nonstop nonprofit

It’s a universal truth that people love to feel special. We all want to feel like we’re an indispensable part of something. It’s also true that each and every one of us has limitations on our time, money, and attention.

So with these realities coexisting, how can nonprofits interact with supporters on a personal level while not draining them of resources? Katelyn Baughan, nonprofit email marketing expert and consultant to Trevor Project, UNHCR, and Amnesty International, has more than a few tactics to share with Nonstop Nonprofit listeners.

As nonprofit fundraisers, you and I are used to feeling pressure to perform. It’s not uncommon for us to be told that without donations—literally our job, btw—our world will be a darker, sharper place. Katelyn’s antidote emphasizes speaking up during quieter moments, making magic happen in the harsh light of a screen, and elevating everyone’s experience through innovation.

So whether you’re in the thick of your busiest time of year or you’re a year-in-advance planner, Katelyn’s advice in this episode will help you use email to scale impact, retain donors, and align your communications—all while reminding you that you, too, are essential to our brighter tomorrow.

Hard as we try, sometimes the individual gets lost in our fundraising efforts. Beth Fisher is one fundraiser working to change that where she can.

Beth is the Chief Advancement Officer at Mel Trotter Ministries, leading fundraising, development, and donor stewardship for an organization that’s been around—and growing—for over 100 years. In her previous life in software sales, Beth’s superpower was seeing her customers’ needs and selling targeted solutions.

So when she took the reins at MTM, she naturally turned to her clients’ needs, providing them not just with “three hots and a cot”, but dignity as well. Beth quickly recognized that her fundraising efforts also benefitted from that mindset—treating donors as individuals was her key to fundraising success.

Listen in as Beth and Justin Wheeler, Funraise CEO and Co-founder, discuss the overlap of corporate and nonprofit fundraising, the value of nonprofit storytelling, and the importance of the individual in fundraising.

For more info on Mel Trotter Ministries - https://www.meltrotter.org/
For more info on Positive Equation - https://positiveequation.com/

Connect with the show contributors:
Justin Wheeler - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wheelerjustin/
Beth Fisher - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethschrader99/
Dana Snyder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danarsnyder/

After everything that the pandemic has brought, who would have guessed we'd be dealing with this next pandemic outcome: The Great Resignation? Tiffany Keesey, Co-founder of Conscious Culture, joins Justin Wheeler, Funraise CEO and Co-founder, on the  Nonstop Nonprofit podcast with emergency advice to keep your organization from being plagued by this latest crisis.

If you haven't heard the term, The Great Resignation refers to the 4M people quitting their jobs each month in the U.S. since April 2021. There are a lot of reasons so many people are exiting, but one that crops up a lot is company culture.

Tiffany puts it perfectly when she says that perks and policies are not enough to create real change. Justin's a little more blunt, though: "No one's gonna stay for ping pong if they've got a toxic boss." The message here is that you can't plop down a keg and a foosball table and call it culture.

But if it's not happy hour and dogs in the office, what is company culture? Listen in as Tiffany reveals how to tap into your real company culture experts, offers examples of great employer brands, and explains how to stand out in this highly competitive hiring market—especially if you're a smaller nonprofit.

And if you're hiring right now, you're in luck! Nonstop Nonprofit listeners get a discount on Conscious Culture's mini-course Create a Compelling Job Post as well as their free Engagement Survey Guide. Check 'em out!

Confidence is a tricky thing: it's simple to say, to talk about, and to identify, but confidence is difficult to reach, and it's even harder to hold onto. During today's Nonstop Nonprofit, Justin Wheeler, Funraise CEO and Co-founder talks to a fundraiser-turned-executive-coach whose confidence unlocked an almost 4X increase in her nonprofit's revenue. 

Justin's conversation with Mallory Erickson goes back to his time as a fundraiser. For context, while these days it's pretty common to follow loads of skilled specialists on social media, back then many fundraisers learned on the job... they weren't necessarily taught the stuff that Mallory brings to the table, and it's a shame—fundraising is so much easier when you view your nonprofit's value through a funder's lens.

Speaking of value, that's the key to confidence we mentioned earlier. Hearing Mallory lay it out, you'll see that it's all connected: when the value your nonprofit offers aligns with a funder, the dynamics of your conversation are fundamentally shifted.

Listen in as Mallory and Justin discover assets you never knew you had, smash the power dynamics of outdated fundraiser-funder relationships, and try on different lenses to reveal your true confidence as a fundraiser.

P.S. Access Mallory's Power Partners intro course for free today!
 

