wanted to overpay us for the deposit via credit card and have us pay his graphic designer and copywriter with the balance.

So I politely declined, telling him that we aren’t a bank and to give us a shout when he secures funding.

I’m sharing this today to encourage everyone to be on their toes in regard to scammers. AI is making it vastly easier to fake voice and even video content – a tactic many scammers are starting to use to dupe people into sharing sensitive information or to pay them money.

If a financial entity with which you do business calls to gather information, ask them from which institution they are calling, tell them you’ll call them back, then track down that number from your records and call them.

If “Mike” contacts you to do a job, don’t fall for his shenanigans.

And if you ever need a gut check on a shady inquiry—or want to work with real humans who care—consider reaching out by dropping us a line .

Homepage Tear Down: Improve Your Ability to Connect

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 06:12:24 GMT

We’re two days behind, but here’s this week’s Tuesday Teardown.

Here’s an evaluation of a great Colorado BCorp’s site. They do great work… here are some ideas on ways to make their website work better for them.

Curious how your website stacks up? Drop us a line with your URL and we’ll take a look.

Authenticity Matters: Follow Your Heart, Not Trends with Your Messaging

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 02:32:53 GMT

I recently joined a program to help Relish find its voice, differentiation, and direction in terms of how we help our clients be their best and do the most good for the world.

It was suggested that I make my takes on marketing be more “prickly” to stand out more and attract more fans.

I get what they were suggesting, but here’s the deal…

…I’m just not a very “prickly” guy.

Sure, I can get fired up about certain topics.

But at the end of the day, I really just want everyone to be happy and reach their fullest potential.

So, if you are looking for “prickly”, go follow any of the thousands of hustle-culture people that I am sure dominate your feed. At the end of the day, they don’t give a rip about you or your success.

If you would prefer to hear someone who actually wants to help, give me a follow or drop me a line.

I can guarantee you’ll get authenticity – without all the prickliness.

Tired of hustle culture takes? Try dropping us a line. We’re here to support, not sell hype.

How to Get Referrals

Thu, 29 May 2025 02:34:45 GMT

One of the easiest ways to spread your story to a wider audience is to enlist others to share it for you.

Create relationships (or even more formal referral partnerships) with other individuals or tangentially aligned business leaders (those who share an audience… think hairdressers if you run a nail salon) so you can easily reach audiences that otherwise might be more challenging to target.

Warm introductions from credible sources enable you to close sales more quickly since people are more willing to follow their friends’ advice, as there is already implicit trust built in.

So think of ways you can enlist your network to make introductions, and then make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Want to learn more about building trust-based referral networks? Drop us a line with the word “REFER-PHASE” and we’ll send you 3 more simple, actionable referral tips you can start using today.

How To Make An Impact When Announcing A New Team Member On LinkedIn

Fri, 09 May 2025 02:38:26 GMT

In this day and age, hiring has become a real challenge. So it’s natural that when adding a new member to your team, you would like to not only celebrate your new hire but do so in a way that creates the biggest splash possible on LinkedIn.

Announcing new additions to your team is a milestone that – if done thoughtfully – can make waves on multiple fronts. Certainly, sharing the news about your new team member has positive effects and demonstrates success externally (to outside connections within your marketplace, investors, clients, etc.) but a well-played announcement plan also reinforces your team culture internally as well – spreading goodwill among your team to improve morale and foster positive dynamics.

But what’s the best way to announce your growing workforce on LinkedIn?

We get this question all the time.

Using our three-part game plan will ensure you not only offer your newest team member a warm welcome but highlight the value they will help you provide to your clients as well.

Part 1 – The Company Announcement

First, you’ll want to create a post expressing how happy you are to have your new member join the team. You’ll want to be sure to include the value and benefits your newest member brings to the crew and how they’ll specifically help further the value the company brings its clients. Typically, the best time to post this announcement is on Wednesday at 12:00 pm EST.

Example: Relish Studio is bursting with pride because we have welcomed Tara McCormack to the team as our Online Business Manager. Tara, a self-proclaimed “chaos coordinator,” has spent much of her career implementing more productive systems and procedures for marketing companies like Relish. We’re delighted that she’s brought her passion and processes to Relish, so that we may better serve our clients by introducing a more streamlined system to our day-to-day operations. We’re certain that with Tara on our team we can continue to drive success for our clients, while they focus on changing the world for the better.

Part 2 – The New Team Member’s Announcement

Next, you’ll want to encourage your new team member to add your company’s LinkedIn page and their position on your team to their profile. Ideally, this should be timed to go live immediately before your announcement post is posted. We usually suggest 1-3 hours between these two actions. The following day, your newest team member should create a new post announcing their joy at taking a new position with your company. The post should tag your business, as well as highlight their past experience and what they’ll take from that experience to help make their new position with your company a success. There should also be a line thanking anyone directly over them, or on their specific team, at your company. Lastly, we suggest the new team member end the post with a statement that expresses an achievable goal they have for working with the company. The best posting times are Thursdays at 9:00 am EST, or between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm EST.

Example: It’s been a fantastic month for me so far, and the good days are sure to keep rolling in now that I have officially accepted a position as Relish Studio’s Online Business Manager. I’m excited to take the attention to detail I’ve fine-tuned during my time with The Maven House and apply it to the systems that help keep Relish a shining example of what it means to provide a phenomenal customer experience for clients. I’d like to thank Stu and Bret for offering me the chance to join a company that truly cares about making a difference. I can’t wait to start ushering in Relish Studio’s future next Monday morning when I start work!

Part 3 – Outreach

The last step to ensure your announcement makes a big impact on your audience is to get the entire company involved. Encourage other team members to comment with congratulations. Request that your team leaves engaging comments rather than just quickly posting a note saying “way to go,” or “liking” their post. Engaging comments look more like: “I’m looking forward to working with you on xyz.” or “I’m glad you’ve joined us and will get to add xyz to the company/team.” The Tuesday following the initial announcement is good timing. Encourage anyone working directly with the new team member to repost the original welcome, with a note of their own that outlines:

Joy
Appreciation for what they bring to the team or knowledge/skills they possess
Achievable goals they have for working together.

The 3-part framework we’ve outlined above not only helps make an impact with your original announcement but also continues directing traffic back to your company’s page for the next 7 days. This not only helps your metrics, but it also helps your business stay top-of-mind with your audience.

BONUS TIP : Another good way to keep eyes on your company’s page is to encourage all team members to have your company and their position with your company as part of their LinkedIn profile. This is especially important if they’ll be part of the above game plan, as you’ll want their association with your company to be part of the overall showcase.

Be Authentic: Bait and Switch is a Bad Way to Start a Relationship

Thu, 08 May 2025 02:45:55 GMT

Ah, the old Bait and Switch.

I was just asked to join a podcast as a guest.

Like other shows, this one asked me to spend some time filling out a pre-interview form, which required about 10 minutes of my time to complete.

Once I had filled in all the info, I was directed to a page that said, “Hey! Instead of an interview, how about we hop on a 15-minute call where I can help you with your business.” (Then received an email with the same suggestion.)

Hard pass. Unsubscribe.

Don’t waste people’s time with a bait and switch.

Had a similar experience? Let us know by dropping us a line.

5 Components of a Successful SaaS Marketing Strategy

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:17:20 GMT

Any SaaS provider knows that marketing for subscription software carries with it significant differences to other industries. Many of the overall concepts, such as inbound marketing and tracking success, can be applied – but they need to be adapted to successfully drive interest, conversions, and subscriptions.

Even within itself, SaaS marketing differs depending on your software. A B2C SaaS provider such as Spotify, for example, will market its product very differently than a large business subscription platform like HubSpot would. And yet, any SaaS marketing strategy includes 5 components that are necessary for success.

1. Attracting Leads with Free Trials

Perhaps more than any other industry, Software as a Service lends itself to the inbound marketing model, thanks to the proliferation of the free trial.

Signing up for a software that charges you regularly, whether it’s $8.99 per month for Netflix or $2,400 per month for HubSpot enterprise, is a significantly higher commitment than merely paying a one-time price. As a result, potential customers are much more cautious, and expect to have a good idea of how the software works before committing to it.

Enter the free trial, an opportunity for users to test out the applicability of the software for their needs for a limited amount of time. Providers, meanwhile, collect relevant contact information of all trial users as a condition for signing up, and generate leads as a result. In fact, free trials that are optimized for conversions are the single best lead generation method for SaaS marketers.

While the free trial is any SaaS marketer’s best tool to attracting quality leads and therefore dominates the industry at this stage, alternatives do exist. Some subscription software and apps use a freemium model, in which free use continues indefinitely – but with limited functions. Others rely on product demonstrations that never give potential users full access to the solution before they become current customers. But each of these two are only variations on the main idea: showcasing a limited version of your software is crucial to generating SaaS leads.

2. Nurturing Leads to Become Subscribers

Of course, leads matter little if they do not convert into paying subscribers. To get there, they need to be nurtured slowly toward the final goal, another inbound marketing concept that is perfectly suited to the SaaS industry.

Lead nurturing, at its core, follows a simple goal: by sending regular and relevant messages to leads in your database, you slowly establish your credibility so that when your audience is ready to become customers, your brand will be on their minds. And because SaaS lead nurturing is set off by a free trial, it can be even more focused and effective.

Unlike conventional lead nurturing, its SaaS alternative has a clear timeline: the duration of the free trial. Once a trial ends without action by the user, the likelihood of a conversion begins to diminish. But during the trial itself, nurturing emails can range widely, from tutorials on various software features to industry topics and trends that establish your brand as a thought leader on that topic.

Traditionally, lead nurturing is focused on regular email messages sent to your audience. But SaaS marketers can enhance the process by adding links to blog posts and webinars that accomplish the same goal with more in-depth topics. In addition, especially toward the end of the trial, building in a sales call can help establish a more personal connection that is often necessary considering the expected commitment on the customer’s side.

3. Retaining Subscribers for Maximum Value

Once your lead nurturing efforts have turned your leads and trial users into subscribers, the work of an SaaS marketer is far from done. Retention matters in any industry. But it is nowhere more important than in subscription software, where the true value of a customer does not come with the initial purchase but with regular payments through the subscriber’s lifetime.

In SaaS, a variety of strategies can help you increase your retention rates. CrazyEgg compiled a relatively comprehensive list of potential tactics , including:

Raising your price to increase perceived value
Following up on customer interactions
Emphasizing engagement from the moment of subscription
Continuing nurturing after the fact
Offering software tutorials and tips
Building a loyalty program to reward longtime subscribers
Gamifying long-time subscriptions through goals
Prioritizing quick responses to subscriber complaints
And more.

All of these tactics have an underlying philosophy in common: the importance of building a relationship with your subscribers. Whether they are consumers looking to stream their music or business managers who need help with their company’s finances, they expect a more personal and frequent contact with representatives of your brands than they would for one-time purchases.

Realizing the commitment they make in signing up for long contracts and recurring payments, your subscribers need just as much – if not more – attention as potential customers. Understanding and embracing this fact can go a long way toward increasing your retention rates.

4. Cross and Upselling Opportunities

You can also increase your retention by offering new and improved versions of your software, or other offerings within your brand catalog. Offering more features within your subscriber’s existing software is also known as upselling, while cross selling refers to selling a new software package to existing subscribers.

You likely have a passing familiarity with both concepts, so we will not get into an in-depth explanation of each in this space. But what we will do is tell you just how crucial they are to helping you succeed in marketing your software.

Why do these concepts work? Because according to numerous studies , selling to existing customers carries with it a significantly higher chance of success than trying to sell to new customers. The cost of cross selling or upselling is low, but functions effectively to accelerate the profitability of your SaaS software over an individual subscriber’s lifetime. As such, it should be a significant part of your marketing strategy.

5. Tracking SaaS Success Metrics

No SaaS marketing strategy can be successful if you don’t know whether or not your efforts are actually working. That’s why SaaS marketers around the globe rely on a core group of metrics to help them track the success of their efforts. These include:

Churn rate , or the rate at which your customers cancel their subscription. Churn rate can be calculated annually and monthly, and knowing the difference between the two is crucial to figuring out whether your subscribers are jumping off at a worryingly high rate.
Average Monthly Revenue . Usually calculated per subscriber, this simply tells you how much each of your customers is worth in a given month, and allows you to better plan out your budget for that month.
Cost per Acquisition , or the total cost it takes to get a new subscriber to sign up. This includes the costs incurred by both your marketing and sales effort, and you can calculate a working average by taking the entire cost over a given period and dividing it by the number of subscribers you gained that month. Cost per Acquisition is especially helpful in connection with:
Customer Lifetime Value . As the name suggest, this is the average amount your subscribers are worth to you over the lifetime of their subscription. Calculate it by multiplying your average monthly revenue by the average duration your subscribers stay with you. This metric is the single best way for you to calculate the true worth of a subscriber, which allows you to determine just how you should spend your marketing dollars. Naturally, your CLV should NEVER be lower than your cost per acquisition.

Naturally, your metrics will differ based on your software and its price. To learn about the benchmarks you should aim for, visit this resource guide .

Does your SaaS marketing strategy include these five components? If not, you may need help in making your software as profitable as it could be. In that case, contact us for help in optimizing your subscription software and maximizing your profits .

Ben Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues Challenge

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 02:51:07 GMT

Recently, I stumbled upon reference to Benjamin Franklin’s “13 Virtues” and an exercise on how to incorporate this type of practice into one’s own way of living. Franklin created his virtues in an attempt to arrive at “moral perfection” and you can use his methodology to craft your own challenge to enable growth, wellbeing, and change in your own life.

Here’s the exercise:

Create your list. Pick subjects that you believe will make the most improvement in your life and for which you believe you are particularly in need of improvement. These could be business-focused, creating connections, health and wellness, or simple attitude-shifts on which you would like to engage.
Focus on the first element of the list and keep it at the forefront of your daily thoughts and practice for a week.
After one week, move to the next item on the list and focus on that for a week.
Repeat until you have gone through your list, then start with item one again.
Do this 4 times, and you have completed a full year of practice.

This system helps engrave behaviors into your way of doing things and allows you to practice and develop skills on a single element four times per year.

Are You Voice Tech Ready? How to Make Google and Alexa Work for Your Brand

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:26:44 GMT

Whether your introduction came from HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey or from J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man, the idea of voice technology has been popular in sci-fi for decades, but it’s only recently made its way into our everyday lives.

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home have become commonplace in US households. Ready for a crazy stat? Roughly 1 in 4 US adults now owns a smart speaker. That translates to 60 million people and 157 million speakers, with a 135% increase in smart speaker ownership over the past two years (according to the recent Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research ).

And while neither Amazon or Google allow brands to do paid advertising directly through the speakers (at least, not yet), there are still plenty of opportunities for brands to capitalize on this tech trend.

Buy ad space on podcasts, radio stations, streaming sites, and news sources. When you purchase ad space on the platforms that your users listen to, you’re more likely to end up in front of your target market.
Optimize your brand and website for voice search: Similar in concept to SEO, voice search optimization is a way to ensure your brand comes up first when someone does a web search via a smart speaker. Diving into the tech of voice search optimization will take a little work, but it may be well worth it for your brand. Here’s a resource to learn more about optimization for voice .
Create Skills (Amazon Echo) and Actions (Google Home) that smart speakers can use all day every day. One example of a simple Amazon Echo Skill would be telling your Alexa to reorder paper towels when you run out. Another example: Tide has a Skill that offers step-by-step instructions on how to remove every type of stain, including recommending products.Want to learn how to build skills and actions that serve your brand? Check it out:
How to create an Amazon Echo Skill
H ow to create a Smart Home Action

Have you explored ways to integrate voice technology to help your business get found through this exciting new tech? Drop us a line and let us know.

Google Business Profile Optimization: The best place to start to improve local search

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 08:30:17 GMT

Google Business Profile optimation is an excellent way to get your organization to show up more effectively in search results – particularly if you have a local focus.

For local searches on Google, often your GBP listing is the first, non-paid opportunity to show up for your audience. Many businesses don’t do a great job of optimizing their profiles making tweaking your listing for “local pack” results a must-do to improve your performance.

Here are a few recommendations for adjusting your listing:

Add content to your listing a couple of times per week. Think of your GBP as a secondary “blog” for your organization and ad updates regularly.

Improve your listing performance by including FAQs. You should see gains in your results placement by answering questions (even ones you submit yourself) a few times per month.

Embed descriptive text or your logo in your images. Once in awhile, add content to your images since Google can now read this information and use it to showcase your organization.

Google presents results based on business hours. If someone is doing a search for the products or services you offer outside of your business hours, Google may not show your GBP as a result. If you are seeking to be found after hours, make sure you list your business as “open” 24/7. This can be set by adding “more hours” and updating your “online service hours” settings to “24 hours” each day.

Let us know if you need help getting your Google Business Profile working better for you by dropping us a line !

Strategy Before Tactics: Start with a Marketing Plan

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 08:32:49 GMT

Marketing can be scary. Especially when you don’t have a plan. Most DIY marketers (and, to be honest, many marketing firms) just hop in the deep end when getting started promoting their brand or their clients’ brands.

At Relish, we believe firmly in, “Strategy before tactics.” As tempting as it is to just get started – building a site, putting out stuff on social media, sending emails, creating blog posts… without a plan, you may not wind up where you want to go.

That’s why we offer the Relish GPS: Growth and Purpose Strategy .

This great audit helps our clients get on track (sometimes, back on track) with their marketing with an assessment of where they are, what their marketplace and competitors are doing, and what actionable tactics based on strategy they can implement to ensure that they take the shortest route to their desired destination.

If this sounds like a program that you would be interested to discuss in more detail, drop us a line and we’ll send you more info.

Digital Marketing Forecast: The Future Is All About Purpose-driven Marketing

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 08:36:09 GMT

Digital Marketing Forecast: 2025 is all about purpose-driven marketing and we have the data to back it up.

Key trends:

77% of consumers are motivated to purchase from companies committed to making the world better (Forrester, 2023)
Purpose-driven content receives 1.6x more engagement than traditional content (Sprout Social, 2024)
73% of consumers say they would switch brands if a similar alternative brand supported a good cause (Cone Communications, 2023)

What does this mean for you?

Authenticity > Perfection: Your audience wants to see the real people and purpose behind your brand. Connection matters more than perfection.

Community First: Local engagement and community impact are becoming important for consumers seeking to engage with brands. Having a community-first perspective helps keep your business top-of-mind.

Value Alignment: Customers are researching company values before buying.

Delivering your purpose message consistently and clearly across all your channels and outreach is paramount to helping people know, like, and trust your business.

At Relish Studio, we help purpose-driven businesses navigate these changes.

Want to see how purpose-driven marketing can elevate your brand’s impact in 2025? Get your free 2025 Digital Presence Audit from Relish Studio by dropping us a line ! Let’s make your brand values resonate.

Referral Marketing: Take Word-of-Mouth to the Next Level

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 08:40:58 GMT

Many business leaders chalk most of their sales up to “word of mouth”.

And having an active referral network of acquaintances and past clients that think of you first is a fantastic gift.

But have you considered how you nurture your network to get the most out of the relationships you have created over the years?

Referral marketing is a big part of our success (and we help teach referral marketing as part of our regular approach to the marketing hourglass).

A little effort put into your referral program goes a long way.

Here are a few ideas to get you going:

1. Set your intention and get committed.

Every week, I carve out time on my calendar for active outreach and meetings with people I already know. Set aside time on your calendar and protect that time for activities that help grow existing relationships (and create new ones).

2. Make it easy for people to refer you.

By asking questions about your referral partners’ ideal clients and how to refer them best *to them*, you’ll open up the opportunity to share your own story. The top 5 questions that need to be asked/answered are:

a. Who you are.
b. What you do.
c. What makes you different?
d. The best way to get in touch.
e. How to refer you.

3. Create a system that works for you.

Some people follow the 5/5/4/2 approach by creating 5 new contact requests, 5 contacts with your existing network, 4 follow-ups, and 2 new pieces of content as part of their daily outreach. If that sounds too daunting, spread it out over the week. But get those conversations rolling.

Relationships are expanded by having valuable conversations and contact over time. It takes time, work, and commitment. But man… it is worth it!

How are you going to expand your relationships this week? Let us know by dropping us a line .

Leading vs. Lagging KPIs

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:46:28 GMT

When asked what metrics matter most for a business, most leaders point to “revenue” as their top KPI.

And, certainly, how many runs you get in each game is of great importance.

If you dig deeper, you can start to uncover “leading KPIs” for your business that precede the collection of revenue. These are those items that get you “on base” or could even be broken down into “hits”, “at bats”, or even “swings”.

Once you understand the process through which revenue is derived, you can start to identify levers you can pull that if measured correctly, can be points of engagement into which you can invest time and money to consistently drive that more “lagging” metric – revenue.

Here’s an example.

A PR firm is looking to bring in $1M per year of service-based revenue.

In the interest of simplicity, let’s say that their average job goes for $10000.

So, over the next year, they’ll need to bring in 100 clients to reach the $1M mark (again, assuming no repeat business, for simplicity’s sake).

Now, let’s back out a channel of activities that lead to a single sale.

If the next step back from a sale is a proposal presentation meeting and their close rate is 50%, they will need to create 2 proposals for each sale to occur. So, overall, they’ll need 200 proposal opportunities during the year.

What activity produces a proposal presentation? Let’s suggest that it’s demo meetings, again with a 50% “close” rate from a demo that leads to a proposal. Therefore, they need to book 400 demo meetings per year.

Perhaps demos are driven through a number of avenues but they want to focus on demos that come directly through traffic to the site from an ad they run on LinkedIn. The landing page for this ad converts at 25%. So, to get 400 demos, they’ll need to send 1600 clicks to that page.

Stepping back one more level, they know their ad gets a 10% Click-thru Rate (CTR). Therefore, they need to invest enough to get 16000 ad views (impressions) to drive the desired volume of activity.

At this point, we’ve identified a “throttleable” activity to measure – ad impressions – and can fairly confidently assume that increasing our investment in the proven ad spend will result in more impressions, more clicks, more conversions, more demos, more proposals, and therefore, more sales.

This is the power of finding your “leading KPIs” (activities) that drive sales vs. focusing just on sales. There are usually many ways to gain predictability in what methods will work for you. Perhaps it’s posted on LinkedIn, networking events, coffee meet-ups (Though, how do you get these scheduled? That would be your *real* leading KPI to measure), postcards sent, cold calls, etc.

Find out what activities have led to sales in the past and see which of those is scalable. Once you figure out what levers you can pull to get to the plate, you will reap the revenue rewards.

Want to talk about how you can get more “at bats” for your business? Drop me a line and let’s chat . The first conversation’s on me.

The Return-to-Office Movement

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 08:51:25 GMT

There’s quite a bit of buzz about RTO (Return-to-Office) and remote working on LinkedIn lately. I also seem to be inundated with advertisements for private air travel.

Not sure what’s going on with all of that.

Clearly, the algorithm doesn’t know me very well.

But I digress.

I’m all for remote working, where it’s feasible and makes sense for one’s business.

I also see it as a privilege that not everyone can access.

And I feel very fortunate to be able to work remotely.

Since moving to fully remote working in 2020 (we were flexible before the pandemic, having an office we visited a few times a week), I have saved tens of thousands of dollars each year on commuting costs and office expenses. My carbon footprint is shallow (I think I put 3000 miles on my car last year). And I save at least 90 minutes per day driving to and from the office.

Not everyone has this option, however.

Some of us hold positions that require on-site work.

Some do not live (or can’t afford to or don’t choose to live) close to our places of work.

I was once told, “Live where you work, or live where you play.”

Thirty years ago, I chose the latter.

And now I’m fortunate to have both.

Also, stop showing me ads for Private jets.

That’s not gonna happen.

Have thoughts on the RTO vs. remote work debate? Drop us a line and share your experiences!

Crafting Core Values

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:54:13 GMT

When was the last time you thought about your core values (either personal or business)?

While discussing what makes us tick the other day with Jeff Kinsey , he very succinctly articulated Relish’s set of core values: Altruism, Connection, and Collaboration (with a dash of Thirst for Learning tossed in).

Knowing that Bret and I have articulated what fuels our fire so well that Jeff could summarize it for us was refreshing. It’s important to know that we aren’t just vocalizing what we *think* our values are, but that we are living them in such a way that others can see them reflected in our actions.

If you haven’t explored your core values in a while (or ever), it’s a good idea to revisit them on a regular basis. Do the values you have chosen still inform your mission? Do they resonate with you and your team? Can your team embrace the values you have identified?

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, give us a shout and we can work together to fine-tune your values. They are the foundation on which everything else builds.

The first conversation’s on me.

Ready to refine your core values and strengthen your foundation? Get started by dropping us a line for a complimentary consultation and let’s align your values with your mission.

Use AI for Ideation, Not Full-cloth Content Creation

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 08:57:28 GMT

I came here to rant a bit about AI-generated content and now I see that LinkedIn is offering the opportunity to author posts using AI.

This is really getting a bit out of hand.

I do not believe it’s in anyone’s best interest to generate a boat-load of inauthentic content just for the sake of generating content.

I’ve heard SEO experts claim that creating hundreds (or thousands) of posts is the way to win the SEO game.

I’ve seen people post here on LinkedIn their 9 tips for “How I created 15 posts in 5 minutes and you can too” (or whatever the hell they were saying).

My guess is that this is a tactic that is going to backfire.

Look, people are curious, inquisitive beings who thrive on learning.

If the majority of the material presented becomes just regurgitated crap, they’ll seek out legitimate, authentic items of value.

And, eventually, the search engines are going to figure this out.

So, before you embrace AI as a content-generation device in whole, recognize what that’s going to get you in the long-run. Sure, there may be some short-term gains… but like the days when one could just scrape a site of its content and repost it as your own, the engines are going to catch up.

I do see a legitimate place for AI to be used as an ideation tool. But if you are having it write your content whole-cloth, you are missing the opportunity to create material that provides real value and creates real connections with your audience.

What are your thoughts on AI-generated content? Share your opinion by giving us a shout .

The Best Way to Use AI to Create Content

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 09:00:29 GMT

The decline of search engine performance is real.

The influx of AI-generated content is flooding the web with new material – much of it lacking a lot of value for real users.

And the search engines are having a tough time keeping up.

This is why we believe strongly that one should leverage AI as an ideation tool rather than a full-cloth content generation machine.

Search engines are currently scrambling for how to cope with this change in the way content is being generated.

Until they come up with solutions, we’re beset with poor results for searches.

In the meantime, we suggest making sure you create content that delivers value and is edited thoroughly to ensure what you are putting out there is correct and meets high readability-by-humans standards.

There are some other tricks you can leverage in the meantime to improve the results you can get from searches.

Here’s a link to a post about how to improve the results you get for Google searches.

Leverage Customer Reviews to Build Your Target Avatar

Fri, 24 May 2024 01:53:24 GMT

Customer interviews are just one of the ways we gain insight into our clients’ performance and the “why” behind what motivates their audience to engage.

When interviews aren’t an option, we turn to reviews to get a better understanding of their audience preferences, challenges, and outcomes in order to help formulate persona profiles .

One of the best uses of ChatGPT (or the model of your choice) is to have it analyze existing data and provide insights on which you can take action.

A simple prompt to use is, “Please create a target customer profile from the following reviews:”, then copy and paste reviews from your Google Business Profile , website, Yelp, or other review platform to check out the results.

You certainly will gain some new insights into what motivates your best customers to work with your organization.

Need more help creating personas? Grab your copy of our persona workbook here or give us a shout for assistance.

VoyageDenver Interview

Thu, 02 May 2024 02:00:11 GMT

I was recently asked to chat with the team at VoyageDenver about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur.

It’s always fun to help others understand that the entrepreneurial journey is rarely a straight line.

Mine has featured a variety of diversions from the main path… some which reconnected, others that turned out to be what one might consider dead ends.

But here’s the deal…

Everything in your life has led to where you are today. There’s no place else you could possibly be. So embrace the journey.

Take a peek at the article here .

Try Something New

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 02:10:02 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

When was the last time you tried something new?

I have never been great at wheelies – the number one most fun thing to do on a bike, according to my buddy, Russell (number two is skidding and number three is coasting – so you probably have a pretty good understanding of how Russell rolls – NPI).

Historically, my biggest challenge with wheelies has been getting over my fear of looping out (falling over backward) and/or committing to the sweet spot. (The Venn diagram overlap on those two looks a lot like a circle.)

See, with wheelies, there’s a balance point one needs to access where you are in perfect harmony between falling over backward and not getting your wheel up high enough – resulting in your front wheel returning to the ground. When you can access this “sweet spot” is where the wheelie (and true bliss, apparently) can be found.

But I digress…

Given that wheelies are the most fun thing one can do on a bike, I figure it is well past time for me to learn how to ride them effectively.

As a fella who’s a bit past his wheelie prime (and one with a lot of other stuff I need to get done – like work), I decided the quickest way to get my wheelie game on point would be to build a “manual machine”. You can buy these online but I just found some plans for a simple stand built out of 2x4s and a 2×6 that will do the trick.

Since getting it put together over the weekend, I have practiced my manuals several times a day. Essentially, instead of surfing the web or checking social media, I jet out to the garage and practice for a minute or two when I have a few spare moments. Win-win.

And here’s my point regarding wheelies and their relation to business like a champ – trying something new usually supplies multiple benefits to your well-being.

You get out of your comfort zone a bit and maybe even scare the pants off of yourself from time to time.

