Relish THIS: The Nonprofit Marketing Podcast

Today's guests are Bob Bandoni and Bill Cotter from Students Shoulder to Shoulder. This amazing organization has a REALLY strong Vision of a future where leaders around the world come to their positions from the perspective of ethical purpose. They accomplish this through mentorship opportunities that place students shoulder-to-shoulder with NGOs and the beneficiaries they serve to learn leadership skills that originate from a place of caring.

One great part of our discussion centered on ensuring alignment when taking on partners to create a stronger, more cohesive connection between organizations. This helps you supercharge your storytelling and engage all your stakeholders effectively.

Check out this episode. I think you'll really enjoy it.

Links:

shouldertoshoulder.com

ASK: 

Pass on Shoulder to Shoulder info and tell people about partnership opportunities - Call us!

How are you building relationships with your stakeholders? 

My guest today is Pavel Reppo who is the Executive Director of A Fine Mind, a really interesting organization that is helping to bring mental health services to Uganda.

Pavel explained that on top of all the challenges faced by Ugandans, there are only 30 psychiatrists to serve 43 MILLION people in the country. Whoa. 

To make matters worse, there is a HUGE social stigma around mental health care in the region making bringing services to those who need it most is a real challenge.

He and his team have come up with a framework to provide mental health support by enlisting and training regular citizens to help. Essentially, they are crowdsourcing mental health care. What a cool idea!

We had a great discussion today and the root of what we chatted about came down to viewing stakeholder engagement as relationship building and coming at marketing for nonprofits as an opportunity to serve others first in order to bring them into the fold as supporters later.

I hope you enjoy the show.

Links:

afinemind.org

Ask:

Give someone you love a hug.

I always love talking with Lisa McAlister, founder of With Good Cause, a Boulder-area PR firm dedicated to helping nonprofits and purpose-focused businesses maximize their ability to affect social change.

Our conversation touched on many aspects of Purpose Marketing and how it is steeped in helping organizations build lasting relationships with stakeholders to really enrich lives. There is some really great stuff on this episode about how to adjust your approach to your outreach to empower people with the tools needed to advance and expand their mission. This creates a sense of community and builds a team that can improve your ability to do good in the world.

Lisa's just great. I hope you have as much fun with this episode as I did!

Links:

withgoodcause.com

oakjournal.com

Ask:

Start a journaling exercise. Even if it's just one sentence around what you are feeling or what happened every day.

Can you make your marketing more personable? 

I am super excited about this very special episode of Relish This. I had a great conversation with Tim Kachuriak, Chief Innovation and Optimization Officer at Next After. Tim’s business revolves around collecting and sharing data-driven, science-based information around donor optimization. This episode is jam-packed with actionable ideas and some in-depth conversation on how to fine-tune your donation systems. 

We discussed ways to structure your value proposition to overcome the unique challenge faced by nonprofits. People rarely wake up and think, “How can I give away some of my money today?” so where the for-profit world speaks in terms of funnels (put potential buyers into the top of the funnel and buyers naturally flow out the bottom), the nonprofit world has a number of uphill friction points to overcome to encourage people to engage.

The most important takeaway from this conversation is that “people give to people” so outreach to your stakeholders should be focused on building relationships and trust. When you are authentic in your ask and your message, more people are likely to engage and donate. 

This is a super, info-packed episode. I hope you enjoy it. 

Links: 

Nextafter.com

Ask: Embrace the fact that no matter where you fit in your organization's ecosystem, the work you are doing really matters!

How are you celebrating your successes and wins? 

On this week's episode of Relish this I talked with Drew Robertson, the Founder of Mattersville Vets. They are an amazing organization that helps provide Veterans with sustainable housing and support to help them reacclimate to civilian life and thrive. Plus, they work with rescue wolves and have them become service animals to support veterans with PTSD.

We had a great conversation that went through a variety of topics. We discussed creating sustainable communities, targeting similarly minded individuals and organizations, and how to create partnerships to increase your stakeholders and supporters. We talked about defining your business pillars and using those broad points to help identify potential business partners. 

Most importantly, though, we talked about success. Oftentimes as organizational leaders, we have the tendency to move the goalposts and change how we define success. But what we should be doing is celebrating every little success and acknowledging the work we have done so that we can continue to level up!

I hope that you enjoy this episode!

