Using the Whole Whale - A Nonprofit Podcast

Train Derailment & Environmental Fallout (news)

Train Derailment & Environmental Fallout In East Palestine Leads To Political & Legal Frenzy

The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio has led to a frenzy of political activity, criticisms, lawsuits, investigations, advocacy demands, and conspiracy theories as the fallout from the derailment continues to maintain prominence in the national conversation. The derailment has prompted criticism of both the Biden and former Trump administrations, ensnarled politicians like Gov. WeWine and Secretary Buttigieg, and has led to numerous lawsuits, criticism of the EPA, and many other activities. One nonprofit law firm We The Patriots USA (WTP USA), a nonprofit public interest law firm, “will host a press conference in Akron to discuss litigation against the Environmental Protection Agency” according to local reporting from WKYC. Americans are increasingly sensitive to environmental disasters and this incident could refocus public scrutiny on environmental regulation, and potentially spur increasing attention toward nonprofit environmental advocacy and intervention efforts.

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Summary

• Many Ukrainian refugees in US are sponsored by ordinary Americans | USA TODAY
• IRS working with nonprofit New America to deliver online direct file tax system study | FedScoop
• The nonprofits accelerating Sam Altman's AI vision | TechCrunch 
• Together We Rise becomes Foster Love

 

Is February for Fraud? (news)

 

Project Veritas CEO Ousted By Board Of Directors

 

James O’Keefe, founder and CEO of the conservative organization Project Veritas has been ousted by the group’s board of directors, according to reporting from The Washington Post and other outlets. O’Keefe was ousted on concerns that his antics threatened the organization's IRS 501(c)3 tax-deductible status, according to a memo released by the board. O’Keefe alleges that he was unfairly ousted in what, according to reports, might be a power struggle within the organization. Regardless, O’Keefe has been called “cruel” by some former employees and has been alleged to spend money in lavish ways that threaten the organization's longevity. Project Veritas is known for its aggressive “sting operation” videos against targets—usually progressive, liberal, or otherwise mainstream organizations, campaigns, or media outlets. The organization’s 501(c)3 status prohibits political operations or the use of operational expenses for private benefit. Project Veritas raised $21 million in donations according to its most recent filing. O’Keefe allegedly spent $14,000 on a private chartered flight and upwards of $150,000 for private drivers over the previous 18 months in a letter released by the board.

 

 

• Mormon church, affiliated nonprofit to pay $5 million to settle SEC charges alleging disclosure failures | CNBC
• Former FTX Executive’s Charity Generated Profits From Employee Token Prices | WSJ
• A Christian Ministry Promised An Obamacare Alternative. The FBI Says Its Leaders Pocketed $4 Million And Left ...| Forbes
• How Sean Penn’s Charity CORE Became a Money Mess | Bloomberg.com 

Earthquake Devastation In Turkey & Syria (news)

Devastation In Turkey & Syria As Earthquake Exacerbates Ongoing Crises In Region

A devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria last Wednesday, in a region already at the center of the world’s most pressing humanitarian crises. As of writing, the Associated Press reports a death toll surpassing 33,000. The New Humanitarian reports that the region has already been torn apart by war, conflict, economic crises, and a refugee crisis as the Syrian civil war has left much of Northwest Syria without a functioning government, instead controlled by militias, rebel factions, and other groups including Turkish and Kurdish forces. The on-the-ground reality has made moving aid and emergency response resources across the border extremely difficult. Yet, in some areas, NGOs and aid groups are the only form of search and rescue and disaster response resources available. Freezing temperatures and already haphazard infrastructure for those in Syria have made already dire situations worse. Across the border in Turkey, the government’s response has been seen as lackluster as the death toll rises. Experts warn the region will need substantial, long-term, ongoing aid and resources beyond that of typical natural disasters. Consider supporting relief efforts through organizations like Americares.
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Summary

• Jesus Super Bowl Commercial Connected to Anti-LGBTQ, Anti-Abortion Group  | Newsweek 
• Why The Pat Tillman Super Bowl Segment Made People Angry | BuzzFeed News
• S.F. nonprofit scandal: Lawsuit alleges head of troubled homeless provider spent funds on lavish lifestyle | San Francisco Chronicle 

How to Personalize for Purpose on Your Website | Optimonk

We discuss different ways to increase leads on your site through personalization with the Head of Partnerships from Optimonk, Eric Melchor.

 

Website Personalization is the human-centric approach to CRO that focuses on the customers' needs first. It is about creating more relevant customer journeys that are unique, remarkable, and meaningful on a personal level. A journey that starts with a personalized welcome message, which is improved by relevant product messaging, and ends with an irresistible offer, tailored to each customer.

In our Personalization Bootcamp, I’ll give you a deep dive into the art and science of website personalization. I’ll show you how to use website personalization to grow your subscriber list, get more leads, and boost the ROI of all your marketing activities – all at the same time!

 

Transcript

 

[00:00:00] Track 3: Welcome to the using the Whole Whale podcast, where we learn from leaders about new ideas and digital strategies making a difference in the social impact world. This podcast is a proud production of Whole Whale a B Corp digital Agency. Thank you for joining us. Now let's go learn something.

[00:00:27] Track 1: This week on the podcast we have Eric Melcor from OptiMonk. And as I understand, OptiMonk helps brands sort of personalize create, custom experiences on this site so that they can, uh, make more relevant content. And he is the partnerships and personalization ambassador. Beyond that, uh, Eric, uh, is big in, uh, European startups as a podcast host.

[00:00:57] He is a self-proclaimed mediocre tennis player and also, uh, passed founded fly movement.org. Uh, a nonprofit focused on, uh, I guess youth health and, and tracking them. And this was based in Texas. So Erica, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for.

[00:01:16] eric_melchor: Hey, George. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having.

[00:01:20] Yeah. And I will say it was, uh, you know, it's interesting how various guests find their way here, and in this case, I have to hand it to you. Uh, you wore me down on email.

[00:01:29] email.

[00:01:29] honestly, and the way I'll say this, the way you did it was very clever because, you know, after a number of these, I'll just be honest, they get a lot of random, Hey, look at our software.

[00:01:39] George: Look at our software. , you actually did the homework. Listen to a podcast and then ask me, uh, the following

[00:01:45] eric_melchor: following

[00:01:45] George: how does

[00:01:46] eric_melchor: does

[00:01:47] George: moon cut his hair? To which I had to see the answer and it was, he eclipses it. Um, perfect. I mean, it's just per, I was like, damn it. He has my attention now. Ah, and clearly that's your job, getting people's attention and then moving that toward a goal, a conversion.

[00:02:07] Track 1: Can you tell me a little bit. Your work and your approach.

[00:02:13] eric_melchor: Yeah. Well, George, I, I guess a question for you. Have you ever gotten a handwritten letter before?

[00:02:19] George: I have gotten a handwritten letter before from not

[00:02:22] eric_melchor: not

[00:02:22] George: mom, but I have gotten handwritten runs from my mom as well.

[00:02:26] eric_melchor: And it pro, you probably felt delighted, right? You probably, it gave you a sense of importance. Right, that feeling. And so with Opti Monk, uh, we try to give marketers the tools that they need to give that feeling of delightfulness and importance to their website visitors in real time. like you mentioned, we are a website personalization platform, uh, that allows you to create different messages for different segments, and those segments can be. like your v i P donors, maybe they are new visitors to your website who, uh, you know nothing about. Maybe they're visitors from a specific channel, maybe like a, a volunteer website or maybe somebody who just made a donation. And so what we do is, uh, give marketers the opportunity and the tools. Very easy to do. By the way, it's mostly a drag and drop interface, and you don't need to have any coding experience, but to just take a step back and, and, and ask yourself, okay, if I was in this visitor's shoes and if I was a person that didn't know about my ngo, what is a good experience for that person? Or if I just made a donation, what would be a. experience for a post donation. and once you have the answers to those questions, then we give you the, uh, the ability to craft that experience, uh, in real time for your website, for those, for your audience, for those visitors.

[00:03:50] Track 1: and I'm curious. We'll be shifting our, our conversation to how, how we get those conversions and different tactics, uh, for, for doing that. I'm curious though, how, how that's achieved, given the clamp down on third party cookies and the ability to like, understand who someone is, right? When someone shows up to the site, like, I go there, you don't know that I am George, you know that I am maybe coming from California because of my IP address.

[00:04:15] What are the ways that I am beginning to customize somebody? Who they are versus what.

[00:04:23] eric_melchor: Yeah. It's all dependent on the type of browser they use. Um, so it's, it's really based on cookies. If they're using Safari, we will recognize that data for. Unfortunately for maybe just seven days, but if they're using Google Chrome, then we can actually know who they are and recognize 'em for up to about a year. so it's dependent on the browser that, the browser that's somebody using, and it's all based on cookies.

[00:04:48] Track 1: Gotcha. are, I mean, do you have concerns? We actually just released an episode of how the, you know, cookie apocalypse as we're joking and how cookies are just gonna get mowed over by updates. You know, obviously we've already seen it in Apple and the land of Apple, uh, but they could be coming for browsers like Chrome, you know?

[00:05:10] eric_melchor: How

[00:05:10] How.

[00:05:11] do you view that as, you know, a shift in the landscape of personal.

[00:05:16] landscape, uh, we kind of welcome it because we are investing a lot in zero party data and it's, it's really actually, and lemme just take a step back. What is zero party data? Zero party data is the data that's actually based on directly from your visitor. And so if, if you have somebody that comes to your website, you know nothing about them, maybe you just have like a, a nice message for them that just says, Hey, we wanna make this experience as pleasurable as possible for you, can you just let us know?

[00:05:47] Are you somebody interested in volunteering? Are you an individual donor? Are you maybe a corporate donor or something else? And once they, they make an answer, then you already know a little bit about that person. and you could probably take 'em to the part of the website that's most valuable to them. But you can also, once they made that answer, you kind of tag them and then put them into a segment that can also be carried over to your email marketing programs and initiatives as well. And so a lot of our, the brands who use Opti Monk really take advantage of our, um, what we call conversational message. And you know this, like I mentioned there, there's different ways to start that conversation, but one of the most popular ways is just have a message that appears, uh, when somebody goes on your website, and again, it's asking. What are you interested in? You know, can you tell us who you are? You know, it's, it's, it's basically like a welcome and, and really trying to hold that person's hand and just take 'em to the part of the website that makes sense for them. And so we're not relying too much on. level data because a lot of this shift has been over towards how do you start that conversation? How do you get that engagement? How do you start those micro engagements so where you can start letting the person know that you're there to educate them, provide value, and ho their hand?

[00:07:06] And that's where we're seeing a shift toward a lot of the top e-commerce brands. Start doing that at the very beginning,

[00:07:13] Track 1: Gotcha. So it's a chat interface or it's a popup, or it's a form somewhere that says, what are you up to?

[00:07:21] eric_melchor: Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a big opportunity for NGOs because NGOs, in my opinion, most of them are focused on that. Do donate now button. think 99% of NGOs you go to, that's the main call to action. It's donate now and you really have to look for, uh, where to sign up for the newsletter. I, I mean, I was doing a little bit of research this morning, for example, world Wildlife Dot. Had a hard time finding out where to subscribe to. The newsletters. You gotta go at the very bottom and there's like a little text link that says subscribe. Same thing with charity water.org and another, uh, NGO called st baldricks.org. Right? It's like they're hiding it. For some reason, they're hiding that, that part of what could be a really good experience because not everybody just like in the, in the for-profit. everybody is purchase ready. And when it comes to NGOs, not everybody is ready to make a donation right there and then. so I think they're missing out on the opportunity to collect or basically try to get somebody's email so you can continue that conversation, tell them your story, tell them more about you, so when they are ready to make a donation, they can go back to your website and do just that.

[00:08:32] So it it. there's very easy things that NGOs can do now to actually grow their subscriber list. Uh, and I could share a few of those, you know, with you during our conversation.

[00:08:43] Track 1: Well, that's great. I think we are on the same team when it comes to believing that the, the, the smartest ask the lowest friction, highest yield play for social impact organizations. is around getting that email, that permission to communicate, to borrow from Seth Code. And that permission to communicate list is that first and most important asset because again, not just for the purposes of donation, but for awareness, identity alignment, for social change, you need that communication bridge.

[00:09:19] And it's one that you own, you know, as, uh, as far as it goes. You don't own that Twitter. , you don't own that LinkedIn, like you don't own anything built on somebody else's.

[00:09:35] eric_melchor: Yeah. Do you know how powerful that email is? And so years ago, God, it's been almost 10 years, but I created an NGO back in Houston, uh, and I ran it for five years. Ended it in 2018, and, um, when I ended it, I stopped sending out emails or updates about the initiative. I, I went back into MailChimp and I looked at my list and I, I was doing something that was related to, to that NGO years ago, and I thought it'd be great to just kind of let people know what I was doing. I sent in a campaign out, literally four weeks ago to that list that I have not communicated with in over five years, and my open rate was above 30. And so it is so powerful where just like you said, it's like those people, they're not necessarily following you on Instagram or maybe Twitter or TikTok, or maybe they are, but whatever you own that, that is like an asset that even if you don't use it, you know, on a consistent basis, you should.

[00:10:36] You definitely should, over time you could actually send out a campaign with a thoughtful headline, you know, good educational, valuable content, and you're, you're still gonna get eyeballs. So it's very important. It's the, it's the most important thing you can do, as you said.

[00:10:54] All right, So

[00:10:55] let's jump into it. Uh, and maybe we can go

[00:10:58] can

[00:10:58] back and forth with ideas. Cause I really wanted to, to generate a little bit of value for the folks listening in terms of what they should be doing. And I love talking about this in q1, where you should be building your list, you know? Planting, planting the seeds before the tree, digging the well before you're thirsty.

[00:11:16] Track 1: Insert metaphor here for here. Give me one of your more clever ideas for acquiring emails as a social impact organization. What do you got?

[00:11:28] eric_melchor: Yeah, I mean, this one, this one to me is a no-brainer, and it's called, we call it sort of an exit intent popup. so e-commerce brands use this. If somebody's trying to leave the website and maybe they had something in their cart and it's like a little popup message that reminds them, Hey, you know, these, these are the items that are in your shopping cart, or, Hey, before you leave, you know, here's like a 10, 10% off coupon or something. But if you're a, a nonprofit, can use the same tactic. I mean, anybody. When they leave your website or they hit the uh, uh, the back button on the brows button, uh, just have like a little popup message that just says, Hey, do you wanna stay in the know and get our emails? And just have that little message there, appear when they are trying to leave your website.

[00:12:13] And we see on average that that will give you email subscribers anywhere in the range of eight to 12%, which is actually much higher than trying to get somebody's email at the very. When you really don't know anything about them and they haven't even started browsing your website or clicking around. Um, so that's like one thing that I would highly recommend that NGOs start testing or experimenting with.

[00:12:38] Track 1: and I love the fact that you put the caveat exit intent. Uh, I get very nervous when I see nonprofits throwing a popup in the, uh, time to first screen and interrupting the content, uh, layout and risking content layout shifts of the site load, which is a fancy way of saying it. Don't. Piss off Google with your pop-ups cuz you'll be hurting more than you are helping.

[00:13:03] So yeah, I'm, uh, I'm on board with the exit 10.

[00:13:06] eric_melchor: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, another idea,

[00:13:11] Track 1: Go. Oh yeah. What I.

[00:13:12] eric_melchor: Okay, another idea. And I'm on, I'm, I'm on the same page with you. I do not wanna show any popups during this entire experience what, what we have in this, in, in, in, in this platform. And I'm sure other platforms have the same thing as, as what we call a teaser. And a teaser is just like a little message that can fit like in the lower left-hand corner of your website.

[00:13:33] And it's like a little message that just says, Hey, get our emails to stay in the know, you know? And it. It doesn't, it doesn't really stand out, but it does catch attention. Um, and if somebody wants to, if somebody's curious and they wanna click on that to see more information than they can, and once it's clicked on, then obviously, uh, like a pop-up would appear and it says, you know, you know, get our newsletters to stay in the know.

