Driving Participation Podcast: What Is Working in Marketing & Fundraising | Nonprofits | Schools | Associations

After five years and 200 episodes, Beth has certainly learned a thing or two (or 200) about participation, such as where it comes from and what it really means. As she turns the final page of the podcast, she reflects on the five principles of participation she’s picked up on with the help from guests along the way, from the meaning and value of collaboration to knowing your audience beyond demographics and much more.

Sarah Olivieri joins this session to talk all about strategy. How do you create a strategy everyone is on board with and can follow? And, more importantly, how do you even define strategy? Sarah, founder of PivotGround, and Beth explore the link between strategy and capacity, what differentiates strategies from tactics, and Sarah’s “secret sauce” to help businesses thrive. She shares tricks for getting time back in your day so you can shift your focus to the activity that is most important, tools for staying on track with the strategy you develop, and more.

When it comes to innovation and experimentation, ideas are only half of the challenge. Donna Kastner, founder of Retirepreneur, joins this week’s session to explore the other half: implementation. She and Beth delve into experimentation and how to get from a conversation about an idea to an actual product. Donna explains how to design a conversation that puts everyone on a level playing field and leads to exploring the "why" behind the idea—without jumping to tactics too quickly. She and Beth discuss how a hackathon can create an impact anywhere from a conference to just within your organization and bring people together to solve, or "hack," a problem, the importance of patience, and much more.

Jeremiah Lane knows the power of putting a face to the name of an organization. After attending a conference, he came back to the Children's Hospital Foundation, where he serves as Communications Director, with an idea that changed how the organization approached its storytelling. With one campaign that directly involves the families they serve, the Foundation has been able to tap into the emotional side of the work they do and share those stories with their audience in ways that resonate, especially because they may be stories about kids from their hometown. Jeremiah shares how to use personal stories to create connections with donors, the link between development and communications, and more.

As many organizations can relate, Julia Toepfer knows that it can be hard to generate the amount of content needed to tell your story when you have a small team. Julia, marketing and online engagement manager at National Immigrant Justice Center, joins this session to share how NIJC found inspiration for content from an unexpected source: its own staff. Julia shares how she and her team encourage staff members to contribute to telling NIJC's stories in ways they're comfortable with, whether it's writing a post, making a video, or even being featured in the story themselves. They explore maintaining messaging for staff members who are not in marketing, how to avoid hurting feelings or egos in new situations, and more.

Say you have a great event that brings in big numbers of participants and donations to your organization. What should you do when the event is over to encourage guests and donors who may have given only to support a certain participant to continue giving to your organization? Kimberly Kroll-Goodwin, manager of events at STARS Air Ambulance in Saskatchewan, Canada, joins this session to share how her organization created a welcome series that introduced donors to the work STARS does and how they can get involved—without making a single ask. She and Beth explore how to measure where your donors come from, how to effectively tell your story to a new audience, and more.

Segmenting your messaging isn’t a new concept—but there are new ways to do it without relying on just demographics. To Amanda Parsons, Associations Coordinator for the Oregon Recreation and Park Association, participation is a spectrum, and that translates to your email messaging as well. She joins this session to talk about how to use indicators of participation as a means of sending the messages people really want to receive without clogging their inboxes. She and Beth explore the value of segmenting based on interest level, how to effectively give your email database a cleanse and create a "healthy list," the lead indicators of an unhealthy list, and more.

Even for an organization as big as the Red Cross, having a team of volunteers with a wide set of skills can make a huge difference — especially today in digital communications and social media. Sara Falconer, director of digital communications at Canadian Red Cross, joins this session to talk about how the organization created a system that allows volunteers to lead the charge in the next wave of social media ambassadors, and how they ensure volunteers feel like they’re making a real difference. She and Beth explore the merits of a shared editorial calendar, encouraging experimentation with a new program, and more.

What's the secret to creating a killer email list? Believe it or not: The unsubscribe button. Gregg Banse, Director of Marketing and Business Development at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, joins this session to explore why quality is greater than quantity when it comes to your email lists, and why having people unsubscribe can actually lead to better results—and better relationships. He and Beth explore the value of automation, why opens aren't enough, how to understand email conversions, and much more.