Nonstop Nonprofit

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

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

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

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

Innovation. What does innovation mean? Where does it come from? Why is innovation important to your nonprofit's impact? Today, we're talking to Brooke Codney, American Heart Association's National Director of Development Innovation, about how AHA, a worldwide leader in the nonprofit sector, relies on creative zero-gravity thinking from its global team.

From finding her job through a pretty traditional (and now kind of outdated) method—a newspaper listing, to being a leading innovator at American Heart Association, Brooke has guided AHA's culture of innovation, culminating in an Innovation Center—a dedicated function within AHA that has led to transformational growth for the organization.

But she hasn't done it alone.

American Heart Association's secret is its staff. They've got a collaborative collection of fresh eyes within the organization and rather than being intimidated by all the different perspectives and ideas, American Heart Association is tapping into it, from the CEO on through their boots on the ground.

American Heart Association is almost 100 years old. And there's a reason why they're not just a leader in coming up with new fundraisers and cool ways to engage with donors, they've made an art of changing the way we view something as fundamental as health.

Listen in to my conversation with Brooke and you'll see why Funraise and American Heart Association make the perfect pair when it comes to cultivating a culture of innovation.

You won't find a lawyer who'll argue that a person innocent of a crime should do the time. It's not a negotiation. With this in mind, in 1992, Innocence Project embarked on a simple, yet revolutionary mission: use DNA to exonerate innocent people who have been incarcerated and turn those pardons into policy to prevent others from being wrongfully convicted. Fast forward to 2021, and Innocence Project is responsible for 232 of the 375 people who've been freed based on DNA evidence. Sounds like a win for everyone, right?

But these problems go deep, and as Christina noted, there's no one thing we can all do, and Boom!, no more innocent people convicted. These solutions go beyond the lifetimes of anyone working on them. So, how does she provide the Innocence Project team with the patience, focus, and optimism needed to stay this long, difficult course?

Listen in to hear how Christina does it; in her words, "We've got to remember that even the small wins are making a big difference in the big picture of this work." The excitement exonerees feel going outside to look at the stars just because they can. The flood of emotions as someone walks to true freedom. The beauty behind every Innocence Project team's efforts, win or lose—these are the short-term wins that fuel this long-range work.

It's estimated that 2% of the prison population—hundreds of thousands of people—are anticipated or expected to be wrongfully convicted in the United States. If you're interested in helping exonerate innocent people, get involved with the Innocence Project today.

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

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

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

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

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

Quick, before we start the podcast: If you're a nonprofit marketer and you haven't seen what happened when Action Against Hunger added Funraise's pop-up donation forms to their website, do yourself a favor and take a look. (We'll wait.) The results they saw are so incredible that you'll immediately understand why Action Against Hunger's Digital Lead, Andrew Chappell, said it was the single biggest contribution to their successful revenue gains in 2020.

Of course, after working closely with Andrew and knowing how he achieved these amazing results for Action Against Hunger, it became obvious that inviting him on the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast would result in gamechanging advice for nonprofits ready to increase donations.

We also took a chance and let Andrew take the podcast-hosting reins—he brought some hard-hitting questions to the table, and we believe our CEO, Justin Wheeler, answered everything with the same kind of openness and thoughtfulness that Andrew offered during his interview.

Now, a warning regarding this episode: We can barely contain the guidance that Andrew offers, so get ready to take notes and set up your own smart opportunities for nonprofit growth, an immensely improved giving experience, and infinitely increased donations. You won't want to lose a moment after you hear what he has to say.

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

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

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

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

Today we're talking to a compassionate (former) banker. A guy who shifted to the nonprofit world from Goldman Sachs after fundraising for a cause close to his heart. Someone who can see how much the for-profit world needs to learn from nonprofits... instead of the other way around: Mitch Stein.

In both his capacity as both a nonprofit leader and the founder of a tech startup, Justin Wheeler, Funraise CEO and Co-founder, cheers this viewpoint and explains that it's a major reason that Funraise put so many resources into building a free product in 2020. Nonprofit growth goes hand-in-hand with impact growth, but it's often overlooked—most nonprofit vendors, funders, and yes, donors(!) default to that stubborn idea that nonprofit overhead is impact's ol' ball and chain, holding nonprofits back from great change.

Listen as Mitch puts a financial valuation spin on nonprofit investment, looks at nonprofits through the lens of expected future impact instead of the stigma of overhead, turns donors into equity stake investors clamoring for impact rather than profits, and paints a picture of a future where nonprofits are publicly traded based on their impact potential.

We're super stoked about this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit: if you've seen M+R's reports, campaigns, and content (and you have... even if you don't know it!), you know that we're talking cream of the communications crop, and getting Karen Hopper, speaker, strategist, and communications specialist, on the show, is a real win.

2020 showed us that between Doing Something and Doing Nothing... well, Doing Something always wins.

And we certainly saw that at Funraise. Heading into the pandemic was terrifying, but we saw 250% growth across our customer base, and it was due to nonprofits stepping out of their comfort zone and into the virtual unknown. Taking on new strategies, tapping into new audiences, testing pretty much every tactic under the sun.

So, Karen's emphasis on that element of communications—that there's always something else you can test, another lever you can pull—really confirms what we've seen: donors are ready to give, and they're looking for nonprofits that speak their digital language, your data is everything... when you put it in context, and social fundraising is here to stay—it's going to last past the pandemic.

And bonus! Karen recommends some rad free tools for nonprofits to use as they continue to dial into digital. Check out her suggestions and let us recommend one more: Funraise Free, your all-in-one nonprofit fundraising tech stack.

Optimizely A/B Test Sample Size Calculator

Optimizely Resource Library

M+R Benchmarks

M+R Direct Response Creative for Nonprofits: Theory and Practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

As an avid advocate of advocacy-based causes (say that 3 times fast!), Michele's advice for nonprofits looking for funding is to lead by example: invest the resources you have available in the same way that you're asking funders to invest in your mission. Rather than stretching your own programming budget, find a counterpart in advocating for your cause and strike up a collaboration. And Michele's number-one must-have is a healthy link between your theory of change and your programs.

Michele's story hits differently than most—being born with metatrophic dysplasia, a rare form of dwarfism, she's had every reason to be thrown off course by life's obstacles. But instead of being knocked down, Michele has looked up and treated every experience as an opportunity, smashing through that glass ceiling and becoming the first female president of the Caterpillar Foundation.

Michele and Justin Wheeler, CEO and Co-founder of Funraise, touch on the things that foundations like Caterpillar look for in investment-worthy nonprofits, ways to communicate the value of your cause, and the best way to present a nonprofit story that resonates with both donors and funders. So, dive with us into grassroots strategies and then come up for a birds-eye view of grasstops results, as we weave the two into a nonprofit field of dreams.

And if you want to hear more from Michele, go to LookingUp.com!