Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 331. Measuring Impact, Leveraging Data + A Crash Course on NFTs for Nonprofits - Nick Lynch

Transcript

331. Measuring Impact, Leveraging Data + A Crash Course on NFTs for Nonprofits - Nick Lynch · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Technology alone can't solve the challenges nonprofits face. And that's why neon one provides software that empowers you to manage constituents all while giving you the resources and support you need to connect to what matters most your people and their passions. Learn more about how neon one is helping nonprofits create stronger connections by visiting neonone.com/weareforgood.
• 0:26
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm Jon.
• 0:27
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:28
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
• 0:30
  Becky Endicott: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:40
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:48
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:59
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Becky, our friend's back in the house.
• 1:03
  Becky Endicott: You know, I know you don't like to pick favorite children, but I do. And Nick Lynch is 100%, one of our favorite people. Nick's back on the podcast. We had him I think on season two, early on. Yeah.
• 1:14
  Becky Endicott: And we just fell in love with Nick Lynch, we were kind of like coming out of COVID at the same time trying to start something that didn't exist. And I think that there's some sort of connection and camaraderie that just kind of imprints you on people as you're kind of bootstrapping something. And Nick is one of just those great visionaries. And I'm here to tell you all you need to lean in. Because for everyone out there who has somebody that says how your board member, your executive director, your bean counter saying how do you measure your impact? Nick is about to bring the gold to you today. And he's also going to be answering questions about what the heck are NFTs and what does that mean for the sector right now? How define it, what is the opportunity, but before we get into all of that conversation, we want to reintroduce you to Nick because he's such a good human, such a good dude. He is a childhood cancer survivor, one of the Make a Wish first early kids who got a wish. We love his wish story, please go back and hear that story on his former podcast. But he's also just a passionate nonprofit advocate and founder of Collidescope.io.
• 2:23
  Becky Endicott: It's a social media analytics and measurement software as a service platform, and allows global causes influencers and organizations to collaborate and measure their collective influence and impact. We all need this, we're all looking for this, Nick went out and built the thing that he didn't see in the world. And we love you for that. Thank you for pouring into innovation, Nick. And so Collidescope is going to bring transparency and measurement to nonprofits looking to add value or improve their corporate social responsibility initiatives. So we're going to talk about all things impact today. And I just can't wait to hear how the company's grown Nick and what you've discovered and how you're applying it to nonprofits. So get in our house, come hang out with us. We love coming to Southern California.
• 3:12
  Nick Lynch: I love it. Well, thank you. I'm super excited.
• 3:14
  Nick Lynch: And it just is I was kind of looking through some of my notes and re-listening to our last conversation. And it's I feel like it's been a decade in terms of like what we've learned.
• 3:25
  Becky Endicott: COVID years, yes, seem longer.
• 3:28
  Nick Lynch: It's so crazy, because when we started Collidescope it was just kind of this silly idea that if we could just measure impact for everybody involved, then more people would be wanting to be involved in and impacted scale that was like the initial hypothesis. And that's sort of what we built to try to like, do that make sure that we can measure as much as we could be as as transparent as possible, and deliver reporting back to everybody. And you know, fast forward to now, we've shifted a little bit but also like kept true to the data and that we actually look at ourselves less as just a straight ahead mission impact, reporting technology, but really a mission delivery platform, which really supports the management, the measurement and the logistics of social good because as we started to do reporting, we would get people saying, well, can you just manage this for us? And then so management started to happen on campaigns and partnerships. And then it was like, oh, that's interesting. Can you help us deliver our mission to so like we've been starting to stack up because ultimately it comes down to process, people and a product that ultimately is centered in data. And so that's always going to be our sort of Northstar is how do we collect as much data as possible learn from that data and inform future campaigns in future in, you know, in in for future mission delivery and literally build this sort of like cyclical data wheel of just goodness. And so that's like what we're trying to build. And that's really what we've evolved into. And we've learned so much and we have a lot of opinions, but we're, we're learning a ton.
