We make the case for not building an app. When you balance the cost and facts of app usage it is probably the worst technical investment your organization can make. Consider that about 20% of apps are used once then deleted (flurry + Statista), and 80% apps don’t make it 30 days (Quettra mobile analytics).

We talk through the argument in the hopes you can share it with any team talking about building an app. If your app strategy can survive this rant, go for it, otherwise, save your money!

DOn't Build that App! by adwords66

Sarah Durham, author of the book Brandraising and CEO and founder of Big Duck shares current trends in nonprofit branding and communications. We discuss how much has changed since the company’s founding in 1994 and what has stayed the same. The question of whether to evolve a brand or rebrand entirely is also discussed.

Facebook’s donation tool charges 0% and has raised hundreds of millions for nonprofits that know how to use it. Digital fundraising strategist, Julia Campbell walks us through how your organization can use this powerful platform. Julia is also the author of – Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits!

Acclaimed author, marketer, and teacher, Seth Godin, whose mentorship inspired the birth of Whole Whale, joins us for our 100th podcast episode.

While there is more knowledge accessible today than any other time in human history, Godin contends, we’re spending our time watching cat videos instead. (Hey, some of those cat videos are trying to cure lung cancer.) The biggest enemy, beyond competition of failure, is fear, which leads to this inertia that keeps people and organizations stuck in a status quo and afraid to move forward.

Here are 10 highlights of the conversation — plus more in the audio itself.

Mostly I’m wrestling with how people are stuck in their status quo, afraid to move forward. There’s more teaching and learning available to everyone today than any time in human history, but we’re spending our time watching cat videos instead. And I’m fascinated by our fear of fear, and trying to decode that and hopefully unlock a better future for people.

When you read about extraordinary institutions that have made a big impact on the world, we look at them and say, “Well, that’s impossible, that guy’s a genius.” If I look at the Aravind Eye Hospital in India: They do 250,000 cataract surgeries a year with half the rate of infection that they have in the UK. It’s magic, but it’s not magic. It’s actually kind of obvious when you see how they did it. But too often we say, “Well, I did my 8 surgeries today, I did a good day.” Aravind redefined the standard to be 120 surgeries in a day. I think each of us can think about how to redefine that standard, whatever it is, in our space.

When GDPR went into effect, all of us got those emails: Your privacy is very important to us, blah blah blah. Well, guess what? If our privacy had been very important, they wouldn’t have passed a law. They passed a law because marketers are selfish, short-term narcissists who are taking every scrap of our attention that they can get their hands on. When I wrote Permission Marketing in 1998, it was a scandal. And it was a scandal because I said that personal and anticipated, relevant messages always do better than spam. Not just when you’re out raising money, but when you’re sending an email to everyone inside your organization. When you’re talking around the dinner table. Talking to people who want to hear what you have to say always works better. It seems super obvious.

But as soon as we made it free to show up in someone’s email box, this sort of asymmetrical API in which people could take your attention without asking, people took it. And when I think about the people in my life who get an instant “Yes” — when they reach out they always get an answer; when they ask me for something, I always say, “Sure” — it’s a very small number. One of the jobs of a nonprofit, when it deals with the outside world, whether it’s the people they serve, their staff, or people they’re raising money from, is to figure out how to earn that “yes” as opposed to cutting through the noise and the clutter every single time.

The fundamental precept is that permission doesn’t belong to you. It’s loaned to you. It’s not your right, it’s something you got as a privilege. You have to treasure it, or it evaporates.