[00:13:59] Please enter your name and email address right there. So that's probably the second thing that I would recommend. After the x and intent popup message,

[00:14:08] George: I like it. Uh, well, I think I like it. I want to, I wanna see it, see it in

[00:14:12] eric_melchor: For

[00:14:12] George: know, it, I feel like there can be a bit of a, , um, malaise that sits in with layout based email asks, right? They're like, oh, just stick it in your foot or stick it in your head or stick it in the sidebar. You know, that that sort of basic block and tackle of like, are, is it around there?

[00:14:28] And then like, eventually the, the person that's amazing, they can just sort of have screen blindness to these things. Uh, and so, you know, I feel like some things can get lost.

[00:14:36] eric_melchor: screen.

[00:14:37] George: Um one I really like that I kind of go to is, uh, uh, various ideas framed around a content locker being. Here is a bit of information for free, but here is the entire list of 101 dma, and if you want the entire list of 101 DMA, hand over your email and we will give it to you right here.

[00:14:57] eric_melchor: email. Yeah, I, I mean if that works, then great. You can probably, you know, continue using that. I didn't think of that, of that one for NGOs. Um, but what's important though, I think no matter what is that you have the right message for the right target, right? And so if you have specific landing pages and you know that, hey, on these landing pages, uh, it's probably a good opportunity to try and capture somebody's email address for somebody who is not yet ready to make a donation. but we don't wanna lose them. Um, and so on those specific pages, then you. know, present some sort of content, that could be very appealing, such as, hey, if you wanna get the a hundred list of 101 dalmatians, you know, sign up here and we'll, we'll get it to you.

[00:15:41] So I think there's key landing pages that maybe are appropriate for that.

[00:15:45] Track 1: All right. What else?

[00:15:47] eric_melchor: Um, well, I mean, to be honest, I mean, those are the two tactics that I would try. First obviously donate. Now is, is the main call to action for NGOs, but the exit intent, the teaser pop up, and then the right message will be the other thing that I think is very, very, uh, important and the right message. If an NGO is doing any sort of like paid me to advertising maybe on Facebook ads, and so you have traffic come into your website and you. these people never heard of you and they didn't come in through, you know, organically, but they came in through a paid ad. Then on that landing page would be another opportunity to where you could have very targeted messaging for those visitors dependent on the ad. And so if that ad. That messaging that was on the ad itself make it very appealing and make sure that it's, it's the same sort of messaging or value proposition that's on the headline of that landing page. And I think once you have that, then it's, it's, it's much easier to try and get the, um, the email, uh, the email ask, uh, once you have your ad aligned with your landing page headline. And so that would, that would be the third tactic

[00:17:00] Track 1: I'm glad you mentioned the value proposition because along the way you, you mentioned you, you have a new, uh, a newsletter pop up saying like, get the newsletter from us. And that's one of those like, sort of like triggering things for me when I see an organization trying to make their unique selling proposition, Hey, their user.

[00:17:20] George: Would you like another email in your in. , do you know? Are people, if you walk around being like, you know what? Do you need me to hit you in the hand with a hammer? Cuz I have one. I'll do it.

[00:17:32] You need another email in your inbox?

[00:17:33] eric_melchor: inbox.

[00:17:34] George: So I like that you said value proposition. Can you tell me

[00:17:39] eric_melchor: compensation about

[00:17:41] George: approach?

[00:17:41] Anything maybe the product does, or what you've seen for message testing

[00:17:45] eric_melchor: investing

[00:17:46] George: getting away from? I will say the dreaded, like you need another.

[00:17:51] eric_melchor: Yeah. Um, humanizing the copy, the brands that we work with, those that tend to have the higher conversion rates in terms of getting email subscribers are the ones where the copy is, uh, is humanized.

[00:18:06] And what I mean by that, like off the top of my head, I think really good emails.com, they've gotta. And it says something like, hey, sorry to be an AHO and interrupt your experience here, you know, But I mean, it's just, it's just a really good copy that captures your attention you end up reading the entire message and, uh, you know, it's got this, it's got this humorous component, human touch, you know, that it wasn't like standard copy and paste corporate type messaging.

[00:18:36] So if you can do anything. Maybe could put a, make somebody laugh and, uh, you know, that, oh wow, this person, you know, or this organization, uh, they're trying to, you know, human humanize a this approach, this human-centric approach, uh, that works well too.

[00:18:55] Track 1: There's a term in, in marketing, communications and copywriting. Um, grabbing a, a swipe file and creating a swipe file. And this is just a, a funny way of saying like, , you should go around and shop for anytime you see something like that, something clever, a good framing in and around, adjacent or even not adjacent communication and, and, and save it and sort of prime your mind with ways of doing that because I think you're, you're right, you need to have something that breaks the third wall.

[00:19:29] Something that stops the normal train. Consume and move. Uh, and so, you know, I dare say interrupt, but rather entertain is a, a good framing and a good approach. And, and too often just because a nonprofit works on serious issues doesn't mean they always need to be serious. There, there's a line there. Um, and I think it's possible to skate on both sides.

[00:19:59] and you know, your point, I don't know, would work on a, you know, world animal protection being like, sorry to f and interrupt here. You know, we were busy with this tiger, but get on this email. Uh, you know, you wanna be careful. But, uh, when it comes to, when it comes to AB testing though, because we're gonna come up with a clever idea.

[00:20:18] Cool. Does it work? Can you tell me a bit about your approach to AB testing messages?

[00:20:26] eric_melchor: Yeah, I mean, that's what we recommend for all brands to do. It's very easy, e very easy to do within our platform. Uh, I'm not sure if you knew this, George, but Google is suning Optimizly. I think

[00:20:38] George: Ah, don't

[00:20:39] Track 1: get me started on the number of things. Google is sunset. That has me infuriated number one, universal analytics, number two. Is optimized like number three is just the fact that they're rebranding Data Studio as Looker, cuz they got Looker and now they're just getting rid of Data Studio. But it's like pretty much the same functionality.

[00:20:56] But I'm, you know what, Google, just stop it.

[00:21:00] eric_melchor: Yeah. It, yeah.

[00:21:02] George: Rant.

[00:21:02] Track 1: End. Rant. Continue.

[00:21:05] Before I interrupted.

[00:21:06] eric_melchor: Yeah, but that, that's the main thing that you should be testing. You could test headlines, you know, with AB testing. With the messaging, like for popups, asking for an email subscriber. You can test different popups that have a different image, different copy, or maybe even the different popup itself, maybe an exit and 10 popup versus another side message popup.

[00:21:24] There's all kinds of ab testing that you can do within our platform, and, uh, you can see, you know, the results in real time also with the degree of statistical. Uh, significance as well. You know, if it's at least 90% or better, we show that too. Um, as as well. But, uh, the humorous approach, I mean, how did I get your attention, George?

[00:21:45] You know, y I sent an email and I don't think I got a response and I followed up with, uh, with the joke, right? And so it works if that is your person. You know, if that is, if you're being authentic and you're being genuine, it works, right? And so if you're an, or if you're an organization and you're very professional and very corporate, like it's probably not gonna work If you, you tr first of all, it's not even gonna get past compliance and legal.

[00:22:14] They're not , they're not even gonna allow that. But it really works. If that is your personality type, and I, I would say that I'm able to get a response back to more than 90% of people that who don't know who I am, but I end up sending them, you know, a code email or something, and I add a touch of humor, because. people under, people wanna work with people they like. And if you can make somebody laugh, then you're, that's, that's half the battle already. They're like, oh wow. You know, this guy put a smile on my face. And it's the same thing works with, we're trying to get somebody's email, maybe even trying to get somebody to donate.

[00:22:51] Right. And it's engaging, it's like a fun micro engagement that I don't see brands take advantage of, enough in this day. And.

[00:23:03] Track 1: Well, certainly in, in your approach, like look, you're, you are proof, proof to that statement right now, right? You got through I'd say a fairly high barrier of me ignoring the heck out of everything that comes in, uh, to my attention, the. Point though also as, as a tactic, you know, if you are doing that type of cold outreach, which, you know, fundraisers and communications folks do, when you're trying to get the attention of the c s r director at so-and-so, when you're trying to get Yeah, just a conversation at maybe the, the, the grant manager at what you callit trust, I think going back to what is your value proposition and how are you positioning who you are and what it is like humor has.

[00:23:47] Um, and it communicates more than maybe we, we realize what I enjoy talking with this person. Does this person both see the cause, see the issue, see the world. And you know, how, you know, how humans really do orient around humor. And I think is, is undersold in, in what I see around social impact communication and certainly just as a tactic.

[00:24:09] I think there's a lot to borrow. I think there's a lot to borrow here from, you know, I'll, I'll see this, this tactic more from, you know, folks that are, we'll call it SMILE dialing and emailing

[00:24:21] George: for,

[00:24:22] Track 1: for attention, but there's a lot I think nonprofits could borrow. What do you think about that?

[00:24:28] eric_melchor: Absolutely. Um, when I was at Bonura and people would come on board for like a free trial, you know, all of us, we would try to send, uh, a personal video. And I found that once I started telling people jokes, specifically like cheesy dad jokes, like, Hey, when does a joke become a dad joke? When it becomes apparent, 20% of people would respond with a video of their own and tell me a dad. You know, and , it just, it just really, it just really broke down Barriers started the conversation and the conversion rates compared to just sending anybody a personal video and just saying, Hey, hi, welcome to have you on board. Um, it blew those, you know, through the roof. I mean, significantly higher when you, when you try to add humor.

[00:25:14] And I do the same thing on LinkedIn too. When I connect with somebody and it's somebody that I do wanna engage with, you know, if I just send them, uh, a really nice message, even with a little dad joke or whatever. I actually get a lot of responses back. People are sending me jokes as well. So, uh, I think it, if you could put a smile on somebody's face, um, it just really opens the door for further communication, just as it did with you, you and myself here. Um, and that kind of clever, that kind of humorous approach. Really works well for any sort of organization that is trying to start that conversation, that initial conversation, uh, whether it be a customer, a potential donor, maybe somebody that they just wanna continue that communication with in the form of a newsletter or email.

[00:25:57] And it works, you know, it, it works. It's been working for me over the past three, four years. And, uh, I've had nothing but great, you know, great results from it and created lots of different friendships, relationships, and contacts, uh, because of that.

[00:26:14] Well there you have, we had, we had to get you to minute 26 of this podcast.

[00:26:18] podcast.

[00:26:19] but there it is. There's the gem for you. You can stop listening. Dad jokes. Dad jokes convert. Simply put, you could stop listening now, or maybe there's more, but there's probably not, uh, I, you're, you're just talking to somebody who has taken great pride in the fact that we index, I think,

[00:26:35] think.

[00:26:35] positions, whatever, one, two, or three in the top, top few for non-profit jokes.

[00:26:42] George: Um, because I thought it was funny and I just put a bunch of dad jokes as non-profit. Simply because, uh, simply because, but getting back to

[00:26:52] eric_melchor: getting

[00:26:52] George: idea of AB testing, I think this is critical, uh, because just setting it and forgetting it,

[00:26:57] eric_melchor: it,

[00:26:57] George: uh, is betraying the point of doing the work in the first place. Do you have any stories or anecdotes or testimonies of being like, you know, I did

[00:27:07] eric_melchor: I

[00:27:07] George: thing and then suddenly the conversion rate doubled.

[00:27:10] eric_melchor: Right? That dream of like two x it, because here's the power. and I don't think we, we get it.

[00:27:16] it.

[00:27:16] When you double a conversion rate, you have doubled your effective ad spend. You have doubled the efficacy of all of the hours of work you put into writing content. You've doubled the downstream net income that comes from the value per email.

[00:27:35] Track 1: It, it is so. and it takes sort of so little time, but it is so overlooked and I like, I try to frame it in different ways, but do you have, what is your stump speech on this? Do you have any stories?

[00:27:47] eric_melchor: Yeah. Uh, I remember when, again, back to the personal video and welcoming somebody that, that was coming for free trial for Bonura. I, um, I started experimenting with after I said the dad joke, right, where we could tell if it was like a SaaS company or if it was an ngo. Or if it was an e-commerce, uh, company, uh, or if it was like an agency or something else. if we were, if we knew that information, um, we would see it before we would send out the video. And what I would do is the call to action would be specifically for. That specific industry. And we had case studies. So for example, uh, if you were an agency, we had case studies about agency owners who started using bargi and they were able to get more clients and more demo calls, uh, because they were sending out personal videos if you were in the education space.

[00:28:42] We had case study on a university that started using uro and uh, they saw that application rates started. Went up like 25% because they were sending out personal videos to potential new students, uh, at the university. And so once I started including a specific call to action that was tied to that industry in the, in the video that I was sending out. the conversion rates, but more than double, I mean, we were seeing clickthrough rates go from, on average, from like 15% to like over 35, 40 5%. And we knew that we had a winner right there just because we recognized who they were. and once we knew, were able to recognize who they were, then, you know, we could insert content that was most appealing for them.

[00:29:26] In the case of a. Right. AB testing, you know, different headlines or different value propositions for the different, uh, visitors that are coming in from different segments. And so with a platform, with the personalization platform, it should have the ability to trigger a different headline, a different copy, a different image, or a different graphic.

[00:29:50] Based on the source. So if you want to, if you're doing, you know, a lot of visitors, you have a lot of visitors from Instagram or maybe Facebook, you can actually show them a different message, um, on that landing page. But even better do an AB test where you have two different messages trying to appeal to visitor visitors.

[00:30:08] Or maybe you don't even want to a ab test the headline. Maybe you just have a regular experience. But for 50% of the visitor, visitor. you're asking them a survey. And on that survey you have a few questions that you're asking them so you can do different things, um, uh, based on the source of where they're coming from. Um, also, you know, based on, um, Uh, the type of visitor. So maybe it's a returning visitor, maybe it's a v i p customer. You already have them in your C R M and you already know who they are. and then also, you know, new visitors as well. You can also ab Tess, um, with those visitors as well, so starting to get carried off there.

[00:30:46] But yeah, it's a fun approach. I always, my, my philosophy is you can't really call yourself a marketer if you don't do AP testing. Point, point, break.

[00:30:56] Track 1: Well, you can call yourself whatever you want. Can't call yourself a good marketer.

[00:31:00] eric_melchor: Yeah.

[00:31:01] Track 1: Uh, I think also with, with nonprofits, they have access to other other means, including now limited to the Google Ad Grant, which is 10 K a month in kind of search advertising. now you can tune and fix all day on the top of that funnel and get, you know, after a certain point diminishing returns on, on that traffic.

[00:31:21] But looking at the landing pages, looking at what you do with that traffic once it's on your site, like you can then look down the marketing funnel and then remember when you get those improvements, it magnifies the value of that attention because you're converting it, turning it into the permission to talk to somebody.

[00:31:39] But it's only through that, that activity. Of AB testing.

[00:31:43] George: Alright.

[00:31:44] eric_melchor: Yep.

[00:31:44] George: Yeah.

[00:31:45] eric_melchor: bringing back memories. I remember when I started my nonprofit, I didn't find out about that program till like over a year. And when

[00:31:51] George: Oh gosh.

[00:31:52] eric_melchor: like, why didn't anybody tell me about this? You know? Yeah.

[00:31:58] Track 1: Well, I mean, whole whale. We have, uh, free resources on how to set that grant up to maximize it and what you can get out of it. We spend a lot of time trying to give away that information. Um, we even have a, a trained cohort coming up where, um, you know, that. Nonprofits limited. 25 of 'em can, uh, can be a part of it, uh, because it's such a powerful tool.

[00:32:19] But it's also, you know, it, it's important because all that glitters is in gold. There's a diminishing return after maximizing it, and then it's just about managing it efficiently for, uh, what it's good for. So before you run off, if you've never heard of this before, be like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna start a nonprofit just to get this grant and I'm gonna take over the world.

[00:32:36] Like, read the article first.

[00:32:38] eric_melchor: yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:41] Alright, Eric, anything else that you wanna leave with our audience as a, a tip or guidance

[00:32:47] Guidance?

[00:32:48] on the upside of personalization?