• 5:00
  Nick Lynch: We can't wait to learn a ton more. And it's just been a fun time to be in this space.
• 5:03
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, so let's just jump in here and brag on our friend Nick here, because I remember your story. I mean, you were flying back from Singapore, if I remember, right, and it was like literally a napkin sketch.
• 5:11
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, so this is what we talked about
• 5:14
  Becky Endicott: I love airplane napkin stories. They're the best.
• 5:17
  Jonathan McCoy: I know! And you never have enough of them. So that scarcity, that small piece of paper, you know, all of that kind of converges. So we just want to like catch up, you know, of where you're at today, because you've learned a lot, and we want to tap your brain, and you just kind of share what you're seeing. But let's start with looking at the current landscape of the nonprofit sector. Companies are moving toward impact investing and greater corporate social responsibility initiatives. What trends are you seeing that nonprofit professionals need to be like okay, that's a signal I really need to pay attention to.
• 5:44
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, I mean, for us, our our, our belief, and our philosophy is in partnerships, as in community building, as and as I know that you guys preach a lot, you know, on your podcast, and everything you guys do. And so what we're part of the partnership equation, is has always been corporate partners.
• 6:01
  Nick Lynch: And Corporate Social Responsibility is not a new concept, right? It's been around 40, 50, 60 years, but it's been primarily housed in the HR unit, because in companies Corporate Social Responsibility has been a means to attract and retain talent, we come come come join our company, we clean up the beach every quarter, and we do good for the world, right, or, you know, stay in our company, because we'll match every donation that you give to make a wish, right, which are amazing endeavors. Don't get me wrong, but it's always been in the HR space. Over time, consumer trends mostly driven by a younger demographic, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a little bit. But consumers are really demanding. I mean, it's a silly percentage, it's like 97 of global or 98. I mean, 99% of global consumers are demanding that the brands that they buy, do something good for the world.
• 6:51
  Nick Lynch: And so because that's Don't quote me, it's a high, ridiculous percentage last time I checked, but all of that data is driving brands to use that in marketing messages and in direct to consumer messaging, because they want to know, you know, the consumers want to know that the brand that their dollars are actually going to something important. So now we're starting to see this migration from HR to marketing, which means more dollars, which again, is going to require a different set of processes, a different set of tracking, all a different mindset and a different conversation point. And so that's like, the big trend I see is that many, many of these organizations, large fortune 500 companies who have huge CSR teams, or have been contributing to CSR, maybe millions of dollars and building a pretty annual report that nobody reads at the end of the year, yes. Now shifting a lot of that focus a lot of those resources into marketing and building specific campaigns around their initiatives. The the auto industry as like, as a sector has been really good and really vocal in CSR. And that's not just like electric vehicle and sustainability. I mean, that's like, you know, there's there's different automakers that will, I think Honda for good does a lot of really good stuff. I hear him on the radio all the time, but Honda has a really good sort of CSR program. There's a couple other automakers
• 8:10
  Becky Endicott: Subaru has been doing meals for wheels commercials for years and been fascinating.
• 8:15
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, I love that you're like challenging
• 8:15
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, so it's those kinds of things. I mean, I was I was watching out myself, but I was watching Watch What Happens this, because I've also seen, like, reports come out that this Live. I was like, I was a bystander, but it was on. But it was Subaru did like a mission, like on air mission read by god, I forgot his name, because I don't no matter how the but like those are the kinds of things that we're starting to see is that corporate partners are really starting to see the value corporate giving is a really small slice of pie. And so it's of CSR messaging in their marketing, and scaling it in easy. If you look at the macro level to say, don't prioritize ways that they didn't before.
• 8:42
  Nick Lynch: And so it's a humongous trend.
• 8:46
  Nick Lynch: this. However, exactly, what you just said is that it's more than But that's the challenge is that nonprofit space is really now trying to figure out how to be a part of that.
