Nonprofits and other social good organizations face many challenges, but one that can be seen over and over again comes from inside the organization. Different departments, such as development and communications, don’t effectively engage with each other, hampering their ability to reach out to and engage with donors as successfully as they could.

Today’s guest is Sam Stern, CEO of Magnify Good, a communications consultancy that helps social sector organizations magnify the good of the work they do. He joins podcast host Steve MacLaughlin of Blackbaud to talk about how organizations can transform by focusing on working more connectedly across departments, particularly between development and communications. Listen in to hear what Sam has to say about where to start to increase inter-departmental collaboration, how creating personas can help organizations operate more effectively, mirroring the donor’s journey with evergreen content, and the importance of technology to bring all the pieces together.

 Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• Looking inward for problems rather than focusing on external factors
• Steps for helping departments work better together
• Developing personas to understand the donor’s journey
• Creating meaningful and lasting content
• The role that technology plays and shifting organizational thinking around digital transformation

Resources: 

Sam Stern

Magnify Good

Connective Impact eBook

Quotes:

“What would happen if we all focused on doing our work together in a fashion that would be more effective and lead to better results?”

“Having this persona in the front of your mind all the time is going to help you get to the point where you can even test these things to see what’s working best and what’s not.”

“How do we need to think about this, organizationally, and make decisions as to whether this technology is actually just going to be more work and not really pay off any benefits, or if it’s really going to empower us.”