You get to push your boundaries, which resets your baseline of what’s within your capabilities.

You get to flex some muscles you may have never used before.

And, most importantly, you get to have some fun.

So get out there and pop some business wheelies.

Let us know something new you would like to try.

And if you need some help, let us know by dropping us a line .

(Note: That’s not me doing a wheelie in the image – yet.)

Supercharge Your Testimonials with Headshots

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 02:26:41 GMT

Want to make your awesome testimonials even awesome-er? (Yeah, I know… not a word.)

Add headshots to the testimonials you post to your site to improve their performance.

People love the social proof testimonials provide. And they also like to see real people attached to the glowing reviews they leave for your organization.

So, whenever you can, add headshots to your testimonials to add personality and validation to the messages your clients share.

Have you experimented with adding headshots to your testimonials? Share your success stories or challenges with this strategy by dropping us a line.

Don’t Hide Your Demo Behind a Paywall

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 02:32:30 GMT

Tip to SAAS marketing teams: If you offer to let people view a video demo’ing your service but require them to share their email address or sign up for something before doing so, you may be missing some opportunities.

Look, if your service is valuable, you shouldn’t hide it behind what is effectively a paywall.

Priming people to “View a Demo” only to ask them to share value with YOU first is just inane.

Remember, the buyer is in the driver’s seat at this juncture.

You haven’t established that what you have to offer is worth their time or effort – much less their email.

Deliver value FIRST, before asking for value in return.

Have thoughts on optimizing SAAS marketing strategies or experiences with delivering value-first? Let us know by dropping us a line !

The 1-3-1 Approach to Problem Solving

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 02:34:50 GMT

How do you encourage your team to bring solutions to the table rather than simply bringing problems?

I was recently introduced to the 1-3-1 approach and it is a winner.

Instead of having your team present problems, ask them to change their approach.

If they are experiencing a challenge or problem, ask them to present the challenge, 3 potential solutions they have considered, and the one they would like to try (their recommended approach).

From here, you can discuss whether this solution is preferred, or even bring additional options to the discussion.

This approach creates a few positive adjustments to the common “escalate the problem” tact.

First, many problems will never require escalation because your team will brainstorm solutions on their own, come up with adequate solutions, and execute them. (This also reinforces autonomy, one of the key motivators for top-performing teammates.)

Second, it reframes the discussion from one that is reactive to one that is more proactive. It fosters positivity in the workplace that can be lacking when everything is presented as a problem without solutions.

Third, it allows people to grow in their abilities to perform their job functions. There’s a reason we grow up working puzzles. Finding solutions independently is a great way to expand our capabilities and confidence.

Do you have other methods of problem-solving that have proven to be beneficial to the growth of your team? Let us know by dropping us a line !

What’s Your Zone of Genius? An evening with Gay Hendricks and Conscious Entrepreneurs

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 02:36:07 GMT

Big shout out to the team at Conscious Entrepreneur for the fantastic talk yesterday featuring Gay Hendricks .

This was a very much last-minute opportunity for me and I’m happy Alejo Lopez posted about it so I could clear my schedule and join in the learning and love.

I have read several of Gay’s books and am aligned well with his ideas.

Nailing down and working within one’s Zone of Genius is something that everyone could benefit from. When we can stay active in those areas that bring us the most joy and tap into our greatest aptitude, we can make the biggest positive impact on the world.

Gay’s talk was very much centered on the thinking he shared in “The Big Leap”. If you haven’t read it, pick up a copy.

I had a lot of takeaways from the afternoon’s conversations:

Working on oneself is the first step in making a huge impact on the world at large. Commit (work on yourself), Manifest (work on your leadership), Implement (work on your company), THEN Inspire (work on the world).
Be willing to extend the time you allow yourself to enjoy things going well in all areas of your life, then COMMIT to extending that time.
Be open to learning, trying, and executing new ideas.

So I am going to invest a bit of time to fully understand and embrace my Zone of Genius, and commit to working within this zone 100% of the time.

The first question to answer (and I pose this to all of you):

What do you most love to do? Let us know by dropping us a line !

Content Creation in the World of AI

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 02:38:45 GMT

I had an interesting conversation yesterday about content creation – especially in the realm of AI.

Here are my thoughts:

I think we are going to see a surge of pretty mediocre content to start (given how many are going to abuse AI). Once the search engines start to see time on site and bounce metrics go south, the algorithms will be changed to favor content that *actually* resonates with people’s needs, pain points, and desires… and people will have to move back to creating content that engages and provides tangible value.

Here’s the interesting deal… if you keep creating/commit to creating that type of content NOW, my guess is that you will benefit in spades once the algorithms change.

So keep creating great content. Be patient. Be consistent.

The rewards will come.

Share your thoughts—do you agree with the future of AI in content creation? How do you approach creating meaningful content? Let us know by dropping us a line !

Clarity in Communications: Ditch the Acronyms

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 02:42:58 GMT

My business partner, Bret Orton , is helping me get better.

In a wide variety of ways, he helps me see my defaults, adjust my focus when I get too carried away chasing the wrong thing, and just does a fantastic job of helping me see the way when I’m in a fog.

Right now, he’s helping me work on my alphabet soup.

See, I am an acronym guy.

And often, my correspondence has the tendency to fall into that acronym trap.

Acronyms may seem handy and helpful, but much of the time they just force people to have to think harder.

Since I am working on this myself, I notice it more here on LinkedIn.

I recently saw a post talking about the LTV of DTC brands and how their CAC and CPC rates keep going up, decreasing the ROI of their PPC campaigns (or some such nonsense).

Oof.

You may have heard me talk about the value of clarity over cleverness.

If you are forcing your audience to translate acronyms throughout your posts, you aren’t following that rule.

Make it easy for me to read your message and get value as quickly as possible.

Ditch the alphabet soup.

Let us know how you maintain clarity in your communication and handle the ‘alphabet soup’ by dropping us a line .

Share your experiences and insights, and contribute to the discussion on creating more straightforward and impactful business messaging.

Marketing Blue Sky: A little better is better than nothing

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 02:44:14 GMT

There’s an old story/joke about being chased by a bear.

The punch line goes something like this… “I don’t have to be the fastest. I just have to be faster than one of you.”

And that idea plays pretty well in the marketing world as well.

We all want to be first. To do things “perfectly.” And let’s face it… it’s pretty fun to “win.”

But in marketing, often the gap between being on top and being a solid player in the game can be significant.

And there is often a LOT of blue sky in just putting in a little bit of effort.

See, we all have the tendency to think that in order to “win” we need to be perfect. “Everyone else is doing so well! How can we even compete?”

But the reality is that there’s a lot of success to be mined in that space between perfection and the bare minimum.

As an example, Coke is certainly the industry leader when it comes to cola-flavored soft drinks. But Pepsi still does pretty big business in the space. And Blue Sky has carved out a nice little niche for itself in the market.

Does Blue Sky need to crush Coke and Pepsi to “win?” Absolutely not.

So, when you think about all the competition in your space, there’s a lot of opportunity in just doing a *little* better than someone else. And there are a lot of “someone else’s” out there that you can outpace without having to strive for perfection.

Remember, you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be a *little* bit better than the others.

Let us know how you’ve discovered the power of striving for improvement over perfection in the marketing world by dropping us a line . Share your experiences and insights on how being ‘a little bit better’ can lead to success. Your journey might inspire others to find their unique path to excellence.

Impermanence in Marketing – How to create longevity in your messaging

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 02:46:13 GMT

Lately, I’ve been pondering the idea of impermanence and how we have become a “throw-away” society.

Everything from clothing to containers to content has become disposable. Use it once and toss it in the garbage.

As a lifelong environmentalist and someone who tries to extend the lifespan and “value” of pretty much everything I use (e.g. I am currently wearing some articles of clothing that are old enough to vote), I believe a different approach is needed if we are going to get out of this death spiral in which we are currently spinning.

And I’m not just talking about consumer goods.

Even the content we create has become disposable. This article started as a post that had a lifespan of perhaps a day, then disappeared into the void amidst a pile of other material we read and let float away into the ether. Hence, it’s being republished here as an article – which LinkedIn will show to even fewer of you.

So, for the few of you who actually see this article, I would like to challenge you to do something different with the material you produce and consume today. Find a way to give it new life – or at least extend its life – by sharing it with others, by publishing it in a way that makes it more permanent and accessible for more than the briefest of moments, by adding your thoughts to these materials to make them have even more impact and help more people be better.

I’m not asking you to do anything with this article specifically, but to inject some new life into your own feed by lifting up other posts and breathing some air into them to let them live just a bit longer. Another great tactic is to go back to older materials and share them again. Many people haven’t yet been exposed to material you shared in the past which still has value and relevance. Re-write older material and give it a second life.

After all, we are only here for the briefest of moments. Might as well share as much love as we can.

Let us know how you’re embracing the idea of extending the lifespan of content and making a positive impact by dropping us a line .

Provide Value to Drive Sales

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 02:47:39 GMT

For those who dislike sales, here’s some food for thought.

Sales cycles are funny.

I’ve landed deals on my first conversation with a client and have stayed in touch with others for years before having them decide to work with me.

In each case, I have tried to remember one thing… my job is to provide value – every step of the way.

I have found that when I remember why I’m in the conversation (to provide value), receiving a “no thanks” or a “not now” about an engagement opportunity ceases to feel like a negative. I know I have shared value, and that’s what’s important.

When I do this with consistency, plenty of conversations turn into sales opportunities.

And plenty of those opportunities turn into engagements.

And when I’m providing value… it doesn’t feel like sales at all.

Let us know how you’ve experienced the shift from sales to value-driven conversations by dropping us a line .

Done Is Better Than Perfect

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 02:50:57 GMT

Here’s today’s #mindset shift on which you can take action NOW.

Stop worrying about getting things “right”.

I’m sure you have heard the saying, “Done is better than perfect.”

In today’s world, change is inevitable, so (even if “perfection” was attainable, which it really isn’t), after you have taken the time to get to something you think is “perfect”, the landscape has changed.

Make decisions. Launch your message. Measure the performance. Make iterative changes.

Repeat. Stop letting “right” get in the way of getting things done.

What can you get done today? Let us know in the comments.

Three Tactics to Better Understand What Motivates Your Audience

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 02:51:57 GMT

What motivates you may not motivate your target audience.

This goes for your clients AND your team.

I was talking with a CEO the other day who was struggling to motivate her team.

“I’ve tried everything to get my team energized. Even doubled their time off and incentivized them with MORE time off if they take all of their PTO.”

That’s a great plan… IF your team is enthused by time off.

Here’s the deal. From the CEO’s perspective, more time off means more time to travel to great new locations.

But maybe her team doesn’t feel as strongly about travel (or, more likely, doesn’t have the disposable income to fund such luxuries).

Listen to your audience(s) and discover what truly motivates them to take action.

Here are three ways to get to this information quickly for your clients (and potentially uncover some core values you can use to inspire new team members to join your organization):

Interview your stakeholders to uncover their “real” motivations for work. If you aren’t comfortable interviewing people yourself, hire someone to help out (having a third-party assist with this can improve the answers you receive as well).
Survey your stakeholders. In the absence of a budget or comfort with in-person interviews, a simple survey that drills down to motivations can be extremely helpful.
Tap into your (or your competitors’) reviews. If you have received customer reviews/testimonials over the years, read back through them to uncover motivators for working with your firm. The language people use in reviews can unearth some real gold when it comes to understanding their problems and how you helped solve them!

From a more fundamental perspective, just focusing on listening for pain points and challenges is a good place to start when trying to get a better understanding of people’s motivations.

Have you used other techniques to get a better understanding of what would help inspire your audiences to take action?

Creating Time

Tue, 09 May 2023 02:58:08 GMT

What if you could create time? Actually manufacture more time out of thin air?

It’s an interesting concept – especially given the relationship most of us have with time.

Lately, I’ve been changing my relationship with time through a variety of experiments. It’s a work in progress since even the concept of time is abstract, on some levels.

The first step is to be thoughtful about what activities I choose to invest time in pursuing. As I have started to understand where my time is best invested and focus on what matters most, I am able to create a lot more time for myself (and others that matter to me). As I let go of those activities on which my time is not needed, less valuable, or simply unwanted, I create time for those activities that bring me the most joy and transfer the most value to others.

Second, when I have selected a focus for my time, I work on being entirely present in that moment – dedicating my fullest attention to that singular instant – to ensure that I can expand the time by experiencing it fully. Often, we feel time is wasted or fleeting simply because we aren’t giving our full attention to the moment we are living right now . We get stuck in reminiscing about the past or thinking about the future – letting the moment we are in now pass without our full consideration and attention. When you stay in the NOW, time expands.

When you let go of activities that aren’t important, you create time.

When you invest your full attention in every moment, you expand time.

What’s your relationship with time and how can you create more of it for yourself?

Market Research Primer: A Guide for Small Businesses

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:38:19 GMT

Welcome to the conducting market research part of our Small Businesses Marketing Guide ! In this section, we’ll talk about the importance of conducting market research and how it can help you better understand your target audience and develop effective marketing strategies.

When it comes to marketing your products or services, one size does not fit all. Your marketing strategies should be tailored to your specific target audience to effectively reach and engage them. This is where market research comes in. By gathering and analyzing data on your target audience and market, you can gain valuable insights that can inform your marketing decisions.

Do not discount this step because it can save you time and headaches. You can have the greatest idea in the world and, if there’s no market for it, you should learn that as soon as possible.

But what exactly is market research, and how can you conduct it as a small business? Let’s dive in!

Market research is the process of gathering and analyzing information about your target audience, competitors, and market trends to inform business decisions. It can help you answer questions such as:

Who is my target audience?
What are their needs and preferences?
Who are my competitors, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
What are the current market trends and opportunities?

There are several methods you can use to conduct market research, depending on your budget, goals, and target audience. Here are some of the most common ones:

Surveys: Surveys are a cost-effective way to gather data from your target audience. You can use online survey tools such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to create and distribute surveys. Make sure to keep your questions clear, concise, and relevant to your research goals.
Interviews : Interviews can provide more in-depth and qualitative data than surveys. You can conduct one-on-one interviews with your target audience or industry experts to gather insights on their needs, preferences, and pain points.
Focus groups : Focus groups are small group discussions that can provide valuable insights into your target audience’s opinions and behaviors. You can conduct them in person or online and ask specific questions to prompt discussion.
Secondary research : Secondary research involves gathering information from existing sources such as industry reports, competitor websites, or social media analytics. This can help you understand market trends, competitor strategies, and consumer behavior.

Once you’ve gathered your data, it’s important to analyze and interpret it to extract meaningful insights. Here are some tips for analyzing your market research data:

Look for patterns and trends : Identify common themes or patterns in your data that can inform your marketing decisions.
Compare your data : Compare your data with industry benchmarks or competitor data to gain a broader perspective.
Use visual aids : Visual aids such as graphs or charts can help you better understand and communicate your data.

By conducting market research, you can gain a better understanding of your target audience and market, and use this information to develop effective marketing strategies. Here are some ways you can use your market research data:

Create buyer personas : Use your research data to create detailed profiles of your ideal customers, including their needs, preferences, and pain points.
Develop messaging : Use your research data to craft messaging that resonates with your target audience and addresses their needs and pain points.
Choose the right marketing channels : Use your research data to identify the most effective marketing channels to reach and engage your target audience.
Monitor and optimize your strategies : Continuously monitor and analyze your marketing performance metrics to make data-driven decisions and optimize your strategies.

Conclusion

Conducting market research is a crucial step in developing effective marketing strategies for small businesses. By gathering and analyzing data on your target audience and market, you can gain valuable insights that can inform your marketing decisions and help you better reach and engage your customers. So don’t skip this important step in your marketing strategy plan!

Stand Out from the Competition: Identifying Your Competitive Advantage

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:34:12 GMT

Welcome back to our Small Businesses Marketing Guide !

In this section, we’ll talk about identifying your competitive advantage, a key factor in standing out from your competition and attracting customers.

Your competitive advantage is what sets you apart from other businesses in your industry and makes you the preferred choice for your target audience. It could be a unique feature of your product or service, a superior customer experience, or a combination of factors that make you the best option for your customers.

But how do you identify your competitive advantage as a small business owner? Let’s explore some steps you can take:

Understand your industry and market

Before you can identify your competitive advantage, you need to have a deep understanding of your industry and market. Conduct market research to gather insights on your competitors, target audience, and industry trends. Use your buyer personas . This will help you identify gaps and opportunities that you can leverage to differentiate yourself.

Define your unique selling proposition (USP)

Your unique selling proposition is a concise statement that sums up what makes your business unique and valuable to your target audience. It should be a clear and compelling message that resonates with your customers and sets you apart from your competitors. To define your USP, ask yourself what problem your product or service solves, what benefits it provides, and what makes it different from similar offerings in the market.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a useful tool for identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can help you evaluate your business’s internal and external factors that could impact your competitive advantage. Identify your strengths and opportunities that you can leverage to stand out from your competition, and your weaknesses and threats that you need to overcome.

Analyze your competitors

Analyze your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to understand how you can differentiate yourself. Look for gaps in the market that your competitors aren’t addressing, and areas where you can provide a superior product or service. You can also learn from your competitors’ mistakes and avoid making the same ones.

Focus on your customers

Ultimately, your competitive advantage comes down to meeting your customers’ needs and preferences better than your competitors. Listen to your customers’ feedback and use it to improve your product or service. Provide a superior customer experience that sets you apart from your competitors.

Here are some tips for identifying your competitive advantage as a small business:

Focus on what you do best : Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Focus on your strengths and what you do best, and use them to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Be authentic : Your competitive advantage should be genuine and authentic. Don’t try to be something you’re not, or make false claims about your product or service.
Stay adaptable : Your competitive advantage may change over time as your market and industry evolve. Stay adaptable and be willing to pivot and adjust your strategy as needed.
Communicate your competitive advantage : Once you’ve identified your competitive advantage, make sure to communicate it clearly and consistently to your target audience. Use it in your messaging, branding, and marketing materials to reinforce why customers should choose you over your competitors.

Conclusion

Identifying your competitive advantage is crucial for small businesses to stand out and succeed in a crowded market. By understanding your industry and market, defining your USP, conducting a SWOT analysis, analyzing your competitors, and focusing on your customers, you can differentiate yourself and attract loyal customers.

Craft a Compelling Value Proposition for Your Small Business

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:31:52 GMT

Welcome back to our Small Businesses Marketing Guide ! In this section, we’ll talk about crafting your value proposition, a key component of your marketing message that communicates the unique value you provide to your customers.

Your value proposition should answer the question, “Why should I choose your business over your competitors?” It should be a clear and compelling statement that highlights the benefits your customers will receive from your product or service and sets you apart from your competitors.

Crafting your value proposition requires a deep understanding of your target audience and what they’re looking for in a product or service. Here are some steps you can take to create an effective value proposition for your small business:

Identify your target audience

Your value proposition should be tailored to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience . Identify who your ideal customer is, and what their pain points, goals, and values are.

Define your unique value

Your unique value is what sets you apart from your competitors and makes you the best option for your target audience. It’s your competitive advantage . Identify what benefits your product or service provides that your competitors don’t, or what makes your offering superior in some way.

Highlight the benefits

Your value proposition should focus on the benefits your customers will receive from your product or service. How will it make their life easier, solve a problem they’re facing, or help them achieve their goals? Be specific and highlight the most compelling benefits. Bonus tip : Read up on “ framing effects ” and how the specific phrases you choose can drastically improve reception to your product (the human mind is both amazing and very stupid).

Keep it concise

Your value proposition should be a clear and concise statement that can be easily understood and remembered by your target audience. Keep it short and sweet, ideally one sentence or less. Think elevator pitch — can you pitch the idea to a potential client in a couple of seconds and have it resonate with them?

Test and refine

Crafting a value proposition is an iterative process . Test your value proposition with your target audience, and gather feedback to refine and improve it over time. An example with an email blast would be to segregate your list into two buckets and send two separate emails to test which one has the better open rate and conversion. Same thing with a landing page: if there’s a high bounce rate on it, the message might be off.

Here are some tips for crafting an effective value proposition for your small business:

Use language your target audience can relate to : Your value proposition should use language and terminology that resonates with your target audience. Use their own words to describe the benefits of your product or service. You may be unaware of how comfortable you are with your business’s nomenclature — don’t assume your potential customer knows what you know.
Focus on benefits, not features : Your value proposition should focus on the benefits your customers will receive, not just the features of your product or service. Highlight how your offering will solve their problems, make their life easier, or help them achieve their goals.
Be specific and measurable : Use specific and measurable language in your value proposition to reinforce the benefits you’re offering. For example, “Reduce your energy bill by 50%” is more compelling than “Save money on your energy bill.”
Avoid hype and exaggeration : Your value proposition should be honest and genuine. Avoid hype and exaggeration, and make sure you can back up your claims with evidence. If you find yourself writing something like “we synergize the efficiencies through hyperbolic transitional reference frames to blah blah blah”… start over.
Differentiate yourself : Your value proposition should set you apart from your competitors. Identify what makes you unique and highlight it in your messaging.

Conclusion

Crafting a compelling value proposition is essential for small businesses to attract and retain customers. By identifying your target audience, defining your unique value, highlighting the benefits, keeping it concise, and testing and refining over time, you can create a value proposition that resonates with your customers and sets you apart from your competitors.

Set Realistic Goals and Objectives for Your Small Business

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:25:38 GMT

Welcome back to our Small Businesses Marketing Guide ! In this section, we’ll talk about setting realistic goals and objectives, an important step in creating a successful marketing strategy.

Setting goals and objectives helps you define what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts, and provides a roadmap for how to get there. Here are some steps you can take to set realistic goals and objectives for your small business:

Start with your overall business goals

Your marketing goals and objectives should align with your overall business goals. Consider what you want to achieve in terms of revenue, customer acquisition, brand recognition, or other key metrics. Go big in this step and brainstorm goals you would like to achieve, even if they seem a bit ridiculous. While the next steps will have you refine the goals, it can’t hurt to challenge yourself with ideals of what you want the business to achieve. The more excited you are, the better the outcomes.

Be specific and measurable

Your goals and objectives should be specific and measurable, so you can track your progress over time. For example, instead of setting a goal to “increase sales,” set a goal to “increase sales by 10% in the next quarter.” There’s a difference between “I want to 100x my marketing investment in the first few months and sell 200 widgets with my first marketing campaign” and “I will shoot for a 15% conversion rate on my initial marketing campaign in the first 90 days and increase that to 25% by the end of 180 days.” Be eager yet reasonable.

Consider your resources

Your goals and objectives should be achievable with the resources you have available. Consider your budget, time constraints, and team capacity when setting your goals. You can’t do it all. Nobody can. And while you may have big dreams, time and money are finite resources that need to be wisely managed. Focus on what you’re good at and enlist help for the items you aren’t skilled at. Note that outsourcing the miserable parts of work isn’t necessarily the best option here, especially if you’re time rich and money poor. Outsource the work that will have the most impact on your business. For example, maybe balancing the books is doable yet you hate it. And it’d cost about the same for accountant help as it would for someone to manage a social media campaign you’d like to run that you don’t know how to do. And you can’t afford both. Maybe you suck it up and do your own books for a bit and hire out the social media help because that’s your best current option to generate leads.

Set a timeline

Your goals and objectives should be tied to a specific timeline, so you can track your progress and adjust your strategy if needed. Consider setting short-term goals (e.g. quarterly) and long-term goals (e.g. annual). One way to approach timelines is to work backward from a future goal, say your 1-year plan. Chunk that 1-year plan into manageable pieces and then create timelines for those pieces.

Make your goals challenging but realistic

Your goals should push you to strive for excellence, but they should also be realistic and achievable. Setting unrealistic goals can lead to frustration and burnout.

Here are some tips for setting realistic goals and objectives for your small business:

Prioritize : Set goals and objectives that align with your most important business priorities. Focus on the goals that will have the biggest impact on your business.
Use data : Use data to inform your goals and objectives. Analyze your past performance and industry benchmarks to set realistic targets.
Break it down: Break down your goals and objectives into smaller, more manageable tasks. This will make it easier to track progress and stay motivated.
Get input from your team : Involve your team in the goal-setting process. They may have valuable insights and ideas that can help you set more realistic goals.
Celebrate milestones : Celebrate when you achieve milestones along the way to your larger goals. This will help keep you motivated and energized.

Setting realistic goals and objectives is an important step in creating a successful marketing strategy for your small business. By starting with your overall business goals, being specific and measurable, considering your resources, setting a timeline, and making your goals challenging but realistic, you can set yourself up for success. Remember to prioritize, use data, break it down, get input from your team, and celebrate milestones along the way.

Choose the Right Marketing Channels for Your Small Business

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:22:52 GMT

We continue our Small Businesses Marketing Guide with marketing chan nels and how to choose them. Choosing the right marketing channels for your small business is a critical step in developing an effective marketing strategy. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to decide which channels to focus on. In this section, we’ll discuss the key factors to consider when choosing the right marketing channels.

Know Your Target Audience

The first step in choosing the right marketing channels is to identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? What are their interests and preferences? Understanding your audience’s demographics, behavior, and preferences will help you choose the most effective channels for reaching them. The channels for busy mothers are completely different than programmers, for instance. It probably wouldn’t make sense to market your SAAS (software as a service) solution to developers on Instagram, for example, unless your service was a machine-learning solution that could help skateboarding coders lessen the time it takes to learn new skateboard tricks (skateboarders like to post their videos and developers like technical stuff; i.e. Instagram might be a good channel in this edge case).

If you missed them, here are some additional insights regarding target markets in our “ Market Research Primer: A Guide for Small Businesses ” and “ Create Effective Buyer Personas for Your Small Business ” posts in this series.

Consider Your Budget

The next factor to consider is your budget. Some marketing channels can be expensive, while others are more affordable. Consider how much you’re willing to spend on marketing , and choose channels that fit within your budget. In an ideal world, you could launch a website with all the right search engine optimization (SEO), and the customers will immediately find that brand-new website and spend lots of money. Realistically, that’s not going to happen.

And, while a solid website is important, you need to budget for continued outreach to get in front of your target audience.

Assess Channel Effectiveness

Different marketing channels have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, social media is great for building brand awareness and engaging with customers, while email marketing is more effective for driving conversions. Assess the effectiveness of each channel based on your goals and audience, and choose the channels that will have the greatest impact. You don’t have to do them all. It’s okay to not advertise on Facebook if you don’t want to and don’t see a positive return on investment from it.

Test and Experiment

Finally, it’s important to test and experiment with different marketing channels to see what works best for your business. Don’t be afraid to try new channels and tactics, and be willing to pivot if something isn’t working. Testing and experimentation are key to finding the most effective marketing channels for your business. You can use yourself for market research, too.

In the beginning, subscribe to a few email campaigns from competitors or brands you like, follow them on social media, and take note of what they do that you like and don’t like.

Maybe Red Bull’s Air Race social feed is the most amazing thing to you, and you have a knitting store you want to market — make and post a couple of extreme knitting videos and see what the engagement numbers look like.

Based on these factors, here are some of the most popular marketing channels for small businesses:

Social Media: Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great for building brand awareness and engaging with customers. They’re also relatively affordable and easy to use.
Email Marketing: Email marketing is a powerful tool for driving conversions and building customer relationships. It’s also highly customizable and cost-effective.
Content Marketing: Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable content that attracts and engages your target audience. It can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more.
Paid Advertising : Paid advertising involves paying for ad placement on various platforms, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads. It can be expensive, but it can also be highly effective for driving conversions and reaching new audiences.

Conclusion

When choosing the right marketing channels for your small business, remember to consider your target audience, budget, channel effectiveness, and willingness to experiment. By carefully selecting the channels that align with your goals and audience, you can create an effective marketing strategy that drives growth and success for your business.

Digial Marketing Budgeting and Resource Allocation for Small Businesses

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:20:25 GMT

Welcome to the bu dgeting part of our Small Businesses Marketing Guide . Budgeting and allocating resources are critical components of any successful marketing strategy. Without a clear understanding of how much money you have to work with and how to allocate it effectively, your marketing efforts may not reach their fullest potential. In this section, we’ll discuss the key considerations for budgeting, including how to allocate marketing budgets, and allocating resources for your small business marketing plan.

Understanding Digital Marketing Budgets

What is a marketing budget?

A marketing budget is essentially a financial blueprint that outlines the funds allocated to various marketing efforts to achieve specific goals and objectives. Think of it as a roadmap for your marketing strategy, guiding how resources are distributed across different marketing channels, campaigns, and initiatives. A well-structured marketing budget ensures that your marketing efforts are not only aligned with your business objectives but also that your resources are utilized efficiently. Whether you’re focusing on social media, email marketing, advertising, podcasting, or other leveraging other channels, having a clear budget helps you stay on track and make informed decisions.

Importance of a Marketing Budget

A marketing budget is crucial for several reasons:

Aligns Marketing Efforts with Business Objectives : A marketing budget ensures that your marketing efforts are in sync with your business goals, whether it’s increasing revenue, boosting brand awareness, or generating leads.
Ensures Efficient Resource Allocation : By having a marketing budget, you can allocate resources more effectively across various marketing channels, campaigns, and initiatives, ensuring that each dollar spent contributes to your overall strategy.
Provides a Framework for Measurement and Evaluation : A marketing budget offers a structured way to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. This allows for data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
Helps Prioritize Marketing Initiatives : With a marketing budget, you can prioritize your marketing initiatives, ensuring that the most impactful and efficient ones receive the necessary resources.