• 8:50
  Nick Lynch: just the money, these kinds of partnerships, how it's shaping the media, how it's shaping perceptions, how it shaping realities, as a result of that.
• 9:13
  Nick Lynch: It is for the taking for the innovative nonprofit that's progressive and how they partner who thinks, you know, kind of down the road of how this can impact you can be that partner.
• 9:22
  Nick Lynch: And so I love that you're kind of leading us into the conversation with them.
• 9:27
  Becky Endicott: I mean, preach on Jon, I agree with you, 100%.
• 9:31
  Becky Endicott: And it is like the time for nonprofit to be bold and to step in to their power. And you have power. I know you feel like you have it that you've just been coming to the table with your proposal. It's different now.
• 9:43
  Becky Endicott: And I just think like, CSR is up 18% where it was up from 17% last year. And if you have a solid brand and you have a solid mission, and you're prioritizing this, I mean the world is your oyster and I love that we're having that conversation. So I want to like kind of transition into measuring that impact, because I think Collidescope does just a phenomenal job of amplifying organizations cause marketing, because you're building all these targeted social media campaigns, and you're doing it with measurable and transparent results. So talk to us a little bit about measuring impact and what can be unlocked when you lean into these measurements and data.
• 10:27
  Nick Lynch: Yeah. 100%. And just to kind of add into that, that segue, I mean, one of the things that we're talking to nonprofits about from a mind state perspective is they're not only mission delivers, they are actually media platforms themselves, people go to them to consume information, right? Like they are their own influential platforms, like organizations, and corporations want to be aligned with them. Like there's massive value in that. And so, in shifting that mindset, and bring in sort of the measurement component, we have seen a lot of different like acronyms starting to pop up around, like, what's the social ROI, or what's your S ROI, and ESG, and seems like all of these acronyms which are great, which means the conversations happening, we're kind of old school, we kind of keep it the same, we like ROI, but we call it the double ROI.
• 11:14
  Nick Lynch: So when we work with partners, on the marketing side, it's really about what's the return on investment for a marketer.
• 11:20
  Nick Lynch: And that's the basic stuff reach, awareness, engagement, you know, clicks, that kind of fun stuff that really drives the mission goals, mostly for a brand. Obviously, they're they're really involved in the outcomes. But from a high level perspective, that's really what drives can they scale these initiatives? And then the second ROI is return on impact. Meaning how much did those dollars in the awareness and the reach actually drive downstream impact for the nonprofit, right, you could do a campaign that reached a million people that 10,000 people clicked on and 1000 people engaged in. But if nobody signs the petition, or if nobody signs up to be a volunteer, or if nobody donates, the ROI calculation is lopsided, right?
• 12:05
  Nick Lynch: And so we want to try to find out how do we get a good balance of really good ROI for our corporate partners, because it's important that they're involved, but also a really good return on impact for our cause partners, because ultimately, they spent a lot of time and a lot of resources in cultivating and building these partnerships. And so we really want to make sure that's how we measure success on both sides. And it maybe sounds a little simple, but ultimately, we want to make sure that we're driving direct correlations between marketing outcomes and mission outcomes.
• 12:33
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, yeah, double boom. So I mean, let's get a little like brass tacks on that. So like, what are some of the key things organizations should be measuring? And you can kind of call out we love doing this, don't do this anymore.
• 12:47
  Jonathan McCoy: This is really a KPI that really matters that you should be tracking.
• 12:50
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, I mean, I, the one of the things that just in terms of like a use case, or a case study, you mean, and maybe stop me if I shared this last time. But when we were when we were working with an organization who was doing their first this was last year, I mean, this was right after we connected. They were doing their first sort of, you know, digital or streaming event and sort of they were leveraging their sort of legacy. Think of, okay, well, we're gonna send mailers out, and we're gonna, you know, send emails out to our 60,000, you know, newsletter list, and then maybe we'll do an occasional post. And, and so that the thinking was like majority of the traffic and majority of the success from a mission standpoint, driving signups to the, to the events, trucks, driving donations was going to be pretty much from their mailers, like your physical mailers, and their newsletters.