Finally, Justin Wheeler, Funraise CEO and Co-founder and bad-ass fundraiser, met his match. This podcast guest is someone so invested in nonprofits, so into impact, so devoted to the sector, that he was barely able to scrape the surface of the topics on his agenda. Jarrett Ransom, aka The Nonprofit Nerd, is the Founder and CEO of nonprofit coaches The Rayvan Group and co-host of The Nonprofit Show. And today, Nonstop Nonprofit is bringing the show to her.

Justin prepares for every podcast and brings with him an agenda—points to hit and questions to ask—but Jarrett blew his agenda out of the water with compelling arguments, perspective shifts, and just straight-up data. It's clear that she's on the cutting-edge of nonprofit trends and she's used to these types of trailblazing topics.

Subjects on deck today: identifying our biggest challengers, using history to inform the future, women in philanthropy, corporate competition, and—buzzword alert!—nonprofit sustainability, capacity building, and infrastructure. Oh, and cute stories of kids' generosity, of course.

This is gonna be fast, furious, and full of unicorn moments, so buckle in and listen as Jarrett and Justin nerd out about the good, the bad, and the future of the nonprofitsphere.

Pop quiz, listeners: How much greater is the risk of suicide that our veterans and service members face versus their peers who haven't served?

Before we answer that, let us introduce you to the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast guests today: Nick Black and Tina Starkey. Nick is the founder and CEO of social fundraising solution GoodUnited and he also founded powerhouse nonprofit Stop Soldier Suicide. Tina, Stop Soldier Suicide's Chief Growth Officer, brings a wealth of experience in the social realm, coming from the American Cancer Society as their Sr. Director of Social Marketing.

By uniting their abilities and planting a flag in the sand, in 2020, Stop Soldier Suicide raised $4M and gained 100k new donors through Facebook fundraising alone, allowing them to shrink the gap that stretches between soldiers at risk for suicide and our national population. It's a big, bold goal: Service members and veterans have a 50% higher rate of suicide than the national average here in the U.S.

One of our biggest takeaways from this conversation is how Stop Soldier Suicide's big, bold goal completely flipped their perspective. Like any other nonprofit, the founders saw a need and wanted to help—but when Nick started thinking concretely and looked at their capacity for impact, he realized that deeper donor relationships weren't just mission-critical, they were the key to being Mission Accomplished.

During this conversation, Nick and Tina are the embodiment of expert-yet-excited nonprofiteers innovating on the fly, applying expansive strategies targeted to very specific donor segments, and infusing their work with an urgency that blows past the reservations that often hold donors back, offering them a chance to invest in the lives of those who have invested everything in our liberty.

Before we dive in today, we've got two questions for listeners: "Have you ever heard of the Google Ad Grant?" and "Would it positively impact your nonprofit if you could reach more people searching the internet?" Those are the two questions that Nonprofit Megaphone CEO Grant Hensel asked hundreds of nonprofits in 2016.

It's kind of a trick question! Grant explains that the answer to the second question IS the first question, but when 75% of the nonprofits he spoke with had never heard of the Google Ad Grant, that obvious disconnect became the catalyst he needed to build Nonprofit Megaphone, a marketing agency focused solely on helping nonprofits get, use, and optimize Google Ad Grants.

So settle in and listen in to a true master at his craft. Grant will explain what a Google Ad Grant is, at what stage of growth your nonprofit should begin focusing on the grant, and how to identify opportunities that can function as a contributor to your cause as well as a revenue driver—and potentially even a source of long-term support for your nonprofit.

Finally, the bottom line is that Google Ad Grants are about the outcome, not the spend, and Nonprofit Megaphone has the experts to maximize that outcome as well as the data to back up their work.

Before we start the conversation, let us give you a little context: about a month ago, in January 2021, Funraise CEO and Co-founder, Justin Wheeler, put up a relatively controversial post on his LinkedIn page talking about the 100% model. Specifically, he wrote, 

"This won't be popular, but the 100% model charities adopt is broken.

At best, it makes a donor feel good about giving to you.
At worst, it perpetuates the idea that overhead spend is bad.

In reality, the reason why nonprofits that have adopted this model are growing fast is that they are spending MORE on overhead, not less."

While Justin stands by that perspective, he also loves open and productive discourse between passionate people, so when Brett and the team at New Story (an awesome team, btw) responded to that post with some solid counterpoints and a suggestion that we bring the discussion here, to the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast, Justin was all about it.

Normally, this is where we'd sum up the episode in a sentence or two, but today we're going to ask that you listen to Justin's conversation with Brett as they discuss his take on the 100% funding model and Brett shares why it's the foundation for New Story's team, mission, and vision. Afterward, Justin would love to hear your take on these ideas—don't be shy! Hit him up on his LinkedIn page or email him directly at justin@funraise.org and get your voice heard!