Determine Your Marketing Budget

The first step in budgeting for your marketing plan is to determine how much money you can allocate toward marketing activities. This budget should be based on your overall revenue goals and take into account any other expenses you have to cover. Even if you come up with $100 or even $50 per month available for marketing, that’s a start and can help guide the next actions. One of the benefits of having a figure in front of you is that it removes some of the nebulous thinking that happens when you don’t. If you know how much you can spend, that gives you focus.

Allocating marketing budgets strategically helps in making informed, data-driven decisions to optimize marketing investments.

Break Down Your Expenses

Once you have determined your overall marketing budget, it’s important to break down your expenses. This includes the costs associated with each marketing channel you plan to use, such as social media advertising or email marketing. Additionally, consider how to prioritize and allocate budget across various digital channels based on target audience behaviors and marketing goals.

Create a Digital Marketing Budget

Steps to Create a Digital Marketing Budget

Creating a digital marketing budget involves several key steps:

Define Marketing Goals and Objectives: Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. Are you looking to increase website traffic, generate leads, or improve brand awareness? Having clear goals will guide your budget allocation.
Conduct a Marketing Audit: Assess your current marketing efforts to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This audit will provide valuable insights into where you should focus your resources.
Determine the Overall Marketing Budget: Based on industry benchmarks, company size, and your marketing goals, determine your overall marketing budget. This will be the foundation for your digital marketing budget allocation.
Allocate Budget to Digital Marketing Channels: Distribute your budget across various digital marketing channels such as social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and paid advertising. Each channel should receive a portion of the budget based on its potential ROI and alignment with your goals.
Prioritize Marketing Initiatives: Within each channel, prioritize the initiatives that are most likely to deliver results. This ensures that your budget is spent on the most effective and efficient activities.
Track and Measure Performance: Regularly track and measure the performance of your marketing efforts. Use data to inform your decisions and optimize your budget allocation. This continuous monitoring will help you make adjustments as needed to maximize your ROI.

By following these steps, you can create a comprehensive digital marketing budget that aligns with your marketing goals and objectives, ensures efficient resource allocation, and provides a framework for measurement and evaluation.

Prioritize Your Marketing Channels

Not all marketing channels and marketing campaigns are created equal, and some may be more effective for your business than others . As you break down your expenses, prioritize your channels based on their (perceived) effectiveness and align them with your overall goals. Use your buyer personas to help determine which channels to focus on. Get to know the social media communities that you might want to target. If you sell fountain pens and accessories, the Reddit /r/fountainpens subreddit members might be a better group to advertise with than targeting fountain pen Instagram feeds. Or maybe vice versus. The better you know your target audience, the better you can gauge which marketing channel will be most effective.

Monitor and Adjust

Once you have set your marketing budget and allocated your marketing spend, it’s important to monitor your progress and adjust your approach as needed. This may involve reallocating resources from one channel to another or adjusting your overall marketing strategy based on what’s working and what’s not.

Additional Tips for Your Marketing Strategy

Here are some additional tips for budgeting and allocating resources for your small business marketing plan:

Consider outsourcing : Outsourcing certain marketing activities can be an effective way to save money and ensure that you’re getting the expertise you need. For example, you may choose to outsource content creation or social media management to a third-party provider.
Leverage free tools : There are several free tools available that can help you with your marketing efforts, such as social media scheduling platforms or email marketing software. Be sure to explore these options before committing to more expensive solutions.
Focus on ROI : When allocating resources, focus on the channels that provide the highest return on investment (ROI). This will ensure that you’re getting the most value for your marketing dollars.
Plan for contingencies : Unexpected events can throw off even the most carefully planned marketing strategies. Be sure to build in some contingency planning and allocate resources accordingly to account for any unforeseen events.

Conclusion

Budgeting and allocating resources for your small business marketing plan is a critical step in achieving your overall goals. By carefully planning and prioritizing your marketing channels, monitoring your progress, and adjusting as needed, you can create a successful and effective marketing strategy that drives growth and success for your business. Want help creating your marketing budget? Explore options for marketing coaching with Relish.

Launching Your Small Business Marketing Campaign: Tips and Strategies

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:13:24 GMT

Congratulations! You’ve made it to one of the most exciting steps of your marketing strategy plan: launching your campaign. Your close to the end of our Small Businesses Marketing Guide . This is where all of your hard work and preparation pay off, and you get to see the results of your efforts. In this section, we’ll discuss some tips for launching your marketing campaign successfully.

Plan Your Launch

Before you launch your campaign, it’s important to plan out the specifics of your launch. This includes setting a launch date, determining your target audience, and deciding on the channels you’ll use to promote your campaign.

Test Your Campaign

It’s a good idea to test your campaign before you launch it to ensure that everything is working properly. This may involve testing your website or landing page, testing your email marketing campaigns, or testing your social media ads.

Create a Buzz

Creating a buzz around your campaign can help to generate excitement and anticipation leading up to your launch. This may involve leveraging social media, creating teaser content, or running a pre-launch giveaway or contest.

Measure Your Results

Once you’ve launched your campaign, it’s important to measure your results. This includes tracking your website traffic, monitoring your social media engagement, and tracking your email marketing metrics.

Here are some additional tips for launching your marketing campaign successfully:

Leverage Influencers: Influencers can help to amplify your message and reach a wider audience. Consider partnering with influencers in your industry to help promote your campaign.
Engage Your Audience: Engaging with your audience can help to build trust and loyalty. Be sure to respond to comments and messages promptly and encourage user-generated content.
Monitor Your Competitors : Keep an eye on your competitors to see how they’re promoting their campaigns. This can help you to stay ahead of the curve and make adjustments to your campaign as needed.
Be Agile : Finally, it’s important to be agile and make adjustments to your campaign as needed. This may involve changing your messaging or adjusting your targeting based on your initial results.

Conclusion

Launching your marketing campaign is the final step in your marketing strategy plan. By planning your launch, testing your campaign, creating a buzz, and measuring your results, you can set yourself up for success. Don’t be afraid to be agile and make adjustments as needed, and be sure to engage with your audience throughout the process. Good luck!

Making Adjustments and Optimizations for Small Business Marketing

Thu, 04 May 2023 03:00:46 GMT

Welcome back to our Small Businesses Marketing Guide ! In the previous posts, we have covered all the crucial steps from conducting market research to analyzing performance metrics. Today, we are going to talk about making adjustments and optimizations, which is the final step in our plan.

Once you have launched your campaign and started tracking the results, it’s time to analyze the data and make adjustments to improve the performance. It’s important to remember that even the best-planned marketing campaign may not yield the desired results at first. That’s why it’s crucial to be prepared to make changes and optimize the campaign based on the data.

Review your performance metrics regularly

To make informed decisions about your campaign, you need to analyze your performance metrics regularly. Keep track of your key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and bounce rates. This will help you identify which areas of your campaign are performing well and which need improvement.

Identify the areas that need improvement

Once you have analyzed your performance metrics, you should identify the areas that need improvement. For example, if your conversion rates are low, you may need to optimize your landing pages, change your call-to-action (CTA), or adjust your targeting.

Experiment with different approaches

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different approaches to see what works best for your audience. Try testing different ad formats, changing your messaging, or using different targeting options to see what generates the best results.

Keep track of your budget

As you make adjustments to your campaign, it’s important to keep track of your budget. Make sure that you are not overspending on underperforming channels and that you are allocating your resources to the areas that generate the best results.

Don’t make changes too quickly

While it’s important to make adjustments to your campaign, you should avoid making changes too quickly. Give your campaign time to run and gather data before making any significant changes. This will help you ensure that you are making informed decisions based on reliable data.

Conclusion

Making adjustments and optimizations is a crucial step in any marketing campaign. By regularly analyzing your performance metrics, identifying areas that need improvement, experimenting with different approaches, keeping track of your budget, and avoiding making changes too quickly, you can optimize your campaign and achieve better results.

We hope that this Ultimate Marketing Strategy Plan for Small Businesses has been helpful to you. Remember, marketing is an ongoing process, and you should always be looking for ways to improve and optimize your campaigns. Good luck!

Ep 101: How to Get Volunteers on Board from the Onset with Karen Knight

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 09:42:29 GMT

Volunteers are the fuel that keeps nonprofit organizations humming.

Not discounting volunteers’ hard work to serve nonprofits’ missions, volunteers and how they talk about their experiences working with their favorite organizations provide the thrust that brings an abundance of donations, interest, and other volunteers into the system.

In short, when you treat your volunteers well and create an experience that a) positions them as the heroes in your mission story and b) treats their time as an invaluable resource not to be wasted, you’ll be on the path to real success.

See, many nonprofits position the organization as the hero of their story. In this narrative, the organization is cast as the creator of the majority of the thrust leading the charge to fulfill its mission.

Turning that framework on its head to position the volunteer as the hero is a fantastic way to encourage better engagement and attract more volunteers to your organization. It’s a subtle shift that can be challenging, but the magic happens when you get it right. This shift in messaging helps bring volunteers into the system as they see themselves cast that the hero. Who wouldn’t want to work with an organization that views its volunteer force through that lens?

Once you have enticed your volunteers to take action to engage with your organization is the next area in which planning and process development works wonders.

Crafting an onboarding process and following that process each and every time a volunteer offers to engage with your organization is paramount. Have a plan, make the volunteers feel welcome and valuable, and ensure they don’t feel that their time was wasted.

When you nail these two elements of your organization, you will see an uptick in your repeat volunteerism, your helpers will start recruiting for you, and referral-based donations start rolling in.

That’s a long introduction to this week’s guest on Relish THIS, Karen Knight. Karen has worked in the nonprofit space since first volunteering at age 11 and has been helping nonprofits improve their volunteer engagement ever since. Her consulting business helps nonprofit organizations knock their volunteer engagement out of the park by developing proven, repeatable processes and a better understanding of effective volunteer engagement and management.

If you leverage the talent and hard work of volunteers, this episode is tailor-made for you.

Dig in to see a different approach to volunteerism.

Links:

Karen Knight Consulting

Ask:

Show your appreciation
Thank your volunteers on every shift

Listen to the podcast here:

Why RFPs May Not Be Your Best Option When Selecting a Partner

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 06:25:40 GMT

Is your organization still sending out RFPs?

Here’s a response I gave to an organization requesting that we participate in their RFP process when they inquired why we hadn’t responded:

“Typically, we don’t respond to RFPs. At Relish, we believe that good partnerships begin with good relationships. Since RFPs, by their very nature, are requesting a proposal and budget figures outside of a relationship, we have found that our success rate when we participate is very low.

In fact, we have only “won” two RFPs in our 14-year tenure – both of which occurred when we were able to establish a relationship with the client and better understand their motivations and desired outcomes prior to presenting our response. Responses take a LOT of time to build out as well. Given our historical performance, we have put our efforts toward other options when creating new partnership opportunities.

I do very much appreciate being considered as a participant and wish you the utmost success with your project. If there is anything more I can do to assist, please reach out.”

See… RFPs can be sticky. They certainly serve a perceived desired outcome (collecting bids and start weeding out candidates) but come at that process that has a very strong opportunity to miss solving the *actual* challenges your organization is facing.

I can’t count the number of times we started conversations with one “need” in mind, only to uncover the *real* problem to be solved during the process of discovery and relationship building.

If you just need a third number to make your first choice shine, I get it.

If you are seeking to make connections with vendors who are well-aligned with your mission and values, and understand your true objectives, an RFP is not the way to get that done. Get in touch with us here to know more.

Your Superpower Can Also Be Your Kryptonite

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 06:49:12 GMT

Big moves can be scary.

I have definitely experienced the fear associated with “trying to get it right” all the time which produces a full stop in the decision-making process (paralysis), overplanning (manufactured paralysis), or delays that result in missed opportunities (effective paralysis).

I worked with a client last year who was stuck.

She came to me for assistance with marketing coaching to gain a fuller understanding of ways to market her business more and get her marketing “right”.

See, her superpower is perfection. Her commitment to getting everything perfect for her business and her clients has helped her accomplish great things. This superpower has gotten her where she is today.

However, her commitment to perfection was also her kryptonite – keeping her from making bold moves quickly to take advantage of opportunities that require fast action.

While working together, I helped her see things from a different perspective.

We worked to create confidence and clarity to make big decisions in the absence of “perfection”. To be able to speed up the process to take advantage of opportunities that required bold moves.

In 9 months, she made 3, big moves that changed her life.

None of these was “perfect”. But in the absence of action, she’d still be seeking perfection back at square one rather than making moves WAY further down the game board.

Are you seeking to be freed from the tyranny of “I don’t want to screw this up” – from the overthinking that results in missed opportunities?

If this sounds like you, I can help. Get in touch and let’s talk.

Ep 98: Creating a More Authentic Conversation with Aaron Wrixon

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 08:50:29 GMT

Are you struggling with content marketing?

In one sense, getting your message out to prospects has never been easier. A quick web search reveals dozens, if not hundreds, of content tools to help you quickly distribute your latest ideas via email, social media, your site, and nearly anywhere else you can think of.

However, this ease of access has come at a price. These distribution gains have come with a loss in the authenticity required to develop strong, lasting relationships.

That’s one of the many topics my guest, Aaron Wrixon, and I discuss today on Relish THIS.

Aaron is not only an amazing copywriter but also just a fantastic human being. I had the pleasure of meeting Aaron at a conference many years ago and we instantly clicked. He’s one of my favorite people on the planet and I thoroughly enjoy our conversations. Whether we are chatting about hockey, the latest Nic Cage movie, books, or marketing, there’s always gold to be mined.

Dive into your approach to copywriting and hone your ability to write copy that embraces the idea of developing a 1-to-1 relationship – one that casts your stakeholder in the role of “hero” in the story they are experiencing with your organization. Aaron is just the best.

Take your content marketing to the next level with this episode of Relish THIS.

Links:
Aaron Wrixon’s Website

Ask:

✔ “Give your head a shake” lol
✔ Try to be more authentic and bold in your communication. Be more vulnerable and more engaging.
✔ Daring to commit to authentic conversation.

Listen to the podcast here:

Ep 96: Your Numbers Tell a Story: Understanding Nonprofit Finances with Stephen King

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 01:43:22 GMT

Storytelling is a major component of any organization’s marketing.

People love a good story, and effective storytelling can make the difference between gaining that new donor or falling short on your projections… again.

More often than not, when looking for a compelling story, one overlooks a glaring opportunity in one’s organization. See, when telling a good story, the devil is, as they say, in the details.

And what better place to look for details than one’s own numbers?

My guest today is Stephen King, Founder and CEO of GrowthForce, a financial management firm that specializes in working with nonprofits to help them keep their missions on track through sound financial management.

Stephen is a font of valuable information: from how to stay on top of your reporting, to how to leverage your accounting data to make all kinds of organizational decisions. He shares his understanding of how healthy finances create tangible results for every organization.

So buckle up for an eye-opening episode of Relish THIS.

Links:
GrowthForce
Twitter
LinkedIn
Podcast: Path To Profits

Ask:
Attend the Nonprofit Growth Webinar. Download the workbooks and start getting your organization set up for growth.

Listen to the podcast here:

Episode 94: How to bring DEI training to the masses with Maren Miller and Nikki Murillo from Building Bridges

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 01:46:59 GMT

In the past, one’s “elevator pitch” lasted 30-60 seconds.

There was a reasonable expectation that one could hold someone’s attention for that period of time during which a longer conversation could be created.

These days, however, 30-60 seconds is an eternity. In the world of TikTok and Snapchat and Twitter, we now have roughly 7 seconds to capture your audience’s attention before they move on to something else.

That’s why you have to answer these questions immediately on your site:

What is this?
Who is it for?
How does it make their life better?
How do they get it? Or what should they do next?

Today’s guests on Relish THIS, Maren Miller and Nikki Murillo from Building Bridges are working to transform the world through DEI training. They see an opportunity to inspire both current and future leaders to embrace inclusivity in the workplace and beyond to shift perspectives and make the world a better place. They are doing amazing work in the space.

They are also doing a pretty good job of fleshing out their story on their site: demonstrating empathy and establishing authority, differentiating their services and processes, and leveraging social proof. But (at least on the date of our conversation) were missing an opportunity to nail the 7-second test to really throw the hook into those looking to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices in their organizations.

Just the nature of their work, which requires individuals to take a pretty hard look at their own privilege, requires overcoming some interesting challenges. We chatted through some sales ideas, ways to create some sparks in their INSPIRE phase activities, and more.

This was a really fun conversation and I hope you can check out the show.

Links:
Building Bridges
Building a Story Brand
Small Business Marketing Assessment

Ask:
Fill out the Building Bridges Survey

Go Slow To Go Fast! Pause take a breath, be aware of yourself, your environment, your surroundings, and your community, and, examine what is the next right step.

Listen to the podcast here:

Episode 93: Is Your Nonprofit Ready to Apply for Grants with Gauri Manglik

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 01:54:43 GMT

Going after grants seems like a no-brainer for most nonprofits.

The allure of readily available money is certainly a draw – that can turn into a real distraction if you aren’t positioned well to win these opportunities.

My guest today, Gauri Manglik, is a pro in the grant writing space. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Instrumentl, a platform designed to help nonprofits manage their grant writing to improve their chances of success in the space.

Gauri has seen it all when it comes to navigating the process of researching, applying for, and then managing grants once they have been secured and she was incredibly generous to share her expertise with us on today’s show. We talked a lot about what your nonprofit should look like from a maturity standpoint before applying for grants, relationship-building in the grant application process, and mindset shifts you can make to improve your success rate when exploring leveraging grants to help fund your nonprofit’s success.

Overall, this is an amazing and valuable conversation for anyone interested in bolstering their grant skills.

Enjoy the show!

Links:
Instrumentl
I nstrumentl Blog
Use RelishThis50 coupon code to get $50 off

ASK:
If there is someone you have been delaying asking for an introduction to a new contact or partner, ask them to make an intro!

Listen to the podcast here:

Ep 91: Leveraging social media chat tools with Nick Black from Good United

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 02:19:48 GMT

Marketing is all about relationship-building.

From selling a $0.25 widget to landing a multi-million dollar corporate sponsor, your ability to close business is only as strong as the relationships you build. People do business with people… and it’s becoming increasingly evident that people do even MORE business with people they like. That’s why any chance to further your relationships with others and strengthen those bonds is an important part of your organization’s tactics.

And that’s what our guest today, Nick Black is all about. Nick is the Co-Founder and CEO of Good United, an organization that helps nonprofits build lasting relationships with their stakeholders at scale.

If there’s one takeaway from today’s show it’s that you need to go over to Facebook right now and make sure that you have “Facebook Giving Tools” activated for your organization. This tool enables you to start collecting donations on Facebook and Instagram immediately, improving your ability to tap into the power of these social platforms to expand your means of collecting donations from those who are interested in the good work you do.

From a relationship-building standpoint, Good United has you covered. They have developed an amazing platform that allows nonprofits to engage with their potential audiences through Facebook messaging. It’s unique, cutting edge, and something that almost every nonprofit could take advantage of.

Have a listen to this episode to expand your ability to leverage the power of social media and the opportunities for relationship-building that it provides.

Links:
GoodUnited

Ask:
Go onto Facebook and make sure that the Facebook giving tools are turned on for your organization.

Listen to the podcast here:

Nick: And what’s neat about this social space is that many organizations coming up are looking at how they’re gonna grow. Well, maybe there’s an opportunity to not necessarily skip email, but you can go directly to where people are, whether that’s in Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or wherever that might be.

It enables organizations to really have a, a fresh perspective on how to build their particular.

Stu: Are you looking for ways

Nick: to shorten your marketing, learning

Stu: curve and help your organization survive and thrive. Welcome to relish this the purpose marketing podcast. A show for purpose focused leaders who want to use

Nick: marketing techniques to fuel their

Stu: organization’s growth. If you’re a returning listener and you haven’t subscribed already, we’d love to have you also please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Now here’s your host, author and marketing specialist. Stew

Nick: swine Fort.

Stu: Hey, everybody Stu here, if there’s one takeaway from today’s show it’s that you need to go over to Facebook right now and make sure that Facebook giving tools is turned on for your organization. That being said by guest today is an amazing individual named Nick black and he is the co-founder and CEO of good United.

And they have a really cool system that allows organizations, nonprofits to engage with their Potential audiences through Facebook messaging, it’s unique. It is cutting edge and it is something that almost every nonprofit could take advantage of. And so if you listen to this episode, I’m sure you’re gonna get a ton out of it.

Nick and I talked a lot about persona development and a lot about just. Facebook in general and, and, and how to make sure that your message is, is really hitting the nail on the head. And that you’re able to engage with your audiences basically where they show up good United is this amazing organization that lets you do all of those things.

I hope, really hope you enjoy the show. There’s a lot of good information here. Here we go.

Hey Nick, how are you? Well, sir, yourself, I am very well. Thanks for joining me today. I’m really excited to talk with you and learn about all the amazing things that you are doing at good United. I took a peak at your website, which is good united.io, and you just crossed a really major milestone there at good United in terms of the amount of money that you’ve held in nonprofits raise strictly through Facebook.

Is that a, is that accurate? That’s it

Nick: $1 billion, not bad.

Stu: No, that is not that at all. I think the metrics that I saw in your, in your welcome video was that one out of every $6 raised for charity on Facebook comes through your platform. Is that, is that accurate or is, is one of

Nick: yours? Yeah. That we have the honor to serve, but you know, we’re just so thankful and, and humbled to be able to work with incredible organizations that change the world every.

Stu: Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s amazing. So Facebook fundraising for nonprofits I guess maybe they’re calling themselves meta these days. Yeah. What, tell, tell us a little bit about what, what you do and how you help people in the nonprofit space raise more funds through, through their, their participation participation on that.

Nick: Yeah. So as you said, good United has helped the world’s largest nonprofits raise over a billion dollars. We’ve done that through customized, meaningful messaging mostly hopping in Facebook you know, and Stu where this came about is that actually start, I actually started a nonprofit myself in 2011 called stop soldier suicide.

I did that, leaving the military and realized very quickly how hard it was to fundraise. But really specifically how hard it was to build relationships with the average. As you may, and your audience may know is that, you know, nonprofits, they just don’t have the tools to reach out to the average person as such.

They, the focus on those people with the largest wallets. So my business partner and I came together and asked ourselves, what would world be like if every donor, every person could have that meaningful relationship that’s they deserve for the wealthy? So what we’ve realized is that we can start to chip away and be able to build meaningful relationships and convers.

Where people spend time and today that’s in some social networks. So we built our technology on top of conversational messaging. I think through messenger, Instagram, DMS, WhatsApp, and through the combination of human judgment data science, we’re able to empower our partners to send the right message to the right person at the right channel at the right time to drive, repeat action.

And you know, we’re, we’re really excited about where we’ve been more poorly where we.

Stu: Nice. So when you say channels, are those strictly within Facebook in terms of whether this is a DM or, or a video or a, a boosted post or, or what have you, or, or do you, you work outside of that ecosystem as well? So

Nick: today we focus about 99% on Facebook.

Cause that’s the general business case of where dollars are coming for nonprofits. And we build our technology on top of messenger. So the conversational messaging. Okay with that, you know, one to one conversations, but we’re really excited about additional channels coming online in the meta universe.

Instagrams, this hidden giant that we’ve been looking at and working with the meta team for a while to find that use case. But it it’s been wild. You know, this world kind of opened up in 2017 with the start of birthday funders and Facebook, and it’s just caught fire and assuming continues to double every.

Stu: Wow, that’s amazing. It’s really cool how you’re leveraging that technology within, within the technology. And, and really trying to, to capture you know, something that’s there. That’s very unique to Facebook and, and and. How do you do that? Do you, do you help people kind of prospect within Facebook or are you just helping them leverage the existing connections that, that they have that can use the messaging piece of that

Nick: platform?

Yeah, we think about it two ways. One is more organic, so inbound. So there are a lot of users within the Facebook or meta universe that start fundraisers on behalf of non-profits. We have our organizations to engage with thank and cultivate those supporters in channel. The second piece is more proactive.

So how can we start virtual fundraisers or activate people to get engaged with that nonprofit?

Stu: Okay. That’s really neat. Are, are these typically kind of, it sounds like there’s a couple of different options there. One might, might be more of a time based campaign and the other might be more of an ongoing campaign.

Is that, is that accurate? Did I get that right? Yeah,

Nick: absolutely. You know, it it’s been, it’s been wild to kind of see the, you know, the emergence of this, you know, we’re thinking of it as the third shift shift is not the appropriate word, but you know what we’ve seen. You know, 20 years ago, you and I go down to the local nonprofit, write a check and they’d wanna know what our home address and, and telephone number was.

Mm-hmm , that’s why I stayed in touch when internet came about. Well, you know, it was a hell of a lot easier to go to a website. And when you make a transaction through a website, you know, emails, the preferred way to communicate mm-hmm , but know, I don’t know about you. I don’t spend 45 minutes a day, but what I’ve seen is about the average American spends 45 minutes a day in social networks.

And so really, as we think about it, St is how do we attack friction of the donor or the user experience in every step of. Yeah, and we attack friction by keeping them in channel. So as such, if you’re gonna, you know, make a donation on Facebook, then how do we engage with you in Facebook? And, you know, one of the really interesting pieces do is that, you know, we, we have the opportunity to work with incredible organizations with massive email list or house, house files.

One of the, you know, first hypothesis that, you know, we had pushed back about this new. Was, you know what you’re gonna Rob Peter to pay Paul you know, these people have already engaged with us. They’re you know, you’re just gonna take ’em from our website and put ’em into, you know, Facebook, what we found even with the world’s largest nonprofits is over 90% of the people that give our net into their house file.

So as we think about it, right, this is a whole new channel or vector of growth for organizations to get involved.

Stu: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve also experienced the challenge of moving people between channels. So right. Trying to get someone to move from your site to Facebook or from you know, Twitter to YouTube or, or, you know, whatever channel hopping You’re trying to accomplish it’s it can be really challenging just because like what you said, people who like to stay in the channel that they’re, that they’re engaged in.

Yeah. So it’s, that’s really an interesting You know, it’s an interesting item that you, that you’ve tapped into as well as to, to just capitalize on and, and really try to just reinforce the behaviors that people are already, already doing within that one channel, as opposed to trying to move them around.

Nick: Yeah. You know, we, we, we think that we’re rapidly moving to a world of, you know, decentralized giving. And in, in that, do you play any video games too?

Stu: I don’t play video games too much. I did a little bit as

Nick: a kid. I did as well. It blows my mind that people watch other people video games online. Yeah.

And it blows my mind even further that people donate to watch other people video games. And some of our clients have made tens of millions of dollars by video game players, donating, watch other video game players. I’m pretty sure that those people wanna stay in the channel they’re at and not be pushed around.

Yeah. And I think that’s what we’re work going toward. In the next decade is that, you know, whether it’s web 3.0 or Instagram or TikTok or wherever these people are, well, that’s where they’re spending time. And that’s where they wanna engage with you. And the act of taking them out of channel, you know, might be a pretty massive headwind on building the relationship with that person.

So our thesis is, well, how do we start to be that central point to be able to empower organizations, to be able to send the right message at the right time and the right channel to drive action. So that’s, you know, kind of our thesis and, and you know, where, where we’re.

Stu: How do you how do you do that?

How do you know what stage of the, of the life cycle or the engagement cycle the, the person is in, you know, within that platform? Are there, are there little metrics that you’re, that you’re following? Are there little cues that people leave behind that? I’m in an

Nick: office right now? So our, our data science team, isn’t gonna throw something at me.

You know, we do all this incredible data work and technology, but the end of the day, one of the powerful pieces about conversational messaging. Is the, the velocity or the cycle that we start to learn about someone just like you and I are having a conversation and we’re collecting data in our brains and, and structuring it and figuring out what next to say.

Well, through conversational messaging, think of it like a text. We can do the same thing. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm . So as such, we have the ability to ask people. So, you know, like as simple as it is if you made a donation to stop sort of. Okay through messaging, we could ask you simply, Hey Stu, thanks so much. How do you see yourself making an impact with stop source, suicide or future, and the unstructured comments that you have?

And we have incredible stories and narratives that people share. Well, how do we take that and turn it into structured data, then, then follow up with you and give you the right message, right? That’s really this new world where we’re having immediate feedback through these, these feedback loops that allows us to, to make the technology that much more STR.

Stronger to deliver the next meaningful message or suggest a message to a nonprofit, to, you know, to help you to, to thank you, to, to get you engaged with whatever that cause. .

Stu: Yeah. And I’m sure you have a ton of data in terms of timing and, and what messaging has worked in the past and all of that good stuff as well.

So you can pretty much take that, that bulk of expertise in all of those data and, and apply them toward, you know, whatever the next campaign is to, to have a really strong starting point in terms of understanding people’s behaviors on that, on that platform. In fact, yeah, absolutely.

Nick: We’re doing some really interesting work right now with a couple partners, but really diving into.

So how do we unpack affinity and start to be able to score? How do we start to understand trust? How do we start to understand, you know, commitment to the cause? And so with that again, what’s really neat about this is that, you know, working with really smart people, what are the five pieces of information that you want to know, someone to figure out if they’re a, you know, dead rights, affinity fit or not, right.

As an example for stop soldier suicide. When we ask people how they wanna stay in touch, they’ll share these incredible, powerful stories about a family member that might have taken their. And how they want to get involved. Well, it’s our duty as a nonprofit, a stop source suicide to give them that opportunity.