[00:32:51] Yeah. Website personalization is a bit like Google Analytics and everybody thinks that, oh, I know how to use Google Analytics because they figured out, figured out how to create an account. And get it working. Um, but the thing is, is that you really want to try to go to. Get as much education as you can.

[00:33:08] Maybe go to our workshop. We have free workshops, free website, personalization boot camps. I actually conduct those and we walk you through our process we actually show you a lot of, uh, the best practices that top companies do, small and mid-size organizations on how they use website personalization.

[00:33:27] And we provide free resources along with like a checklist. And based on that checklist, you actually will uncover, um, top ideas and experiments that you can do that are going to give you the biggest ROI based off the reach, the impact, and um, the expected effort. And so once you have that, then you have an idea in terms of what should be the priorities of what I should focus on next.

[00:33:51] And then we also have like playbooks and how you can implement those for, uh, for your website. So, um, that URL. Optum munk.com/bootcamp and that that's the what I highly recommend. That if you wanna learn more about website personalization, then check that out.

[00:34:08] George: Well, we normally end our show with rapid fire. I'm going to cherry pick some out of there because typically we're talking to non-profit leaders and focused conversations. But I, I'm gonna throw some random questions at you. Uh, please keep your answers super short and here we go.

[00:34:23] eric_melchor: Okay.

[00:34:23] George: is one tech tool that you have started using in the past year?

[00:34:27] Track 1: We cannot say optimum. What is it?

[00:34:30] eric_melchor: One tab.

[00:34:31] Track 1: One tab?

[00:34:32] eric_melchor: Yeah. Have you heard of this, George?

[00:34:35] Track 1: No. What?

[00:34:36] eric_melchor: No. So, you know, every marketer has like 50 or 60 tabs open and it makes your website, you know, your, your computer run slow anyway. Um, Uh, for, it's for Google Chrome and you can use it in basically just kind of hides and, and saves in the back, keeps it, keeps it in the back, all those tabs and you can very quickly, uh, find them.

[00:34:57] But it just saves a lot of me memory. Um, you know, while you're using Chrome and you don't have to have 50 tabs open, you can just have one or two. It's called Onet tab.

[00:35:07] Track 1: what is one tech Dragon Tech problem issue that you are currently battling with?

[00:35:13] eric_melchor: Uh, text Expander. This is another third party tool. Um, it's a great tool that allows you to just to type a few different keys in and it'll auto-populate the rest of the message.

[00:35:23] George: this a G

[00:35:23] Track 1: P T three game?

[00:35:25] eric_melchor: no, the problem that I found out is that if you have LinkedIn open at the same time, LinkedIn, um, thanks that you're using it as sort of an automation tool to try and connect with people. Autom messages people on LinkedIn. And so I actually have my LinkedIn account like, like pause for like 24 hours because of this thing. so that's the thing that I'm currently battling. It's called Text Expander. It's a good tool but just can't have LinkedIn open or can't have it open. When you're using LinkedIn,

[00:35:57] Track 1: Okay. Uh, what advice did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't?

[00:36:03] eric_melchor: uh, I would say the advice, it was not so much like words, the advice, but more of actions and, uh, my dad, when we were kids, he had this like mini Mitsubishi truck and I remember the windshield wipers and stop working and he never replaced them. And so it'd be like raining and he would, you know, be trying to drive out there in the middle of the night. Couldn't see. Couldn't see. And I've always just, it's not necessarily advice, but it's one of those things that you learn from and you, you learn like what not to do as a parent. And now that I'm a parent, it's like that's something, you know, stupid things like that I would never do.

[00:36:47] Track 1: Who is the most important mentor that you've had, and how did you come across?

[00:36:52] eric_melchor: Oh, uh, my most important mentor would be secondary mentors. And so that's just a lot of different books, everything from, oh God, Napoleon, to, uh, God, I mean even, even and, and different coaches like Pat Summit, Vince Lombardi, um, did a lot of reading when I was younger. I just didn't really have a lot of access to good mentors, um, or people in my family. Um, you know, I'm first college graduate in my family, so, uh, secondary mentors were just a lot of books that I, that I read so many

[00:37:30] Track 1: What is something you think you should stop?

[00:37:37] eric_melchor: mm. You know, I've, I'm really happy with my life right now and the person that I am, the parent that I am, the father, that I am, the husband that I am. I think of one thing that comes to mind is, um, I haven't written any handwritten letters to my family, I think in over a year. And so that's something that I should start doing, but that's like the first thing that comes to mind. oh, I know what I should stop doing. Eating, eating candy and junk food when I go to. It's 10:00 PM I go to bed and I go grab some, a candy bar, and I'm eating that. That's, that's what I should stop doing.

[00:38:11] Track 1: Yeah, you gotta put the Gremlin law into effect. No feeding after a certain period of time.

[00:38:15] eric_melchor: Yeah. Yeah. My wife is, uh, to blame for that one.

[00:38:19] Track 1: Well,

 

 

 

Is Charity Content for Clicks Charitable? The Mr. Beast Debate (news)

 

Hot Take Debate: Was Mr. Beast's Cataract Surgery Video charitable?

Adam Faircloth joins the debate. 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamfaircloth/ 

 

Context:  MR Beast made content around paying for 1k eye surgeries, is this charitable.  the video has 95million views and was sponsored by Experian.

At a rate of $2.13 per CPM, the video has generated at least $200k. 

 

does it matter that it isn't a nonprofit?

what if it was a nonprofit?

how does this compare to flies in the eyes videos of african children that used to be used for fundraising

does it matter if Mr Beast made a profit on this?

what difference is there between actors being paid to perform in a video and people getting their surgeries covered to perform in a video

Is this actually a potential earned revenue model?

 

 

Other NonprofitNewsfeed.com Summary

World Cancer Day Promotes Advocacy, Awareness, & Early Detection

World Cancer Day, which was this past Saturday, emphasizes the importance of awareness around cancer, its potential symptoms, and the importance of an early diagnosis. The BBC acknowledged the day of advocacy by highlighting stories of young cancer patients who were misdiagnosed, acknowledging that young people can get cancer too. Many nonprofits, including Whole Whale client LCFA, advocates for research, awareness, and community on behalf of those impacted by cancers of various type. Many hospitals and other medical centers launched advocacy campaigns themselves, including the Georgia Cancer Center.
Read more ➝

 

• Late Subway Cofounder Donates 50 Percent Ownership to Nonprofit  | QSR magazine
• Local nonprofit cleans up 36,000 pounds of trash along American River  |  CBS News
• World’s biggest YouTuber paid for 1,000 people to get eye surgery but is slammed for ‘making content out of people who can’t see’   |  Fortune
• Gorillas, militias, and Bitcoin: Why Congo’s most famous national park is betting big on crypto  |  MIT Technology Review
   

 

 

 

 

Buying Voter Files is so 2015 Advocay - Join 2023 with Quorum

Alex Wirth, Co-founder & CEO of Quorum.us - a leading public affairs software that helps map, track, change, and report on policy landscape, shares insights into advocacy approaches that will work in 2023.

Alex ranks: Twitter, IRL meetings, calling, letters, videos, Meta, and billboards as just some of the methods advocacy organizations can be using to get the attention of representatives.  

 

He shares why buying Donor Voter files may be obsolete in the new advocacy landscape. 

 

About Alex

Alex Wirth is the Cofounder and CEO of Quorum, a public affairs software platform that enables organizations to launch grassroots advocacy campaigns, manage stakeholder engagement, and monitor dialogue in Washington, Brussels, all 50 states, and thousands of cities around the U.S.

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] audio1717820249: Today on the podcast, we have a returning guest, a returning guest that we had on a few years ago. His name is Alex Worth, the co-founder and c e o at Quorum. Uh, quorum is a public affairs software helps you work smarter, move faster. Thousands of public affairs officials use quorum and their work to Congress.

[00:00:44] My short hot take on it is it helps you connect with Congress and has an amazing database and functionality prior. To that, uh, he did happen to graduate from Harvard, as I understand it, and he was an intern at , the White House. Uh, and the office of the Chief of staff, uh, has also spent time as a global shaper.

[00:01:04] And a board member on the Economic Club of Washington, among other things. Uh, but Alex is also one of the folks that I've known since back in the day, and I respect his work and his persistence in, in staying with, uh, staying with the organization and building it over time. So, Alex, welcome and, and thanks for coming back.

[00:01:25] Awesome. Thanks for having me. Well, I hopefully didn't confuse people too much about Quorum, but what is your elevator pitch and explaining what Quorum does in the world of political advocacy? Yeah, so we're a public affairs software platform, uh, that is used by public affairs professionals at major companies, trade associations, nonprofits, uh, little bit of federal government work to track everything that's happening on Capitol Hill.

[00:01:56] All 50 state legislatures help communicate up to members of congress. Um, we collect both the official and staff contact information and have the tools to be able to get email messages to those staff. And then also we have a whole series of grassroots advocacy technology to help individuals write their member congress, tweet their member, call their member, run massive mobilization campaigns.

[00:02:18] And we are currently working to bring a brand new pack product to market to help, uh, third party packs, both collect and raise. Manage their individual bank accounts and records and then issue disbursements to lawmakers to participate in the political process. So the quick way to think of us and our goal is to be the one stop shop for all the efforts that an advocacy team needs to engage on Capitol Hill in Brussels or in any of the state capitals across the country.

[00:02:45] Yeah. It's pretty impressive. And before we, we pressed record, you were telling us, um, about Capital Canary. Right? You were, you were able to, to pull them into your. Feature suite and what has that capability? Yeah, so this has been the really exciting update for us, uh, from the last year is that we did acquire Capital Canary, which is the new name for the phone to action business, which sends more messages to Capital Hill than any other technology platform out there.

[00:03:15] Uh, phone to Action on average sends about 25 million messages a year to Capitol Hill, and so we combine forces with them, uh, at the end of September of this past fall. And overnight both doubled in size for the number of clients we serve and that we're working now with 2000 organizations, including hopefully some listeners, uh, on this call, but also as a result of that, have been able to double the size of our research and development team.

[00:03:41] So we're incredibly excited to be working combined as we think about innovations with advocacy and advocacy technology rather than against each other, taking the same teams to build the same features on multiple different platforms. And we're pretty excited about what the future's gonna be able to bring from.

[00:03:58] Well, last time we talked, I feel like you were really opening my eyes, our audience's eyes, to the impact that Twitter was really starting to have. And mind you, we were pre pandemic, we were PreOn Musk coming into Twitter town, and I felt like you really were helping us understand that there are, you know, I guess a hierarchy.

[00:04:21] A hierarchy of ways that elected officials and you know, really their staff. Are are listening to constituents and I'm, I'm wondering, maybe we could just revisit that. What is your current hierarchy of high to low attention? No attention for messaging, elected officials, representatives. Yeah, so to start with the Twitter piece one, you were spot on.

[00:04:49] Twitter has taken off since we last talked, and a lot of that was as a result of the pandemic of you had members of Congress, state legislators, mayors who are used to being out with people in their constituents, stuck at home, not able to meet everyone, anyone. And wanting to show that they are being relevant and share as much information as they can with constituents.

[00:05:10] And so we saw the number of social media messages from elected officials skyrocket in 2020. I mean, just a full jump, um, as the pandemic and lockdown hit. Um, and so there's been more definitely usage of the platforms. I think the other component to it is, I do agree with Elon Musk's comments that Twitter really is a digital town square, and I think you see that very significantly in the policy influence participation journalism and advocacy worlds that exist on Twitter and that many of us, including me, follow along, but that we see members of congress, journalists, policy, influencers, actively participate in.

[00:05:51] And the example that I think is helpful to share is that almost every state legislature in the country, Has a given hashtag for the individual legislative session. I was born and raised, uh, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My dad happens to be a state legislator so I know it well. Uh, and in New Mexico the hashtag is hashtag nm ledge.

[00:06:09] And the best way to get information about what's going on in the State House during session is following on the hashtag nm ledge. Cause you have people that are in the gallery. You have reporters sharing what the information they have. You've got leadership sharing, Hey, we're gonna be on the floor of the House of Senate.

[00:06:24] This bill is moving, party's sharing what's up next. And you can't get information that quickly, that accurately and from that many people anywhere else. And so that same level of conversation that's happening, New Mexico is happening in all 50 states. But also then it's happening on key issues here in Washington DC and it presents a really significant opportunity for advocacy organizations to participate in.

[00:06:48] Stuff. Yeah. Because frankly, it's, you know, love it or hate it. We're not here to litigate the, you know, week by week changes that Musk is putting out there. The, the truth is that it's, uh, an open, trusted platform to the extent that identities and we understand the identities of representatives and people that have been able to burnish their reputations with consistency on the platform are able to report on things like bills progress, uh, and political means, and.

[00:07:18] And one of the questions I actually had for you is around the fact that, you know, recently, you know, we were recording this in January of 2023, uh, change of allowing political ads in political organizations to, to run ads. Now on, on Twitter has, you know, the, the ban has been lifted. What are your thoughts on the, the implications of that or opportu.

[00:07:41] Yeah, so I think there's huge opportunities you think about reaching policy makers and their staff in that it is possible to geofence state capital, the US Capitol, a given agency, and run publical or public policy related Twitter ads to those organizations. I think that is some of the biggest opportunity and impact.

[00:08:03] and the Great Washington story that I, I've heard over the years is there was an official at the Department of Transportation that was needed to approve an airline route from one country in Europe to the us and it was held up with a singular individual official, and the public policy firm in DC figured out where the official lived.

[00:08:23] Figured out the exact direction that their apartment window faced out of, found the billboard that they look at every day, and went and bought just that one billboard and talked about the benefits of opening up this airline . And literally the official had to stare at it for a month or a month and a half, and then suddenly the approval came through.

[00:08:42] And so that's obviously like the really old school way of doing things. And that story is probably from 10 plus years ago. But that is now possible again on Twitter with public policy and political advertising. And it makes a difference because these elected officials are looking at it. They're watching and seeing what's happening and going on, and so you wanna be at the platform that they're on.

[00:09:02] And it's a lot more cost effective to do than that, than try and advertise to everyone that's gonna be watching Super Bowl Sunday and like hope you get the elected officials that are also gonna be watching as well. So I want to come back to my question about hierarchy. So at the top of the hierarchy, Billboards in front of the windows of representatives, number one.

[00:09:23] What is number? In person meetings. Um, and I think that that is something that very much got lost in Covid. Um, members of Congress did love to do zoom meetings cuz they could be many more places at once, much more efficiently. But there is something about sitting next to someone in person explaining your story, saying, I traveled to Washington or the state capitol from whatever county or state it may.

[00:09:51] And giving that pitch and, and giving that conversation. I think the third one that I would put out there is video. Uh, and this is something that we're seeing much more cutting edge within the last year and a half, is video story banking. So pulling in and having individual advocates or members or donors record, what does the organization mean to you?

[00:10:11] Why is this policy issue important? How are you being impacted? Buy this change or buy a covid lockdown. And then organizations stringing that together to be able to play to an individual legislator or lawmaker or appointed official and say, let me show you how your constituents are having an impact.

[00:10:28] And it feels really raw when someone's sitting in their car with a cell phone video and sharing that. And that's been pretty impactful. I've probably put Twitter, um, close to number four. And the reason for that is that we have seen an increase in members of Congress who are personally tweeting themselves on the platform.

[00:10:47] Um, and that's one of the big things that we've expected to happen just as we've had both, you know, more younger members of Congress become elected, but also more members adopted. And one of the interesting things from our annual social media report, Is that some of our most prolific tweeters in Congress are actually the older members themselves.

[00:11:04] Um, and so we're seeing, you know, individuals look towards that example and realize this is the way that you communicate with constituents. And let me tell you, we've all used the Twitter app. You know, when you're mentioned and you know, when you're talked about. And it's a little bit along the lines of, you know, what people are saying about you, not behind your back, but on a public town square.

[00:11:22] Like, you're gonna click on that and see how you're mentioned and see how you're being discussed. And so I think that has a huge impact that oftentimes can go overlooked as a way to be able to reach and, and get to a member of Congress. That's a sort of self-aware sentiment that I'm sure they're all using tracking applications.