• 13:42
  Nick Lynch: And I said, well, let's just measure. Let's just measure this and see what happens. And mailers went out, emails went out, no traffic, no donations, nothing like literally nothing.
• 13:53
  Nick Lynch: And I said, Okay, well, let's try some social media. Let's do some posting. And let me let's find some partners that are aligned in that they started doing posting, you would start to see traffic go up, you would start to see donations go up, you'd start to see event registrations go up. And ultimately just measuring your, you know, the your, your key metrics of what you want on the outcomes, and also measuring what you're doing to drive those and correlating the two that had saved them a ton of money on second and tertiary mailers and sending them a ton of time on, you know, creating email newsletters. And really what they just focus on ultimately, was that social media worked well, we identified that Instagram was the best platform, we identified that there was certain messaging and certain imaging that worked better on Instagram than others, right.
• 14:37
  Nick Lynch: And so just by measuring those types of things, and drawing the correlation between your tactics and your outcomes, that's it was game changing and like the cost pressures are there. Their cost ratios were the lowest they'd ever been partially because it was streaming but also partially because they just didn't spend money on the things that didn't work. And they optimized and scaled to things that did. And so That's, that's I think, like, for me the most illustrative that gave me the most juice when we started doing this, because I was like, I knew it, I knew it if we could just measure it, and we could show it. And then that's that's was really what snowballed into what we're doing now.
• 15:12
  Becky Endicott: I mean, there are, all our donor relations and impact officers out there salivating at this conversation right now, because this is what they need and what you want. And I think that it underscores a lot of these tenants that we say on this podcast all the time, which is try stuff, we need to be listening, you know, in a deeper way. And we need to be open to just figuring out where are people? Why would we push into direct mail if our people are online? And that's where they want to engage with us. And we really need to be intentional about A/B testing. And what works and is it the platform and if you don't have space to try that, that's something I would really encourage you to talk about with your team as you're going into 2023 is making space to find where your people at, and really creating those engagement points. So love that example, Nick, and I want to talk just about something we're seeing a tremendous level over here in our media company, which is this creator economy, and this influencer marketing that's just rising into the world. Talk to us about this creator economy and the potential that anyone has to have influence to have their voice heard and to bring community and the things that they care about together. What are you seeing right now?
• 17:03
  Nick Lynch: I mean, I'm probably the most biased person to answer this, but I believe it's the the future, for sure. In terms of all media for a lot of different reasons, I think on its face, you know, people think of influencer marketing and like Kim Kardashian is like always, like the first one that comes up. And then she's, you know, sharing on her Instagram account, some new makeup line or some new clothing line, right.
• 17:24
  Nick Lynch: Like, that's what people I think, think of as influencer marketing, because it is still new. I mean, it's only seven years old. Like it's like, in terms of like marketing. It's still pretty new.
• 17:33
  Becky Endicott: Baby.
• 17:34
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, but, you know, our philosophy is a couple things. One is that anybody can be anybody's an influencer, right? Like, you could have 100 followers and those 100 people, if you made a book recommendation, if any of those followers read books, they would probably take your recommendation, you're an influencer, right? And everybody has somebody who has more influence than them, right? So like everybody can be an influencer doesn't really matter. I have seen during campaigns that the most influential people on a campaign are board members. I've seen the board members drive more clicks, more donations, more traffic, more just general, you know, activity through a post on LinkedIn, than a partner influencer with 40,000 followers on Instagram. Right, like, everybody's influential, and everybody can make an impact, which is why it's really important to like think like everybody is, but part of the reason why I think the Creator economy is the future is it's multifaceted. It's not just somebody who has a following on social media promoting something. I mean, we're in a cultural, a content rich culture, that video is king, followed by King and Queen. And images also are king and queen, right? So like, there's just content creation machines, and they do it really well. They do it really cheap. And they do it really fast, right. So like, it is totally switching so many different paradigms in terms of how communication is being created, how communication is being disseminated and how communication is being targeted.