And we’d never be able to understand that at scale, unless we have technology help us.

Stu: Yeah. It’s just simply impossible for us to, to monitor and digest and, and draw conclusions from such a huge amount of data. Yeah. That’s absolutely. No, that’s really cool. So what are, who’s this for? What, what size of nonprofit, what type of nonprofit is this something that, that everybody could could benefit from if they’re running a, a, a nonprofit

Nick: organization?

Yeah. You know, generally when we first started out, it was geared more towards large you know, big blue blood brands that you’re probably familiar with. Mm-hmm , but as we. Gone down this path, just like most things technology has started to, you know, proliferate towards smaller organizations. So we just signed the first social good partnership with meta earlier this year.

And one of the pilots working with them is actually, how do we empower smaller organizations? So to your points to, I would say any organization that has a, a consumer focused brand, that’s interested, engaging with the average supporter and getting ’em to. We’d be interested in what we’re doing with good United, not just as a one off expense that might happen today, but how do you invest in the future and partner with us to be able to meet people wherever they.

Stu: Yeah, it’s, that’s great that you are available for for, for some of the smaller nonprofits out there. There’s so many kind of roadblocks in the nonprofit world for, you know, up and coming or startup nonprofits that absolutely don’t yet have a mailing list or don’t yet have even have, you know, a big, strong donor list.

And it’s like, well, you know, we we’d love to work with you, but you need to have, you know, a, a 10,000. Email list or something like that to get started. And a lot of these, a lot of these guys just don’t have that yet. So it’s really cool to hear that you’re able to help people kind of across the spectrum.

Are there things that people that you know, leaders in nonprofit organizations might want to take you know, You know, take off their list or, or have available before engaging with good United.

Nick: Yeah. And the first thing that you want to do is turn on to giving tools within Facebook. They’re called Facebook giving tools.

You can search it and turn those on you’re missing out on free revenue. And I’d also encourage you to, you know, do that on Instagram. The second piece is, you know, I encourage all nonprofits, really take a hard look at their strategy and how they view that they’re gonna meet. Wherever they are, if you’re really good at direct mail.

Awesome. That’s a great business line, if you’re good at email. Great. But for organizations, I’ll tell you stop sort of suicide’s use case you know, cuz I can, but you know, we start off with zero emails and you know, the thought, you know, of aggregating a hundred thousand and be able to get the metrics that we needed with open and click through.

Right. Just, just wasn’t you know, amen. One of the stories I tell is that, you know, I actually grew up in Africa. So I spent nine years in Africa, in eighties and nineties. What I tell people is that, you know, in Africa, I never heard a phone ring. We had no house phones. And the reason being is that the countries that I lived in didn’t have the, the, the balance sheet to be able to invest in the heavy infrastructure cost set telephone poles.

Right. Well, if it’s moved forward to today, everyone’s on a cell phone, right? So what start off as a hindrance of not having that heavy infrastructure. Turned into a blessing is that technology enabled them to skip that whole generation and that heavily costly investment. Yeah. And what neat about this social space is that many organizations coming up are looking at how they’re gonna grow.

Well, maybe there’s an opportunity to not necessarily skip email, but you can go directly to where people are, whether that’s in Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or wherever that might be. It enables organizations to really have a, a fresh perspective on how to build their particular cost.

Stu: Yeah. That’s, that’s fascinating.

So essentially make sure you have a good understanding of your audience and, and where those people might prefer to engage with your, your brand or your organization. And yeah, and then just turn on the tools that are already available to you. Sounds like the, the good advice that you’re giving right there.

So that’s

Nick: amazing. The other piece too, is I think a lot of times nonprofits view their donors is we’re gonna tell them how we want them to give to. I think that’s dead wall in that I’ve been consistently amazed about all of the strange, the seemly strange and bizarre ways that people wanna play a role in philanthropy.

And I think that the opportunity and the challenge set is how do we let people give on their terms? And I think that’s, what’s really powerful about social giving. Is that whether you wanna do a Hulu hoop dance on TikTok, or you want to be able to do a pushup challenge or whatever it is that engages that user, let’s meet them where they’re at and allow them to participate on their terms and not ours.

I think the days of, you know, like you will show up at the rubber chicken dinner, you will show up and do the auction. Yes. That’s still a thing. However, there’s a whole wide world of people that care about what you. And it might be in really, you know, interesting and, and new channels and new ways of how people want to get involved.

Stu: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s amazing and, and wonderful that we do have so many opportunities and ability or means to, to help out at any given organization. I mean, most of the nonprofits that we work with here at relish studio, as well as You know, as well as many of the ones that I’ve engaged with personally are, you know, they have, they have multiple stakeholders, so they have big, they have big donors, they have individual donors.

They have. One time corporate sponsors and all of these people have a variety of different ways that they might like to give. In fact, just this week, I donated a motorcycle to to a, a Colorado bicycle organization. It was a, a motorcycle that I bought 20. Years ago now, I guess I can’t remember exactly when no.

Yeah. About that. Bought it in 95. And and I tried to sell it for a little while and just couldn’t find anyone who was interested in a, in a bike of that of that age range. And so I said, well, why don’t I just donate it? And someone came over yesterday and picked it up and, and you know, and as soon as they sell it at auction, they’ll donate that money to the, to the charity.

So or they’ll facilitate. Donation to, to go to that charity. So you know, there are so many new ways of, of giving as well in terms of crypto and, and, and things of that nature. So it’s it’s, it’s really cool to see to see you be also helping that out. So that’s great. Yeah.

Nick: You know, another piece to is, you know, I think oftentimes nonprofits.

they confuse their audience by maybe their name or how they’re positioned the dumbest and smartest thing. The co-founders and I did at stop sort of suicide is called stop sort of suicide to make our logo and American flag mm-hmm you know, it’s pretty idiot proof. So, you know, with that are your social channels obvious.

Is your background super obvious about what you do and the impact that you make? I, I, I’m consistently amazed by organizations that have a cryptic name that you don’t know what they do, and you have to go at three levels deep to really get to the. And I think that in a social word, it’s all about storytelling.

And so, you know, be simple, be to the point and tell compelling stories.

Stu: Yeah, for sure. Storytelling is such a huge component of it. And, and yeah, I think we, we talk a lot about the kind of the continuum or the, the on, on either end of the spectrum. You have, you have clever and you have clear. And a lot of times people go, you know, they try to get very marketingy and they end up way over here and clever.

and I like that. And there’s no clarity. There’s no understanding of what it is that, that they do. If you’re a large organization like Nike, for example, everyone knows who Nike is. They’ve been around for nearly 50 years at this point, or maybe 50 years on, on the dot actually. But. You can say, just do it, which doesn’t mean anything.

So you can, you can really fall away over here in, into, into clever or cute because you don’t have to have that clarity, but when you’re a startup nonprofit or a smaller entity or, you know, someone trying to, to really get, get their foothold in You know, in a crowded marketplace, you need to make sure that that you’re being clear first.

And then if you can get to, to both clear and, and clever and get some overlap in that particular Venn diagram, then, you know, then you’ve nailed it. But in the, in the absence of cl in the, in, in the combination of those two, you’ve definitely want to err on the side of, of clarity.

Nick: Yeah, I agree. I, I love that clever to clear.

That’s a beautiful way

Stu: to think about it. Yeah, it seems, it seems to be something people can, can wrap their arms around, you know, it goes not just for branding and not just for, for naming, but also You know, for your, your core message. I mean, we, we see a lot of really pithy you know, very clever very cute kind of you know, we do it all for you or, or whatever it’s like, well, okay.

That’s great. But it’s not clear enough. We don’t, we don’t. Have the opportunity here to answer the questions. What is this? Who is it for and how does it make their life better? And, and those, those three questions need to be answered right off the bat. And you know, if you can do that in when you’re, when you’re creating your name that’s even better.

So I, I love that you guys just cut right to the chase there with your organization.

Nick: Yeah, I appreciate it. It’s been a hard road, but I think that’s, that’s always helping

Stu: super clear. So what are some of the, what are some of the things that you’ve seen work really well? What are, are there, is there messaging cadence?

Are there any you know, any things that, that really surprised you in, in the way that people have started to engage there in the meta universe?

Nick: Well I think the fact that people are new to house files is the most surprising. You know, the second piece is you know, how much people are willing to share or engage in these new channels. The stories that people share about why they’re engaged with the cause how they’re willing to participate and to, you know, to, to take action is powerful as well.

And I think that gets to that, that maybe in the past, you know, I can speak for stop source suicide again, but we don’t have the technology or the scale or the, the employees to be able to reach out to every person give ’em that option to do. And so, you know, with the technology for the first time, we can give them a, you know, somewhat meaningful experience and say, here’s the action you can take next, or what do you wanna do next and give them that, that fall through.

So that’s been amazing that the average person really does want to engage and wants to do you know, to help out with,

Stu: yeah. Yeah. Yes, I’m just trying to, trying to wrap my head around all of the, all of the amazing questions and, and more detail that I’d love to get to understand exactly how you guys are doing this.

And I know that that’s part of your algorithm and your secret sauce. When, when people embark on this, are they you know, what, what is the, what’s the investment that they need to make? How, how do they engage with your, with your organiz?

Nick: Well, we work with each to make sure that we’re fit. So we have the good United platform which is a monthly fee.

And then if needed, we have all the professional services to make everything turnkey. So generally what we see is people coming to us, wanting to start a virtual challenge, a Facebook challenge and then have the platform to deal with their organic fundraisers, to be able to do that as. So if you go to good united.io you know, sign up for, you know, talk with our team and, you know, we’ll be happy to see if, if we could be a

Stu: service or not.

Nice. Nice. Do you do, how do you see, have you, or have you seen any backlash around, around Facebook in the last couple years? I know that, you know, they had this, this really great, you know, rocket ship sort of rise and then you know, had some kind of. Interesting squeakiness that, that occurred with the platform itself.

Yeah. Have you, have you seen backlash there or have you seen any any fall off on, on giving on the platform? You

Nick: know, we have not giving, I think started in 2017 and has, you know, seemingly doubled the amount of time it takes away is a billion has, has been cut down by half. And you know, just from the wall street, quarterly reports, I think the.

Quarter ever was Q1 where I think that went down in, in average users, but it seemly still goes up into the right and the Instagram’s coming on strong. So we haven’t seen any backlash, but you know, the other piece here is not, not everyone’s on Facebook and that’s okay. But we need to meet people that are, you know, there’s, I think it’s two thirds of the country, so

Stu: that’s a good place to, yeah, it’s really funny when you look at demographics and you know, and certainly those change as platforms, age, and And, and it’s also really interesting to, to kind of hear what people say about them, but, but yeah, like what you just said, two thirds of the, of, of the country is on Facebook.

So even though it may not be the place that has the most teenagers or 20 somethings, there’s certainly plenty of plenty of those, those, or plenty of people within those demographics that are, that are using that platform. And so. You know, I think that, that as a space to start playing it, it’s certainly, you know, one of the bigger, one of the bigger playgrounds for sure.

And as they continue to, to, you know, engage with other other platforms. So for example, buying Instagram that just, you know, creates a whole new demographic and a whole new channel that people enjoy in a different way. For people to play in. And you mentioned early on that that Facebook and Instagram were going to just have more and more integration.

Is that something that people will have to manage on, on those two platforms or does your system enable people to kind of have a, a portal to get to, to those, those two platforms? At one place.

Nick: Yeah, we see that being a huge problem to the future. So we’re actively working today to ensure that we can uniquely identify, you know, each individual to ensure that we can meet Stu wherever he wants to be, whether that’s in Facebook or in, in Instagram or wherever you

Stu: okay.

So you’re adjusting the platform to be people-centric as opposed as opposed to, to platform centric. That sounds really cool.

Nick: Yeah, people centric for each organization. So, you know, I, we have such a, you know, huge mission set for stop source suicide, which I put a lot of things for them and our clients.

But you know, it’s, it’s about how do we increase the lifetime value of each individual person and, you know, doing that. We need to build a authentic relationship. We need to show. Recognition of all the great stuff that that person’s doing. And then we need to meet people where they’re most likely to engage.

Stu: Right? So you’re really leveraging the platform as a two way, two way street, which is another challenge that I think people have with social media. They tend to get on it and, and just. Kind of use it as a soapbox, as opposed to really developing those relationships or, or trying to create those, those back and forth.

Do you have advice for, for clients or for, for nonprofits who are struggling with that?

Nick: I think, you know, today it’s, it’s. We’re at the very infancy stages, I think, in this new world. So I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I think that, you know, engage with the people that you have get ’em linked into your CRM and try to follow up with them an email, but you know, and just reach out to good United and see if we can help you.

You know, we don’t have all the answers we’re starting off. In this space as well, but we got a clear mission vision, and, you know, we’re held onto, oh, that’s great.

Stu: Who are, who are some of the, the test cases that, that you’ve worked with, that, that have, have really seen the Facebook meta. Kind of engagement work really well for them.

Is it, is it kind of everybody, or does it take, does it take a lot of, of adjustment and, and, and fine tuning to get your, your program up and running once, once you engage either on that platform or with good United

Nick: it, it depends. I think a lot of organizations, we have to find, you know, product market fit for lack of a paraphrase for them.

So as such as we think about virtual challenge, We charge per fundraiser created. I ensure that we ski in the game. So that’s why, you know, truly a partnership where, you know, we believe in that cause, and see, you know, how we can find fit with this new audience and this new channel. You know, some organizations that we publish with as Susan G.

Coleman American Ken society, we’ve also done some interesting stuff with American Indian college fund. So I think it’s organizations of all sizes and scope that if you have a cause that resonates with an. Joe an average American, and I think there’s an opportunity to meet them in this

Stu: new. That’s great.

That’s encouraging for, for all of the, all the nonprofits out there who are, who are struggling to to figure out where they should be playing to, to get more donations and drive, drive their ability to, to serve more, more people or, or serve their cause more effectively. So that that’s encouraging that it.

That it’s something that can work for, for everybody. And I know you touched on, on the size piece a little bit ago, but it’s just, it’s just fun to, to hear how you know, how there’s this opportunity out there for, for people. How did you, how did you guys come about this? This idea. What, what was it that, that spawned your thinking here?

Was it, was it frustration with your own organization and trying to figure that out or, or was there something else?

Nick: Yeah, it sure was. It was, you know, in the early days a stop sort of suicide, we did a, a wine tasting event in Northern Virginia that overlooked the DC mall and Arlington Virginia, and my family, you know, reached out to their entire network and, you know, were trying to hustle local businesses for, you know, donations for the auction and you know, all of that.

I think we made $40,000 and the thing costs 20 to put on. And you know, with that, I got an email from one of my soldiers who asked me if I got his $50 gift and, you know, I was told ’em, I’m like, you know, thanks, man. I really appreciate it. I, I don’t know. You know, and they’re talking with my business partner, you know, I, I, I only had the capacity to focus on those that wrote the biggest checks and that made me feel awful.

And that was really the catalyst take look into this. And saying, what would it be like if we could give, you know, that soldier meaningful experience, be able to thank him, to recognize him and to meet him where he’s at no matter how large his wall

Stu: was. Yeah. And I’m, I’m guessing that you’ve seen a real uptick in, in repeat donations and, you know, we, we talk a lot about, about relationship building and how marketing is really just, just relationship building.

And, and if you. Create a positive experience and a, a, you know, a positive relationship with, with an individual, the, the likelihood that they’re going to continue to not only come back and, and, you know, support you again, but also tell everybody else about you is, is a lot higher. And so it sounds like this, you know, this platform that you’ve created is, is really an effective way to just continue to nurture those relationships in a.

Authentic way. Yeah,

Nick: we’re working on it too. You know, it’s still early days. There’s a ton of technology that we need to build, but we’ve got the, the initial starting building blocks to do powerful things, to get, you know, to collect the data and the stories and why people are doing that. And then you know, I’m really excited about this.

I’m excited about the opportunity of for staff source suicide. I think we have over 400,000 people engage with us in Facebook, me. what would it be like if we can get each, each one of those people where they’re at, you know, what’s the value in that? And I think it’s gonna be, you know, immense.

Stu: Right.

And how, how automated is, is your, are your systems, I guess if you know, if you have 400,000 people then, and you’re trying to engage with, with as many of those as possible you know, clearly that that becomes an automation concern. And so essentially it’s the timing piece. It’s, it’s looking at their, at their responses to, to, I’m assuming fairly automated questions that are, you know, are authentic that then determine the cadence and the messaging for, for the next follow up.

Is that, is that accurate?

Nick: yeah, that’s that’s about right. And you know, that second piece of the cultivation is really what we’re rolling out in the second half of this year and the next year. And for the last four years we’ve been focusing. The pinpoint experiences, whether they’re a week long birthday fundraiser or a two month long peer-to-peer fundraiser.

And then now that we’re getting these people and starting to build, you know, the capacity and equity in this channel, how do we continue to

Stu: engage with them? Gotcha. Now I’m just, my, my brain is just spinning with with ideas and opportunities and options. I know that that we have a couple of. Partners that do some really fascinating work in terms of, of sweepstakes and things like that in the nonprofit space and just enabling them to, to take what.

Could be, you know, a fairly standard kind of campaign and, and leverage the opportunities that you at that, that you provide to really get that out to not only potentially a larger audience, but but a really more engaged audience or get. Get that audience even more engaged, even, even in the planning phases of, of those campaigns.

I could see this being just a huge benefit. And, and, and, and data tool for for nonprofits that really of, of almost, almost any size, it sounds like.

Nick: Yeah. You know, it, it’s definitely worth taking a look. And if you’ve invested, if you have Facebook giving tools turned on, if you’ve invested in the building community and you’re telling stories and you’re, you know, part of.

Your strategy is to build community and monetize that community. You should definitely take a look to see at good United and see if we can be a service.

Stu: Yeah, that sounds amazing. Is there, is there any other advice or any other experience that you’d like to share with with, with the audience today in terms of, of things that they should, that they should think about when they’re, when they’re trying to expand their their.

Nick: I, I think it gets back to just doing discovery with your donors and, you know, taking the time to get on the phone, meet ’em in person, not just one type of person, but as as many different, you know, type of people that you can get to and really unpack how they spend time and where they are and what are their hobbies, what do they do?

Because then I think you’ll find new opportunities. You won’t be banging your head against the wall and you might find something really neat. You might find a, a niche that your organization has particular fit. And I found, you know, finding a niche, finding a starting point allows you to start getting momentum.

The momentum can build but until you have that first start you know, life’s pretty.

Stu: Yeah, we do a lot of we, you know, persona work or, or avatar work where we’re really trying to help clients and, and our partners figure out exactly who they wanna go after. And, and what that person’s motivations are, what that person’s Preferences are where they go to get information.

So it sounds like doing that work up front is, is what you’re absolutely recommending in order to, to be able to launch a successful a successful campaign and, and also be able to more effectively nurture nurture those people. One of the things that we do see is that clients and, and our partners, they, they tend to wanna have.

You know, everybody figured out, so they’ll, they’ll develop, you know, half dozen or, or more personas that they need to, to try to, or they want to try to reach cuz they don’t want to exclude anybody. But what I’m, what I’m hearing from you is if you could just narrow that down to one or two and focus on, on those first that that’s how you can, you can gain the most momentum.

Yeah, I think

Nick: so. I think that’s the, you know, that’s, that’s the best path, at least that’s what that’s worked.

Stu: great. Well, I appreci. You’re taking the time to chat with me today about all of this it’s fascinating stuff. I’m, I’m really excited to see how people in, in the community here can get on board with this because it, it feels like such a, a fantastic opportunity for people to. You know, to be able to, to not only reach out, but, but nurture those relationships that they’re already building just through all the good work that you guys are doing, how can people find out more about what website, what you’re up to good

Nick: united.io or full of free to, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn Nick black and, you know, I’d be happy to answer any questions that I can and, and see if, you know, we could be a service or our team would be happy to talk with

Stu: you.

That’s great. I love having these conversations and, and talking with people who have just these fascinating and, and really valuable You know, platforms and, and resources, but I also really want people to take action and you’ve given us a few things that people should, should do right away. But if there was one action that you’d like people to take, who’ve listened to the show today.

After, after hearing our conversation, what would

Nick: you have them do? Should I’d have ’em reach out to good United to see if we could be a service, but unselfishly, I tell them to ask their. Or take a look at their Facebook page and see if Facebook giving tools are turned on. You’ll know if they’re turned on.

If, if you see a ability for people to donate or for people to start a fundraiser on your behalf, if they’re not on, you should turn ’em on it’s as close to free money as you’re ever gonna find.

Stu: Fantastic. I love those ideas. I’ll be sure to share those in the show notes, Nick, it was really great talking with you today.

I really appreciate you taking the time and And I’m gonna go tell everybody to go, go check out Facebook giving and thanks so much for being on the show. And there you have it. Another great episode of relish this. Thanks again for listening, you can find past episodes of the show@relishthis.org.

And remember if you liked what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information on purpose market. Grab your free copy of my book. Mission uncomfortable. How nonprofits can embrace purpose driven marketing to survive and thrive. Get your copy now@missionuncomfortablebook.com.

Thanks again for listening. Come back next week. Won’t you.

Episode 87: Aligning and Defining Your Company’s Culture with HR Strategist Otisa Eads

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 02:30:20 GMT

Building a team seems like a pretty straightforward endeavor. Figure out what you want people to “do” then get someone on board to accomplish that task, right?

Turns out, there is a better way to approach the hiring process and it comes from “BEing” rather than “DOing”.

And it really comes down to seeking cultural fit before task fit.

It’s a bit of a scary mindset shift but when you can see that it’s WAY easier to train someone to expand upon their set of skills than to facilitate a cultural alignment, your ability to build a solid, happy, healthy team will be unparalleled.

Leading with culture has SO many benefits that go beyond efficiencies and output gained by having cultural alignment. A strong company culture influences everything around it. From vendor relationships, to marketing, to investment opportunities. When your culture is humming, everyone who has a relationship with your organization gets on board.

That’s why today’s conversation is so important. My guest is Otisa Eads and she’s a HR Consultant and Systems Strategist who is fully steeped in culture and team building. Yes, Otisa can help you with your HR needs, AND that starts with culture.

Otisa is also a big proponent of measuring. See, when you can identify ways to measure the effectiveness of the modifications you make – the experiments you run in your organization – you can then make more educated decisions about what to try next.

Running your organization is really just a series of experiments. Define a hypothesis. Establish tests to prove or disprove that hypothesis. Measure. Repeat.

Otisa is AMAZING at this stuff and our conversation was super valuable.

Have a listen to this episode and help get your culture game humming.

Link:
Otisa Eads

Ask:
Gather feedback and data. Whether from the staff or stakeholders, spend time doing research on what is happening internally at your organization.

Listen to the podcast here:

Otisa: I will say one like little like PSA for folks to really kind of focus on the culture that they wanna create and build with their team. And that’s not just at the staff level that’s overall at the organization. I think the problem is, is when I come in, they can never answer those questions. It’s rare that someone can explain to me their culture.

They’re usually asking me to fix it. And so I try to remind folks that, you know, I’m not going to be here forever. Right. So it’s really important to. Really sit down and really Des design or dream about what this culture is going to look like after you are long and gone. And how does that look like at the board level and what does that look like at the staff volunteer and beyond, and how can we weave this all together?

Are you looking for ways to shorten your marketing, learning curve and help your organization survive and thrive? Welcome to relish. The purpose marketing podcast, a show for purpose focused leaders who want to use marketing techniques to fuel their organization’s growth. If you’re a returning listener and you haven’t subscribed already, we’d love to have you also please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Now here’s your host, author and marketing specialist, Stu SW Fort.

Stu: Hey everybody Stu here. Welcome to relish this. There are three takeaways from today’s. They are the following. The first is that culture is super important in any business and making sure that you have your team aligned culturally is just an incredible way to start to build your business.

And if you haven’t done it already going back to that and making sure that you have culture defined and aligned is, is just paramount. The second is. Treating everything like an experiment and making sure that you track and document and have data on which you can actually iterate. So really looking at everything like it’s.

It’s a part of this bigger growth, this, this iteration, this evolution of your business, and making sure that you have the data available to make good decisions. And the third is that my guest Ossa Eids is just an amazing person. She is an HR consultant and an HR and system strategist. She’s just amazing.

So I think you’re gonna love this show OSA and I had a really fun conversation. Here we go. OSA, how are you?

Otisa: I’m doing well. I’m happy to be talking to you today.

Stu: Well, I am happy to have you on the show. I think this is dropping in the late may early June, 2022 zone. When we finally go live, we’re recording today on what’s a beautiful day up here in the mountains in kind of, kind of mid to late April.

Seeing some warmer weather and snow is melting and it’s springtime in the Rockies. Thanks for thanks so much for being on the show today. Thank you for

Otisa: having me. And you know, it’s doing the same thing here in, in the city. It’s definitely warm there’s, you know, bees and wasps trying to get into my place.

So it’s definitely springtime.

Stu: nice. Nice. It’s a good time to be here. I think you know, once we get through mud season, that that tends to be the, the, the kicker. So hopefully we’ll run through that as quickly as possible. So. Again, I I’m really excited to chat with you today. I know we connected several months ago.

In fact, I think our, my, our mutual friend, Jeff Kinzie, who was on the show late last year introduced us. And you are an HR specialist and consultant in the in, you do a lot of work in the, in the nonprofit sector. Is that right?

Otisa: That is absolutely correct.

Stu: So tell us a little bit about your organization and what you do for nonprofits.

Otisa: Yeah, so I started my business in 2019, but I didn’t get started with working with nonprofits until 2020. And my business is evolving and growing as I evolve and grow. And it’s been a pleasure like working with different sizes of nonprofits working with you know, Mostly when nonprofits come to me and I joke about this, but it’s true as they come to me when things are really hitting the fan and you know, people are leaving and all, all this, I would say all, all the problems are erupting at one time.

And so they usually come to me because, oh, look, they’re hiring an ed. What, you know, the board needs to figure out what to do or Hey, We wanna staff retreat because you know, our staff has changed and we’re worried about retention and our goal setting. And, oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. And and so I come in and, you know, I create that and that’s actually happening like next week.

so it’s fresh in my mind. So a lot of the times, you know, folks are coming to me because there is a problem that they want solved and usually. Problem has been developed for a very long period of time. And usually folks are, they think that I can just come in and fix it and move on. And a lot of the times that’s not the case.

right. So, so yeah, it it’s, it’s been a, a great journey so far, and I’m starting to kind of see these themes that are kind of coming up. Again and again, with. Nonprofits that, that kind of come my way. And my goal is to really try, trying to share like, Hey, here’s some things that you can start considering now, before you hire more folks or before you grow your organization, like, here’s some things that you can be thinking of.

But right now it’s just me as the head consultant. I do work with other contractors and other folks that I can bring in with bigger projects, or like I said, like retreats or workshops or trainings. I like to, I like to work with. So anyway, I can, I can collaborate. I, I do. So yeah, that’s kind of how it kind of how it began is in 2020, I was doing other types of work and a friend of mine was like, Hey, my friend works at this.

Non-profit. And they’re, they’re about to start this onboarding this heavy onboarding season and they’re not prepared. Can you help them? I was like, yeah, sure. That’s awesome. Yeah. And that’s kind of how I started and it grew from.

Stu: Oh great. That that’s it’s a, it is a really fun adventure when we kind of fall into these opportunities and, and, and it’s like, oh wow.

That I didn’t even, that didn’t even even occur to me six months ago. And here I am running my own show. That’s that’s amazing. Yeah. So you mentioned some themes that you typically hear from, from your, your clients. What are some of those, some of those big problem buckets that you tend to, to. People dig their way out of,

Otisa: yeah.

So before I go into that, I will say one like little like PSA for folks to really kind of focus on the culture that they wanna create and build with their team. And that’s not just at the staff level, that’s overall the organization. And I think the problem is, is when I come in, they can never answer those questions.

It’s rare. Someone can explain to me their culture. They’re usually asking me to fix it. Mm-hmm and so I try to remind folks that, you know, I’m not going to be here forever. Right. So it’s really important to. Really sit down and really Des design or dream about what this culture is going to look like after you are long and gone.

And how does that look like at the board level and what does that look like at the staff volunteer and beyond, and how can we weave this all together? So it’s one big PSA because nice, because it trickles down into everything, you know, from, from systems to governance models, to hiring and firing like it all.

It really all blends together, but folks, unfortunately they don’t think about culture in, in, in their systems. They think about culture as this like separate entity, kind of like a mission statement. People think that it’s a statement. This is what our culture is. And it’s like, not really. But yeah, a lot of the times folks that I’ve, I guess I’ve seen, or the challenges I’ve seen is, is handling growth and, and kind of having a growth plan for the org for the organization.

So meaning like, you know, maybe at the very beginning, it was this ed and now it’s five years and it’s the same ed. And they have maybe a few staff members. . But I know that that’s not gonna be the end all be all of the team mm-hmm so a lot of the times, no one really has sat down and decided like, okay, for the long term, do we see this being just an ed?

Okay. Does this ed need support at the staff level? What does that look like? Let’s create an org chart of our dreams. Because then that helps with the hiring process. No matter what stage you’re at. If you already can see how this org can develop, then it makes the little things easier to deal with, cuz you’re like, okay, well right now I need a grants, a grant writer, contractor.

It’s looking like we’re gonna have a whole team of development. So what does that look like? Maybe I start looking for a development director in the next six months that works with this grant writer contractor now. So that way I can offload this whole kind of area to someone else that has that expertise because.