[00:11:41] And last time I dug into this, there are very, you know, smart apps that are, that can be used to track these things and manage messages. And so that's up there. So it's interesting because it feels like it, it's moved up the rank, you know, looking back, we were talking about calls and letters, you know, where, where does that communication medium fall for?

[00:12:01] Yeah, so calls are still key, um, and certainly have an impact. I mean, if you can have a hundred people call a legislative office in a given day, that's really big. Now the challenge is that staff picks that up, not the member. There are some great stories, a members that'll occasionally do a little time phone banking and someone calls and suddenly, if they're a member of Congress on the phone.

[00:12:22] But you know, that's one in a million um, calls that it happens. And so members do, and I was a congressional intern, you know, get a sheet every day of here are the top issues that we're called about. And the key piece there is doing it all in one day so that you're at the top of the list. Because having a hundred people call over a month, you're gonna have five, six calls a day.

[00:12:40] It's not gonna be as effective as everyone in one given day. Um, I still think that personalized letters really do have a pretty big impact. Um, and the key piece of it is making sure that they are differentiated and on, you know, slightly different subjects than all form letters on the same thing.

[00:13:00] Because what happens behind the scenes is that members of Congress have constituent management software platforms and they can both pull and collect similar messages together and highlight that. If a message is 50% the same text, batch it all together, write, write one response, and send it. . And yes, the numbers matter, but it's different than if somebody takes the time and writes a completely customized note.

[00:13:21] You can't send a form letter to a customized note, and so then you actually have a staffer customizing a message in response, getting that approved and having that happen. Uh, and I really do believe that that starts to change some of the conversation in a congressional office because it can take an issue that no one was previously aware about and suddenly raise it to be top of mind for the office because they're spending time writing and customized and thoughtful.

[00:13:45] Mm-hmm. . So you would still put Twitter above calls and differentiated, we'll call them custom letters. So I, the handwritten letter is what might give that a little bit of a run for the money. If you can deliver a handwritten letter to a member, um, that's pretty valuable. But again, the opportunity with Twitter that exists is you've got a chance to reach that elected official or policy influencer directly themselves and differentiate and also catch them in a little bit of downtime.

[00:14:13] Um, and I think that's the key thing that I would encourage and you know, it helps with both my parents being local elected officials, is they're people just like, And so members of Congress the same way they're sitting, waiting for that flight to take off to go home, do they really wanna be sitting there, you know, powering through email?

[00:14:26] No, they're probably scrolling on Twitter. And are they gonna click on the notifications tab? Of course they are like, we're all human. Um, but you know, that's a different experience than if you're a state legislator and you're trying to go through email as fast as possible. Like it may not have that same component or piece to it.

[00:14:43] Um, that getting the direct in front of and, and on the Twitter platform. . All right. Any other honorable mentions out there? You know, the, the case for Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, fill in the blank. You know, I won't talk about Mastodon because I feel like that is a moment in time. Yeah, we're cer We certainly see some members that are active on Facebook at the congressional level that use it even more than Twitter.

[00:15:10] Um, I think, you know, anecdotally we'll see more form posts or posts that it feels like come from staffers and are a little less personalized. Um, than Twitter. We, interestingly enough, see more state legislators have Facebook accounts, uh, than Twitter accounts. It's about 75% have a Facebook account and little over 50% have a Twitter account.

[00:15:33] Uh, and that's where they do end up using it a little bit differently. But the medium of the platform is just harder of saying, oh, you're gonna comment on an. Uh, in, you know, sending someone a Facebook message to page, it just doesn't work the same way that Twitter does. And, and that's part of, I think, you know, the relevance of Twitter and also where I have to say long term, you know, I am bullish on Twitter continuing to be around because you have all the users and people on it, and it's designed in a way.

[00:16:03] that is very user friendly and also very personal. That is a, you know, way for an individual to communicate. Whereas I think when you look at some of the other platforms, there are many more uses for them. And so as a result things become harder where, you know, TikTok is not gonna be the best way to, to reach your legislator.

[00:16:19] I mean, are they allowing government officials on TikTok anymore? I know there's certain bands talked about for, uh, government employees on the platform. Um, namely because China is literally probably used to spy, manipulate popul. Yeah. So I know certainly that's been talked about for federal, uh, executive branch employees.

[00:16:39] Um, I am not as familiar, um, with the rules that are currently happening in Congress, but realizing is a different branch of government. Oftentimes we will see different rules, um, that are applied to congressional staff. Um, but I don't have the answer top of mind. Gotcha. Alrighty. I wanna talk about what you're seeing.

[00:16:59] 2023. In terms of tactical trends, there's an organization listening right now saying we are, you know, going to be gearing up. There's the, you know, the new elected officials in office. We're trying to get our, you know, lobbying and advocacy straight for 2023. What are the types of activities that you see being planned for, that you think are going to be.

[00:17:22] Yeah. So first off, it's state level, state level, state level, state level. And the reason for that is we now have a divided government here in Washington with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House. And so the general mood in town is that not a whole lot is going to happen here over the course of the next two years.

[00:17:41] Uh, and where are things gonna happen? Things are gonna happen at the state level because you've got state houses. Both on the democratic side and the Republican side, where you have either Republicans or Democrats in complete control of both chambers as well as the governorship that wanna enact policy and want to go, and Bills can move fast and they're able to do things.

[00:18:01] And so it is incredibly important to have a state level advocacy strategy because there's both an opportunity for a lot of wins, but also there's an opportunity to, that you need to be aware and be playing defense because any of your opponents are gonna be really active. on that state level as well. Um, so I think that's part one.

[00:18:20] Um, part two of that is thinking a little bit about how do you build a thoughtful and engaged advocacy program to succeed in Washington in the long term. Uh, and it's a pretty exciting time because we're about to. Start thinking about the 2024 presidential election cycle and also what does Congress look like in 2025 during the next cycle.

[00:18:42] And there's a world that, you know, we could be back with one party control. There's a world, we could have a new president and a new administration, and there's a world that we could still be in divided government, but that as we are ramping up for that, now is the time to be planning those strategies in.

[00:18:56] For 2024. And when talking about strategy, I'm talking about things like voter education. What are the campaigns that you're gonna be running when everyone's talking about the presidential election cycle, and how are you helping your advocates and your donors and your employees and your members register to vote, find their polling places?

[00:19:11] There are some super innovative programs that I've seen nonprofits do targeting campaign staff. Targeting individuals who are running for president and making sure that they are very known. So one of the most simple ones is just simply to go wear your nonprofit's t-shirt and go volunteer for a presidential or congressional candidate and make sure they know that on that given day the phone bank is 50 people from this organization.

[00:19:35] They're gonna notice, and these elected officials and presidential candidates are gonna be way closer to the voters than they are during most times of the year. And then figuring out bigger picture, like how are you gonna position your issues both in the election cycle, but as well as in the presidential cycle?

[00:19:51] So that they're top of mind when either, you know, the administration is reelected or new congress comes in so that you're off and running in 2025. And I think it's really about playing the long game at the federal level. Um, that becomes so important. And then the last thing that I'll share, Just on thinking about 2023 and the advocacy side is it's all about integration.

[00:20:11] I think in the past we've seen a lot of very siloed efforts and siloed technology platforms. So you use one thing to send things out and you use another thing to do advocacy, and you use another thing for tracking. Um, and it ends up with data being lost, really clunky, lot of time doing downloads and uploads and what we're seeing both with Quorum as well.

[00:20:34] Other platforms out there is that integration so that you have more one-stop shops and that your data lives together connects together, um, and that you're able to leverage the full benefits from it.

[00:20:56] I have a random question. Can you explain data, data voter files to me as though I were a seven year?

[00:21:06] Yes. So when you are 18 and you get to register to. You go and give information to your county clerk about where you live, who you are, your age, and that information is compiled in a publicly available record that you are registered to vote, and then that record is accessed by campaigns candidates.

[00:21:37] Policy organizations and advocacy groups, and they can use that very simple information, most notably your home address, to attach a whole series of additional information to you based sometimes on algorithms and sometimes on other anonymized data. So for example, if you give your home address to go. For a hunting magazine, they can tag you as likely interested in hunting.

[00:22:07] And so when you get a mailer from your candidate or uh, elected official that's talking about the work that they're doing on access to guns and hunting. You can bet that the person that cares about environmental issues or cares about gun control is not also getting that same mailer, and so it lets a series of both hyper targeting from mail, but also from digital ads occur in an anonymized fashion that protects an individual from being exposed by, or being known for the fact that they subscribe to a hunting magazine and may care about.

[00:22:47] I was wondering, I've seen some organizations, you know, when it's time to jump into the advocacy fray, think that like, step one is I buy this absurdly expensive donor file and then I do the advocacy. I, I, um, I'm curious of what your thoughts are on where that fits in the strategy versus, you know, looking at it from a different lens.

[00:23:14] Yeah, I, I love this question. So I've spent this morning with, um, two Quorum customers as we've started off the year and done just strategic planning around their advocacy campaigns. And one of the comments from breakfast this morning was that 2015 was the era of buying big lists. And this organization bought a massive list of.

[00:23:37] Suddenly had all these people on their contact program, and now five years later, what they're seeing is these people aren't active. Their sending domain and reputation is going down. People aren't engaging because they never signed up and never wanted to be a part of it. And so that era of big list buying and just adding people in is over.

[00:23:57] It is all about having a trusted brand or trusted network of communication of someone that you know. And getting individuals to take action through that. And one of my favorite examples of this, uh, is American Airlines, uh, a company that I am, uh, quite a big fan of as being a frequent flyer. Uh, but they're also phone to action customer.

[00:24:21] And about four or five years ago when they were facing some of the challenges with air traffic control staffing and the f AA funding and where we gonna have enough air traffic controllers, they sent out an advocacy alert to all their frequent flyers, myself included saying, You don't wanna have longer waits on the tarmac.

[00:24:38] We need to fully fund the f a and expand the number of controllers. And so suddenly you have all these frequent flyers saying, of course I'm in. Take action, write my member of Congress. And it elevates that issue. And so for organizations out there, My encouragement for you is you have to start by looking at who's on your existing list, who are your most engaged donors, advocates, event participants, individuals who are involved, and use that list to start your advocacy program and then slowly recruit people beyond that because it's about the quality that matters and not the quantity.

[00:25:10] And it goes back to behind the scenes of what the Congress. To see if you have a ton of people that don't really care, just sending and clicking a form letter, it has nowhere near the same impact as someone who really does care, taking even just two minutes to write what they personally care about. And so that's where, you know, unlike 2015, you shouldn't feel this pressure that, oh my God, I need to send 10,000 messages because 10,000 messages that say the same thing.

[00:25:34] ops is just shrug. And I'm like, yep, I've seen this before. But sending a hundred messages that are all different and super customized, like that's really impactful at the end of the day. And then ideally, you're having your in-person advocacy team go up and talk to the members and re-share those messages and say, let me tell you about your constituent who's facing this issue.

[00:25:54] Yeah. I think that's, that's helpful. I love you saying it was such a 2015 moment. It's clearly burned into your mind as you led up to the presidential elections. I. , you know, the, the expenditure on that. And the interesting thing is, you know, you're, I, I dunno what the going rate is, but it's tens of thousands of dollars depending on what you're getting, but you're not getting the permission to communicate.

[00:26:14] And, and I think that's what you're hinting at. And when you burn through that list, you are also hurting your digital reputation. You know, ending up on, on many, uh, do not send lists and ultimately the goal was missed. Um, and so what, what are some int. Planning in terms of spending, like, you know, clearly everyone will get quorum, , uh, right.

[00:26:38] But, you know, in terms of the, the outreach, what, you know, is it buying Twitter ads? That seems like, uh, an opportunity, is it spending to build up my list? Am I trying to do petitions, promote petitions? What is the, the tactic then if, if you're not buying. but earning it. Yeah, so the most easy one that we go to is Facebook Lead Ads, because Facebook still has a series of targeting that you can get pretty specific in terms of individuals with interest that you're looking for, as well as individuals that are in a given region or area that you can then connect.

[00:27:14] Through to an advocacy webpage. Uh, and so that by far is the default for organizations that are really actively looking to grow their lists and looking to invest. But I will also just go back to my big challenge is before you look externally, look internally and what are the options with your internal events and internal lists to be able to grow your pool of advocates.

[00:27:38] And what I often see happen with nonprofits is the advocacy team. Siloed in a given area that says, oh, well that's your database, that's your list. You figure out how to grow it. And the organization is sitting on a list that is way bigger and way larger for their major trade association or major individual impact summit or movement.

[00:27:57] But it says, oh no, you can't use that list to do advocacy. And I think one of the key message. To share and highlight is that advocacy can be helpful in building a more robust relationship with your members, donors, individual participants, because they're looking for ways to be involved. And I think so often what you get is fundraising teams who go, oh, well, don't even ask our donors for anything.

[00:28:19] We're already asking them to give money every year. But if you're just asking, give money, you're sitting there saying, well, what's my connection? Why am I here giving resources and dollars to it? I don't feel like I'm helping. I want to be more. And so as you can have a donor who gives money and say, oh, thank you for it.

[00:28:35] Would you be willing also help us out and take action? There's more of an attachment, more connections, and so you can build on the ladders of engagement and actually end up with, you know, larger donations, more frequent donations, and people who see the work and connection that they're funding. Rather than just get hit up for a check every single year.

[00:28:53] I think the inverse of that too is also your grassroots advocates are the best people to identify future donors from. Because asking someone to go and write a hundred dollars check, like that's a big ask. Asking someone for two minutes of their time to click a couple buttons and write their member of Congress, that's easier.

[00:29:09] And so the challenge that I would give to any of the organizations listening, Is what percent of your grassroots advocates are donating and how do you help increase that percentage? And what I think you're gonna find is, is that very few organizations turn around and actually solicit the grassroots advocates because the advocacy teams are sitting in their silos saying, oh, well we don't wanna ask them to donate money.

[00:29:28] Like we're trying to get them to do advocacy. And really what we're seeing is the best organizations are connecting the two and making it part of a cohesive engagement.

[00:29:40] final. Uh, thank you for sharing that. It's, you know, helpful to see your framing on it. I'm now curious, you know, we're talking about grassroots advocacy communication, and it's not one size fits all. I feel like when we last talked, we were in peak moments of what I will call rage politic, right? Ra ra rage messaging was all the rage.

[00:30:04] I, I, I'll go out on one and say, what? , what do you look for in terms of tactics, guidance, advice, approaches for getting people to care when clearly, uh, we are, we're even postig of political messaging at this point, so I think one, you have to make it relevant to them. Uh, people are not as interested to be stirred up or responded in, uh, Aggravated per se based on whatever the issue is on left or right, because certainly there are people there that feel that way and feel really passionately.

[00:30:44] But you also have a whole series of people that just wanna go about their lives that aren't thinking about what's happening. The state capitol aren't thinking about what's happening in Washington, and honestly probably don't even know the names of the individuals that represent them. And so the challenge for most organizations, Is, how do you phrase the messaging in a way that gets at those people who are in the middle, who and are, who are often on the sidelines.

[00:31:08] And I go back to that American Airlines example, and there's many others. If you have to make it directly relevant to them of, Hey, your life is going to be impacted because of this. And that's how you get some of the most passionate and engaged stories. Because what you end up hearing is saying, Hey, if I'm sitting on the tarmac for another three hours, I'm not home playing with my kids and I already have to travel.

[00:31:28] X number of days a week. This is the personal impact that it has on me. That's the story that you want to tell the member of Congress, not the story around government funding and whether we should spend more money or less money on the f aa and how that impacts the federal debt. Um, because it comes down of that.

[00:31:43] They wanna hear the personal stories and that's what moves. And so making clear that individuals know, you know, what is the impact for them, and making that as hyper-relevant as possible, I think leads to both the best advocacy outcomes and also the most effective. . Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Making it practical, bringing it to your backyard, you know, the sort of act local and is what you started off by saying, which is , the state.