Links: 

Mattersville 

Suicide Crisis Hotline: 800-273-8255

FB: mattersville

IG: mattersvillevet

Ask: Celebrate a success you have recently had in your organization. Acknowledge the work it took to get there and how it set you up for future success. 

Have you ever thought deeply about how your purchases are impacting the environment? 

If you haven’t, now is a great time to learn more about the products you consume and ways we can make better purchasing decisions that will positively influence consumer brands to help save the environment. 

On this week’s episode of Relish This, I chatted with Shiv Goel, Co-Producer and Executive Director of Green Consumer Project, about how to use your purchasing power to help reduce carbon load and support organizations and businesses that are supporting the environment. 

During our conversation, we discussed ways we can all influence consumer goods environmental policy to hold brands accountable for their environmental impact. Consumer purchasing power can fuel sustainability if we focus our shopping decisions and support brands that are good environmental stewards. 

Enjoy the show! 

Action Item: 

Educate yourself about climate change and how you affect it and how it affects you

Links: 

• https://greenconsumerproject.org/ Green Consumer Project
• GreenFunder-https://greenfunder.io/contact/
• CatchAFire-https://www.catchafire.org/
• Climate Reality Project-https://www.climaterealityproject.org/

Katherine is doing some REALLY hard work with her African animal charity and has a second one we talked about as well that is all about media awareness.

We talked a bit about how to make things actionable instead of just a lot of talk.

We discussed ways to reach potential audiences through retargeting (vegans, for example)

Noticing is the first step to behavior change. Just creating space where you can realize you are doing x, notice and acknowledge you are doing that, then make adjustments.

An idea I had for her was to create a "social media" or "news media" meditation series and get that on Calm or Headspace

We also talked about DuoLingo's "15 minutes of Duolingo can help you learn a new language. What can 15 minutes of social media do?" as the behavior-transition that needs to be made.

https://anaw.org/ | Instagram

http://americancanary.org/ | Instagram

Action:

Think about the presence you bring to the work you do and find room for reflection, joy, friendship, and connection.

Do you have an understanding of your stakeholder lifecycle? 

On today's episode of Relish This, I had a great conversation with Deb Fowler.

She is the Executive Director and co-Founder of History Unerased and has a  program that promotes LGBTQ inclusion in the classroom by helping educators with curricula and teaching strategies to talk about all the great things the LGBTQ community has contributed to society throughout the years.

In addition to discussing how to consider her stakeholders' journey through the audience engagement cycle, we chatted about making sure you are swimming in the right pool by offering your services where your audience seeks information. 

We also looked at some tools you can leverage to get on education-related podcasts, and, finally, we discussed how to get your foot in the door with stakeholders by simply helping provide solutions to the immediate challenges they are facing with your personal expertise, even if this expertise may fall outside your mission. 

Helping solve an immediate problem could be the access point to helping mission-focused problems later. 

I hope you enjoy the show!

Learn about History Unerased here:
Home Page
Mission
Curriculum
Theory of Change
Donate

To view sample resources, use sign-up code BF84BH at
Learn.UnErased.org/register
kitcaster.com

Ask: Help spread the word of History Unerased. 

Head on over to the “how you can help” page (https://unerased.org/resource/how-you-can-help) and copy and paste the text from that page and send it to your local school leaders, PTAs, or any other educational resource that could find value in their mission.

How are you cultivating and nurturing your non-profit’s ecosystem? 

In this week’s episode, I talk to Rudy Miick from Rudy Miick Consulting Group and we had a great flowing conversation about how non-profits need to be run like businesses. We delve into the importance of building out your vision, mission, and purpose and discuss how your non-profit organization is part of an ecosystem and an ecosystem in and of itself. It’s important to learn how to navigate and nurture each part and recognize how each component impacts the others. 

I hope you like this conversation, there is a lot of wisdom in this show. 

Link: Miick Consulting Group 

Action: Coach to the positive 

Where are your donors online?

My guest today is Maggie Grout, Founder and Executive Director of Thinking Huts.

Her organization's mission is to increase global access to education through 3D printing and they are working to build the world's first 3D-printed schoolhouse in Madagascar.

Maggie is just getting started with fundraising and building awareness for her organization and has created a solid following on social media. We discussed ways to get a strong understanding of her assets so she can make more informed decisions about where to engage and what levers to pull as well as how to hyperfocus messaging to make sure there is clarity and specificity in her correspondence.

This was a super fun conversation... here we go!

Link:

Thinking Huts

Action:

Visit the site and learn how new technologies are helping this organization's mission.