I’m learning that EDS wear way too many hats. yeah. That’s pretty typical. You know, so that’s just one area that I’m noticing is, you know, the Ed’s wearing way too many hats and, you know, and then also they’re trying to be HR at the same time, which I find. Fascinating. Because how, I guess for me as an HR man, as HR manager, director, whatever my goal is to make sure that the staff have what they need.

They’re able to communicate those needs. We’re able to fix their problems or do any behavior correction or whatever we gotta do with the staff. But we also have to think about the employer and what they need and what their requests are and how can we kind of compromise, negotiate. Do we have to do to make sure.

This is a safe environment, but all these needs and requests are being communicated and followed through on. So how can an ed maintain that neutrality at all times? And how can they gather feedback from that staff when it’s about them? Right. So right. That’s that, that’s a huge one. That I, I, I, I find again and again, and again always comes up, even though they hired me to like help their board with something , I’ll get a call like, yo, our Ed’s having issues.

Can you talk to them? You know? Or, Hey, like we’re dealing with a lot of turnover what’s going on. So. And I really think it boils down to the fact that this executive director just has way too much pressure to, to, you know, for one person and way too many tasks. So I think that that’s something that folks really need to kind of look at from the board level and from the staff level, like how, how can this ed have the support and how can we help them when they need something.

But also what happens when the. Noticing things. It’s kind of inappropriate, right? For the staff member to email the board, you know, chair, Hey, I have this problem, right. That’s usually not a norm. Sure. So that’s kind of, I would say those are the big ones. And then the last one is hiring firing policies, procedures.

Usually folks either have been they’ve been lucky and so firing is very rare. And so when it does happen that can be a, a thing or just dealing with the nuances of being a manager and ha and having staff. So when conflict arises or, oh my gosh, this person is not showing up on time. Like, what do I do?

Or, Hey, we have a handbook, but it’s not really fleshed out. It’s kind of a template we use from so and so, right. Right. So there’s not a lot of internal systems put in place. And, and usually they’re trying to do that at the same time as something else that’s going on, whether it’s You know, it could, is that your cat?

Sorry. Yes.

Stu: Let me pause you there for a second. Kick her out. Hold on a sec.

I’m

so sorry. No, I’m so sorry

Otisa: about that. No, I was just like, am I crazy? Or don’t hear a cat

Stu: Nope. Nine. Let me, I’m just taking a note here. Nine 50 ish cat. All right. I forgot to kick her out before we got started. So I apologize for interrupting there. No problem. So. So essentially, if we were looking at the things that you hear, it’s either coming from the ed themselves or from perhaps the board.

Yes. Expressing concerns about, about some of the challenges that they’re facing. Cuz my guess is that you don’t, well, you might have some EDS coming to you saying, Hey, I’m wearing too many hats, but that’s probably very rare. yeah, probably pretty rare. Cuz they don’t have that. Insight into themselves, I guess, probably.

Right, right.

You

Otisa: that you, if, if an ed is coming to me, it’s because they want systems in place and structure because they think that’s gonna help with whatever the problems are going on.

Stu: Gotcha. Gotcha. When the real problem is them, I’m detecting something here in, in stuff that I do here at relish myself.

So shining a light on, on on me here in your, in your conversation. That’s amazing. When you’re working with with nonprofits. I mean, I heard you say that a lot of times they, they think that you’re gonna swoop in with your, your Superman Cape and, and just fix things and then go away. And, and it sounded like that’s not the norm that normally it, it requires more investment.

What, what are the. What should, should an executive director or board seeking to bring someone like you on to help them look at, in terms of, of longevity of, of that project or that engagement?

Otisa: Yeah, I think so this is sounds, it’s gonna, I’m gonna answer your question, but I, I’m also a southerner, so I love stories and parables.

So anyway, I tell folks that a lot of my work is like going to the. Usually you go to the dentist for a checkup maybe once or twice a year, but some people never do that. They only go when there’s a big problem. So folks unfortunately treat me the same way they come to me and there’s a big, big problem because they didn’t do their checkups.

They didn’t do the maintenance. They waited and waited and waited until it got so bad that they think this can’ be solved. Quick solution but in reality, there’s so much more in depth and I, I, I usually do the root canal comparison mm-hmm but I’ll spare you that but, but that’s usually what happens is folks come to me like, oh my gosh, my tooth hurts.

And really it’s like, oh, we gotta get rid of the whole tooth. And we gotta look at the other ones. So that’s usually what’s happening. And I tell folks what really is important is how much clarity has, I guess, at the board level staff level, or even from an Ed’s perspective, like how much clarity do you have on the problems internally?

What are some things that are impacting you, but maybe there’s more to that story that you don’t even know. And a lot of the times is when I come in, I’m asking so many questions. That they’re like, they’re not prepared. so right. I think doing kind of like an audit and, and again, you could hire that out or you could just kind of take some time and really, you know, get feedback from staff.

That’s another thing I always tell folks to do. Like I’m curious in what, and I always say this in my, in my intro calls, like, what do, I’m curious about what your staff thinks about this does your staff express the same concerns that you have? Mm-hmm because your staff will tell you a whole lot about what’s really the priority.

And it may not just be like, oh my gosh, it’s leadership. It could be like, you know, I really just wish I understood where I send my, my reimbursement Infor information to right. Or, Hey, I really wish my onboarding was better. And sometimes what I’ve noticed is staff, they become very protective over new hires that come in after them.

So they start doing more than maybe their job description allows. And I know in the nonprofit world, that’s the norm. However, I wanna change that. I think that when you hire great folks, you, you also wanna make sure that they have what they need to succeed and they shouldn’t be doing more. So that way new hires don’t have that experience.

It should be like, Hey, how can we make onboarding better staff? And there comes a solution out of that. And even if that involves everyone on staff to participate, that’s awesome, but it shouldn’t be left to one person to do all those things. So I, I, I, I think that a lot of the times is just taking time for reflection and, and I, I encourage anyone I work with.

To sit down and do a self-reflection and then at the board level, maybe it’s doing a board reflection and maybe looking at engagement with staff. Like, I, I I’ve been doing listening tours for a client lately. I love doing them. And so I’ve been asking staff what, in your opinion is the relationship between board and staff and so far?

No one has, has been able to answer that question. It’s like, oh, I met them once or twice. They’re nice. you’re right. But that’s it. And then you have some staff where it’s, it’s different, they’re heavily involved. Right. So yeah, just taking some time and really kind of do an inventory on what’s happening with.

Relations from between board ed and staff. What feedback can you gather from the ed and from the staff? Does it correlate and then say, okay, you know what? We thought it was a leadership problem, but maybe it’s a culture problem, an employee engagement issue, or maybe it’s, you know what? We have zero systems in place at all for hiring policies and procedures.

You know what I mean? Like it, it gives you a better roadmap to where your focus needs to be. And then lastly, and I tell this to everyone, whether you’re a nonprofit, small business owner or entrepreneur really take time in developing where you see this place going. And I think I said this earlier, but like, and I would get to the details of okay.

In, in one year, in three years and five years, And if you can do 10 years awesome. But that usually freaks people out right. You know, and create a timeline of where you see this place evolving and growing, and that will help answer a lot of the questions of, okay. So our hiring efforts are gonna be focused here right now because here’s the immediate need, but you know what?

I think that we’re gonna need X. In a year or two. So it’d be great to get someone maybe at a mid-level. We can bump them up to a director later. And then we can get them more support as this department evolves. Like that’s just a silly example. So it’s

Stu: really about being proactive instead of reactive in terms of, of planning for, for future growth and expansion, as well as.

As well as just having systems in place before you, you end up with problems, is that yes, that’s one correct.

Otisa: Hundred percent. And then I tell folks like, it doesn’t have to be this perfect plan. It could literally just be an outline in a Google doc, you know, with bullet points, you know what I mean? It doesn’t have to be this beautiful imaculate I think one thing about nonprofits I’ve learned is they get.

Hung up on it, looking a certain way or it being extremely long and wordy and lengthy and, and eloquent. And that’s great. Yeah. But it doesn’t, to me, I’ve, I’ve read a lot of information from nonprofits I’ve worked with and it never really got to the point of right. Of the problem that needs to be solved or the future challenges that you might face once you do grow.

Right. So yeah, I completely agree. It’s it’s all about being. Proactive and, and, and realizing that what you do today will not be the same in five years, right? So you have to have what you’re, you know, you have to figure out what to do now, what the, what those systems can look like now, but keep in mind that it may outgrow you.

So you’re gonna have to come back and review this on a periodic. At, at a different timeframe, you know, it could be once a year, twice a year or every two years mm-hmm , but you’re gonna have to sit down and update and review these, these pieces and not just look at the mission statement and right.

Stu: Absolutely. I think that. A lot of people forget that pretty much everything is a living document. And, and, you know, even if you go to print you know, it’s that struggle with perfection as well, where we’re always constantly trying to get things perfect. And it’s in, in, in reality, there is never. Perfect because you can always continue to, to tweak something until, until, you know, you’re, you’re unable to type anymore or whatever.

However, you’re, you’re creating that, that, that documentation or, or website or song or, or whatever. And so getting comfortable with, with the You know, the, the, the done is better than perfect idea and that everything can, can be revisited and sh and in fact, many things should be revisited. You know, if, if one can, can change one’s mindset, I think, to, to embrace that idea I think we’d be, be in a lot better shape because more things would just get done.

We’d be able to get them out into the, into the, the world and test them and see how they’re working and, and then make adjustments. And and so teeing that up for clients. I mean, we, we do the same thing with, with documents. It’s, it’s like, you know, this is, this is where we are today. And in three months we’ll come back and revisit it and see if we’re still in the same place.

And if, if so, Maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s bad, but but ultimately we’ll make adjustments accordingly. Yeah.

Otisa: You know, so you kind of said something that, that I, I tell folks is treating things like an experiment, right? It’s not like an onboarding process is never perfect. Okay. Like even sometimes you have this dream of what your onboarding process can look like.

And usually that dream is in the future. Right. And then you have that one person for onboarding and you’ve planned for. 15 people. Right? So, you know, it’s an experiment and, and gathering data and information is, is what I always say to my clients. You know, a lot of the times when you’re changing systems or you are, you know, changing up documents or whatever it’s an experiment you’re seeing it.

Can this really be executed accordingly. And if not, what changes do we make? And I, and I agree with you, I think. That’s how I try to look at a lot of systems now, then there’s the, the, the legal part, right. With HR, which is not fun. Mm-hmm and that’s different you can’t experiment with law right.

But you can also say, okay. You know, with how I do my hiring process, I it’s gonna be equitable, but here’s some different ways we can do it. We’re gonna try panel interviews. We’re gonna see how that works. And I did this with a client recently, and that’s why it’s on my mind. But. They were really nervous about doing panels.

And I had to do a whole training on here’s, how you can do an interview this way, or here’s different techniques. And here’s how we can prepare as a committee. And. And I had to explain to them, like, there is no perfect way to interview. It’s just doing it over and over. And again, again, to where it’s, it’s comfortable for you, but half of you all have never interviewed before mm-hmm so it’s gonna be Rocky.

It’s gonna be difficult. But this is an experiment. Well, what, what did you learn from this experience that you went through and how can we use this for the next round that we do later? So, yeah, I completely agree with you on.

Stu: Yeah, it’s just a, it’s an interesting mindset shift that I think, I think everybody would benefit from just, you know, recognizing that that.

Well, first of all, you’re not necessarily gonna hit a home run the first time. You’ve, you know, you you’ve step up to, to the plate, right? Mm-hmm to use a baseball analogy, which I don’t know why I use, because I don’t play baseball or watch it or anything, but there you go, I guess it’s cuz I’m from the United States and, and and here we are.

But but ultimately just knowing that, that. You’re gonna get better at this. You’re going to find things at work. You’re gonna find some things that don’t work and, and just be always flexible and, and attentive to to what’s going on so that you can identify what’s working and what’s not more, more quickly and, and, you know, fail fast and move on.

Otisa: Yes. Fail fast and move on. I like that. That’s a slogan. Yeah. And, and I. I think most people it’s natural to be nervous to fail or do something wrong. Right. Mm-hmm like for example, like terminations, there is a wrong way to do a termination. Sure. There is. And you know, and I’ve, I’ve been lucky to coach people, so they don’t have a bad experience, but I, I have to tell like, boards all the time, like, yeah, terminations are not fun for anyone.

They’re just not I, I try to prep folks in the fact that this employee, you have no idea how they’re gonna react. You think you’ve known them for 10 years. You have no idea what they’re gonna react to being terminated. Okay. So don’t take anything that they say personally. Cause right now they are processing with the fact that they are losing a job that they’ve had for X amount of time or for the reasons why they’re being terminated.

So they’re gonna come at you with some sassiness and be prepared, right? And so a lot of the times I, I, I, or, or I’ll hear, like, I try not to sit through certain things with my clients. Termination’s being one of them. right. Because I don’t want this employee thinking that I wanted them fired. Right.

Like I, it was my agenda. So I try to be mindful of what experiences to let the client handle on their own and coach them. So a lot of the times I’d L I like to do debrief. So if they’ve done a hiring process and I was not there for the interview, I wanna do a debrief to help them work through what happened, cuz sometimes things can go left field.

Okay. Well, let’s talk about that. So what can you do next time? What did you learn from this? What suggestions did I give you that you didn’t take that’s okay, too. Right? Like, you know what I mean? Like what do, okay, so this suggestion you didn’t take. All right. Well, you do it next time. Great. Or, okay. You did, you, you, you did this and I didn’t suggest that, but it worked well.

Awesome. It’s just gathering information and, and and keep applying what’s working and drop what doesn’t. And I think that’s usually where people they get so stuck in the perfection of something or they are doing it right, right, right. I wanna do it. Right. And I’m like, well, that’s great. We all wanna do things.

Right.

Stu: sure, sure. Yeah. So, and what’s yeah. And, and what’s right. Might not be the best, the absolute best of what it can be. So you know, again, it’s that getting. Getting that experience and that expertise and being able to apply that to the, the parts that works to a future engage or conversation or, or circumstance and, and throw away the stuff that didn’t work very well.

Otisa: Yes. 100%. I agree.

Stu: So when working with nonprofits, what are. Where do you, where do you typically think people should start? I know that, that you mentioned that a lot of times you suss that out through your, your processes. But is there, is there a, a size of nonprofit that people should really start to consider HR consulting?

Or is there, what are the, what are some of the sweet spots or places where people really should have. Have light bulbs go off that, that this might be the time that they need to start looking at, at streamlining their HR. Engagement.

Otisa: Yeah, that’s a great question. And, and also a difficult one, because I think I look at it as cycles and stages.

So if, if, if there’s a nonprofit and they have one person and it’s just the ed, maybe you’re not ready yet, but maybe you wanna have like little one on one on one conversations to prepare to hire. Right. Mm-hmm, awesome. Or maybe you have a staff of six to 10 and you see that this is going to double in the next six months to a year.

Okay, well, let’s get started, but I think, I think there is no perfect time to start. I just feel like the earlier the better. So if you are really realizing like, oh my gosh, I, we don’t have a handbook. We don’t have policies, policies, or procedures, staff. You know, they’re kind of doing onboarding it like sink or swim style.

Right. Which is very common. And we really wanna smooth things up before we continue to hire. That’s a great time. So, I guess there’s no perfect time. It’s more of, it’s more of again, looking at where you’re headed. When are you ready now to get things in place before things really kind of either take off or go off the rails.

Right. So kind of doing that quick checkin assessment with, with the organization, like, okay, look, Hey, we, we got a happy staff of six. But we could be better. Awesome. Maybe we’ll get her in here. Right, right. Call. Or maybe it’s like, you know what? We really wanna do some trainings and workshops around culture and you know, all kinds of different things.

Awesome. Like it just, it really just depends on what the goals are internally. Where do they see their growth headed? If, if they plan on growing, right? There’s some places where they, they wanna stay small. That’s great too. Maybe there’s areas of refinement that they, they just haven’t thought of. So it really just takes time in doing like a self-assessment of check in on where, where the, the org is at, where they headed and what are some things that are out of their expertise and skillset that they need.

an HR consultant to come in and do things. And it’s not, it doesn’t have to be just a handbook and policy y’all, but it’s just that these are easier examples to think of. It could be a culture assessment. They wanna look at the culture, they wanna do a listening tour. They wanna figure out are they practicing what they preach, right.

Mm-hmm are they actually providing their staff with a happy you know, healthy work environment? Yes or no. And what changes to be made? If not, So, yeah, it just depends on, on those different factors, I think. Gotcha.

Stu: Yeah, it sounds to me like the, there are a few things that you’ve mentioned a, a number of times one is this kind of this self-assessment piece, and I’d love to dive in a little bit more into what that, what that looks like.

So people could, could maybe have that as a tool that they. That they can at least start considering. If they, if they find themselves wondering if they need an HR consultant, maybe they can take, take that step. What does that self assessment kind of piece look like? When you take people

Otisa: through it?

Yeah. And you know, it’s changing. And it’s funny cuz I. I created it originally as part of a project to create an equitable performance management process. But now I send it out to people all the time. But yeah, so it could look like a lot of different things. I think that, I think the board might wanna get a head start though, before inviting the staff.

If that, that makes sense. because they need to get clear. On their goals and the things that they have to do. And I think here’s the thing. And I’m curious in your thoughts on this, and this might go a little left field, but I think, I think folks forget that the bored and staff, they co the it’s like they do a dance, you know what I mean?

Like mm-hmm, , it matters what’s happening at the board level. Even if the staff don’t know all the. but it matters. Right. And what’s happening at the staff level is extremely important to the board, even, even then, even though they may not know the day to day operations of things. It’s I guess what I’m saying is these groups matter to one another.

And I don’t think that’s always often talked about, I feel like they’re talked about as separate entities right. You know what I mean? But they actually you’ll be surprised when I, when something’s happening at the board level how that affects staff at some way, a shape layer. And vice versa.

Right. So anyway, I think that sitting down and kind of those questions I kind of mentioned earlier is really where I would start, you know? And it could maybe if, if each member is doing it themselves and coming back to a group that might be a little bit more detailed, right. Mm-hmm like a, a consultant buddy and I were talking about.

Kind of renewing your commitment to a board and what that could look like. Which sounds fun. So it could look like a lot of different things. And I think that someone would have to either curate a reflection self-assessment to fit the needs of the organization or really taking time to figure out, Hey, where’s my place here.

Where’s my role. Am I aligned with the mission? Still? Am I aligned with what we are doing in the world? What does the core values or. The culture mean for me as a person and as a board member, staff member ed. Right. Right. And how am I showing up in this space, given all the information just said, and where do I see myself headed from here?

It could be very simple. It doesn’t have to be a 20 page, you know, survey. It could literally be like six questions at the moment. Right?

Stu: Right. It’s interesting. I was on a call actually earlier today, and this was an opportunity for a founder CEO type person to really start to let go of the reins a little bit of, of their organization.

And, and you could tell that that this individual was having some challenges because of, you know, this had been this. System and, and you know, entity organization that, that, that they had you know, they’d come up with it. They had nurtured it over the, over the last 10 to 15 years. And. And they knew that they, that they were wearing too many hats and needed, needed experts on hand to help them.

And one of the challenges that that was, was expressed was when, you know, they, they said, well, As we’re going out and selling, how do I make sure that the, that the message is, is consistent and aligned and that people are saying the right things. Mm-hmm and it was funny because, because when, when they said this, I thought to myself, well, that’s what, that’s what that values, vision and mission exercise is perfect for in that everybody should be aligned and everyone may have Maybe a slightly different way of getting to mm-hmm , you know, from point a to point B, but as long as everyone’s going toward point B and no, one’s, you know, completely off the rails in terms of how they’re getting there, doing something unethical or what have you.

It really. Shouldn’t matter that much, as long as we’re, as long as we’re getting there. And, and when you have that strong culture and you have those strong you know, values and, and, and that, that long term vision, as well as the kind of pull back day to day mission.

Components of what you’re doing then then that’s where you, you can just let people, let people do their thing.

And, and hopefully, you know, not only have you, have you partnered with or hired great people who are gonna bring more to the table than you could have ever done, kind of yeah. You know yourself, but also You also have the ability to let them make mistakes because yes, because that’s where, that’s where they are able to grow and just become even stronger parts of that team.

So it was an, it was an interesting, like slight, I, I talked about a light bulb moment earlier. It was a slight little light bulb moment for me, where I was like, oh, that’s, this is where he. He’s coming from here and, and where he just needs to let go of, of that control and allow, allow the people that he’s, that he’s put his trust in, allow them to do their thing.

Otisa: Yeah. It’s Showtime. They gotta show what they’ve learned and, and, and that letting go is, so it’s funny, cuz I talk a lot about founder syndrome sometimes with. You know, summits and things. I, I bring it up because it’s funny when I tell nonprofits that like, oh, we don’t have that here. Cause we’re a nonprofit.

I said, no, no, no, no, you do. It just doesn’t look the same. It’s not one founder. Right. But if you’ve had a, a board of folks that’ve been there for a decade, well, they’re gonna, they’re gonna, they’re going to show symptoms of founders and we’re just gonna look a lot different. Right? Mm-hmm or if you, if you had a ed that’s been there for half of a decade, like five years, six years, they’re also going to.

You know, having those symptoms as well. It just, again, it’s gonna manifest itself a lot different than just a founder or CEO. And I think that letting go piece is really difficult for some and, and allowing someone to have the autonomy to make mistakes. Right, right. I think that folks that are micromanagers, they don’t understand that the more you micromanage, the less autonomy you’re giving someone to learn.

Yep. And so I think it’s really, really important that folks think of that, but yeah, it’s like, well, you can’t control how this is gonna. How it’s going to turn out, but you can at least give them enough resources, tools information to be able to get to where they’re supposed to get to. And that’s the most important piece and how to stay in that lane, right.

How to stay in your lane of, of, of prepping up the people and helping them get to where they need to get to, but let them let them figure that those things out for themselves. So, yeah, it’s a fun dance. Yeah, for sure. It’s a fun dance

Stu: yeah. So one of the things I’m really picking up on which is, is fantastic is I think when people think of HR, all they think about are kind of the hiring and, and, and firing and, and those types of things.

But what you’re telling me, or what I’m hearing from you rather is. That there’s just a lot more that goes into the HR consultancy that you can bring to the table to help organizations kind of take it to that next level. And it’s not just about building teams, but it’s about that culture piece. And, and how to how to get everybody on board.

Like what we were just talking about, what, what are some of the things that you see, or, or maybe, maybe places where people. Skip steps where an HR consultant, like you could help help keep them on track to, to really, you know, get, get very much leveled up in terms of, of their culture piece.

Otisa: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great que and I love talking about culture and, and before I dive into that, thank you Stu for picking that up.

cause I, I literally try to tell folks. You know, I, yes, HR, mm-hmm, shiny object syndrome come over here, but when they meet me and talk to me, I’m asking other questions. I’m not asking about your handbook or, you know, I don’t care about your worker’s compensation policy right now. What I care about is other pieces for this puzzle, that, that is people, right.

It’s really what it is. It’s people, operations is what I’m trying to get people to steer to. Right? HR is I think HRS got a bad rep. over the last. Few decades. So I think it’s, it’s managing people. And how do you handle that? And what does that look like? But with culture, I think there’s a lot of different things.

I think it also starts with the, in this case with nonprofits, how, how is the culture being. Embedded, right. Like what makes up this culture? And a lot of folks, when you ask them, they, they go straight to what’s on the website, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm, they quote their mission statement, their core values and what they’re doing with their their do you know, all the great things that they’re doing.

But that’s not answering the question. So I usually ask people like, how are, how are decisions being made? How is feedback given and received? How are folks engaging on a day to day basis? Is there, is there, like, for instance, I don’t like the open door policy cuz it, to me it’s what does that mean?

mm-hmm and then how does that translate in a virtual remote? How are staff meetings being conducted? And is it just a lecture of, or what I call status updates or is it like a conversation debrief over what has happened in the past week? Is it coming up with solutions together? Is it collaborative or is it not right.

So it’s kinda looking at the day to day and really figuring out how how is it aligned? With where they think their culture is. So I’ll give you an example where, and this is kind of ranty, so I’m sorry. But I don’t like when folks say that their workplace or their staff is like a family, right? No, it’s not like a family you don’t pay to go to barbecues.

You don’t right. Expect someone to pay you from your family for hanging out and working. Right. That is not what we do with our actual family. So therefore let’s not call our, our workplace, our coworkers. Family and it leaves room for toxicity resentment. And then you start feeling obligated to do things that you don’t have to do.

Right. So mm-hmm, it just, I I’d never really like that. And I always tell folks that well, a workplace, if you call it a family, it’ll be a dysfunctional one. yeah. So, so really just taking the time and like, and looking at all these different pieces of this culture puzzle from the day to day operations, to like, again, feedback, especially, and also leadership because you know, if leadership is very top down, then that’s kind of the culture that you’re gonna have.

So staff may not really. Want to come to that leader with suggestions or ideas or coming up with some cool. I don’t know. So just some cool projects or I don’t know, who knows. They may not do that in a top down leadership type culture. Right? Mm-hmm but if you say that you’re collaborative, are you practicing what you say?

So do people come together and talk about things? How. How is that being done and shown and then also employee engagement. So how are you, how it, it doesn’t have to be cookouts potlucks. Like I know that when we think employee engagement, like that’s what we think mm-hmm , but it really could be staff retreats.

It could be how are you investing in their, their education and knowledge of something, you know, are they wanting to learn more about. I don’t know, I’m gonna say development cuz it’s something that I really wanna learn. right. I use so much about it in my work. I’m like, what is this? So, or maybe they wanted to learn more about fundraising and maybe you can, you know, you can hook them up with a mentor on the board or maybe you have to look outside look external for some resources.

So there’s a lot of different pieces I think to culture and really it’s kind of do again, going back to doing an inventory to really see. Are all these things aligning or what where’s the gaps what’s missing. Okay. We tell staff that we’re collaborative, but yet we really aren’t. Okay. Well, what does that really need to look like?

The, those kind of things, or how, how are we making decisions that impact a group of people? Do we invite. I don’t know volunteers to some of these meetings because this is gonna impact them and it would be great to get their input. Right. So really kind of looking things, looking at things and taking things apart a little bit and just kind of saying, Hey, are, are we really, are we really showing up the way we think we are?

mm-hmm and what are the things that we could do better improve, but also what are the things that we’re doing great at maybe. Billy’s barbecue. Every July is the hit of the year. Right. Right. Like, let’s keep that barbecue going. Awesome. Or, you know, our board retreats are kind of lackluster, so maybe we could definitely spend more time developing this out for the board and for the staff.

Okay. What does that look like? Do we have the resources? Do we need someone to come in and do do some, do, do something with us? So, yeah, I know it’s very long winded, but I hope I answered your

Stu: question. Oh, definitely. Yeah, it’s really interesting. One of the things that we see, and I think this is just, this is just pretty standard with people.

Is that what we think? We are great at or what we think we are known for or, or liked for. Oftentimes isn’t the, the thing that the people who are engaging with us actually believe is, is our best attribute or even worst attribute for example. And one of the things that we do here at relish is when we’re doing client interviews, we’re really looking for the language that clients are using.

When, when they talk about an organization and and what the clients are really saying that that, that that’s, you know, what they were looking for and the problems that they were actually looking to get solved. And it’s funny, we had a client that was in They were, they were in home services.

And when we asked them what made them special and different, they talked about all this great equipment that they would bring to job sites and how cool that was. And then when we interviewed the clients, not one client like mentioned how neat all of the equipment was. They, they talked about how punctual and, and friendly and easy to work with the, the, the company was.

And, and so. Those actual, you know, listening for problems that the company solved as well as those attributes that were being kinda lavished upon them. Really led to a change in, in the language that we recommended that they use on their site to describe, you know, why people should work with them. And so it very quickly adjusted from this discussion of, of you know, all this, all this great gear that they brought to, to help fix your, your house, to how.

To the experience that they were going to bring or that they were going to create when they, when they engaged with, when you engaged with them as a, as a vendor. So it’s, it’s really. It’s fascinating to me to, to be able to pay attention to those kinds of conversations and, and really see what people are saying.

And so I, I imagine that you do a lot of interviews with with kind of all those stakeholders to, to get to that. Is that, is that part of your process as well?

Otisa: I, I wish I had the time and I wish they had the budget, cuz I would love to do that. but with my listening to where I usually. Stick with the staff at first mm-hmm depending on where that leads me, then I’ll go to the board and then we’ll see where it goes.

But usually folks, you know, with nonprofits, you gotta work with what you can work with. Sure. But what I usually tell folks is I’ll ask them questions like with staff, I’ll ask ’em to describe what are the behaviors, what are these different actions that. Seen in the workplace that describe the culture.

Right? Because a lot of, again, like with culture, it’s so robust that it’s hard to kind of figure out, you know, What that looks like. So, or I’ll ask questions, like what behaviors other synonyms are rewarded, right? Mm-hmm at this place. And that question tells me a whole lot. So if they’re saying punk, you know, punctuality and.

Following the leader and saying or being the loudest in the room, right? Like that tells you a whole lot, versus someone saying collaborative, friendly you know, a servant leadership. I don’t know, I’m just making up things. Right. You know, being helpful, resourceful, right? This, this tells you a lot of things about an organization without having to.