[00:32:08] The state, state, you know, is acting in your backyard. Um, super helpful. Anything else that you wanna share regarding Quorum Cool Tactics, uses of the platform that are. I, the big one I just go back to is this is the year of integration, the year of one stop shop, and it's time to get your data working for you.

[00:32:31] Um, and both, some of that runs through the work that we're doing is we work to string together, pack information, advocacy, legislative tracking, and have that sync. But it also comes to just simply donor databases and is your donor database talking to your email platform, talking to your fundraising tools, talking to your grassroots advocacy tools, and getting all the information from those back in a, you know, circular motion so that you can learn from it and apply more analytics and information.

[00:32:55] This is something that was really probably cutting edge as we think 5, 6, 7 years ago. But now is the time to make it happen. And we're seeing a lot more organizations make changes to their technology stacks to reflect that we're in 2023 and the technology is out there. It is possible to do, but it's really comes down to a matter of having both the willpower.

[00:33:20] As well as the encouragement to know that now is the time and that you don't have to be a trailblazer to go and, and make that happen. Um, and so I would just encourage folks to really think about that because as you think about 2024 and the advocacy opportunities coming presidential election cycle, like that's the time when you need your tools to be the most effective they possibly can be.

[00:33:40] And so take the time this year to go make those investments and make those changes, uh, to be your, put yourself in a position, uh, for. . Well, thanks for that. All right, we're gonna move into some rapid fire here. Please keep your responses brief and interesting. , what is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in last year?

[00:34:04] So we finally started using a chat bot on our website to engage with people who were coming to the website. Uh, we were late on this, um, from a B2B perspective, and many of you have probably been to websites looking to buy and see the little chat bot pop up. But we've seen a whole new series of engagements, conversions, and people that wouldn't normally just fill out a form on the website that we've captured through the chatbot.

[00:34:29] And so my kind of out there challenge to the listeners on this podcast is what would it look like to put a chatbot on your website? Who would you wanna try and engage with? What information would you wanna capture and can you get more people added to your organization's list or engaged than you could from just a standard email sign up?

[00:34:47] I think we've seen a lot of B2B uses for it, but I don't think we've seen as many advocacy nonprofit and even B2C uses for it, and that there's a lot of low hanging fruit there, especially with the new AI coming out. As you know, as much as you wanna trust a pre-trained AI to answer on behalf of your organization, uh, is a good point though.

[00:35:07] tech issues. You are battl. Yeah, so we just bought Capital Canary, doubled in size overnight and literally had two of every system. Now, sometimes they were the same system in that we had two instances of Salesforce. Sometimes they were totally different. We had an instance of churn zero and an interest of Gainsight.

[00:35:25] For our customer software, uh, we have HubSpot and we have Marketo. And so we are currently in the middle of a major, major push to both select go forward systems and integrate so that we're operating as a combined business. And the advice and kind of mandate that I gave our team is that we don't wanna be Southwest Airlines.

[00:35:45] When you look at the challenges Southwest ran into at the end of December of 2022, they have not upgraded their technology yet the way that they need to. And so you saw a massive meltdown as a result of it. And I think that all organizations need to take a moment and just look within and say, do we have the technology infrastructure that we need to scale as we look to grow and expand our operations, or even keep the operations going right now?

[00:36:09] Because the, you know, if Southwest Airlines is culpable of not having the technology, I know that there's a lot of organizations out there that may be looking and saying, yeah, my tech really isn't working for me, so we're up to our next, just because of combining two businesses together and doing it. But I'm really excited because I know we're gonna come out stronger with more advanced tech than if we hadn't done the combination.

[00:36:32] What is coming in the next year that has you the most? Yeah, so we're launching a brand new pack product to help pack professionals run, manage, and distribute contributions from their pack. It's gonna be the first new software in the market in 20 years, and so we both have an incredible amount of excitement to come into a market that just has not seen a whole lot of innovation.

[00:36:56] And also we have customers that are really. Excited about for what that's going, uh, to bring. And then for us, it's the last leg of the stool on the integrated product strategy of finally putting together federal and state legislative tracking, grassroots advocacy, impact management at one place. So that's certainly gonna be, uh, a highlight for us.

[00:37:16] Can you talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things? So the biggest business mistake that I've made is signing a new office lease in downtown DC where I sit now. Uh, and I share this because I think organizations really need to think differently about both their office space and their work strategy.

[00:37:39] We signed this lease three months into Covid, so probably. Uh, probably a year or so after we last talked and, um, you know, we were focused in betting on a rebound of coming together and coming back to the office. We now have a fully remote development team, and about 35% of our team is fully remote and lives outside of dc And even for the folks that live in DC people are not coming into the office the same extent that they normally do.

[00:38:05] Now, luckily as a company we doubled in size, and so the amount that we're paying is a small percentage of our overall budget each year. But still, when you sit in 28,000 square feet of office space and have 30, 40 people coming in, you realize that is this really the best use of money? And is this also no longer is the way that you engage, retrain, uh, at attract and, you know, help, uh, skill and motivate team members, uh, because it's a whole new world.

[00:38:35] Uh, and so I really think that both has changed the way that I look at the world, both of how we operate as an employer in an organization. But also, you know, I was even in a board meeting, um, earlier this week of folks that are planning to renew their office and, you know, thinking really is that the best sentence?

[00:38:52] And looking at what are the other options? What can you do with less space? Can you do more flexible working? And that the way of working as much as I loved it or others may have that we've done for the last 50 years has completely changed with the pandemic and that we've gotta adapt our strategies to that.

[00:39:10] do you believe that nonprofits can successfully go out of. . Absolutely. So one of the things that we initially met through do something.org, uh, which is just an incredible organization, uh, working on efforts and getting more young people engaged in making a difference. And one of the things that I think do something really framed for me is this ideal of social impact and doing it in a way that.

[00:39:38] Funded by organizations that are looking to make a difference or by donors, um, that are looking to achieve a particular outcome that's clearly measured. And I think the same way that businesses can go out of business, if they're not consumers that are willing to pay for it or customers that are interested in the service.

[00:39:56] Uh, nonprofits should be able to successfully go out of business either because, one, they've solved the problem and so there's no more need to pay for that individual code or service. Or two. I think it's also okay to. And look at the number of startups out there that have tried to do successful things and the number that fail as a result of that.

[00:40:15] Um, and even with that, it's clear that hey, there's not a market or need to it. And I think the trap sometimes that, uh, smaller organizations, even larger organizations, can fall in of what, we're a big institution. We're here, the donors keep funding it, and so let's keep finding things that we can keep getting more donations.

[00:40:32] The push that I would say is, are you really making an impact at the end of the. And one of the clearest ways to do that is if someone is willing to pay dollars or services or time for what you're doing, even if it's a small amount, because that gives an indication that you know what you're doing is, is successful.

[00:40:48] And then the best ones, uh, you're eventually gonna run it out of that because hopefully you've solved your individual problem. How did you get started in the social impact sector? So I was involved, uh, in local youth advisory boards. Uh, I served on the Santa Fe Mayor's Youth Advisory Council, uh, and eventually chaired it for two years and gave me really a chance to start thinking bigger and broader around the community.

[00:41:13] And then realized that there was a whole series of opportunities to work with organizations that informed youth advisory boards do something. Dot org was one of those, uh, and had the chance to be on the do something youth advisory board. Uh, and then I sat there thinking about it and saying, look, we've got a whole series of governors, a whole series of members of Congress that have youth advisory councils.

[00:41:29] Why doesn't the president, uh, have one? And so I ran a campaign for probably four or five years to try and get a presidential youth council. Uh, we got this close, but ultimately, uh, we're not successful. With it. But what it really taught me was how to start and run an organization. How do you get people signed on?

[00:41:48] How do you delegate tasks? How do you put a website up? How do you send out email updates? Uh, basically everything but a whole ton on the financial side. Uh, and what I realized is that social entrepreneurship was one of the best lessons that I could have ever wished for, for doing actual entrepreneurship because as we were founding and launching the company, it felt really familiar and it was something that I'd.

[00:42:09] You know, a couple of years before, just in the social side for the Presidential Youth Council. Yeah. It's funny, I rare aside that, yeah, it is how we met. I'm getting flashbacks. I don't know if I was directly running it at that point, but I do recall at one point it might do something career, uh, needing to arrange a bunch of kids coming to New York, going to and from hotels to our office.

[00:42:31] I don't know if you were part of that adventure when I was running it, but that was pretty funny. Yeah, I remember it. , I'm glad I didn't lose you in the , the subway. Uh, alright. If I could put you in a hot tub time machine back to the beginning of your work, what advice would you give?

[00:42:54] So I think one of the hardest pieces is you have to be prepared to give things up. And there's a great article called Giving Away Your Legos. Um, but you have to train yourself and learn that you have to constantly be pushing and giving things to other people as you grow and scale. . And that's really hard because when you're a small organization, you have all the Legos and you know, the Legos are super, super fun to play with.

[00:43:20] But as you scale more and more Legos start falling on your plate and you have to start giving away your favorite Legos and that you can no longer send the emails or collect the invoices or spend all the time with customers or do these items and you need a team around that has their own Legos that they're playing with.

[00:43:35] But all those have to start with you. And so I think one of the most challenging lessons is we've scaled. Is learning, okay, how do you give away your favorite Lego set and say, I'm no longer involved in doing that, or I'm not gonna go do X. And that's a really core part of scaling that I think founders definitely struggle with because you care, you're passionate, you're engaged, uh, and I think also applies for individuals, even if you didn't found organizations.

[00:44:00] What are you doing that you can give your new team member that just joined or be able to delegate or give back to someone else to let you really spend time focusing on the things that matter the most? Uh, and that's been one of the most helpful framing things that we've learned over our eight and a half years of doing this.

[00:44:16] That's so funny. There's part of my brain that's saying Absolutely right. , you have to eve away tho those types of things. And the other part of me is saying, I don't want to give away my Legos. I think there is, you know, speaking to somebody who's approaching a decade of work in the organization, I think there are some Legos that I will say you have to hold onto because it fuels you in some part, because otherwise you're just left with all the little gray pieces that don't really match or anything.

[00:44:37] And you're like, these Legos stink. I don't like this Jack. So I'll put an asterisk on that. Alrighty, . Very fair. . What is, what is something you think you or your organization should stop? Uh, the number of meetings that we have. I am a big believer in the book time, talent, energy, and I think the shocking thing that the book starts out of is you have all these organizations, many listeners too, who have large finance departments that are really concerned when you go spend a hundred or a thousand dollars on something and all the approvals that are involved.

[00:45:13] Well, most organizations', largest expense is the salary. For their headcount, and each individual each hour of the day has a cost associated with it. But yet, so often you see, oh, let's put 10 people in a meeting, and suddenly you're looking around and you're running a $500 or a thousand dollars meeting.

[00:45:31] And most organizations, including ours, Don't have a whole series of protocols in place that limit the number of meetings or put standards around meetings the same way that you have to get your expense report approved or a budget approved. And so I certainly would love to see us reduce the number of meetings, reduce the number of people in meetings, and be more intentional about when we get together.

[00:45:52] But it is a fight that I've fought for many years and it is a challenge because we as humans wanna socialize. Wanna see each other and default to that, and also wanna be inclusive, and so add more and more people and suddenly you've got 15 boxes on a Zoom screen and it ends up being a pretty significant cost to the organization.

[00:46:13] What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't follow? I love, I love this question. So, when I first told my mom, uh, that I was going to start a startup at Quorum to track what was happening on Capitol Hill, uh, her immediate response is she goes, oh, well that sounds like a nice thing to do between college and graduate school.

[00:46:34] Rest assured, both my parents are lawyers that would've loved for me to have gone to law school. Um, I did not have the opportunity to go to graduate school. I'm very happy to be here in growing the business. Uh, and so that, uh, immediately comes to mind because look, founding a company, Or a social, uh, impact effort or a nonprofit can be scary and you've gotta jump off and have confidence.

[00:46:56] And if you spend enough time working towards it and iterating, you will eventually get there, even if it's not the idea that you started on. If I were to hand you a magical wand wave across the social impact sector, what would it do? So for us, we're always interested in more government data, more information published online, more information in machine readable form, and more transparency, uh, that happens every day, uh, on both state governments and, and the political process.

[00:47:27] I think there's a ton of opportunities at the state government level of just being able to pull in much more information around the individual proceedings on the floor amendments, agendas, and committee hearings. Some state governments have individual transcripts of what's happening on the floor and committee sessions, and so there is huge opportunity, but oftentimes we'll see government organizations trying to hold it back where they don't want to give too much information to the public.

[00:47:51] They don't want to invite too much participation, and so that's the big area that I would love to take a magic wand and just fix that and make the government more accessible. What advice would you give college grads looking to enter the social impact? So my big advice would be go follow your passions.

[00:48:12] Go do the thing that you are most excited about doing, and that gets you up every day, even if it is not the given chosen path or the one that might be most exciting. And it's really interesting. Well, that most exciting, but most financially rewarding. When I look at my college classmates now, about eight years out, the ones that really went out and followed their passions, did the most risky things that at the time we graduated.

[00:48:38] You said, well, why aren't you going to take the really high paying. Consultant or financial job or going to law school and doing the traditional thing. Um, those are the folks that I think are both most successful and most fulfilled currently in their careers. And that is something that when you are leaving college at a given and current moment, you have this pressure of where everyone else is making high salaries and going to, you know, go work in business or go work in Wall Street or going to go do X or Y and a big encouragement that you will.

[00:49:09] Financial success, you will find fulfillment. You will find what's right. It might take you a little while to get there, but your twenties are the time to do that. And so use that time to explore because you'll end up with just a much more fulfilling career and you'll have more opportunities to pivot within it than say you will, you know, going into one of the more traditional paths.

[00:49:29] Well, Alex, thank you so much. Final question. How do people find you? How do people. Yeah, so we're super easy. Um, quorum.us. My email's just Alex quorum us. Uh, more than happy to be helpful. So if you're looking at your nonprofit technology and just want someone to talk to, certainly happy to bounce ideas off.

[00:49:48] Uh, if you're figuring out your advocacy strategy for next year or looking for advocacy software, we're certainly here. Uh, and happy to talk and in general, you know, looking to be able to give back to the community because I think it's so important that we help each other and realize that there's a lot of advice, uh, and favors and help that we've been given over the years.

[00:50:04] That's let us build the company, uh, and looking to see more people do that with NGOs, social impact movements, uh, and startups. Uh, thanks for the work you're doing in the sector. We appreciate it and good luck this year. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me on, George.

 

Blood Donation Eligibility National Update (news)

FDA To Further Ease Restrictions On Gay Men & Blood Donation Eligibility

On Friday the FDA proposed new policy revisions that demonstrate a shift toward more inclusive regulations surrounding blood donation for members of the LGBTQ community and those of various sexual orientations, according to reporting from CNBC and others. In 2015, the lifetime ban on gay men from donating blood was eased to allow those who abstained from sex for one year to donate blood, but Friday’s announcement proposed easing those restrictions further. The restrictive blood donation rules have long been criticized as discriminatory. As CNBC reports, “the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, said the FDA proposal is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to remove restrictions.” The new rules would allow monogamous gay and bisexual men to donate blood, while folks engaging in sex with new or multiple partners must wait three months.
Read more ➝

 

Summary

• PEPFAR Celebrates 20 Years of Unprecedented Global Impact in the Fight to End HIV/AIDS
  United States Department of State
• How Nonprofit Hospitals Put Profits Over Patients | nytimes.com
• SNAP 'food stamp' payments are about to get smaller. NJ lawmakers want to fund the difference. | Gothamist
• 10th Annual High Country K9 Keg Pull raises money for local nonprofit | Watauga Democrat

 

 

Proud partner of the Nonprofit Podcast Network from Nonprofit.ist.

 

 

Cookie-pocalypse & Fundraising in 2023 | Agility Lab Consulting

Elyse Wallnutt, Founder & Principal at Agility Lab Consulting shares how nonprofit fundraising professionals need to adapt to the removal of 3rd party cookies, dealing with evolving donor privacy laws

 

Resources on GDPR, SHEILD, and CCPA for nonprofits.