• 19:05
  Nick Lynch: Like if I was a, if I was starting a e commerce brand today, I would hire an influencer, buy 10 of them to do 10 videos, I would use those videos as my ads, I would use ecommerce data to target people with those ads, right sort of the same thing. If you're a nonprofit, starting today, it's like find one person who was deeply passionate about what you do, and work with them to create content for their community, use that content to share with the broader community, and then start targeting people that like the same or that are interested in the same cause that you are.
• 19:38
  Nick Lynch: And so that's, it's like, you can get so many different layers with one activation, right?
• 19:43
  Becky Endicott: I'm doing the mind blown.
• 19:45
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, we knew you were value aligned, but like what you just described there, let me like translate this into the lanes that we talked about.
• 19:50
  Jonathan McCoy: That's your rabid fans, like if you have literally the most bootstrapped budget look and see who are your believers, who are your rabid fans, who has influences when we talk about it's not just about money, it's about who has social capital, who has this crazy following or just this niche following that, really trust them deeply. And tap into that power, like that is so absent from literally 99% of anyone's marketing plans in nonprofit and it's there for the taking, like you could actually do that outreach today because you have those people probably in your world that are not screening on some wealth report and they're not popping up in through traditional channels. So let's take this into like, what are those opportunities? I love your idea of if you started a nonprofit what a disruptive approach, what are other opportunities that maybe people aren't thinking about of how to leverage influencers and influencer marketing as part of their mix?
• 20:42
  Nick Lynch: So I think there's two ways. One is, I mean, I really love the content creation piece, right? Like really thinking through how do you work with with these partners to create content. I mean, I the, the softball example for me is like, is Make A Wish, obviously, because it's near and dear to my heart. And so many people have been positively affected by a wish delivery, it could be a neighbor, it could be a brother, it could be a cousin, it could be you, right. And so just like if I made it, like, let's say like, Nick's make a wish chapter, I just started one here, another one in Los Angeles, we're competing with the other one.
• 21:16
  Becky Endicott: You did? I'm so proud of you.
• 21:18
  Nick Lynch: I'm CEO of a Make A Wish chapter in LA, in this tiny corner of West Los Angeles.
• 21:23
  Jonathan McCoy: What!
• 21:24
  Becky Endicott: I can't believe you just casually dropped that.
• 21:26
  Becky Endicott: That's just amazing.
• 21:26
  Nick Lynch: I just did it. I just got the EIN while we were, while we were talking. It's a whole thing. We just did, we multitask. So I would...
• 21:35
  Becky Endicott: Live TV folks.
• 21:38
  Nick Lynch: I would literally put a call out and say, send me a video that talks about, you know, how Make A Wish has affected you and we'll we'll promote it on our social media, you'd get 10, 20, 50, maybe even five, right, but you'd get some videos, that is essentially free content that you can now use to promote your mission. And it is deeply, deeply emotional, because it's somebody who is directly connected to a mission.
• 22:05
  Nick Lynch: So it's not like you're like paying somebody to promote something that they don't really care about. I mean, these are like, these are influential people because they had influence in their communities.
• 22:11
  Nick Lynch: And now you are using that community to sort of like double, triple, quadruple down, and slowly start to build your concentric circles around your mission. So that's like step one, I would probably do that.
• 22:23
  Nick Lynch: Right. And that's how I would use sort of influencer marketing in that respect.
• 22:33
  Becky Endicott: Taking a quick pause from today's episode to thank our sponsor, who also happens to be one of our favorite companies Virtuous. You know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you both see and activate donors at every level.