360 listening tour or survey mm-hmm . But it does tell you a lot of, of where to start. So yeah, for me, it’s like the type of questions I’m asking staff and the types of questions I’m asking board. And here’s a fun fact. I don’t ask the board any questions. I usually deliver a whole presentation and then I ask them what shocked you like you what’s shocking for you or what’s new for you?

Because if I were to ask the board what the culture. It’s gonna look very, very differently from the folks that actually live and breathe in that. Right. Right, right. So I don’t wanna to skew my data. So I usually, it’s more of like a discussion about what they have experienced after me delivering the information I gathered.

And that’s fun. That’s my favorite part because they’re usually like, oh my gosh. I don’t know as much as I think that I know about what’s going on at the staff level. So it’s always fun. I love that part.

Stu: yeah. I love the, the sh the shocking reveal. I think , that’s my favorite. That’s a great, a great tactic to to really get, get some some engagement.

Do you with in your HR capacity, are you doing like big, big breakout type meetings with boards? That’s not the.

Otisa: I know what you mean? Like an all

Stu: board meeting, like yeah. Yeah. Are you I’ve done that. Are you hoping to facilitate those as well? Well, it just

Otisa: depends. I mean, I’ve done a variety of, I’ve been grateful that I’ve done a lot of cool stuff.

So I have, I have been to, those are terrifying, but I I’ll do ’em because it’s, it’s more, it’s more. Than you. Right? So it’s like 20 people in a room and then you’re the one delivering bad news and that’s always right. Hopefully it’s good news. But for the most part, it’s always like, so here’s the problem.

Stu: Or, yeah, I was on a board where we had a, an all day kind of intensive and, and, you know, it was really coming back down to, to what’s the, so the board’s there to, to really kind of guide, you know, point, point in the right direction. They’re not there to, to facilitate the. The movement toward that direction

Otisa: 100% usually.

Right.

Stu: But most folks, they can’t, they, they can’t see it that way. right, right. But but ideally you know, you have, you have a board that says we’re going, we’re going this way. And, and hopefully they give some you know, inspiring Inspiring speeches to to encourage people that that’s, that’s the right decision.

Maybe they’re not giving speeches really, but in any event you know, they’re, they’re giving them some, some guidance as opposed to telling them how to do it. It’s the, here’s where we’re going. And and so we’ve, you know, in the, in my experience on boards, we’ve had. You know, potentially all day sessions to review those, you know, that vision and then, you know, kind of pull back to the mission that that helps drive that helps the what’s the day to day that helps get us there.

But you know, those can be, you know, these very intense, all day types of, of engagements, which can be. Very rewarding. I was just curious if that was, if that was something that you and your, your that you do as your capacity of a, of, of an HR consultant.

Otisa: Yeah, I’ve done. I mean, it’s funny, cuz I just got someone asked me, Hey, can you, we’re gonna have a board retreat and we’re gonna talk about org structure.

Can you come? And. And do a little thing on it. I’m like, sure. So I, I have, I’ve had the pleasure. It just depends on exactly the topic. Like I I’m very detail oriented. What are we talking about? How much time do we have? Right. But yeah, I, I love, I love having those conversations because it does help having someone outside of the entity to kind of help guide the conversation.

And it’s nice being a third party to, to these kind of conversations, especially. If, if we’re, if the conversation is around planning for the future or mm-hmm, mapping that out. Right. And I’ve, and yeah, I, I, I love having those, those conversations with folks and and seeing where that goes and helping them brainstorm.

I love brainstorming. It’s so much fun. Nice. Yeah. So yeah, I have, it’s fun. I, I enjoy it when I get the opportu.

Stu: That’s great. I I’m I’m this hour flew by I’m I’m I had such a good time talking with you today about all of this stuff. If, if a, a board member or an ed or, or someone who has the capacity to to reach out to you to, to bring you on for help, if they.

If, if they are feeling that like they’re wearing too many hats or, or are experiencing any of the, any of the challenges that we talked about today, what, what should they do? How should they go about finding out more and, and reaching out to, to find you?

Otisa: Yeah, there’s a few ways. You can go to my website, WW dot Otis, eve.com.

You can leave me a message on there. That’s perfectly fine. Or you can directly email me. My email address is hello, Otis, Eeds dot. And you can also find me on LinkedIn, which is a great place. You can send me a, a message and I’d love to talk more and set up a time to figure out what the needs are.

So those are some ways that folks can get a hold of me for sure. That’s

Stu: great. I’ll put those in the show notes for sure. I love having these conversations of being able to talk with experts like you and help help bring a little bit more insight and, and engagement to the nonprofit space. I know that it’s a challenge out there for nonprofits and and so having someone like you.

Willing to come on the show and, and chat with me is just fantastic. And I, I very much appreciate you being on the show. If there was one thing that you would have people do. However, I, I, I like saying that that, that talk is great, but actions, actions even better, what would, what would that action be?

That you’d like people to take after listening to the show today?

Otisa: Ooh, man, that’s hard. Cause I got all alls the answers. I would say the biggest thing. The biggest action step. Gather feedback and data, whether that’s from the staff, from the ed or, you know, from the board to the board, however you wanna look at it, but spend time gathering information and doing your own inventory and research on what’s happening internally, just because it gives you, it you’re able to really communicate your needs when you’re working.

You know consultants or other experts, it just really helps to understand what’s going on. And that way you’re not dealing with too many surprises from that consultant having to deliver some information to you, you already know here’s my mess. Here’s where we’re at. How do we clean it up? You know what I mean?

Stu: Yeah, for sure. So do that, do that work up front to really get a good feel for for what you think the challenges are before you, before you maybe reach out?

Otisa: Yes. I

Stu: couldn’t agree more. awesome. Well, thank you so much again, for being on the show today, Otis, I had a really fantastic time talking with you and, and really appreciate you taking the time.

Otisa: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great and I just adore you and everything that you’re doing in the world. This is

Stu: great. Oh, thank you. That’s awesome. Have a great day. All right. You

Otisa: too.

Stu: Hi. Hi. And there you have it. Another great episode of relish this. Thanks again for listening, you can find past episodes of the show@relishthis.org.

And remember if you liked what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a review. Wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information on purpose marketing, grab your free copy of my book. Mission uncomfortable. How nonprofits can embrace purpose driven marketing to survive and thrive. Get your copy now@missionuncomfortablebook.com.

Thanks again for listening. Come back next week. Won’t.

INSPIRE to quick revenue wins

Fri, 20 May 2022 06:55:15 GMT

Looking for ways to drive quick revenue wins?

If you’re like most organizations, you’ll find the lowest-hanging fruit—and the quickest path to a cash infusion—comes in the INSPIRE phase of your stakeholder lifecycle.

INSPIRE is the phase where you transform your contacts and clients into repeat participants in your programs, leaning on these existing relationships to get repeat and referral business.

It’s always easier to sell to someone who has purchased from you before. You don’t have to go through the initial phases of engagement—ATTRACT, BOND, and CONNECT—to try to get people to know, like, and trust you. Nor do you have to convince them to try your services for the first time—always a difficult prospect. After all, they’ve already passed through these stages with you.

“But what if they aren’t ready to engage or purchase again?”

That’s ok— the relationship you’ve built enables you to ask them to help spread the word about your talents.

This can look like any number of requests, including introductions (referrals), shout-outs (on social or to their list), or even opportunities for you to supply content for them to use in their own marketing that points back to your organization.

There are SO many ways to supercharge your referral network:

Offers (which can even take the form of a direct, “we love referrals” ask)
Building out a Referral Partner Network (connecting a group of people who can keep their eyes open for introduction opportunities)
Internal referrals (creating an incentive-based system for your team to introduce new business – or talent), and more

Here’s a real-world example of a Partner Program in action…

Chris runs an HVAC service. He and his team work dozens of jobs a month and connect with property owners and managers all over the metro area.

Being in this field of business also means that Chris has developed friendships with a number of other business owners in the area. He knows an electrician, an owner of a roofing company, someone who does spray insulation, and more.

On each of the jobs he runs, Chris hands out business cards of several of these “friendly businesses” to the job manager (or property owner, if that’s Chris’ direct contact).

Though they may not be in need of a roofer today (for example), they may need one in the future and this warm introduction from a trusted vendor makes it much more likely a connection will be made.

And Chris’ network does the same for him.

Struggling with quick-win tactics to accomplish your revenue goals? Reach out to discuss options and let’s see how we can work together to turn the corner on INSPIRING your stakeholders.

Episode 83: Planning where you want to go with Sherry Quam Taylor from Quam Taylor Consulting

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 03:39:01 GMT

When thinking about planning, most of us start that exploration from the perspective of where we are today .

Want to buy a new car? How much money do you make or have in the bank?

Interested in taking an extended vacation? How much time have you accumulated in your PTO at work?

But my guest today, Sherry Quam Taylor from Quam Taylor Consulting takes a different approach.

She asks the question, “Where do you want to be?” and budgets according to those goals rather than getting stuck in the present state of affairs.

Sherry is a veritable font of nonprofit strategy and planning wisdom. (Much of which can be applied to the for-profit world as well.) She helps nonprofits move from collecting donations in the low, seven-figure range to trending toward becoming 8-figure organizations.

Even if your nonprofit is nowhere near those milestones, our conversation on today’s show has plenty of fantastic mind-shift opportunities and information that can help you and your team thrive.

I hope you enjoy the show.

Link:
Quam Taylor Consulting

Ask:
Donors are open to new ideas, walk confidently into scary situations. Go for it and commit to growth.

Listen to the podcast here:

SherryQuamTaylor: And fundraising is not quick fix. If we really want to move our organizations into like these huge, sustainable trajectories of growth and really scale by millions it takes time. There is no quick fix. This is deep rooted. I kind of call it like, you know, the, the things we can’t see under the iceberg and the waterline.

These are things that really have to shift in, in that takes time. And they’re, they’re they’re business aligned. And so to me, the most creative and amazing thing I’ve seen the last couple of years is it’s really leader saying w we don’t want to do it. Like we were doing this before COVID or 2020.

We really, we can’t do more unless we really want to be more. You know, kind of upfront and sharing with donors, what we need are you looking for ways to shorten your marketing, learning curve and help your organization survive? Welcome to relish this, the purpose marketing podcast, a show for purpose focused leaders who want to use marketing techniques to fuel their organization’s growth. If you’re a returning listener and you haven’t subscribed already, we love to have you also please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Now here’s your host, author and marketing specialist. Stu Swineford.

StuSwineford: Hey, everybody, Stu here. My guest today is Sherry Quam Taylor. She’s the president of Quam Taylor consulting and coaching, and she helps nonprofits grow from a growth strategy and revenue coaching perspective. She takes people from make, you know, bringing in seven figures to bringing in multi-seven figures into their organizations.

And two of the things that we talked about one was this idea of coming at fundraising from a needs-based perspective. So starting with what you need and then budgeting for that need, even though you’re not quite there yet will help you position your fundraising in such a way that you meet those needs and you then have astronomical growth.

And the second piece is really understanding that most of your donors are probably never giving their best gift, unless you’re asking them to give their best gifts. So if you’re framing conversations in the idea of, oh, well you gave a thousand dollars last year, do you think you could give 2000 this year?

Maybe those people could give $20,000. So framing your conversations and reinvigorating that storytelling to really get to that best gift. So you stop leaving money on the table is what Sherry’s all about. This was a super fun conversation. She’s amazing. I hope you have as much fun with it as I did. Here we go.

StuSwineford: Sherry, how are you today? How are you doing? I am doing great. It’s a beautiful day up here in the mountains. And I’m excited to talk with you. You’re from the Chicago area. It sounds like it, maybe isn’t so beautiful there today.

SherryQuamTaylor: Well, you know, it’s Illinois. These are the months when I am in like saying to my husband, “Where are we retiring? Because it certainly isn’t here. Is it?”

StuSwineford: Well, it’s funny because my brother lives in the area, as I mentioned as we talked before the show. He has had similar conversations with his wife, I believe. So they are always on the lookout for where might they go.

SherryQuamTaylor: And the older I get the the crankier I am about winter I will fully admit. So so stay tuned to see where I move here in 10 years.

StuSwineford: Yeah, that’s awesome. I actually we, my wife and I went to a concert in Chicago, way back in the late nineties. And we flew in and they shut, he town down like four minutes after we landed and it snowed like two feet and it was, it was amazing. We stayed downtown and just got to walk around and everything was shut down, but it was, it was really, really cool. So it was a fun visit to Chicago for sure. So tell us a little bit about what you do. I know that your tagline is that you help nonprofit leaders go to seven figures in terms of their fundraising.

Tell us more about that. That sounds amazing.

SherryQuamTaylor: Yeah, it’s actually, it’s so much fun. So I have my own consultancy and in essence, Come alongside CEOs of nonprofits who typically are, are already raising millions, but they need more money and they need usually very specific kinds of money. And I guess I’ll just jump right into it.

They need more unrestricted money for overhead. They need more flexible funding or more flexible revenues, so they can really invest in and all the things that like, like infrastructure and growth. All the things that it really does take to next level. And so a lot of leaders come to me who maybe have you know, created an amazing strategic plan and really have dynamic growth initiatives on the horizon, but it feels a little.

Gosh, do, do we know how to get there? Does, does my team know how to get there? And so I always say, I love working with people who are already doing so many things, right. But they do want a coach and somebody objective to really come alongside them and, and show them how could they be securing larger unrestricted gifts from investment level donors.

StuSwineford: Right. So are they in the spine because they’ve been relying too much on grants or is it restricted donations or what’s the, what typically gets them in the, into this particular pickled few,

SherryQuamTaylor: a few different profiles. One of them who I was speaking to today you know, wonderful. They get so much funding, federal funding, government funding.

That’s been great. It’s never enough, you know, it never is enough to invest in staff or really hire, like they’d like to, or frankly serve the people that they’re serving in an integrated way. Sometimes it is heavy foundation funding where maybe it’s a program revenue or you know, heavy multi-year contracts, the foundations and then even, you know, pre 2020, and kind of, you know, feeling that in 20 20, 20, 20.

Maybe it was, we were way too dependent on one giant gala. And you know, we, we all know what happened there. And so I always say it’s, it was, they were too dependent on one thing or two dependent on two things. When when it just, it wasn’t as pressing, you know, a couple of years back. But they really are, you know, the, they have plans to grow and, and they, they really do need great flexibility to take advantage of really what’s out there for organizations.

StuSwineford: Right. So what types of of, of leaders do you work with typically, or it’s obviously in the executive directors zone probably or heads of, of revenue or whatever that title might be at your particular nonprofit? Are they usually very seasoned? I mean, you mentioned there they’re pulling in millions already in a lot of cases.

So I would say that that’s largely. Larger non-profits, you

SherryQuamTaylor: know, it, it, it it varies. And I would say that I’ll answer that of like my favorite client who comes to me is, is someone who actually has pivoted out of corporate. And I pivoted out a corporate role 15 years ago. And so it’s like, oh, we’ve, we’ve come into nonprofit.

We’re doing a lot of things. Right. We’re learning the ropes. But I kind of don’t know what, I don’t know, you know, there’s, there’s, it feels similar, but there’s some differences. You know, and then the other profile, which I, you know, I guess I should say, I love just as much as maybe somebody who was an absolute and utter program expert, you know, they are experts in their field.

These are the doctor of social workers, you know, leaders who maybe founded a nonprofit or a leading an organization. Yeah. And they’re great at their programs, but they just simply haven’t ever needed to know how to do major gift work or kind of relationship-based fundraising. And so the, the grant writing and the more transactional types of fundraising maybe just feels more comfortable because they’ve simply never been trained how to do that. Right. And

StuSwineford: so, yeah. That sounds great. What does the program look like? What, how, how do you transition people from their current current state of frustration to this, to this amazing, amazing aspirational

SherryQuamTaylor: future? I will tell you it’s due. Yeah. Well, so I usually always start working with with the CEO.

That’s usually who reaches out to me or executive director, you know, called different things. And, and I, and I, I will also, I always say I work with three groups, one being the executive director, and then I want to work with their team. I want to work with our development staff and then I want to work with their board.

It’s funny. I, I used to, you know, years ago say, well, if, if you want me to train your board, I’ll do that too. But I actually this past year has started requiring it because a, my clients were getting better results when I did. It could be, we need them to, you know, I always said one of the three of those entities, if you will really aren’t, aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

We’re going to lose money on the table. And so my work looks a lot like working with leadership up front to really see what are the areas, maybe not even fundraising areas, but what are the things we might be doing? They’re keeping healthy revenue generation from growing or keeping donors from getting their best gift.

It could be how we’re budgeting, you know, are we budgeting in well, we hope we can grow. And gosh, I’m afraid to put, you know, some of these growth initiatives and are we being too, too frugal in the way we’re budgeting, which is then not propelling the growth. So do a lot of behind the scenes type. Is our business.

We’re running aligned with how we’re generating revenue. And then I, then I usually kind of pivot that into okay, great. Now that we know really how we’re going to finance the growth and what it should look like, where we want the money coming from. Now how do we really equip the team to align their hours with dollars?

And so it looks a lot like coaching and a lot, like where are we doing really well and where, where do we need to improve? So I usually have a privilege view with organizations at least 12 months, simply because change takes that long. But I also feel like it really does take that long for entire teams to get in a new rhythm and, and really see and learn what maybe they need to stop doing so that they have time to start doing other more strategic fundraising initiative.

StuSwineford: Yeah, that sounds sounds super interesting. I think that that applies to a lot of for-profit businesses as well, where it’s people, people don’t take enough time to to, to let things cook. Right. You’ve put something in place and if you don’t get immediate results, you’re onto the under looking for that next thing.

And, and just making sure that you’re committed to, to that, that change and what that is actually gonna entail all of

SherryQuamTaylor: our businesses, I suppose, that we could say that, you know but it takes time and, you know, I would say just to that point that you’re bringing up, I I think like just over the last couple of years, No, I think a lot of the podcasts and webinars I’ve been on, I’ve been thankful to be on so many.

There’s always a question about what’s the most creative or out there kind of fundraising thing you’ve seen. And, and I, I, I don’t love the question because it really is. It’s kind of like, I guess I’ll say an anti my method, but, and what I mean by that fundraising is not quick fix. If we really want to move our organizations into like these huge, sustainable trajectories of growth and really scale by millions it takes time.

There is no quick fix. This is deep rooted. I kind of call it like, you know, the, the things we can’t see under the iceberg and the waterline. These are things that really have to shift in, in that takes time. And they’re, they’re they’re business aligned. And so to me, the most creative and amazing thing I’ve seen the last couple of years is it’s really leader saying yes, we, we don’t want to do it.

Like we were doing this before COVID or 2020. We really, we can’t do more unless we really want to be more you know, kind of upfront and sharing with donors, what we need. And gosh, our missions have never been so worthy of being supported so far. And so I’m just so proud of, you know, so many of my clients are people who have come to me saying we want to do it differently.

Heading forward. We want to lead with unrestricted gifts and we want to not be afraid of the percentage conversation and all the things that I think in the past too many of us were really kind of handcuffed.

StuSwineford: Yeah, it’s funny on the, on the, you know, the marketing front. A lot of times, the, the most boring thing is it’s the thing that’s going to produce the best results.

And everyone’s looking for that for that, you know, sexy, new thing. That’s out there. That’s going to. Turn the needle or move the, move, the needle. And you know, frankly, it’s well go back to the well and start making some phone calls. And, and I know that’s not necessarily marketing, but a lot of times that’s what brings in donors and, and and revenue. So that’s pretty

SherryQuamTaylor: funny. One person said to me recently I hope you don’t take this personally, but I, I feel like your approach is that is quite practical. You know, it’s quite straightforward. I thought, oh my gosh, I would never take offense to that effect. She was like the biggest compliment because it, it really is practical.

And I think sometimes we’re looking for the flashy or we’re looking for the, I don’t know that, you know, that there’s something sparkly and and sometimes really just one foot in front of the other and being consistent and steady. Eddie is, is the name of the game. And.

StuSwineford: Yeah, for sure. So what does that, what does that year long process look like for you? What does an engagement look like? Yeah,

SherryQuamTaylor: happy to answer that. You know, I would say that it’s at the, with the front half of it, the first half probably is, is pretty intensive. And I mean that in we’re really rolling up our sleeves and making sure that you can fund what’s in your strategic plan and you can move into a funding model.

That gives you the most flexibility and we’re starting to raise way more dollars. The types of dollars, I should say that that really are going to give you the ability to pivot in tough times or invest in times of growth. And so it looks a lot like strategy and planning and advisement and coaching and teaching, and really rolling up my sleeves to understand.

Maybe where money is sitting on the table that perhaps they haven’t been and grabbing, I guess I’ll say I don’t love that word, but like they haven’t been taking advantage of w w where are those opportunities? Where are we perhaps treating donors, like one size fits all? You know, are we listening?

Are we, are we open to having investment level conversations? Are we walking donors through the financials, all those things. And so it’s pretty. I used the word intensive because I it’s like intense. It’s not like, oh no, we’re working 80 hours, but it’s like, it’s an intense shift. And in a lot of mindset work and shifting on, we used to do things this way and now we do things this way.

And then I, it kind of tapers out just because my clients are in new rhythms and they’re doing new things every month and we can quarter and and I want them putting what they’ve learned. Into action quickly. And so it really turns into coaching where, you know, we’re, we’re going through like, Hey, here’s our next five meetings or here’s our next five solicitations.

And let’s let’s role play. Let’s let’s kind of practice those tough questions that, that one CFO always asks when we come in. What does that look like? And so it, it’s pretty fun to watch the transformation. I will tell you. When people start using the tools we create and we start talking a little different way and really make, I would say like an intentional shift from maybe just receiving gifts to actually soliciting gifts.

It’s really remarkable to see you know, someone started having success and see where maybe money has been sitting on the table and you really grow. You know, six and seven figures. It’s like, really, I really get the front seat. Some pretty remarkable things.

StuSwineford: That’s amazing. Yeah. So it’s really cool to see what can happen when you just ask the question instead of dancing around the question and, you know, I think, I think that a lot of people in the nonprofit space have a hard time with that, which is interesting.

You know, certainly you, you, one would think that someone doing that much good in the world would be able to, to ask for, for help with that. But I think that there’s just a human tendency to shy away from, from that either there’s an ego play going on or, or, or something, but but yeah, just empowering people with the tools to, to just simply have a better ability to.

To ask that question, I think is

SherryQuamTaylor: super valuable. I think part of it Stu is like, it’s like kind of demystifying it to you know, I think even just on the, on the board side, you know, so many so many board members I hear like, I’ll do anything, but don’t make me ask for money. And so I, I think people have this perception of what fundraising is, you know, when it’s going to be.

Either begging or used car salesman and like there’s nothing in the middle. And I think of a true believer in demystifying, what people think fundraising is because it looks a lot like being in relationship with people and and really helping them see how their investment can change lives. And there’s really nothing pushy about that.

If we take the time. It’s really not, of course coming from a real authentic place, but it doesn’t look pushy and it doesn’t look UCL, car sales man. And so my coach said to me a couple months ago that my business coach, she said people say they hate sales, but she said, I think they hate what they think sales is.

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the same in fundraising. They people hate what they think fundraising is. But once they realize like, oh, it’s actually me just taking the time and being in authentic relationship and really offering this amazing opportunity to invest in an amazing mission who doesn’t want to do that?

It’s it’s, it’s actually not scary.

StuSwineford: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s the power of coaching I am, I have discovered and and I’m very committed to is, is just something that I wish more, more and more people would understand. And, and I know that there’s some great language on your website, around the idea of cost versus investment.

And how, how that mindset shift is so important in, in taking that, that step. Tell us that story a little bit about how you came to that realization.

SherryQuamTaylor: Yeah. I mean, you know so I love that you said you, you, you know, you’re invested in coaches and like kind of bought into that. I mean, I can clearly see just as I’ve grown my business and.

I don’t know, I’ve lost track. Am I on your nine 10? I don’t know what I’m on. But I can clearly see my growth you know, on a totally different angle going up when I started investing in coaches. And wasn’t super scary that first time when I clicked and bought some program, which now I wouldn’t even flinch in doing that, but wasn’t super scary.

Yeah, it was scary. It was actually a great exercise because I, in that moment, I literally remember thinking this, this was years ago. I remember thinking, gosh, this is what my clients feel like. Like, is this person going to get me results? Can they be trusted? This feels like a lot of money. And I thought, gosh, this is really almost like a good taste of my own medicine to feel how my clients feel.

But like I just quickly saw like, wow, I have no idea I needed such objectivity and that I actually didn’t know everything that I thought I knew, or whether there may, maybe just are fresh ways to look at a problem that perhaps I I’ve been looking at this same way for too long. So, you know, I’ve, I’ve constantly, as my business has leveled up, I’ve, I’ve constantly leveled out my, my coach and did so again, this past year, And gosh, it just pays back tenfold.

And so it really inspires me to, to get those same results for my clients and to, you know, be able to just say to them like, Hey, I know this is a big investment. Gosh, like in to really help them see, like I can see that you would make this back, you know, so quickly or that this is a sure investment.

There is a good ROI on this. And I think I do feel. Be talking a little bit about my business growth and as maybe you in Congress to do like the mindset work that goes behind that. And that, that really is such a it’s so similar in some of the coaching work I do with my client.

StuSwineford: Yeah. Yeah.

My coach has, well, he has a bunch of sayings, but one of the things that he has related to me is that transformation happens in the speaking of the transformation. And so being able to share those wins and share those experiences just helps other people understand that that, that, that they have access to that same.

That same level of, of growth in the same level of, of, of positive change and And I think we have a tendency to kind of think that that’s bragging or, or hide behind that. But you know, in actuality being able to share those wins and losses, but being able to share whatever transformation is happening is what then.

Makes that transformation even more real and then helps spread that opportunity to others. I

SherryQuamTaylor: love it. I love it. I’m such an advocate for having a coach and I just don’t flinch anymore because I just know you know what it is. I, I actually said to my coach the other day, I was like, well, I’m going to be an A-plus student here.

So like, like I, I, I’m going to put the work in. So I also know if I’m invested in. And something that like, I’m going, I’m going to be the A-plus student and I’m going to put the work in you know, that it is 50 50, like the coach is going to teach me, but I have to take it and run with it. And kind of helped me articulate to some clients who, you know, consider hiring me and, you know, they, they want to know, do I have a guarantee?

You know, I said, oh, I guarantee you, I will teach you exactly what you know, what, what I taught these clients who are having these amazing results. Also at the end of the day, you have to be ready to change and grow and be open to new ways of thinking and be open to really looking at the problem from another angle.

Even though it’s maybe kind of worked for you up to this point it’s not going to help your organization propelled to that next level, or go from two to 10 million or whatever, whatever your.

StuSwineford: Yeah, it’s that? What got you here isn’t necessarily going to get me there idea. Right?

SherryQuamTaylor: So what

StuSwineford: what are the, what are some things that you have seen aside from just sharing stories that, that have helped people really understand? Mindset shift and be able to, to embrace, embrace the idea that they need to invest in, in in getting them to that next level.

SherryQuamTaylor: Yeah. You know, I would say one interesting area that I always start with, which sometimes surprises people because they’re like, wait, aren’t you, the fundraising person.

But there’s a lot of mindset work just around money, I guess I’ll say. And I think even personally what we bring into conversation. Oh gosh, that person would never give that much. Right. Or we certainly couldn’t do that. And so even one of the biggest transformations before we get into the fundraising work sometimes is, is really around just budgeting.

And you don’t have a lot of groups come to me who, you know, maybe have a whatever, 20%, 25% growth initiative every year for the next five years. And they’re in year three and they’re not hitting their numbers. And I really have to ask. You know, but you know, with the strategic initiatives that you’ve spent money on a consultant to put together, and it’s great, are, are the expenses behind those in the budget, because if we’re not putting those expenses in the budget, how will your fundraising team be raised into the right number in the first place?

And so sometimes that’s a real big shift and real big mindset reframe for people to say, Wait, are you telling me, like, even though I don’t have, you know, that money pledged, there’s like I should put it in the budget. And I nine times out of 10, 10 times out of 10, I will tell you to do that because you know, let’s just use an example here.

I’ll I always use round numbers on podcasts. You know, let’s just say your, your, your budget added up and it’s, you know, 4.56. Great. Board-approved budget. That’s great. And then sometimes I’ll say, but is that one growth initiative in there and is that one staff member that you need in there? Well, no, but how would we do that?

Let’s say let’s, let’s put it in so we know what your true need is. The true need is 4.8. And oh no, we don’t have a very strong reserve fund. Maybe we should be putting a financing plan and a true fundraising plan in place to reach 5 million that year. So that’s just but to me it feels practical, but sometimes that’s a bit of a bonkers move of like, wait, you’re telling me the number we want to raise two might be different.

Yeah. And the budget, but well we’ve never needed greater reserves than these last couple of years. Right. And for too long, our mindset, you, don’t kind of, this mindset thing is we’ve been told, like, try to do more on, less, like try to squeeze by try to have everybody wear too many hats and that’s simply doesn’t work.

And so there’s a lot of mindset work, I think, around, around them money and numbers and just the, the, the sector I think, has been. Irrationally frugal for, for too long, when we all know it takes money to grow our businesses.

StuSwineford: Right? Well, it’s like there’s a scarcity mindset there as opposed to an abundance mindset.