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] audio1299811408: Today on the Whole Whale podcast, we have somebody who was referred to Whole Whale by none other than a, a frequent guest and teacher on whole whale, uh, Josh from Round Table. And we, uh, we tend to pay attention when he says this person knows what they are doing, knows what they're doing with regard to data privacy and fundraising.

[00:00:48] So I was, I. To Elise, the founder and principal at Agility Lab Consulting, uh, agility Lab Consulting. And that's, uh, I believe Agility Lab Consulting. Uh, agility lab.io. Agility lab.io is their website. And we're excited because Agility Lab has just founded and starting their work. And I will say Elise comes with an incredible background, previously senior director marketing advertising at World Food Program.

[00:01:17] Yeah, you might have heard. In the us I also spent time director and strategy at the Center for American Progress. Uh, spent time at Media cause for a year and of course, uh, a little organization called The Nature Conservancy as a senior Associate director, uh, digital acquisition. So safe to say, you know, your stuff.

[00:01:37] I'm excited. I'm excited to learn from you. Thank you for coming on. Anything I, I missed, Elise? No, thanks George. It's, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, well, you caught my eye immediately because you started speaking my language before we turned on record by talking about the sort of like cookie apocalypse.

[00:01:58] The cookie apocalypse. So I don't know if that's the right place to start, but things are gonna get weird in 2023 for fundraisers. Why? Yeah, so you're probably all aware as consumers about how much more aware we've become about how our data is being used. I think that that's been a much more popular topic of conversation in the last couple of years, and audience demand for privacy has really picked up.

[00:02:28] We saw the EU adopt privacy laws with GDPR in 2016, which really set the standard and us. Uh, legislators have taken note as well. So there are five states in the US implementing privacy laws this year. And with that, uh, big tech is really paying attention to how they need to protect their reputations, um, and stay in compliance.

[00:02:53] So they are eliminating what's called third party cookies, and that's a, it's a little piece of code. , that is what allows marketers to stand up ads that, uh, essentially follow you around the internet. So those, you know, that pair of pants or shoes that you can't stop seeing, it's, it's that pixel or that, that third party cookie that allows for that.

[00:03:15] So, um, the reason it's. It's troublesome is most people consider it not consented data use. So what we're moving toward with the elimination of third party cookies is marketers are only gonna be able to use. Consented information. So the information that you provide to them. So we're looking at things like what you provide in a form, when you donate, what you provide, when you fill out that petition, um, and, and things of that nature.

[00:03:46] So that's really gonna require us to be a lot more thoughtful about our targeting strategies. You caught my attention here with saying that there are five states. I was only aware of the New York Shield and C C P A in California, but it's feels like, can I just summarize saying like where one goes all must follow it.

[00:04:06] It's essentially like I love how am American states are like so futile when it comes to internet laws and even like registration. So I. nonprofits have to register in each state for fundraising, even though you have one donation form on your site, is this is where data privacy, third party cookies are going?

[00:04:29] Like how do you advise, because obviously you're offering like consulting advice on how to approach this. How do you advise folks of being like, oh no, no, you gotta do this here, here, here, here. What is the approach? So the good thing about the, uh, five states that are implementing this right now is that the laws are, are pretty similar.

[00:04:46] Um, what it allows for is audience members to request that their information, um, can be deleted from your file essentially, so they can. Call you up and say, Hey, I wanna know everything you have on record about me. I want to view that information, and if I want you to get rid of it, you have to. So most of the states are, are pretty aligned on where they're falling with that.

[00:05:10] And to your point, George, I think most of the states are probably gonna have to. Fall online eventually based on, uh, demand from constituents, that's not going to stop. And there's actually, um, a bipartisan supported federal bill that's pending. Um, it's gotten a little bit stalled up, but may make progress in 2023.

[00:05:33] And if that comes to fruition, that will create that federally supported framework. So my advice for nonprofits is to start treating this like it. Already a reality and to start getting prepared for something you can put in place operationally across the board. There's not really a point in standing up, you know, a set of operations for Colorado versus California, um, because they're, they're pretty similar.

[00:06:00] So GDPR is the most aggressive and luckily we already know what that looks like, uh, from the eu. And if you use that as a framework, you're pretty much guaranteed to be in compliance with what the states stand up. and just to play it out more practically, let's say you get, cuz it's a, a rite of, rite of removal, I think for your data.

[00:06:23] Mm-hmm. . What if that's not followed in, what is it, 30 days or 90 days? What are the kind of penalties you're seeing for this? Uh, so what we just saw actually, um, Facebook got hit with a really large fine by the EU for not following privacy compliance. Um, so when you're out of compliance, you can get hit with fines.

[00:06:44] Um, you, you will have more of that, uh, legal eye on you and it really could impact you in. In terms of audience trust more broadly. Um, so that's where I've been encouraging people to think of this as more of an opportunity rather than a slap on the hand. Um, when we're showing audiences that we care about respecting their rights and how their data is used, you can really build your brand and make sure that you are front and center of building that trust conversation.

[00:07:16] And just to be clear, let's say there's a, a privacy@myorganization.org. Mm-hmm. , I George email them saying, you know, I'm sort of invoking my right for removal. Right. To be forgotten. Yep. Uh, please present and remove any and all data. This is an official notice, let's say that goes to that email and the organization's like, this is the first time we've ever seen it.

[00:07:40] Like, what does that actually. So it means that you're gonna have to go through your C R m present everything that you know about, but you also need to have a handle on how you've been releasing data to third parties. So you know when you're uploading a person's. Email address into Facebook so that you can serve ads to them.

[00:07:59] You're also releasing some of that data to Facebook. So there are things that you can implement, like Facebook's conversion API that allow you to self-select some of those fields and get your third party options in, uh, better compliance being more risk averse there. But really it involves you being able to tell people what you have on them.

[00:08:23] Um, You know, your own spare, but also how you've been using their, their data externally. So the idea is that you don't want it to take you three weeks to execute one of these requests. You wanna be able to make sure that your staff knows how to, uh, turn this over and make sure that it is, you know, scalable and your approach is able to be right sized.

[00:08:48] Um, and also that your privacy policy reflect. What people can expect. So if you have 45 days to, to do this, is it gonna take you all 45 or can people expect to see something in 10? So you really need to be able to set the tone for, um, what audiences should get from you. And when

[00:09:08] I see a lot of headaches in the future here, I mean clearly, unfortunately, my mind goes toward. More of a predatory attack potentially, um, where you could sort of deluge an organization with, um, hundreds of these requests, um, and really bog down a technical team. So certainly I think having a plan in place for how do you do this in, in batch and do it efficiently, uh, especially if you are on the front lines of organizations that dance on contentious issues, we'll say.

[00:09:39] Is that a, is that a fair. Yeah, we're actually seeing whole companies, uh, being stood up just to provide for that. Um, you know, it's flooding businesses with requests from consumers, you know, as the consumer you can hire them to go and do this for you and they'll hit everything you know, you've ever email subscribed to.

[00:10:01] So that is where you need to be able to make sure you have your operational process in line and, you know, um, what. fair game to be released and, and what's not, um, and, and how you're gonna treat that. Yeah. Sounds like, um, a lot of work. I I, I don't wanna spend too much more time here unless there's something I'm maybe missing on the, the right to be forgotten and those policies coming up.

[00:10:26] I think really the most important thing, well, not the most important thing, but another important thing for, uh, marketing teams to also consider here is that, Data minimization is going to be your legal team's recommended approach. So it's really important for you to get a good handle on what the states consider, uh, personal information, what those fields look like, and also for you to know the business reason that you're ingesting certain data fields and what you want your retention period to be, and what fields you're willing to.

[00:11:02] You know, forego. So if you know that you're going to lose some of that third party tracking, what do you need to know on a first party level in terms of, you know, person's age and their interest categories and, and all the other things that make us understand what makes a person tick? You need to have a good handle on that so that you can sit at the table with the legal team and, uh, engage with them productively on what can stay and what can.

[00:11:28] I mean, I don't even know how you would go about finding that individual's third party cookie that you're using to track them around the internet and delete it. I mean, I think you acknowledge it, but is there a way to like signal out that one, you know, unique identifier inside of the walls of Google and, and others?

[00:11:47] Uh, no, I, well, you, so what most people are approaching this as, and, and again, this needs to come through in the privacy policy, is there are services that will let a person like you or me, George. Gotcha. Yeah. Go wipe my, yeah. Yeah. Um, so. An organization can say, Hey, we're gonna recognize signals from those types of services or not.

[00:12:10] Uh, and that's what you need to make clear in your privacy policy cause you're not technically, legally obligated to do that yet. But in the future, when third party cookies are wiped, that's gonna go away for all of us. It's not gonna exist as a capability. And when is the, is the deadline for removing third party?

[00:12:28] So they, you won't have to do anything to remove them. Uh, Google's gonna do it for you supposedly. Uh, Firefox already doesn't support third-party cookies. There's several other browsers that don't, um, but Chrome is, owns 64% of the market share when it comes to browsers and they. Google is saying that 2024 is the year they're gonna make good on this promise.

[00:12:54] And it's notable, this timeline has shifted a lot because Google hasn't quite figured out how they're gonna make up the revenue loss on their end, is my guess. Uh, so they are, they keep extending it, but 2024 is, is what they say. Uh, the deadline. And we've already seen, you know, thank you for explaining a bit about cookies and kind of how they're used and the, the apple fallout, I feel like is still coming.

[00:13:19] So maybe you can talk a bit about how fundraisers are needing to adapt to the reduction in tracking ability in email and maybe marketing with regard to Facebook Advertis. . Yeah. So the question I get asked, um, often is, why is Facebook acquisition struggling and what are we gonna do to replace it? And I think what people are missing is that Facebook is just the first, because they were hit so hard with apple's changes when Apple forced web developers to say that, um, they had to ask users for permission to track them.

[00:13:57] N 94% of those users said, no, I don't wanna be tracked. Facebook lot lost a lot of capabilities to target people outright and also to create lookalike models based on what they knew about people's behaviors. So what you're saying from Facebook is just representative of the struggle you're going to also have on Google via paid search ads and the like when third party cookies are wiped out.

[00:14:23] So it's really the time to take stock. Understanding what's working on your file, doing some contextual audits to get a sense of. What you know about your audiences and what you'd want to know so that you can collect those inputs. And also so that you can do more one-to-one media buying. If it came to it.

[00:14:45] Um, you might wanna understand, hey, we, we stood up ads on this site and they worked, but not this site. So we're gonna play more toward that type of content category. And we're also going to take that one step further and build our, our content strategy so that it focuses more on that type of topic. Uh, so you might think about those pieces now while you still have the capability to see into, uh, your Google results.

[00:15:14] So the other thing that is really important to understand about third party cookie elimination is that there will be analytics implications. GA four coming into play. Um, and with third party cookies wiping out, you know, Facebook and other advertising capabilities to see a pixel fire, you're gonna have to feed that information more manually.

[00:15:39] And you're also going to need to adjust your attribution model potentially to, uh, make changes so that you understand the state of play and how things are converting or.

[00:15:52] I think the way I'm kind of trying to position this is less moving forward about who people are with regard to their cookie footprint. Mm-hmm. and more about what they do. This is gonna be a behavior first environment. And you know, you mentioned GA four. I have the feeling. based on numbers, conversations, and what I'm seeing, I have the feeling a lot of folks are not ready for the hard transfer from Universal Analytics.

[00:16:24] The number one used web tracking analytic on the interwebs. Mm-hmm. stopping in July, like done, done like dinner, gone not until November, but until gone. Won't work and then suddenly everyone's gonna have to use GA four, which is very clearly Google's response to cookie apocalypse gdpr rising concerns of the way the fundamentals of universal analytics work don't work in this new environment, which is why this is happening.

[00:16:54] Yeah. Uh, what is your take? How are you positioning this transfer and thinking? So in terms of my advice for people, I would. Operating like it's happening tomorrow and taking stock of what you've learned and the benefits of having all these tracking capabilities in place now, uh, by creating and documenting all of those insights so that you can say, , Hey, you know, right now I'm on this really sophisticated attribution model that lets me see all of the touchpoints that led up to a conversion.

[00:17:32] But if those go away tomorrow, and if I never had them at my discretion, how would I make different decisions? So if I am only able to see that a person gave on this donation form and I know nothing else about their path, how, how would I apply some of the learning? From the past to, to get to that. So, um, I would look at what you've learned about, you know, when I was at the Nature Conservancy, we were finding that it took an average of 16 touchpoints for a per person to decide to give.

[00:18:02] And those were the ones that we could track. So knowing that, how many emails do you need to get in front of them? How many, you know, direct mail placements do you need to, to hit them with? What are the more creative outlets that you. Uh, apply with influencer marketing and, um, more of that thought leadership lens that parn back to, you know, a decade ago before we had all these, uh, capabilities at our hands and had to operate, you know, more like creative marketers, , and getting to that touchpoint model.

[00:18:34] And thank you for, for sharing that, having to be top of mind for your audience. Losing. , the tool of remarketing hurts. Mm-hmm. , I don't know. I like, I think that's the technical word hurts. . What? Help is my question. Yeah. So I, that's where I think that piece of the contextual auditing is gonna be really important.

[00:18:59] So that, you know, I think the word persona is overused and it means so many different things, but really getting that fine-tuned understanding of what makes people tick. Um, and like you said, based on their behaviors, what they're doing. So qualitative, Data is one thing. You can ask people in a survey how they feel, what they think, but we've seen the downfall of qualitative data, uh, with, you know, election polls and, and whatever else.

[00:19:29] So we know that we have to take that with a grain of salt. So understanding quantitative data and, and what's working, I think, will help you make those decisions about the content that you're standing up. Your forward path to creating, uh, what's called a first party data acquisition strategy, um, and making sure that you're creating content that's going to give people a reason to give you their email address so that you can do that more manual retargeting with, with emails and, and other services.

[00:19:58] So you mentioned email. You know, when Apple flipped the, the switch there, we started to see some wonky things in our mm-hmm. open rates, confusing numbers of being like, we're doing great, but are we, can you explain a little bit more? Because so much of I'll, I'll say, , the digital fundraising tactics that whole whale pushes forward, rely on those email data.

[00:20:23] Can you explain what's going on, why we may not be able to trust our open rates and what we can do as, uh, you know, moving forward in this environment? Yeah. So that goes back to the same iOS update, um, that impacted. Mobile app developers on the advertising side, and it'll also hit email. So the metric to watch now is, is click data.

[00:20:47] That is what allows you to understand if a person actually engaged or not. And everything before that is a bit amiss because of the tracking capabilities that are missing now. So the, the metric you wanna watch, Um, engagement, and that is because you know that that information is visible on your side and it's, you know, considered your data.

[00:21:11] So, Paying attention to all of those content insights is what I would focus on right now. And, you know, there's never been a more important time to make sure you have really good, um, reasons for a person to click through and engage so that you can factor in at that email engagement rate. It's so difficult because sometimes the purpose of an email is to deliver that experience.

[00:21:41] in that platform, in that medium and not click through. Mm-hmm. not lose that extra step. When you do that though, you're getting less data. So, you know, we know that that strategy has worked in the past, but it's tough to also say like, oh, we're not saying only send like two words and be like, click to see the rest.

[00:22:00] Right. We're holding your content hostage until you give us data in the form of clicks. Uh, . I mean, I don't know. Are you recommending that? Is that the trade off or are you just like, no, what you're not getting. Yeah, I think there's, so one of the things that I've been playing with in my own email strategy is encouraging people to reply to an email or do something that's other engagement, um, and reply to say, Hey, this is why I signed up for your email list, whatever, whatever type of content that you think, um, might be engaging and might give you some information that you can scale.

[00:22:34] That's another mechanism for people to. Really show interest and, and give you data that is consented that you might be able to gain some, some insights from. Um, but yeah, otherwise, I, I would not recommend sending a two word email that just says click. But I would say that you should start, um, optimizing.

[00:22:54] Content in the way that we used to optimize for subject lines to get that open. You know, you still need a good, you still need a reason for people to open, but that's not your primary focus. Your primary focus and your metric basis should be on, um, what you're doing to, to get the engagement in those insights.