• 22:48
  Becky Endicott: And Virtuous is the platform to help you do just that. It's so much more than a nonprofit CRM.
• 22:51
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• 23:23
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey friend! Meet her new partner Gravyty. Gravyty provides an ecosystem of products to energize, mobilize and steward your network of believers.
• 23:32
  Becky Endicott: One of its products is Community, your force for digital member communities. You know, we believe community is everything.
• 23:36
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• 23:47
  Jonathan McCoy: With its video first platform your community can have access to state of the art virtual networking experiences with a personalized feed, a directory to connect with peers and virtual events all in one place.
• 23:58
  Becky Endicott: The Coca Cola Scholars Foundation is a great example of a community customer who uses the platform to connect, give back and expand their scholar and alumni network. Its community platform allows members to connect by networking with fellow members and alumni to build relationships and mentorships.
• 24:15
  Jonathan McCoy: Learn how gravity's community engages employees and in return keeps them happy, involved enriched and motivated. Learn more at Gravyty.com That's Gravyty, G R A V Y T Y dot com. Now let's get back to this feel good conversation.
• 24:36
  Becky Endicott: Okay, I'm going to make an early prediction that Nick Lynch's Make A Wish chapter is going to blow the LA chapter out of the water. And I just want to give a shout out to John Cena, who just this week passed giving the most fulfilling the most wishes over 60,000. So way to go John Cena for using your platform for good. He is a force. So okay, we're so lean into this conversation and I'm trying to break it down for the nonprofit that's listening. It's like how can I actually do this because I want to activate and think in this way. And I'm also going to tell you nonprofits, it's going to help you with content creation for days that you don't have to do this is a working smarter, not harder kind of tactic. So let's dive into like creating content and cultivating community. Because we're seeing this here in We Are For Good. We're trying to create community grassroots based learning Earning education and awareness. And it comes really from the base up, talk about how nonprofits can really adapt that content plus community mindset.
• 25:45
  Becky Endicott: Especially if they're starting from scratch right now, what would you suggest?
• 25:48
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's, it's just asking one person, I mean, it starts with one like, can, can you share? Can you make a video about your experience with the cause that we're passionate about? Or do you have friends, right? It's like, literally just start with one person, and then post it. And then ask a couple other people and say, Hey, we just posted this video, do you think you can make something like this, and it starts to snowball really, really quick.
• 26:13
  Nick Lynch: But you have to just start with one person, right? You have to just start with one person, try it out. And you know, maybe the next time you ask a little bit differently, because you learned that, hey, when I asked my friend, she was like, I'll do this because I'm your friend, but the ask was off, right?
• 26:27
  Nick Lynch: Like, let's work on the ask, right? But like, you just got to do it with one, one person, right? And then and then my whole thing is like that, I mean, like pull up mode, meaning that like, we got to pull up the next person. And then we're going to look to the next people above us to pull us up. And then we can do, the more pulling up we can do the better. So it's like, literally, we're just in pull up mode. And so you got to start with one person, pull them up into your, what you're doing in your community, your mission, and then use the power of the two, to pull up four, and so on and so forth. And so that's like my mentality for all of this in terms of like community building and content creation.
• 26:58
  Jonathan McCoy: So we're not holding out for perfection. Is this what I'm hearing? Right? I mean, it's like, I just shift creative work. Yeah, like, this is gonna inspire other people, and it's gonna get better, and you're gonna figure out the cadence to it. Okay, this is like, I've got, like, literally blowing up, Becky and Julie's text feed right now of like, how we went, we need to do this in our own work. But I want to give a space to talk about NFTs because, you know, we got on the phone with Nick, this has been a couple of months ago. And honestly, I was like, Nick, take me back to the beginning. Like, I don't even understand what NFTs are. And you were so kind of walk me through, but I still don't fully understand. So let's go slowly through this. Let's Yeah, I'll take a deep breath and explain what NFTs are, then we're going to go into how they impact us.