And, you know, just understanding that that money is abundant and then creating that opportunity to. To, to put yourself on, on pace to gather all of the, all of the resources that you actually need to be successful is, sounds like that’s part of that first

SherryQuamTaylor: step. It is. And, you know, even just you saying that Heather’s, it’s interesting this scenario play out I guess at the beginning of the.

Where I was talking to two client prospects on the same day. And I always say oh, what’d you raise this last year? And what are you going to raise next year? Where do you, how do you want to grow kind of big, big question. One of the prospects of which of which I love this answer she said, well, we’re, you know, we’re, we’re just at about, at that 2 million mark and I need to get to 10 million.

Like it was like, holy smokes, let’s do this. You know, it was very it’s really abundant. It was. Well, of course we will, you know, just, just help me see the path to it. Help me see what I need to be spending to, to be making that. I hope you see the team that I need to invest in, help me see the board that I need to build.

And I gotta tell you, it was such a wonderful call to be talking to someone so growth minded, and so determined to say, yeah. W w w we’re moving from two to 10. Can you help me?

Absolutely. I can. And I’m working with that. But the funny thing was on that same day, you know, it’s like I talked to the next group who was a similar size.

And I said, well, where do you need to grow? And, and it was very much I don’t know, like how, w I don’t think we could do it. We’ve never been able to do it. Maybe we could grow a little, you know, it just, it wasn’t it was all mindset is what I’m getting asked to, but it was, you know, one of those we’ll grow in scale to 10.

And both of them can take the same path. But it really, it really comes down to being open to, to seeing the new path and then fasting in you know, somebody who’s been on that journey before to really guide you through it. Yeah. So it’s just so fun to to help people and really reveal like to them in both of those cases.

Well, here’s how you do it. Exactly. One foot from the other room. This is what it looks like. If people are brave enough to invest in the path and and really like you were saying with some content on my website, like really seeing it as a calculated risk, it’s not risky. It’s, you’re investing in your growth and you’re investing in your people.

And you’re investing in, you know, impacting more lives in both of those.

StuSwineford: Well, right. And, and it’s, it’s an investment. There’s an, there’s a desired outcome attached to that in terms of there’s a return on that, that you’re hoping to achieve in the, you know, the number of things that, well, it makes it a lot easier when you, when you consider it as an investment to, to look at.

Okay, well, you know, maybe the. Maybe that works vastly better than I was expecting it to, or maybe it didn’t work as well as I was expecting it to. But but we take those kinds of those kinds of investment risks all the time. But when we think of them as costs, that then just become something that’s taken out as, as opposed to something that’s being put in.

And and, and I think that, you know, just changing that language and I actually I actually wrote a blog post on this, on my site somewhere. Just about the, the, you know, seeing things as a, as an investment instead of a cost, is, is that first step in, you know, knowing that you’re making smart, calculated decisions to improve your, your current state. Yeah,

SherryQuamTaylor: it’s a, it’s a little I’ve written many, a LinkedIn posts. I’m on LinkedIn a lot. I think that’s maybe how we connected, but it’s a little bit, and I write this all the time. And it’s not even my services. It might be website. It might be you know, I don’t know, accounting or something. So often the, the knee jerk is, was not in the budget, you know?

And it’s like, but hold on one second. We, we just said, we want to grow by 25%. We just said, we have these strategic issues we can’t get to. And so those two statements don’t add up of, you know, what, it’s not in the budget and gosh, we really want to grow, you know, because it really. It really does take that, that investment and that spend to yield more dollars.

And and I think that like that shift in mindset is, you know, many people get it, which is great. I love, I love working with those people, but sometimes the, the leader, the executive director might totally get it and it’s completely on board. But maybe the board is, is not so sure. You know, and so it just depends.

There’s no who to, who do we have to convince them? I’d say you know, it was kind of different depending on the day, but it’s crucial.

StuSwineford: Yeah, it’s I was just, just reflecting on, on, on that mindset piece and, and how important it is to, to really, like you said, just budget for it. Just say, look, you know, we want to grow this much and it’s going to require this much investment to, to do that.

Right. And, and as long as those numbers, aren’t, you know, flip flop the wrong direction and, and there’s a reason. You know, re reasonable numbers attached to both of those, both of those outcomes are, or those inputs then everything’s good. Yeah. Yeah. And,

SherryQuamTaylor: and you know, and I don’t hear me saying like, oh, triple your budget.

You know, like I would never advise anybody to do that, but I do find that sometimes the reason we aren’t growing or our funding has plateaued has way more to do with the spend versus the. And so that’s why I, I always start with budget. It surprises people a little bit. But it really is the key to setting up the team to, to, to reach or exceed your true budgeted need.

And then how can I say, I’ll just want to say one other thing on this kind of budget topic or any topic. I always find that a lot of investment level donors, meta-major level donors who might be in our donor for. They don’t always know you need more money and it’s always a funny conversation of like, do we think they know we need more money?

And if it’s like, well, we’re a nonprofit Sherry, of course they know we need money, but so often I find that donors don’t truly understand the need. And, and sometimes that’s because of what we’re doing or how we’re articulating you know, well, we, we hope to raise 4.6 or we’d like to do that. You know, to have it to 2 million of it is government funds.

And so we’re hoping, you know, versus really owning it. It’s sitting at the table and saying, we have a $5 million need this year. Could I kind of walk you through what that looks like? When my clients move from a reactive, like, well, we hope we could, or we’d like to, to really articulating with confidence a plan and really almost inviting that person along on the journey.

It’s amazing to me, how many donors say what? I didn’t know you needed that, or why didn’t you ask me that? Or I had no idea you were this bag. I didn’t understand how you were funded. And so I always, I was pause and say, do your donors know you need money, rich, which really goes back to have you had an honest moment with yourself to really, really know financially what the organization needs to do.

X, Y, and Z. This. And so often there’s a disconnect there and cash or investment level donors, they need to know that they they’re dying for information about our financials. Not saying that it’s more important than, than story and impact and change lies. Of course, that’s, that’s a huge part of it, but there’s a financial story and there’s a, there’s a are you a good investment story that has to be told.

So often I find that that, that fundraisers skip because they think donors don’t want to know that, but they do.

StuSwineford: Yeah. It’s amazing what people don’t know and how that affects what they’re, what they’re willing to give. I mean, it’s kind of like the value proposition, right? When you, you know, value is so relative you know, Where one person may perceive something is worth X and other person is perhaps willing to spend three X on that same thing, because it brings them so much, so much joy.

I mean, if you’re, if you’re incredibly hungry at pizza is worth way more than $7, whatever it goes for it. Right. And so. You know, just, just communicating that and communicating that I love this idea of starting with, with the budget and what you need, what budget you re is required to meet the needs that you have, as opposed to, you know, even just kind of wishing for, for some sort of growth, you know, and be like, look, we want to go to here we get, when we’re gonna need.

These three people. So we’re putting that in the budget. We’re going to go get it is just a super cool.

SherryQuamTaylor: Yeah. And then of course, we’ve got to do different things, right? We can’t just put it in the budget and kind of just hustle harder or try to crank a little bit more out of that appeal. You know, we can, we can have confidence in doing it that way when we learn then how to do new things.

And and, and to know that we are stopped doing, doing some things and starting to do other things. No, we’re, we’re, we’re playing off with a different instrument, you know, at that point. But I think like the biggest thing I’ll tell people is you know, with that kind of value proposition, I’d like that angle is the best part of fundraising is like, especially with individuals we don’t actually need to to know what that person’s best gift is.

You know, it’s actually, none of our business, our job is really to articulate. And, and to fully share the need and to really lead them to an opportunity where they, they might give their best gift or, or, you know, that we’ve answered every question in their mind so that they’re like, oh, I want to give my best gift.

And I want to give that every year.

StuSwineford: Yep. You ask them to give $20. They’re probably going to give $20. You ask them to give what they think this is. This is worth to them, then you could get 20 grand. Yes.

SherryQuamTaylor: Oh, right. And and I always have this concept of or I was taught forever ago. Th that we really do.

We want all of our donors giving their best gift. And so exactly what you just said so often you know, somebody is like, yeah, I’m giving 25 bucks a month. Well, that, that’s what they asked me to do when. They might not understand the need and B may have way greater capacity, but we’re just surfing them down there as a monthly donor.

And down the road, they might be writing $25,000 checks. And so, you know, there’s, there’s such an important just, I gotta get, again, I guess it’s mindset shift of really pausing and saying, you know, is this donor giving their best gift crush with her now? W what don’t they understand? You know, are they just coming to our event every year and right in that $1,000 check you know, because if they are giving that check at an event it’s not their best gift, you know, we need to be soliciting our donors one-on-one w when possible, and when they have that capacity.

And so there’s just you know, a lot of very, again, very practical things we can be doing. It’s really where I do see see money left on the table. For sure. I have a client who added seven figures of general operating to his bottom line last 18 months. Simply because he heard me say that concept actually on a bypass.

And he, he called me and said, I’m sure you said something, you know, that I, you know, and, and, and I don’t think our donors are giving their best. I think we have great donors. But I just can kind of guarantee that they’re not. And so you know, I just use him as an example because we really worked hard.

It’s not quick, right. It’s 18 months, but like most of those gifts and that, that growth of seven figures were from donors who already were giving to them. But that’s how much money was sitting on the table from individuals. You know, in the form of family foundations and kind of pivoting into something a bit more relational with them, or gosh you know, a lot of gala sponsorships that we worked so hard to shift into mission-aligned gifts that the move from $50,000 gala sponsorships to $100,000 unrestricted gifts.

Right. And so it’s, you know, it’s, it’s not an easy thing, but I see people make that shift every day. Which is pretty exciting.

StuSwineford: Yeah, it really is. And it’s just so interesting how reluctant people are to go back to those relationships and. That’s usually for really any organization, going back to people who have, who have engaged with you in the past is you know, is, is your fastest route to to revenue gains.

And it’s, you know, it’s certainly not as as exciting as landing a new relationship or, or, you know, creating a new opportunity, but it’s. It’s just solid in there. And it’s, it’s all about that relationship

SherryQuamTaylor: piece. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really, that is the best gift every year, best gift every year. You know, why wouldn’t that donor it, well, why wouldn’t they want to give every year, right?

If they really understand your plans, they really understand what you’re doing, your programs, they really understand your financial need. Why wouldn’t we assume they want to give every year for taking the time to build a relationship we’re taking that. Really treating them as stakeholders and and really seeing that this, this relationship is a win-win like I like let’s assume they want to give again.

You know, and so I think that has a lot to do with thinking and impact reporting and really using that step to really impress upon that donor, how well their gift was used and how lives were changed and, and, and really use that stuff. In the donor experience to lead that donor to their next gift.

It’s a huge area of I think of like low-hanging fruit for organizations to really use that, that thanking and impact reporting step to, to lead that donor to their next gift so that you don’t have to kind of try to figure out why to call him next. Or right

StuSwineford: now, Yeah. So what are your, what are your thoughts on that?

You know, if I’m thinking back when I get, I get called for two, to either up my engagement with an, with an organization or, or donate and, and they usually start with a number in terms of, you know, could we. Can we get you to, to give $50 or whatever, but, you know, that’s potentially leaving out the opportunity for me to give, to give my best gift, but if you recommend to to nonprofit

SherryQuamTaylor: favorite topics here so I guess I’ll answer that.

Maybe a little less at the $50 level and more at the maybe mid or major level. Just yeah, I, I’m a believer in having some tools in hand that you can really lead a donor to an open conversation about what their best gift might look like. Presenting the need in a way that, that helps them see like the types and sizes of gifts that the organization is looking.

I’m not a real believer in saying, I know you gave 5,000 last year, so could you give 7,500 this year? And I’m not at not a believer in that. I shouldn’t say believer, but like, I don’t always advocate for that methodology because I’ve sat in meetings where what, you know, in the olden days when we weren’t on zoom all day which olden days, I guess, 2019 I got to go sit in some solicitations and I saw gifts go from like $10,000 to six figure gifts.

And they’re just like, wait, what? Oh, wow. We didn’t know this was your need. We didn’t know all of these things. And gosh, I think like if we would have come up with the number we might’ve said, could you go from 10 to 20 or 10 to 15? Yep. And so I just am, am until we really get so deep that, that we’re having such an overcome open conversation that they’re like, no, really that’s my max.

I don’t want our preconceived thoughts about what they can or cannot give get in the way. And so I’m just a real believer in articulating the need and asking for their best gift and really leading them. To a deep understanding of what that could look like. And I find that donor’s gifts grow tremendously more a little cut cousin comment, if you don’t mind me making on this topic which I don’t know, it might be controversial to some people, but it’s a little bit of a same or the same tone that, that I feel about board’s give, get I just see so much money left on the table.

With gifts gets where I had a client recently telling me that they had a Newport member. They’re excited about this person. And I think maybe they’re give this. My clients was maybe I don’t know, maybe a 10 K gift gap. And this person was like, oh, okay. That’s all you need. My last board I was on was a $20,000 gift, you know, and it was, it was, it was literally like, oh, you don’t need me to get this.

Right. And so I just feel like. Even with our board members is the gift get their best gift or is it keeping them in a box? Are you soliciting for their best gift? Even if they have it, even if you have a gift gap you know, so often I see board members gifts grow because they don’t even understand the full need of the organization.

Right. So I don’t know. I just, I just bring that up because. It really that the fundraiser or the solicitor we more control of that kind of gift, timing and gift size than you think. But we gotta be open to, you know, to kind of breaking through some of the old, transactional and traditional methods that really don’t suit our growth plans anymore.

StuSwineford: Right. Are you tying that to this? I’m assuming that the conversation is really. It’s storytelling and, and not only discussing the need, but the, but the outcomes that will be generated when you achieve that need, is that accurate?

SherryQuamTaylor: Yeah. You know, I, sometimes I’m, I’ve been guilty of pivoting right into like the finance doc and the ask and yeah, of course, like, of course there’s, there’s the whole storytelling element and we want to make sure their, their mission, the line and their mission forgiving is, is our mission.

And. Eight months, years, sometimes to do that. Yeah. And then when people are giving gifts to, to really help that donor see the impact of their gift and how can we, how can we do that in a real exclusive or customized way that that really, really is rewarding from a heart sense. You know, th the third gift was, was, was used well, and gosh, I want to give it.

And so I feel like, yes, of course there’s mission story, there’s all the storytelling. But, but, or maybe, and of where I see money left on the table is when we leave it there. When we say yeah, it was great meeting. I th they, they love what we do. They, I think, I think I saw tears in their eyes and they said, they’d make a gift.

Right. And then we get the gift in the mail. Oh, it’s only $5,000. I felt they’d give a hundred thousand dollars. So like the part of the story that was left out was he, can I share with you how we’re growing? Okay. Share with you what our need is to actually like, not miss a beat and pivot right into that and, and explain, you know, in essence, your finances within confidence and you really show how different parts of.

Tie back to impact and and to really not miss a beat and have that be very fluid. And and I do just find that people stop short and, and investment level donors need not only the mission story, but they need the financial story. They want to know that their investment is spent well. And I always tell, I always tell people who I’m coaching.

You know, if we think of who these people are likely. You know, they’re entrepreneurs, business leaders leaders in the community running in many cases, their own successful businesses. They’ve probably had to sit down and ask for investments to, they’ve had to, had to really talk about their plans and the money they need for their plans.

So speak their language like w this is certain language, right? Meet them where they are having. CEO to CEO conversation because like what an opportunity a and B, if nobody else was doing it cash, it really sets your sets your organization apart. It really helps them see you as, as transparent and in forthcoming and in someone with a plan that that I want to invest in something that has a plan.

It’s a win-win in that situation.

StuSwineford: Yeah, it really is. It really is. So if somebody were to be interested in working with you, what, what are some of the things that they should have teed up in terms of know where are they in their, in their growth? What, what are some of the problems that they’re bumping up against that they, that, that you help bring clarity

SherryQuamTaylor: to?

You know, I would say problems that are maybe presenting themselves would be you know, we’re, we’re, we’re raising a good amount of money, but they’re still cashflow issues. I’ve $10 million organizations come to me who struggle with payroll sometimes because it’s too restrictive. Perhaps you know, you’re, you’re, you’re growing, but like it’s, it’s, it’s, you’re growing in restricted funding.

You know, another thing would just be the, I think that what I said. We have a strategic plan, but like we can’t ever seem to do all the great things in it. Because you do need that flexibility. And so oftentimes it is coming to me because they, they, the great development staff who, who know how to write grant reports, know how to plan events, know how to send appeals, but they’ve never, they’ve never, ever had to learn how to do major gift work.

And it’s it’s time for. You know, if you didn’t get the sense that our conversation today I want people who want to invest in growth and have, have you know, great growth plans and great missions. And they really just do need the revenue to match their big visions.

StuSwineford: Right. Right. I love that. I love that change.

In idea you know, coming at it from, from the, what do we need to get us there? And let’s go, let’s go for that. Yeah, for sure. So, I can’t believe it’s been an hour since we started talking. And it was such a great time chatting with you today. How can people find out more about you and get in touch if they if they’re interested in, well, hop

SherryQuamTaylor: on my website, which is Quam taylor.com. It’s my, my made it and my married name was Shannon. And then I’d also say I’m on LinkedIn every single day. And engaging in engineering content there first. So go over and find me on LinkedIn. And we’ll have a current.

StuSwineford: That sounds amazing. I will share those links in the, in the show notes as well.

So I love having these kinds of conversations and talking through things, but I’m also really committed to being you know a person that inspires action. So if someone has listened to our show today, what, what action item would you want them to take to get them on their way to making the world a better place?

SherryQuamTaylor: You know, I would say that there’s never been a more important time, or I’ll say maybe even like a wider window or a door to walk through where I think donors and funders are open to hearing different ideas and in maybe are moving some of the old misconceptions to decide. I I’ve just really encouraged people to go for it, to to walk into those scary the feel risky elements and, and really really commit to, to doing things differently into growing your business at greater greater strides because, you know, there’s, there’s just never been a more important time.

And I take every opportunity to say, gosh, aren’t we so thankful how non-pro. Just like stood up and stood in the gap for your community, for our state and our nation and these last couple of years. And so own it, you know, it be a big deal, own it. Ask for what you need and assume that people want to support you in that manner.

StuSwineford: I love it. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Had such a good time talking with you and, and I’m excited to hear what’s next for you. Thanks for having me have a great day. Bye. And there you have it. Another great episode of relish this. Thanks again for listening. You can find past episodes of the show@relishthis.org.

And remember if you liked what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information on purpose. Grab your free copy of my book. Mission uncomfortable. How nonprofits can embrace purpose driven marketing to survive and thrive. Get your copy now@missionuncomfortablebook.com.

Thanks again for listening. Come back next week. Won’t ya.

Check out Stu on the Say Less Podcast

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 03:46:20 GMT

Pretty excited to share this guest spot with Christina Shay , Founder of Luceo Creative on her new podcast, Say Less Connect More .

Christina and I first connected in the fall of 2021 when she found our post about the Marketing Ecosystem . It turns out, we both live in the Boulder, Colorado area and this serendipitous overlap led her to give us a shout.

She turned into a SUPER fun coaching client and we were off to the races.

Christina is a real go-getter. She’s smart, talented, funny, and so full of energy it’s infectious. She’s on a mission to help others thrive through content creation and that’s what our conversation focused on most. It was a blast talking with Christina on her new show. Check it out!

Episode 80: How to leverage authenticity and passion to do good in the world with Steve Bacon from Belief Theory

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 03:59:14 GMT

My coach frames everything from the perspective of commitment. And if you think you understand commitment, let me tell you something, his definition (and getting committed to REAL commitment) could change your world.

See, it’s easy to “commit” to things you know you can do. I can confidently sign on to say, throwing a football 20 yards. That’s not commitment. That’s just doing .

I can similarly not get behind the idea of doing something I know I can’t accomplish. Like throwing a football 100 yards. It would be silly for me to suggest I would ever be able to accomplish that feat.

But where real commitment lies is in the in-between. That space where we get out of our comfort zone and start to wonder, “Could I actually get this done?”

And I would say, “What if you committed to it?” What if you got really comfortable with the idea that you were going to go places somewhat outside of your zone of comfort.

That’s what today’s guest on Relish THIS is doing.

Steve Bacon is a remarkable, passionate, authentic human being who has committed himself to making enormous changes in the black community. His goal is to make sure that this is the LAST generation that has to experience the ingrained belief structure endemic to his community.

Steve is the Master Teacher and Coach at Belief Theory and in this episode we discuss taking passion and authenticity to the max and how to use those qualities to push yourself to make change.

Warning, there is some NSFW language and potential triggering content in this episode so please be advised. That being said, I think this is an important conversation and well worth the listen.

Hope you enjoy our conversation.

Link:
Belief Theory

Ask:
Stop looking everywhere else for problems that come from within

Listen to the podcast here:

Steve Bacon: A lot of times when people teach and they don’t, they’re not effective when they teach it is because they try to speak to people from where they think they should be and not meeting them where they are. Right. And I tell this to people all the time, even well-meaning black folk and white folk, stop trying to stop, trying to stand on your high mountain and tell people they should be up here.

Take your ass to the bottom of the. And show them how to walk up the mountain step by step

Are you looking for ways to shorten your marketing, learning curve and help your organization survive?

Welcome to Relish THIS, the purpose marketing podcast, a show for purpose focused leaders who want to use marketing techniques to fuel their organization’s growth. If you’re a returning listener and you haven’t subscribed already, we’d love to have you. Also please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Now here’s your host, author and marketing specialist, Stu Swineford.

Stu Swineford: Hi RelishThis listener. Stu here you are in for a treat today. My guest is Steve bacon and he is the founder of Belief Theory. He’s a master teacher and coach, and he is seeking to make huge changes in the black community in terms of the historical baggage that’s been passed down from generation to generation.

He wants to make sure that this is the last generation that has to experience and, and have the kind of ingrained belief structure that has been endemic in that community for for the last 400 years.

Steve’s one of the most authentic people I think I’ve ever met—certainly one of the more authentic people who’s ever been on the show. And so there’s some language involved in today’s episode, as well as some triggery stuff, but I think it’s very well worth the listen. Steve’s passionate. He’s out to change the world. And I think you’re going to love this episode.

So listen up and here we go, Steve, how are you today?

Steve Bacon: Incredible. If I was doing any better, I’d be jealous of myself. What’s happening.

Stu Swineford: Well, I am so excited to talk with you this afternoon. And you were introduced to me by a mutual friend, Townsend Wardlaw. He was on the show a few weeks ago and He is just the best. And I would, I would love to have you do your introduction of yourself because I know that you do something quite special.

So why don’t you hit it?

Steve Bacon: Absolutely. Wait, what up Relish THIS family.

Stu Swineford: That is awesome. You’re the first guest to bust that kind of action out. And I am excited for our conversation today.

Steve Bacon: Listen, I hope you pre-warned your audience before you brought me on and listen, if he. Whatever you are offended by it’s his fault. He does not pre-interview me. He didn’t see how crazy I was before he put me on.

So, whatever it is, it’s his fault.

Stu Swineford: Well, I will take full responsibility for the next hour or so of everybody’s lives here, Steve, but I have, I was just thrilled to death to have you on, I know you are doing some amazing things. And Townsend has kind of teed me up a little bit for what you were up to, but I’d love to hear it straight from you what your mission is and how you are going to change the world.

Steve Bacon: Absolutely. So my mission is to end what I believe. Well not, I believe what I’ve experienced that I know has plagued the black community for. 400 years. And that is the generational trauma that we continue to pass down from parent to child, from child to parent and so on and so forth. And I’m every cell of my body.

Every breath I breathe is dedicated to not letting that trauma pass down to one more generation. And it started with me. And then I worked on my family and now I’m turning my intention on the rest of my.

Stu Swineford: Well, I think that sounds like an admirable mission. What, what are, what are some of the things that you’re doing to to combat this, this challenge?

Steve Bacon: So one is, as I go through my experiences and healing, the traumas that I had from childhood and things that were passed down to me, I shared openly with my audience. Like for instance, yesterday or day before yesterday, my dad and I just reconnected after 20 years of being estranged. And, you know, we spent about eight days together.

And then we went live on Facebook talking about everything that we learned about ourselves and each other during that eight day period so that we can encourage more sons to reach out to their fathers, invited.

Stu Swineford: Yeah, that sounds amazing. It sounds like you guys are really just jumped in the deep end there.

What, what was that? How did, how did you reconcile

Steve Bacon: compassionate and understanding? Man? A lot of people just like me, a lot of people convict their parents, judge, jury, and execute. As being superheroes who just decided to neglect them. I don’t know if I can cuss on this thing, if, just let me know. Cause I’ll have to censor myself, but

Stu Swineford: we haven’t done that.

But if you, I would like for you to be as authentic and free as you feel like, because there are

Steve Bacon: not better in a flow, but a lot of people convicted their parents, judge, jury, and executioner as to. Superheros who just decided to neglected them neglected instead of human beings that also have traumas beliefs and an entire fucking childhood that they were trying to recover from when they had you.

Stu Swineford: Yeah, we’re all kind of here based upon all of the experiences that we’ve had throughout our lives. And then, you know, as you’ve said, those, those experiences are kind of passed down, right?

Steve Bacon: Absolutely. You know, one of the things my father said during our interview was I was just doing the hand, what was done to me and we both said, Right.

We’re passing down culture and tradition, but not human development and education nobody’s growing. Right. And so, because of that, we continue not only to pass down our own baggage, right. When we have a child and we have our own baggage from our childhood, and then we have. Not only does that child develop their own baggage because that just comes with life.

But now we put our baggage on top of theirs and now they’re carrying Louis Baton, emotional, emotional damage all the way into their adult lives and then passing that on to their child because everybody’s afraid to take a look at themselves in the mirror and deal with the. And of course this generation confuses emotional avoidance with protecting my energy.

No, your chicken shit.

Stu Swineford: So how, what are you doing to disrupt this, this cycle, but what are some of the things that you’ve put together to help, help make this not happen

Steve Bacon: anymore? Well, first of all, I start off by telling you. And the reason why I do that is because nobody cares how much, you know, until they know how much you care.

And why would I open myself up to you if you don’t open yourself up to me. And that’s part of my issue with the mental health community. They’re literally trained not to open up and share their own experiences with the people who sit in, in front of them, that they expect to just open up and share all their darkest secrets with was, and I went through that and I was like, Hmm, I don’t trust you.

Because I don’t know anything about you. Right? And so the first thing I do is before I ask anybody to open up about themselves, I tell all my business, I tell them every dirty, dark, secret I’ve ever had, everything that I’ve ever felt, because I want them to understand I’m not coming from a place of just some book I read, but this is L E life experience.

I explain it to you this way. There’s a story I heard from a gentleman by Cain Ramsey. He says there was a man walking down through the woods and he fell into a hole. Then he started to scream out for help. And after a while this lady shows up and parks her chair at the edge of the hole and she says, sir, can I help you?

And he said, Ma’am I’m stuck in this hole. I don’t know how to get out. And I’m starting to feel a little anxious and claustrophobic, and I don’t think I’m ever going to get out of here. She says, well, lucky for you. I happen to be a therapist. And so she said, why don’t you talk to me for the next 45 minutes about how this whole, that you fell into is related to your child.

And he looking at her like what the F did I just tell you? I was stuck in his home.

What’d they got to do with it. But he had nowhere to go. And so he started opening up and then just broke down, crying. And then at the 45 minutes, she looked at her watch and she said, well, that’s our time. Listen, if you’re still stuck in this whole next week, why don’t I swing back around?

And we’ll pick up where we left off and she left, left this man shattered because he has any, has no idea what to do with the state that she just left. And so he pulls himself together and he starts crying out again, help, help, help. And a man shows up to the hole and he looks down in the hole and he says, sir, are you okay?

He says, no, I’m stuck in this hole. And this lady came and she made me talk about stuff I didn’t want to talk about. And now I’m not only feeling. Claustrophobic and afraid and anxious, but now I’m feeling guilt and shame from my childhood. And I don’t know what to do, what all these emotions and I’m still stuck in this goddamn hole.

Somebody please help me. He says, listen, listen, calm down, calm down. It’s okay. It’s okay. I happened to be a doctor. I’m going to write you a prescription and give you some stuff that help you with all these feelings that you’re feeling. And if you still feel this way after six to 12 weeks, you come back and see me and I’ll write another prescription.

And then he walks off and the man starts to lose hope. And he says, I don’t think I’m ever going to get out of this hole. And this lady just wants me to talk about my childhood and this dude just wants to drug me up and he gets into a fetal position and puts his hair between his legs. Next thing, you know, he hears a voice and he hears a voice and he goes, yo, you good?

And dude’s like, nah, man, I’m stuck down in this hole and nobody can seem to help him before he can complete that sentence. Do jumped down in a hole. And the guy looked up from, take his head from out of his knees and looked up and said, oh, what the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t I just tell your dumb ass.

I was stuck down here and the man goes, yeah, But I was stuck down here last week and I figured out how to get out. Let me show you. That’s what I do.

Stu Swineford: That’s a really great metaphor. I love it. I think that that there’s so much goodness there. You know, no offense to people who are, who are doing their best as, as therapists and physicians.

Steve Bacon: No, we’re not. We’re not letting nobody off the hook. Hell no, I don’t care. And let me tell you what. Because one of the things you don’t know about me is when I was 18 years old, I put a loaded gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger out of depression. So I’ve been at the lowest of the lowest that a human being can possibly be, where they believe their life has zero value whatsoever.