[00:23:12] And so you mentioned that in 2024, Google Chrome is gonna be making this change. Does this also extend to Android and Gmail? in terms of that tracking. Will open rates put another way, be completely null and void as we get into 2024 of that change? Or do not? I under do, am I misunderstanding this? Uh, so Chrome.

[00:23:37] So safari has already been hit by this with Apple. Um, so anything that's happening on your iPhone right now is, is not really trackable in terms of third party cookies. Um, in the Android land, I, what is the primary browser for Androids, it's chrome. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Chrome, yeah, everything will stop being supported there.

[00:24:04] So yeah, unless you're using some device that none of us are aware of at this moment, , it's, it's really going to be hurting, I guess if you are opting into some browser that's, that's very small and market share. Um, effectively this is really just gonna need to be the wholesale change, so. I think this all comes back to the same thing, which is that this is just kind of the way of the world now where audiences, they're not gonna get less aware of how their, their data is being used.

[00:24:36] So you should probably adjust for that and, um, take the opportunities that you have to be a leader in the space and. You know, let people know how their data is being used. Be upfront about what you'll do to, to respect their space and their privacy, and make proactive changes so that you're not caught off guard.

[00:24:56] We saw a really good example of this actually. Um, the New York Times in 2020 became the first major publisher who went to a first-party data only model. So they completely stopped using third-party supported, um, information. And the way that they were able to scale that is they came up with a really creative content tagging strategy where, you know, they're tagging their content based on a range of different things, whether.

[00:25:23] You know, emotion evoked author, topic, et cetera. But with those insights, when an advertiser comes to them and says, Hey, I wanna place an ad on content that has this type of feel, the New York Times can offer that with. Completely consented data because it's based on what people are doing on their site in a logged in state.

[00:25:46] So the New York Times is a great example of a content publisher doing that, and obviously it's not completely replicable for the, those of us who are not, uh, you know, news outlets. But I think that there are things that we can learn from them in terms of giving people a reason to log in. , which is easier said than done, but is a case for brainstorming what some creative product development might look like, and also thinking about the context of the content that you're putting out and how you might, uh, do it differently in terms of both tagging and the, the actual content within, so that you are setting yourself up to, to get good data insights from it and, uh, to make sure that you are setting your data or setting your content up in a way that.

[00:26:32] Clear funnel toward monetization. It's a move kind of back toward the old school intent driven ads. Mm-hmm. , what is the, uh, user intent, and it's more clear on Google's search than probably any other platform at this point. If I'm searching for ways to support the environment, it's pretty clear. I care about a couple things.

[00:26:55] I have a desire to take action, and that action is revolving around learning more about the. , guess what? That might be a good moment to introduce yourself as the nature conservancy. Yeah, and what's interesting is that, uh, last year was the first year in recent memory that the total combined ads, as I understand the stat, um, being spent total ad spend of Google, Facebook, who used to dominate pretty much the entire market fell, um, fell below 50%, which means there's like a rise of the rest coming.

[00:27:29] and I wonder if you can talk about how we'll have our own data of emails, but then we'll be like shopping around in a much larger marketplace and needing to make a lot more decisions than ever before. Uh, as it relates to data opportunity, however you want to take this, uh, this fly ball. Yeah. Yeah. You, uh, in terms of things like co-op partnerships, I think those are some of the options that are at.

[00:27:58] Discretion. Um, and I think that's where knowing third party data terms is gonna be really important so that you're making really practical decisions to understand how, um, those partnerships are working. You know, I think that there are some organizations that can offer up. Email addresses at scale, and you wanna make sure that they're also GDPR compliant and following cans, spam rules, and doing things in a way that aren't gonna get you into hot water.

[00:28:30] Uh, so that's, I think, point number one is you're going to need to be newly. Aware of and deeply aware of as a marketer, the decisions you're making on that front. Um, and also you're gonna need to consider efficiency. So I think when it comes to the efficiency question, obviously the third party. Data pieces are what allowed us to scale so quickly.

[00:28:58] Um, but I would test a range of different publishers who are not so much reliant on, um, third party cookies and start getting those insights now so that you get a sense of how things are gonna perform and you can scale that later. So there are publishers who are exploring this in a pretty forward thinking way, you know, Spoke with Basis Technologies last week, just as a, as an example, but, um, they're already exploring how they can garner, uh, marketing techniques that put advertising out there in a way that isn't, um, illegal.

[00:29:34] as it will be later. . Yeah. Well, it's gonna get pretty interesting. Any other points you wanna make before we move into our rapid fire about coming data privacy changes? What organizations need to be prepared for? I think really just making sure that, as you know, a marketer or a fundraiser, wherever it is, you sit on that spectrum that you consider.

[00:29:58] The implications in a forward thinking way. Um, and don't think of privacy as something that's just for the IT and legal teams. I think it's going to impact your job in a way that it just didn't previously, and that's gonna be the state of play from here forward. So it would make sure that you understand, you know, what your privacy policy says.

[00:30:18] Make sure it's covering you. Make sure your legal team knows what you're up to so that, um, you are protecting your organization and ultimately your brand, which is your job. So that's the big piece that I would hammer home there. That's super helpful. Alright, rapid fire time, roughly 32nd responses. And just to kick it off, what is one tech tool or website that you've started using in the last.

[00:30:44] Uh, so I have been using. Kajabi, that's how I built my site and I really enjoy that. If you are looking to build a website, which is probably a, a small number of people, um, I'm also exploring notion, um, I'm late to the game there, but that is a tool that's. . Um, I need a replacement forever Evernote, because my Evernote syncing has gotten very bad, uh, between my devices.

[00:31:11] So I'm looking for a, a replacement note taking app. Maybe that follows into tech issues you're currently battling with ? Yeah. Yeah. I would say data sync issues between devices has been a big one for me, uh, where I'll write myself a to-do on my phone and it's not showing up on. My desktop app version. So that is a big problem.

[00:31:35] What is coming in the next year that has you the most excited? What's coming? Yeah, what's coming up? Uh, personally, professionally, does it matter? Oh, let's do one, one professional and one personal. Now that you ask, uh, I would say professionally, you know, this is my first year in business by myself, so I am excited to, um, be able to know what to predict for 2024.

[00:32:02] Uh, no. What I can scale and um, how things need to pivot. I think entrepreneurship has always been something I've been very intrigued by and I'm excited to be, you know, taking the plunge personally. Um, I am going to Greece for the first time in March, so that should be a great time. Awesome. Talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things.

[00:32:28] this is a good question. I think one of the most valuable insights I've learned over the years is when it's important to have at least a verbal conversation, if not an in-person conversation, rather than trying to make it work over email, slack, et cetera. Um, I think sometimes people rely on the efficiency of.

[00:32:52] email and, and written coms. Um, and I know I certainly over relied on that in the past, and sometimes it's really important to just take the time to take somebody to coffee and recognize that that's gonna do more service to what you're trying to get done than hammering home a deadline will.

[00:33:08] Do you believe that nonprofits can successfully go out of business successfully? Go out of business? . Yeah, I do. I think that it is, there are a lot of solvable problems. You know, when I was at World Food Program, we called Hunger, the world's most solvable problem. I think it's a matter of building the operational infrastructure to be able to ingest the money that would allow you to go out of business.

[00:33:37] If you got. A huge donor, are you gonna be able to scale your operation that quickly and think about the components that would need to go into that? So I think, um, nonprofits need to be able to operate in a way that allows them to have those overhead pieces taken care of, and the sound operational infrastructure that allows for that.

[00:34:00] if I were to put you in a hot tub time machine back to the beginning of your nonprofit work, what advice would you give yourself? Hmm. Um. I would say to be unafraid, to, to speak. I had a mentor early in my career who made clear that if you were invited to a meeting, it was for a reason and your voice needed to be heard.

[00:34:26] And I think especially as, uh, a female in this industry, you can, can take a step back from that at the beginning of your career. You, there's some, I think, imposter syndrome among all of us, but especially among young women. So I would. Speak.

[00:34:41] If I were to give you a magical wand that you could wave and change something in the industry, what would it do? Hmm. I think we'd be a lot further ahead on diversity initiatives and understanding how they come into play in every facet of what we do. I think nonprofits. Just catching up to this conversation.

[00:35:04] And we still think of it as, you know, we need a diverse hiring pool and we don't necessarily understand all of the things that go into building that, that talent pool. So making sure that we have cultures that diverse communities would want to work within and, uh, that, that respect, um, the difference standpoints that we all come from.

[00:35:22] That's what I would change would be further along. What is something that you think you should stop doing? I should stop doing, I should stop drinking more than one cup of coffee a day. , I, uh, I'm playing with my, my workflow for the day and the optimal time to make sure I'm, I, I used to exercise first thing in the morning, and I'm pivoting that more toward, toward the, the mid-afternoon, which I, I guess, are the luxuries of being an entrepreneur.

[00:35:52] But, um, playing with the caffeine intake, um, has not been great. So produced. How did you get started in the social impact sector? So I grew up in a very conservative area of Colorado. Um, Colorado's a very interesting state in terms of politics, but I grew up in the area of Colorado Springs, um, that's very focused on religion, military, et cetera.

[00:36:17] Um, and I was about nine when my Uncle Keith passed away, uh, from AIDS and. at that time, we weren't allowed to talk about why he passed and what happened and, uh, his sexuality and I, as I have gotten older, always think about what that must have felt like for him to not even be able to talk to his family about, um, you know, this terrifying illness that he had and.

[00:36:48] The, where he was in life. So that's, that's been the event in my life that I've always come back to. That drives me to make sure that no one else feels like that or is in that place. What advice would you give college grads looking to enter the social impact sector? You co oh, I guess your college graduated by that point.

[00:37:07] Um, I was gonna go the internship route. I, I think just start. I think there's a lot of trepidation around diving in and, um, finding, you know, the perfect job description to apply for, or the perfect service to offer. And I think just getting out there and seeing, um, Casting a wide net is, is very useful in those beginning stages.

[00:37:34] And also not being afraid to say yes when you get invited to, you know, that networking session or the happy hour, that might seem useless. Just building your army of, of friends and contacts. What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or did not follow?

[00:37:55] Um, my parents gave me lots of advice, advice that I, I did not follow. Um, . One thing that I did follow, my parents, uh, grew up in, um, a very small area of Ohio, former mining town that, um, was not well to do. We did not grow up, um, super well off money wise, and my dad really wanted me to focus on a business degree, uh, because it was practical and I did do that.

[00:38:24] Um, but I will say that I've, I've tried to pivot it in a way that's become my own. Um, and that is, is focused on. Yes, the business side and the practical sides of that, but also the social impact side that is, is my own mark. Well thanks for sharing all of that. How do people find you? How do people help you?

[00:38:44] So my website is agility lab.io. Um, and I have on. That's a, uh, you can contact me for a quick informational consult or I have a couple of, uh, checklists that will help you think through your risk diversification strategy. And if you're interested in pursuing a project together, you can reach out to me one-on-one through the site, um, or join my email list.

[00:39:10] Yeah, I'd say just add, if you're looking for that digital privacy tuneup that doesn't just stop at privacy, but also looks. How your fundraising and comms team are approaching a different landscape. It sounds like you know what you're doing. I enjoyed the conversation and thank you for all that you've shared with our audience.

[00:39:27] Thank you, George.

 

AmazonSmile Turned Upside Down Cutting $449m CSR Program (news)

 

Amazon Sunsets AmazonSmile Amid Cost-Cutting 

The AmazonSmile will be ending by February 20th, according to a statement from the company, as reported by NPR and others. While the program dispersed nearly $449 million to nonprofits globally, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. Amazon pointed to other efforts, such as its Housing Equity Fund, which supports affordable housing efforts near its headquarters, as an example of a social impact program receiving investment. However, smaller nonprofits that received AmazonSmile donations say that the donation were helpful and would be missed. The move comes after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, amid a winter defined by tech layoffs across the industry.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

• Time's Up to halt operations, shift resources to legal fund | ABC News 
• People are only just realising what happens to the money IKEA makes - and it’s blowing their minds | The US Sun
• Founder of Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit accused of embezzling millions | king5.com 
• What if school was all outside, every day? N.J. ‘nature schools’ take class outdoors, rain or shine.  NJ.com
• The Eagles thought their Christmas album would fund a toy drive. It ended up doing much more. | https://www.inquirer.com

 

 

Rough Transcript

[00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we are talking about turning that Amazon smile upside down. I was first off, really happy to be able to come up with that subject line. Um, not as happy that this program is ending. Uh, Nick, how's it going?

[00:00:42] Nick: It's going good. George, this is, I think, gonna be one of those weeks where we are just focused on, on one-liners and, and puns. But alas, I'll take us into the top story, which you alluded to, which is that Amazon Smile. The program that donated a PORs, uh, portion of the proceeds from purchases on Amazon to nonprofits will be coming to a close on February 20th.

[00:01:07] This comes via reporting from NPR and other outlets. And in the history of the program, it dispersed nearly 449 million to nonprofits globally. However, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. That's in quotes. Um, Amazon pointed in their statement to other efforts such as its Housing equity fund to support affordable housing.

[00:01:34] Here its headquarters as an example. Of a social impact program it was investing in. However, in the articles, smaller nonprofits said that Amazon SMILE donations were helpful and would be missed. And this comes amid broader economic headwinds that the industry is facing. Amazon has announced 18,000 layoffs.

[00:01:57] Tech layoffs are now commonplace across the board. Amazon Smile more like a frown these days.

[00:02:06] George: I'm sad to see a CSR corporate social responsibility program of this magnitude get sunset in this way in short order. I've been looking on LinkedIn, um, the reactions, and some folks are saying, you know, good riddens, this was a distraction for nonprofits because it sort of baits an organization into becoming an affiliate marketer.

[00:02:30] Meaning you get a portion of the sales based on a trackable link and you're pushing product as opposed to your purpose. , I hear that. I also see 449 million, uh, across nonprofits being something meaningful now. Yeah. You spread peanut butter too thin and it turns into nothing. Right. If I were to donate that, but like, that's still just, that's a lot of money.

[00:02:55] You know, there's, um, 1.5 ish million nonprofits, so I don't, I don't know that I buy that full narrative of like, it was too small to make a difference. , it was part of, for some organizations, a balanced fiscal diet. It was a diversification of revenue streams. You know, it was something that they, they got and ideally didn't have to push too hard for.

[00:03:19] So bad thing too bad. You know, I, I, I don't think that, I'm curious why, and, and I'll maybe never know the reason of like the actual, like, is this a cost cutting? Is there just a change in csr? Did they not get enough, uh, from it? Because on the same token, it actually served them as well because guess what?

[00:03:42] Somebody was buying something from them. You know, it was the affiliate marketing strategy. It was actually pretty darn clever, and it worked so sad to see it. And hopefully there'll be a, another solution that arises, an opportunity that shows up for, for those organizations.

[00:04:02] Nick: I agree. I. It can't have cost them that much money to run though. Like that's the thing, right.

[00:04:11] George: Well, the the other thing is like you can just sign up for an affiliate link and sell things, but I think the difference also with Amazon Smile is that, You could have your supporters put Amazon Smile on their purchasing. So I had it for, for my nonprofit, and it was just, anytime I buy, I had something on Amazon.

[00:04:27] A point went that way. So I, I, maybe you need to backtrack on like affiliate marketing versus actually it was adding a layer that said, for these customers, a portion of your proceeds go back to this organization. So that is uniquely different.

[00:04:43] Nick: That's fair. That's fair. We'll continue to see if we hear more about this, maybe they'll roll out something different or new. Alas, we move along to our next story, and this one is from a ABC News and others that the Times Up organization, the Me Too, the organization born out of the Me Too movement, particularly the that one in Hollywood, um, has Hal.

[00:05:13] Operations and is shifting remaining financial resources to the Legal Defense fund. So Times Out has had a. Go of it. Fallout from associations with Andrew Cuomo and that scandal, um, and has been something of an EM battered, uh, embattled organization rather, um, over the past couple years and is now closing doors and, and shifting that money to the legal defense fund, which does, uh, provide, uh, resources for women in, in specific industries. This is kind of a weird one because it's such a high profile organization that came up very quickly. I think there's probably some lessons to be learned here. George, what are those lessons and what is your take on this?