• 27:39
  Nick Lynch: Sure, I just, some tablesetting, about NFTs is, is that, you know, a year in what they call web three, or NFTs is it feels like 20. Because things happen so fast, the terminology changes. Ultimately, the technology doesn't, but things happen really, really fast. And new use cases pop up all the time. And so it creates a lot of noise. So if you hear NFTs and cringe, I hear you I do too. And so the, my journey throughout this whole entire thing is I mean, I'm a big baseball card collector when I was a kid, so I like to understand and really passionate about just collecting stuff. My wife says I clicked too many things. That's another discussion for another time.
• 28:20
  Nick Lynch: But, you know, I started because as we did, we launched an NFT for Make A Wish for world wish day in April of last year. So I still didn't know what that was.
• 28:32
  Nick Lynch: I had to learn like what is an NFT? Who Where do you sell it?
• 28:34
  Nick Lynch: What is it? You min it? What is a mint? I thought you only minted currency, like it's a whole vernacular of craziness.
• 28:41
  Nick Lynch: And then even when we created these, like these collectibles, and you know, try to give them away to the streamers that were participating in this Make A Wish charity stream and they're like, what's in it? I don't know what it is. I don't want it like I don't have a wallet. IYeah, right. All right. So yes, yeah, there are a lot of challenges for this to become mainstream past the, you know, couple million people that actually are in it. So anyway, long story short, it's a crazy world if you don't get it don't feel bad.
• 29:11
  Nick Lynch: It's absolutely nuts. I'm in it.
• 29:11
  Nick Lynch: And I still don't get it. I have to like look up things every once in awhile. So let's just set expectations there and everything's okay. Yes. So NFT is just an acronym. And it stands for non fungible token, I don't think it really matters really, in the in the case of this, it's like, what it is essentially is is is something that is built on the blockchain, which again, is another thing that we could spend dozens and dozens of time on. But really, this is just a new technology that makes sure that there is a a record of truth, that cannot be changed unless a community of people agree or validate that it is changing, meaning that right now, like let's say you go to the bank, and you deposit $10, there is one record for Bank of America that says you just deposited $10. And then they look in their records, make sure that it hits your account, and then your account is now plus$10. And the blockchain, if you were to deposit something that you hear decentralization, a lot of time if you were to deposit$10, it would send that message to the community and say, Okay, did you did you add this to this$10 to his account? Yes. And so all of the community has essentially validate that that transaction happened. So then it is tracked. So essentially, it's sort of like takes away the one central group of people saying this is the truth, and even I can change If I want and too bad, it's my truth, as opposed to a community of people that have to agree that that's the centralized truth. So I'm going to stop there. But does that sort of make sense in terms of what like this concept of blockchain is? And like, all of that?
• 30:46
  Becky Endicott: It makes sense.
• 30:46
  Becky Endicott: And I mean, I think the the two words that I always think about when I think of NFTs is it's a digital asset. And understanding what the digital asset is. And in and I'm just thinking about, why is this even important for nonprofit? Why does this relate to what we do? And how and how much should we lean into it? I think is the biggest question that I have.
• 31:09
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, I think that so yeah. So when it comes to NFTs, it is it's a digital asset that essentially, is living on a blockchain. So meaning that you would have it's no longer something that like the government could like take or somebody can take from you.
• 31:23
  Nick Lynch: All of the community would have to agree that a
• 31:23
  Becky Endicott: Exactly.
• 31:25
  Becky Endicott: transaction of you giving it to somebody else, or you selling it to somebody else is happening.
• 31:28
  Becky Endicott: So like, that's why there's a little bit of a unique difference in terms of NFTs as opposed to, you know, just regular trading. And so why I think it's important is I look at NFTs sort of like the new either the new membership card, or association card or the new raffle ticket for nonprofits, right? And there's so many things you can do around, okay, if I own this raffle ticket, it's, you know, I have maybe I bought like a tier one raffle ticket from Nick Lynch's Make A Wish, nonprofit, and that tier one raffle ticket is the most expensive tear, it enables me to win a car or a boat or a house.