And there is no hope for the future. And I got an issue with those same people. That’s why I tell that story because most of them are wounded healers. They have never dealt with their own sh try to help everybody else. They read a book, figured out how to diagnose some shit. And that was it. And they keep people coping rather than healing.

So, no, I’m not fitting to let nobody off the hook, because if you’re not doing the work on yourself, then you are not doing the best you can to help everybody else out.

Stu Swineford: Point taken point taken. I really appreciate your, your passion around this and. And your perspective. It’s certainly not everyone has been in that, in that hole. And and yeah, I think that the, the fact that you’re out there really fighting that battle to really allow people to understand that they have someone there that can help them and is willing to help them and is willing to do everything that they can to, to make things better is incredibly valuable.

What are some of the things that you do with, with, with people to, to help them understand that? So

Steve Bacon: I coach mainly a one-on-one, I’ve also done some groups, but I do a lot of teaching to different organizations like YMCAs and boys and girls clubs and different cities working with. Their counselors and their teachers.

I also, co-run a drug rehab and post prison program in California, but I have clients that range anywhere from meth addicts to former police, captains, and PhDs and everything in between. Most of my work, like I said, has been done one-on-one or in small groups, but that has shifted since the, the towns in ward laws and the Steve hardens and those people of the world have gotten to know me.

You know, I spent a lot of time with one of my mentors or one of the people that I looked up look up to for years Mr. Les brown, who, you know, just on the phone today, it was just like, We need to get you in front of millions, for sure.

Stu Swineford: And

Steve Bacon: so I just been quietly doing my work, helping one or two people at a time.

I mean, not as in like a year, but my work is very personal because I take people through what I call a full. Self image reconstruction. And so I, I give you an example. Imagine watching the show, flip that house, right. And when they go into a house, depending on the condition of the house, they either have to just remodel it like, you know, do some new decorating.

They need to. You know, strip it down to maybe the carpets and the floors and maybe put up some new walls and then some of them, they need to just completely knocked down the whole damn house and knock it down to the studs. Right. And start from scratch. When I coach with people, I knocked them down to the studs and start from scratch.

Everything that they believe about themselves. I challenged, I bring it up and we challenge every value, every belief, everything that they were ever taught, because it’s the human belief system that controls everything that we do. But most people have no idea what it is. And that amazes me that the very thing that controls everything you do, you have no idea how it works, how it’s installed, how it’s uninstalled, how it’s used and how it’s used again.

So the first thing that we do is dig deep into their belief system to find out what is it that you believe? What are the meanings that you took away from old life experiences that has you believing that you’re not good enough? You’re not worthy. You’re not deserving because most of the time it’s all bullshit.

It’s perspectives from a child. You didn’t have enough life experience to explain some of the things that were happening, but because you’re a child you’re young, you’re emotional and you don’t have the life experience. You take everything personal and make everything mean something about you. And you carry that into adulthood.

And that becomes the foundation for what you build your life on, which is why you’re 40, 50 years old, but you’re still emotionally 14. You got longer arms and longer legs, but you’re still a kid.

Stu Swineford: Yeah, it’s amazing. Some of the work that I’ve done with Townsend, he has touched on this same sort of idea. That there was something that either worked or didn’t work that was implanted, you know, at a very young age that, that a lot of times becomes that default setting and that, that default belief that we have about ourselves that just continues to be that, you know, that Rocky ground in which all these weeds are, are kind of growing.

And if we can get to that and figure that root idea out. And, and then, you know, in his construct and he he’s learned this from Steve Hardison You know, we’re, we’re pulling that weed. We’re cleaning up that ground. We’re doing that hard work and then planting a new, a new plant, a new flower, whatever image you want to put there on, in that place.

But if we don’t get to the, to the, to the root of that, if we don’t dig deep enough, we’re just planning a new flower on top of a bunch of garbage. And so it’s not going to stick. It’s not going to stay. And and yeah, I mean, we all have our experiences. And as you said, we’re carrying, you know, the experiences that have been passed down through generations as well, just because, you know, that’s, that’s how we were all raised, but it’s, yeah, it’s really a really cool how you figure that out is what’s your process to, to get to that, to the, to those.

Ideas.

Steve Bacon: So I’ll start off by, by sharing our story, just to give your audience a real world example of what we’re talking about here, and then, and I’ll share how I get to it when I was eight years old. So my mom got addicted to crack when I was six months old, I went to 14 different schools growing up.

I was molested as a kid and I didn’t really know who my father was. He wasn’t around and whatever was going on between him and my mother. But when I was eight years, I never forget. There was a knock on my grandmother’s door and this Chico DeBarge looking, dude is standing there and he tells me you coming to live with me.

And I’m like, who the F are you, why am I going to live with you? And I’m looking at my grandma, like you really finna, let me walk out the house with this dude. And where’s my mama. Why she didn’t tell me this man was coming to pick me up. And who are you again? You might. And then he takes me to live with him.

Now, what most parents don’t understand and most people don’t understand is that we have this need for certainty as human beings. And we make everything mean something. And because in the black household, we have this rule or this tradition part of our culture that a child is not supposed to be seen or heard, or a child is supposed to be seen and not.

Which is really some old slaves to be honest, but because we believe that and that a child shouldn’t question adults, they leave the child to come up with their own meanings of what things mean. And again, with whatever little life experience they have. So when we experienced that level of trauma and for eight year old boy to be taking away from his mother with no notice, that is the most trauma that an eight year old boy has ever experienced a.

His mind took a snapshot. My mind took a snapshot of what was causing that, and that was the two women who claimed they loved me the most. And then my mind developed a strategy. Now I learned this all in retrospect, but there a time period, my mind develop a strategy, never trust a woman who says she loves you.

She will leave you and give you up for something. That’s the meaning that eight year old boy took away from this situation that became the foundation for which my relationships were built on. And so when I was 17 years old, I married the first girl who says she loved me. And then I beat her ass until she got the courage to leave.

I’m not proud of that, but it is a part of my story because I couldn’t understand why I was so mean, so angry. So. And saying that she was cheating on me every day when I really had no proof whatsoever. I had it wasn’t something I was consciously thinking. It was just a feeling that I kept having it. And I kept projecting that feeling on her ended.

I realized in retrospect that I wasn’t fighting my wife at the time I was fighting my mother.

And when I went to ask my mother, when I realized that. When I was about 28 years old, I said, my why’d you give me a, why did you do that? I said, I trace that back to what was the foundation for why I was so manipulative and mean and abusive towards women. I was really mad at you. Why did you give me a, and she said, boy, what the hell are you talking about?

And I explained to her what I meant. She said, that’s not what. She said you’re, you’re my sister. And then I found out when my, since my dad was here and your grandmother helped you, daddy tracked your daddy down and helped him file for custody because they thought you should go live with him. Then my grandmother called my mother and convinced her to come drop me off so she could watch me for the weekend, but really she was setting it up so my dad can come get me.

So here I am, 20 years. With the wrong perspective, meaning I just created the worst relationships ever based on a lie. I told myself yeah. For something that never even happened the way I thought it happened. So when I’m talking to my clients and I, and I helped them pull out whatever beliefs and negative thoughts they have, we go find the story to support.

I remember it was Tony Robinson said that a belief is like a table with four legs. The tabletop is the belief, but the legs of the stories. So we call it the belief theory. Court of appeals. You didn’t convict the Joe parents or yourself. Judge, jury executioner. Why you’re not good enough, but the judge was nine years old.

The jury is nine years old and the prosecutor nine years old. And there’s no defense. Right. So how about you bring all of your evidence to my courtroom and I’m poking holes in every last one of them damn stories. So when I’m done, you will feel stupid for ever believing that you weren’t good enough and you weren’t.

Stu Swineford: It sounds like some amazing hard work for people and and really interesting how you, how you break that down. So tell me a little bit about who your, who you’re trying to attract in terms of, of clients.

Steve Bacon: I am looking for black. Who believe what I believe that this generational trauma shit has got to stop because we are doing it to ourselves period, point blank in order for our culture to move forward.

Because here’s what I do know when black people heal. So will the world. You want to know why? Because the number one export out of America is. Think about it, hip hop hell in Japan. Right now they have salons where Japanese do to probably never even met a black person in their whole life is getting their hair Napa fide.

They’re taking their straight here and making a course so they can grow Afros and have fades like white people. That is our number one export out of America. And we’re exporting track. Because we have so many things that we need to deal with culturally that we have not. And it’s because we haven’t had the tools, we were taught stew that we were conditioned, but we were never taught how to recondition, if that makes sense.

Yeah. It’s like you’re being born and you were born with. And you were given the owners, man, and you were not given the owner’s manual to that car, but you had to drive that car your whole life. What happens when that car starts to break down and something starts to go wrong. If you don’t have the owner’s manual, you don’t know where to even look for the problem, let alone how to fix it.

If you do find it. So you leave yourself subject to people who hopefully have men, mechanics who hopefully have the owners may have. And you can trust that they will do right by you because you have no idea what’s going on. And then if you can’t afford them or you don’t trust them, then what do you do when the thing starts breaking down, you find ways to cope and deal with it.

Everybody on here has probably had a bucket or a Pinto before, you know what it takes to keep a car moving because you don’t have the thousand dollars to fix whatever it needs to be fixed, but you know how to keep it moving. That is what the black community has done for 400 years. Because we’ve never gotten the owner’s manual of how to heal ourselves, how the mechanics of the mind works.

We’ve just learned to cope and get along and move along. And that has to stop.

Stu Swineford: Yeah, absolutely. How, how are you getting that message out? What are some of the things that you’re doing right now with, with belief theory, to try to. Make sure that you’re talking to the right people and, and, you know, building a larger base of people who understand what the problem is at least.

Steve Bacon: Well, I’ll tell you what the truth is, is that we’re just now starting to figure that out.

Okay. My coaching for the last seven years has not been geared towards that. Although that has been what I’ve been doing because 90% of my clients were black, even though they were cops and PhDs and addicts and probation and single moms and business owners, most of them were black. And that’s exactly what they dealt with.

It wasn’t until the reason why you got to know me or you come to know me and I knew Townsend was because right around November, I slipped into a depression. Even though I had the greatest year of my life. I don’t know if you’ve heard this story or not, but I had the greatest financial year of my life, but I still slipped into a depression because I was still unsatisfied and unhappy.

And I couldn’t understand why and things started to kind of go downhill. And in that depression, I understood what it meant from reading the book. What is it called the happy pocket full of money. He says, depression comes from suppression of the soul’s desires. So I knew that even though I’m having a great year financially, my soul is still crying for something and I’m not listening.

So I sat down and I wrote, and I wrote 10 pages of whatever it is my soul wanted to express. And that was that manifesto that Townsend read that led to all of this that led to me talking to you, right. And when I committed to that, that, okay, God, this is what I’m going to do because you’ve been chasing me for 10 years, right.

There was a point about eight years ago, I’m at a conference and it’s 5,000 people, random seating. Ms. Guys behind me taps me on the shoulder at the end of the conference. And he says, I have a message. He says, God says it’s time to stop running from him and come home because he has worked for you to do.

And it didn’t trip me out until I looked at the man’s name and his name was the same name as the childhood imaginary friend that I had that used to keep me company in the crack houses that I was dragged to from year to year as a kid. And his name was Myrtle. How many people, you know, named Dan.

Stu Swineford: Exactly. I’ve never met him.

Steve Bacon: Imagine you have this childhood friend, imaginary friend named Marel and then 20 years later, some random dude named Marel shows up, taps you on the shoulder and says, God says, it’s time to come home. He got work for you to do that’s what the last eight years has been. Random messages like that.

And I ran from them until I couldn’t run no more. And then I finally submitted, said, okay, God, this is the vision you just pulled out of me. I will commit every last fiber of my being to making sure this happens before you call me home. And since then, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get that message out.

So I had to burn my old business down to the ground. Which was doing great financially, but I’ve had to burn it down. And right now we’re just in a space where I’m just showing up to wherever I need to show up. And people miracles just keep happening. People keep introducing me to this person and that person and this person and that person, people read my manifesto.

And they’re just like, where do you need help? What can I do? So right now, I’m just showing up and allowing miracles.

Stu Swineford: Well, it seems to be working for you. I mean, I would say that you’ve created that and I think Stephen, Steve Hardison and Townsend would agree that the, that this is a situation that you’ve created for yourself, where you have put yourself out there and are willing to have vulnerable, accessible conversations with a variety of people and, and allow miracles to occur or create those mirrors.

Steve Bacon: Right. And that’s why I want to give a shout out to Steve, Steve Hardison and tells award law because those guys, man have covered to my life in the last two months and really has taken my mind to another level of what’s possible. And Townsend has been knocking out a lot of cobwebs that I thought I didn’t even know were there.

Right. You know, I was just doing some of the homework he gave me right before we hopped on to this recording. And I’m just like, wow, I didn’t, I didn’t realize after 17 years of work on myself, how much, how many cobwebs I still had, but it was, it was little stuff, little stuff from again. And a lot of people don’t understand this that are not in the community, but you got to remember the slave was the, the, the, the way you got a large human being and a hundred of them to follow your, every word and command in feed.

From one, you know, little old white lady got a hundred muscle bound, black men that fear, every look that comes out of her eye there, they learn to break the mind without breaking the body. Does that make sense? Yes. Those traditions and teachings have been passed on for generations that was conducted. And I realized, and what Townsend is, I’m being completely honest with tiny towns in is helping me pull out is that old slave as conditioning, but it’s still in there that I didn’t even know was there.

I, I I’m, cause I’m very transparent. There was a time when Tony first met Townsend, this is what I’m talking about. When I first met Townsend and he started offering, you know, gifts. I should, I would say my coaching session was Steve Hardison was gifted to me by Townsville. And when he asked me, did I want it?

I almost said no. And let me tell you why, because I don’t trust a 45 year old white man to give me shit and not want anything in return because it has not worked like that. Does that mean. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people who are not black or conscious white will not understand that because they’ve never experienced that.

But in our community, white people don’t give black people shit. What, I want something in return or seeing dollar signs somehow. So I’m looking at him going, what do you want from me? That’s literally what I said to him. What do you want from me? I don’t know what you see, and I don’t know what you want.

But you gifted me something right now that I cannot pay back. And he says, why do you feel like you need to pay it back? And I said, because of the law of reciprocity, I said, if somebody give you something, they gonna want something in return of equal or more value. And he says, and you know, you’ve coached with Townsend.

I hate him so much for sadness. He goes, he goes, I want to hit him so bad. He said, I believe you believe that pitch.

Stu Swineford: That does sound like something.

Steve Bacon: I’m like, oh my God. He was like, I believe he believed that the being that you’re being right now, 100% subscribes to that. And I’m just like, first of all, I don’t know what the hell you talking. Second of all. What do you mean you believe? I believe that. And he says your idea of reciprocity is going to keep you from receiving blessings that are God directed because you feel like you can’t pay it back.

Sometimes people will gift you things that there’s no way you can pay it back. And they’re not looking for anything in return because they were instructed. By there being right. And I had that conversation with a friend of mine earlier today on the phone, because he was telling me about something, a favor that another guy wanted.

And he’s like the last thing I did for him, he really didn’t pay that back. And I said, man, I said, it’s crazy. And I told him this story. And I said, because where we grew up.

If somebody gave you something it’s because they want something in return. And I said, I almost blocked a blessing that changed my life because of old conditioning from our neighborhood. That one never to trust white people, it to don’t ever let nobody give you. Without giving them something in return.

So they don’t hold nothing over you, man. I don’t even know. 17 years of working on myself. I didn’t even know that there stuff that deep ingrained in my DNA that needed to be pulled out.

And so I tell people, I said, listen, I thank God for towels. And Wardlaw because he has a free mind. And he, he and Steve Hardison, y’all moving what they move in ways that I just I’ve even had other black people say who read the book and go, oh, if a black man moved like that, he gets. I’m like, damn look how deep rooted it is for us who can’t even read and enjoy the book.

Because the first thing we think is if a black man moved that free, he gets shot. Fuck.

Stu Swineford: So when your mind is changing that perspective, To start changing that, changing that throughout your community.

Steve Bacon: I don’t understand the question.

Stu Swineford: So if you can, if you can help the black community or even just a portion of that community, understand that it, that, that we don’t have to live in this, in this reciprocity.

Kind of world, but we can give freely and accept freely. Does that, is that the first step?

Steve Bacon: No, that is not the first step. That’s more like the 10th step 10 step. Okay. Because I’ll be honest, man. And, and, and I want people who listen to just to receive this. You can’t expect it a lot of times when people teach and they don’t, they’re not afraid.

When they teach it is because they try to speak to people from where they think they should be. Right. And not meeting them where they are. Right. And, and I tell this to people all the time, even well-meaning black folk and white folk, stop trying to stop, trying to stand on your high mountain and tell people they should be up here.

Take your ass to the bottom of the mountain. And show them how to walk up the mountain step by step.

Stu Swineford: Right. It’s jumping back in that hole.

Steve Bacon: Exactly. Jump back in the hole, but you don’t want to do that because you’re too high and mighty. And because you learn being and consciousness, that’s the level you want to come to people at?

They don’t understand that I was listening to a guy earlier talking about that and I’m like, What the fuck you talking about? Like, I know what he’s talking about, but I’m thinking from the mind of the, of the, the, the person that he really wants to reach, and I’m like, what the fuck you talking about being in consciousness and giving freely.

And I see you through me, they don’t understand that. Right. Let’s deal with the basics. How you feel about your mom and daddy, because that’s your self image. Let’s start there. Let me teach you by beliefs. Let me teach you about values. Let me teach you about perception. Let me, you understand. Let me give you the basics of the human mind.

Then once we graduate from I’m not good enough and I’m not worthy and you start to learn how to create yourself because you dealt with all the past bullshit it’s levels, this being stuff it’s amazing. And it’s changing. But bro, that’s level 10 to people who have no idea of what personal development is when I was growing up, personal development was for weirdos and white people.

You laughing, but I’m serious because our thing is, you’re not allowed to show weakness in our name. Right. You’re not allowed to show that there’s something wrong. A friend of mine just sent me a Instagram video of when you tell black parents that you depressed and, and the dude was a comedy sketch and the dude was like, the father walks in and says, you’re depressed.

Yeah, dad, I’m just not feeling so you better get your ass up and depressed them dishes talking about you depressed. That’s what it’s like, we’re not allowed to express our emotions. BMS, suck it up. If I give you something to cry for. Right. And the first thing you want to come talk about as being, making the fuck outta

Stu Swineford: here, right?

Steve Bacon: You better start off with some scripture because that’s where our foundation is. You better start off with the Bible and Jesus, if you want to win this audience,

So you got to meet people where they’re at. I don’t know if I’m too real for your audience, man, but it is what it is. I just tell the truth. I don’t try to sugarcoat anything.

Stu Swineford: I think that’s, I think that’s the way that, that that you should do things. I mean, that clearly is working for for you and your, your audience.

Steve Bacon: Oh, yeah. I’m definitely not for everybody that I offend. And

Stu Swineford: that’s good. I think that, I think that that showing that realness and that, and I’m assuming that you’re, you’re this authentic every everywhere you show up everywhere and allowing that to resonate with, with those people who get it today.

Allowing that to be a little nugget of a little seed that gets planted in the minds of those who maybe aren’t quite ready, you know, who let it sit and let them let, let it, let it grow a little bit. And then come back to you. Are you poor? Are you producing? Are you producing? Material around this. Are you getting this message out there for

Steve Bacon: four people?

Mostly what I’ve done so far since, you know, we’ve shifted our focus and his Facebook lives. I’m still I’m still waiting on instruction right too. And I’m talking about from my highest being. Got it. Yeah. Of what direction he wants to be to go. And it started off with, he gave me the next title of my book and who needed to write it and what was supposed to be in it and how we’re supposed to disseminate it.

And now I just got a commitment from Les brown to write the forward to it. Right. Which is dope. Cause I I’ve, I, I didn’t ask for that. Right. So right now, I’m just, I’m waiting for instruction. So people who are listening to this, you know, take the, you see where I’m at in 10 years, they’re gonna be like, mm, I heard it when it first started.

Yeah.

Stu Swineford: How are the Facebook lives working for you in terms of

Steve Bacon: pretty much how I’ve built my business for the last 10 years, to be honest. And. And it’s because I get on there, I teach, I share stories. I share my own stories that people hit me up and he’s like, Hey what you just said resonated with me.

And I like to talk further about that, or I’ll get booked to come speak somewhere. So Facebook lives have been my bread and butter for man seven years easy.

Stu Swineford: And I’m, I’m guessing that you’re very committed to doing those. An accurate

Steve Bacon: assumption. Yes. But I’m also open to other stuff

Stu Swineford: that, that wasn’t a leading question to derail derail you from doing that.

What I wanted to make sure of was if you have something that is working the best thing to do is to do more of that to start and, and enable that to, you know, To be as big as it possibly can be. A lot of times people are doing something it’s kind of working or it’s working well. And the. Nervous about the fact that they’re not doing something else.

And so then they start doing the other thing and it drops their ability or commitment to, to the first thing was actually working. And then they wonder why, why, why they’re not getting as many conversations going as they used to. And so just making sure that, that your You know, the, that the thing that, that is generating opportunities for you is something that you you’re continuing to do.

Steve Bacon: And yeah, I it’s so funny, you bring that up too, because I learned my lesson with that the hard way, man. Cause I was that shiny object dude. Right. Especially when you get to do Facebook ad or somebody goes and has a huge, you know, week or month or a year in their business and they’re like, I’m using this platform and then you’re just like, oh, I need to go over there.

Right. And. And I, I remember every time I would look at my business and go, why I made no money and I’m like, oh, I stopped doing Facebook lives. And so it just got to the point where I, I beat my head, beat myself over the head enough to know, just stick with Facebook lives.

Stu Swineford: Yeah. Yeah. It’s commitment, consistency.

And, and, and knowing where your audience is, is showing up.

Steve Bacon: Yeah. Cause even when I tried to go to Instagram live, it wasn’t the same. Facebook is just happens to be where most people that I reach are, I think it’s because it’s more of an older audience.

Stu Swineford: Do you typically work with older, older

Steve Bacon: people?

Yeah, my, my every now and again like this weekend, I have a 19 year old flying in from Canada. But most of my audience is between, or my clients are between 30 and 55. Okay.

Stu Swineford: Yeah. And are you boosting your Facebook live stuff or is it just an organic kind of audience that you tend to reach?

Steve Bacon: Okay.

All, all of the marketing stuff. I had to bring on other people for because

Stu Swineford: you’re working with somebody who has your back there. Yes.

Steve Bacon: When, and then once we get. Clear on what our message was going to be, because we didn’t want to waste money because I also done that as well over the years, right. Is just hiring people.

Who’d just be like, well, all right, let’s do this. Let’s boost this and, and, and no return, but it’s because I’ll be honest. I was not being authentic to myself as to who I wanted to serve. I was chasing the money and not the purpose, but once I decided to chase the purpose. All of a sudden opportunities come out of nowhere.

And I was like, oh, okay. Got it.

Stu Swineford: So that’s a pretty, pretty powerful, powerful lesson in shifts that that I think, I think a lot of people could, could benefit from from listening. Well, why don’t you say that one more time when you said it really

Steve Bacon: well. Yeah, I was just saying that it, none of it was working because. I was not being authentic to me.

I was not being authentic to what I was called to do. I was chasing the money. What, who’s the target audience that invest the most? And who’s the, yeah, none of it worked. This is why I didn’t feel right. And that’s why I didn’t work. And even when I did get some success in it, I was not fulfilled. I got some money, but I wasn’t fulfilled.

And then the minute I started being authentic to me and. That mother’s commitment that Steve Hardison talks about when I got mother’s commitment to what my soul was crying for and who my soul wanted to serve all of a sudden, I mean, my wife meets Townsend Wardlaw who introduced me to Steve Hardison have introduced me to all these other people, including you, including a yellow van Zandt who introduced me to this person who introduced me to it’s like, it’s like, God was.

Finally, thank you. Move the hell out the way and let me get to work. It’s like the

Stu Swineford: flood gates.

Steve Bacon: Go sit down. Finally. Thank you. All I needed was your commitment to sit your ass down. I got work to do, which is why it’s called a miracle because it’s inexplicably the way things, the way I ended up on your show right now, there’s no way I could have planned for that to happen.

Great. And so that taught me a huge lesson. Sit down and wait for instructions. And it’s not that you don’t do nothing. It’s you wait for instruction and you know, when you get it, we just ignore it most of the time. Right? It’s the difference between being, you know, on the ground, in the battle, fighting in foxholes and being stressed out and, and sleeping in, in, in, in intense, hoping that everybody’s watching your back because you’re afraid to get shot.

And then being that drone pilot, that’s in a different country on a safe base. Who just gets some instruction and says, here you go. And then they go do it home. And then they go home massive amount of impact, little bit of stress or no stress. That’s what it’s like when you do it, God’s way you can do it your way.

And you’re going to be out there in the trenches, you know, on the front lines and that can get worn out. You might get dead or. You could be a pilot and just do your job. Yeah.

Stu Swineford: How many how many one-on-one clients are you? Are you seeking to work with

Steve Bacon: this year? One-on-one no more than 10. Probably no more than six because what is being planned right now?

I’m going to have a very busy speaking schedule. Okay. And so, and the type of work that I do is extremely intense because when I devote myself to a client, they get all of me. And it’s because I’m, I’m pulling weeds pulled us really deep weeds and dealing with some, some highly emotional individuals Regardless of, again, I have PhD clients who have PhDs in psychology, who I have to do the same pooling of the weeds with.

Right, right. And so it takes so much out of me that I burned myself out in past years, which is why now, you know, Townsend is helping me find a way to do it where I don’t burn myself out. So maybe I can take them. Individually probably no more than six, but I’ll probably host a couple of group sessions this year and a bunch of teaching engagements.

Stu Swineford: Nice. Anything coming up in April that that we can let everybody know about

Steve Bacon: that I know of. Not yet. Oh, trust me to come, but not yet. No nothing in April.

Stu Swineford: I can’t believe that it’s been about an hour since we started talking, this has been so enlightening and so amazing. How can people find out more about you safe

Steve Bacon: right now?

We still have belief theory.com up. If they go there, that is also about to be changed. But for now you can still go to belief theory.com. So we’re in a complete rebuilding and restructuring right now. New website, new. To reflect our true mission, right? And, and I was afraid to go this route for so long, but now my entire brand is shifting to represent truly authentically what I’m after.

And that’s the ending of this generational trauma in my community. So right now people can still go to believe theory about. And they can find my Facebook from there. My Instagram from there I don’t have a Twitter but they can find that Facebook and Instagram and even a link to join our community, but that’s going to change as well.

Stu Swineford: Okay. Well, we’ll make sure we chase that down before the show goes live. That would

Steve Bacon: be great.

Stu Swineford: So I love having conversations. I am all about action. In fact, that’s one of, one of the pieces of my declaration that I’ve created for myself, which is I am unbridled action. So when we have these conversations on the show, I like to ask my guests, if there was one thing that you would have the listeners do after, after hearing our conversation today, what would that thing be?

Steve Bacon: You looking for one word. Nope,

Stu Swineford: one action. You would want people to take,

Steve Bacon: got it. There was a man walking down the street and he saw an old lady looking under a street lamp in the dark. And he said, man, what are you looking for? She said, I lost my keys. He said, well, where did you lose him? She said in the house.

He said, well, why the hell are you outside underneath the street lamp, looking for your keys when you lost them in the house. She said, because it’s better light out.

So the, the one action that I have to tell your listeners is stop looking out everywhere else for answers that only you have. That’s why you can’t find them. Put your big girl panties on and turn inward and deal with shit. It will save you a whole lot more time and effort and money. If you just turn inwards and face yourself.

Because that’s where you lost, whatever it is that you’re looking for.

Stu Swineford: I love it, Steve, that is a great story and a great metaphor and an amazing, amazing action for people to take is so I would encourage everyone to take Steve’s advice here and, and and look, look where the problem really. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

This was super

Steve Bacon: fun. Thanks for inviting me, man. I appreciate it. I did.

Stu Swineford: It was my pleasure. I will talk to you soon and there you have it. Another great episode of relish this. Thanks again for listening. You can find past episodes of the show@relishthis.org. And remember if you liked what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information on. Grab your free copy of my book.

Mission uncomfortable. How nonprofits can embrace purpose driven marketing to survive and thrive. Get your copy now@missionuncomfortablebook.com. Thanks again for listening. Come back next week. Won’t ya.

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Keeping Your Foot On The Gas Even Through The Hard Times With Angela Forster From Tiny Studio

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Episode 56: Remain Relevant By Running Online Events With Dave Jensen From Encompass Event Group

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Remain Relevant By Running Online Events With Dave Jensen From Encompass Event Group

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Episode 57: How To Build Partnerships And Expand Your Mission With Mike Reichert From Wild Bear Nature Center

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How To Build Partnerships And Expand Your Mission With Mike Reichert From Wild Bear Nature Center

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About Mike Reichert

Episode 58: Sharing your Passion With A Wider Audience: PR and nonprofit outreach with Maya Brook From Slow Food Denver

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Sharing your Passion With A Wider Audience: PR and nonprofit outreach with Maya Brook From Slow Food Denver

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About Maya Brook

Episode 59: Manage And Fuel Your Organization’s Growth With Goodworld Co-founder Richie Kendall

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Manage And Fuel Your Organization’s Growth With Goodworld Co-founder Richie Kendall

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About Mike Fye

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