[00:06:03] George: I wish I was smart enough to actually understand the, the full implications of of this. The different narratives that I see here, one, are the types of organizations that pop up in these. Cultural moments have a lot of headwinds. Later they start off with a disproportionate amount of attention and funding upfront, which certainly times updated and they did remarkable work, certainly around if we're looking at victims of Harvey Weinstein, and then the way that they were able to, I'd say, update the way that victims were dealt with.

[00:06:44] In these cases from a legal standpoint and a lot of achievements there, but there's a certain type of what feels like immutable. What goes up must come down type of physics here, where the speed at which with which you rise to fame. also seems to all but guarantee the fall from Grace. That is kind of like the inverse Lindy effect.

[00:07:15] The Lindy effect is if you have been here for this long, you'll probably continue to be here. Uh, coming from the. Run of show for Broadway, uh, productions that if a Broadway production had been on, you know, it's a, it's a wonder that cats ever stopped being on Broadway. Cause cats had been forever on Broadway.

[00:07:32] And it was this, this joke of like, once you're in the line cafe, you'll sort of never be removed. Um, I've gone far from the topic, I'm gonna come back to it. So the first thought, the speed with which something rises probably dictates the speed with which it falls the next. Looking at organizations that need to sort of spin up with all of the overhead, with all of the infrastructure and hiring staffing, like to create a new organization takes a lot of, of work and wealth.

[00:08:08] And the fact that now at the end of it, you know, they, they talk about, and even in this quote, very simply, the Legal defense Fund really reflects who we were, not only at our inception, but really at our core. And that's a quote from, uh, Schultzer. And that's why, you know, the, the remaining 1.7 million, which is, is quite small, uh, in the grand scheme of the size of the organization, uh, is going back to that fund.

[00:08:33] And the question I guess in my mind is, you know, the fund administered by the National Women's Law Center in Washington? Which has provided and provides legal administration help to, to workers that identify as low income and 40% of people of color. I, I'm, I'm curious as to what the world would've looked like, had times Up simply been a branch of that organization, how much more could have been applied to it and the, the learnings and the staff and that ability rolled into an existing organization rather than saying, we need a new organization.

[00:09:08] You know, could this have. A campaign or a program of that legal defense fund. Those are just questions in my mind, and it's, it's tough with an organization under this level of scrutiny. I, I have a hard time getting behind some of those decisions they made with, you know, Andrew, Andrew Cuomo and, and consulting, allegedly consulting with them behind closed doors that was then later revealed by reports.

[00:09:33] Uh, It's tough. I think nonprofits are under, uh, a much, much greater microscope and it doesn't take much to set the, set the tide in the wrong direction because you exist at the public's. Will you rely on funding and funders and if those funders are then effectively being shown. as public donors because nine 90 s are all public.

[00:09:59] We can see donors and donations. Are you then saying, oh, a large donor has to then reconsider like, wait a minute, am I supporting an organization that supported Andrew Cuomo? Not saying that that is a direct line, but all things being equal, it doesn't take much to hurt in that reputation, and it's tough for organizations that are in that frontline type of work.

[00:10:17] Nick: George, I, I think that's, that's a great point. You bring up a lot of different nuances and the threads there, and it makes me think that your nonprofits have to play by different rules than businesses, right.

[00:10:33] George: They do. You can't just go on an apology tour being like, Hey, sorry, we fired him. We're all back to normal. Like, nevermind that our news station. Maybe let this kind of go by the wayside.

[00:10:44] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I guess we'll, we'll continue to keep an eye on this story. It'll be interesting to see how that legal defense portion of it, which is still administered by, um, that, uh, the other organization, the, the woman's um, uh, legal organization, how that all pans out. Um, so we'll keep our listeners updated, but to that end, I will take us to our next story.

[00:11:12] And this one comes. From King five.com and the founder of a Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit is accused of embezzling millions. Um, so. Uh, the, the gentleman in, in question, Issa I apologize cause I know I'm mispronouncing. That was the founder and longtime executive director of the West African Community Council or W A C C, which is based in Seattle.

[00:11:44] Um, and after decade of service, um, he was ousted, uh, on December 16th. Accused of embezzling, which is, which is, you know, terrible, terrible, um, especially, you know, people who really, really need help. And then this long article kind of goes into it, it goes into, uh, in DA's started of the story, um, as well side of the story rather, and it kind of a complicated one.

[00:12:11] But, uh, George, what's your takeaway on.

[00:12:16] George: I look. Board members for this, and this is a reminder for the fiscal responsibilities that your board members take on. And I'm not saying send this article to your board members, but if you are on a board, if you are building a board, fiscal stewardship and hiring and firing the c e o, those the primary jobs and roles of a board.

[00:12:38] And so I see this and I don't look at, you know, in the D and say, oh, what a bad actor. Like there are bad actors. One out of a thousand people, one out of 10,000 people are not the, you know, folks that you should be trusting. The job of the board is to hire and fire and make sure the right people are in there.

[00:12:56] And the fact that this was an extra bank account started in 2014, like a secret bank account, and like hundreds of thousands of dollars going through there, you know, I'm looking at auditors, I'm looking at board members looking at that, and so paying attention to those things like, oh, it can't happen. . Um, it, it is just a function of odds and, uh, again, I wouldn't have put this in here actually if it had not been for the size of the, the embezzlement.

[00:13:25] We have millions of dollars. It's, it's brutal. Uh, so it's a reminder to, to board members out there that, uh, while those finance meetings may be boring, and also the people preparing them, like, here's, here's what you're actually doing. Um, you're making sure money gets to the. The right places and you're avoiding, um, tragedies like.

[00:13:45] Nick: Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point and we always like to keep our listeners on their toes to protect themselves from this happening at their organization. I have our next story is an interesting one. Um, Georgia. Did you know that IKEA is owned by a nonprofit?

[00:14:11] George: Here's the thing. I didn't know that Ike. Was owned by a nonprofit. Frankly, this is like a non-story story, but it's fascinating because, uh, you know, in the , the rep reputable, the US Sun , and this title says no Ikea, uh, people are only just realizing what happens to the money IKEA makes, and it's blowing their minds.

[00:14:32] I mean, first off, a plus on a hook title. But it's funny because there is a nonprofit involved and owner of the main entity. So IKEA is actually a nonprofit organization. So the money made from those, uh, you know, fund to assemble wardrobes, uh, you know, beyond paying is, is put away into, um, a nonprofit. And the charity's big mission is to further the advancement of interior design.

[00:15:01] Nick: Novo, Novo.

[00:15:03] George: uh, They're putting it out there further, the advancement of interior design. I mean, you've gotta believe in that mission, I suppose. Um, I did. I didn't have anything else here. Just I thought it was funny.

[00:15:17] Nick: it's really funny. So the detail is I e Ikea store stores are franchised by a company called, Inga Holdings, which is fully owned by a nonprofit organization called Stitching Inga Foundation. Um, yeah, I , it's kind of funny. I wanna do a deep dive on this. We need like a little mini documentary on what the hell's happening, but.

[00:15:45] Uh, I am willing to bet there is some criticism in the wonderful Scandinavian world about, uh, whether this is truly because people are passionate about, um, easy to assemble interior design pieces, or whether this is some kind of, uh, super duper clever, uh, tax loophole that is being taken advantage of.

[00:16:09] George: Yeah, I mean, look, there's some definitive, like this is a tax play very clearly. They pay according to online mba, 33 times less taxes than the average business. The Economist, the overall setup of IKEA minimizes taxes and disclosure handsomely, rewards the founding camra Cam Prad family, and makes IKEA immune to takeover.

[00:16:32] So it's interesting. That when you're saying like, this is a strategic reason, like frankly as a business owner, now you have me thinking, should a nonprofit own whole whale and suddenly we don't have to pay taxes. We have, I'm gonna go ahead and say a loftier mission then to improve, I'm sorry, I want to get it accurately to, uh, to further advance, uh, the advancement of interior.

[00:17:00] Further the advancement of interior design. So I would say ours has built a healthier, more just and sustainable world as an agency. I, uh, I don't know. One of the funnier quotes here is, uh, no wonder why you gotta put everything together yourself at Al Okaya, because they rely on a bunch of volunteers to put their stuff together.

[00:17:20] So, you know, they have a lot of volun, big volun. I have volunteered for Ikea on more than one occasion,

[00:17:29] Nick: Volunteering on for IKEA is a, a family pastime. Um, That's funny. Here's another one for you, another light story. We're, this is a good week. There's nothing too traumatic in

[00:17:42] George: I mean, just, you know, massive embezzlement, half a billion dollars of CSR stopping at Amazon. This is a good week,

[00:17:49] Nick: Yeah, this is,

[00:17:50] George: on

[00:17:51] Nick: this is a good week for

[00:17:53] George: this. Okay, you're classifying Good week on this. Okay.

[00:17:55] Nick: I, you know, maybe it's just because it's sunny out. But that is a perfect segue into our next story, where one New Jersey school asked What if school was outside all the time? Every day. So New Jersey Nature schools are taking class outdoors, rain or shine. Um, and this article talks about bundled up kindergarten students at a Star Child Nature School in Medford, New Jersey, outside collecting tree sap to make glue.

[00:18:28] Four handmade ornaments. So this is an immersive, you are outside, you are learning, you are one with nature type situation at this school. And that brings us to, uh, the relevant question of making, uh, the question of nature versus nurture ever. The more salient.

[00:18:46] George: Wow. It's, it's all, it's all nature school here. Uh, and I know some are nonprofits, some are for-profits, but there's a number of them, and I'll call out one quote here From the South Mountain Nature School, our programs promote social and emotional development and instill confidence and foster independence.

[00:19:01] Said Mary Claire Solomon. Who also in other news happens to be my sister. And so I'm incredibly proud of my sister for starting one of these nature schools, pushing through the pandemic and growing to the size that they have, uh, in New Jersey. And, you know, I get to see the, the pictures and the approach that they take in.

[00:19:23] There's, you know, that question that comes up, well, what about when it snows? And it's like, you know, there's no bad weather, just bad apparel. So they, they are out there, rain or shine. I think this is a, a really healthy way for, for young people who are inevitably going to wander into the world of screen first learning and engagement and work to realize that, you know, food comes from the ground.

[00:19:52] SAP is fun and it's, uh, it's great to see. I'm very proud of my sister, though. In other news,

[00:20:00] Nick: That's super. George did you know that's mine, hometown, A South Mountain Reservations with in walking distance from where I grew up.

[00:20:07] George: He can go over and say hi.

[00:20:09] Nick: Go over, say hi. Maybe a little too old for, uh, the Nature School thing,

[00:20:14] George: you could volunteer perhaps.

[00:20:17] Nick: love it. All right. How about a feel good story?

[00:20:21] George: Yeah. What do we.

[00:20:22] Nick: This one comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, uh, and it's about the eagle. The team, not the group, uh, thought that their Christmas album would fund a toy drive and it ended up doing so much more. So the Philadelphia Eagles of a football and. Sports fame can tell.

[00:20:44] I follow football. Uh, thought that they were just raising a mere $30,000, um, for this charity toy drive, when in fact they raised

[00:20:59] George: Quarter million 250,000 I believe.

[00:21:02] Nick: million. Wow. Wow. Good for.

[00:21:07] George: Yeah. What it's nice is also going to be funding not just one, but two toy drives and a summer camp, uh, which. Objectively I, while I respect toy drives and I like those moments, it's great to also say, what about dealing with, uh, the summer learning gap and supporting communities when, um, when you are needing a potentially even more.

[00:21:29] So, uh, congratulations. Also, full disclosure here. Nick thought that this wasn't the team, the Eagles, but the band, uh, the Eagles. And it took him a couple of reads to realize that it was a fact about the sports ball. So Nick, I think we all learned something today.

[00:21:49] Nick: We've learned a lot.

[00:21:51] George: Have we, well, before I give you a terrible joke, I have a bit of a sponsored post here and it. A note that we are opening up our, as far as I know, we only do it once a year and it's the ad grant cohort and we're teaching. Organizations how to run the ad grant, the Google Ad grant, the thing that you get 10 K a month in in-kind ads for placing ads that drive traffic and value to your organization.

[00:22:20] We're doing a five week live cohort. This isn't pre-recorded. This is hands-on and we're sharing exactly how we run this ad grant to maximize the ROI for your organization. And so we're gonna help, uh, only I think it's limited, 25 organizations. It always sells out. Registration is now open. Uh, and you can find that link in the show notes or wander around whole whale.com/university and you'll find it there.

[00:22:47] Alrighty, question Nick, for you.

[00:22:52] Nick: Uh oh.

[00:22:53] George: Why, why did the clown donate his salary?

[00:22:57] Nick: Hmm. I don't know about the clown thing, but why did the clown donate his salary?

[00:23:02] George: Uh, it was a nice gesture.

[00:23:05] Nick: Ah, ah, ah.

[00:23:09] George: He, he laughs sometimes he doesn't know. And then we like, go off, Nick, did you actually get this one or is this gonna be the one where you like pause and you're like, I didn't get it. Explain it to

[00:23:17] Nick: I, I got this one. I'm a huge Shakespeare Stan. I, I'm very familiar with a court gesture and this was, yes, but offering to explain was as well a nice gesture. Um, cuz

[00:23:30] George: I just wanted to do it cause I feel like I cut off. I'm like, this would've been much funnier if he didn't understand it. He was like, I laugh, I don't get it. Alright. Thanks for humoring me and this is what you get for staying to the end of the podcast. Leave us a review. Thank you. Bye.

[00:23:46] Nick: Bye.

Using Food Entrepreneurship to Feed Careers | Hot Bread Kitchen

We interview Leslie Abbey, Chief Executive Officer, Hot Bread Kitchen.

In this podcast, Leslie shares how HBK is focused on reaching 1,000 "breadwinners' by 2024 and how it has been leading the organization out of the pandemic. Hot Bread Kitchen programs and services include professional skills training and career programs, job placement, food entrepreneurship and social services support. We have a built-in network of high-quality employers ready to hire women from our programs. Our food entrepreneurship offerings help small business owners seed, start and scale their ventures. And our team helps women overcome obstacles to success outside the workplace—from financial planning to childcare.

 

About LESLIE ABBEY, ESQ.
Leslie is an organizational leader and entrepreneur who has committed her career to supporting at-risk youth and families, social justice, and data-driven strategies to improve human service outcomes. In January 2022, Leslie became CEO of Hot Bread Kitchen, an organization that creates economic opportunity for immigrant women and women of color through job skills training, food entrepreneurship programs, and an ecosystem of support in New York City. 

 

Prior to joining Hot Bread Kitchen, Leslie was Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of Covenant House New York, the City’s largest organization dedicated to serving youth experiencing homelessness. During her tenure, she implemented significant operational improvements, including the launch of multiple data-driven strategies to improve youth outcomes, growth of the organization’s budget by more than 50%, and the spearheading of an agency-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic plan. From 2014 to 2017, Leslie was Interim Executive Director and Chief Program Officer at Lantern Community Services, a leading nonprofit provider of supportive housing in New York City, and the largest operator of such services for youth leaving foster care. From 2007 to 2014, Leslie held progressively senior positions at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). 

 

Leslie started her career as an attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice from 1997 to 2007, where she first represented children and youth in Bronx Family Court, and then moved on to the Practice’s Special Litigation and Law Reform Unit. In 1995, Leslie received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was an editor of The Review of Law and Social Change and a member of the Family Defense Clinic. She received her B.A. with Honors from Swarthmore College in 1990. 

 

Leslie has served on various boards and committees in the nonprofit and public sectors and currently sits on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College and Board of Trustees of New York University School of Law. In the year following her law school graduation, Leslie founded Legal Information for Families Today (LIFT), which provides legal information and support to Family Court litigants, and now serves 30,000 litigants annually; she continues to serve as a member of LIFT’s Board of Directors. A native New Yorker, Leslie lives in Manhattan with her husband, two teenagers, and rescue dog, Sammy.