• 32:06
  Becky Endicott: And maybe I actually want to sell that, because I found out that there's not a lot of people buying these tickets, and there's a high likelihood that it could win. And so I could sell that raffle ticket to somebody else, right. So I can give you the opportunity to actually like transact these raffle tickets. But it also because you own this digitally, you can build programs on top of that raffle ticket. So like, let's say I own this tier one raffle ticket. Anybody who bought a tier one raffle ticket is now also going to be led into an exclusive concert by Tupac, he's coming back, by the way.
• 32:41
  Becky Endicott: Tupac will come back and do an exclusive concert, a concert for tier one people. So like having these types of opportunities where it's no longer just like an email receipt of a ticket, but really like it's ownership of something that is yours. And that can be used repeatedly. And that people who own that can get additional rights or additional opportunities. And you can continually build on that.
• 33:06
  Becky Endicott: That's an amazing way from what I believe, to build community around a cause you own this, I now own this NFT it means that I stand for this cause. And because I own this NFT I actually have additional opportunities to participate in raffles, in food drive and whatever the case may be, but it's now mine, and I can and there's value to it. And there's pride in ownership because it's part of a nonprofit cause. So I think that's like philosophically, that's where I think it can go, the major hurdles, and the major challenges are is that nothing that has been built today for NFTss and web three is really built for mainstream, right?
• 33:46
  Becky Endicott: Like I can't just like I can't like buy an NFT like I buy a pair of shoes on nike.com. Like I have to get a wallet, and then I have to move money from to Coinbase. And then once I moved on into Coinbase, I moved to my wallet. It's a terrible, terrible thing. And so I think, Becky, to your question about should nonprofits care? They should, they absolutely should, they should know that there's value in it, they should kind of keep their ear to the market to see what's happening. We're actually trying to build right now, the first NFT donation platform where people who have NFTs can just donate their NFTss and then we can resell them like the Goodwill model. And then money would obviously go to you know, the nonprofit. So we're testing it right now, as a means to make things more accessible because asking a nonprofit professional to learn all of these other things about NFTs on top of all of the other things they have to learn about just running their organization and learn about marketing, I think is just a challenge. So what we're doing is we're shifting the onus to people who already in NFTs they already know how it all works, why don't you just donate it will sell it for you.
• 34:50
  Becky Endicott: And then the money will go to a nonprofit cause or, or something like that. And so we're piloting that right now. It should be done like in December. And that's something that I think would be could be the first step in getting nonprofit organizations more involved in this because then we're not asking them to learn a new skill set. We're just acting asking them to promote in part.
• 35:12
  Jonathan McCoy: Holy smokes. I mean, I think the value proposition here is that it's like this next level of engagement for people that do care about that. And maybe in the future, we're all gonna have like this like array of NFTs that we're all really proud of in the metaverse, but like, for now, it's a way to see another type of donor that does have an interest in that and finding a way to engage them at a deeper level. Because we saw that play out with crypto to I feel like you know those that leaned into that and made that accessible had these like Gen Z's offloading massive gifts because they were ready for the moment.
• 35:41
  Jonathan McCoy: And so it's certainly something we need to be paying attention to. And as much as we're all kicking and screaming that the metaverse is coming at some level, we're going to have that as a part of our life. You know that there's gonna be this digital.
• 35:53
  Nick Lynch: There is.
• 35:54
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm just not in it yet.
• 35:56
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, it is.
• 35:58
  Nick Lynch: Well, no, here. I mean, here's the thing though.
• 35:59
  Nick Lynch: It's crazy because, you know, I even talked to like, like executives at some of the largest video game companies who think that the metaverse is BS.
• 36:09
  Jonathan McCoy: Interesting.
• 36:10
  Nick Lynch: Because we already live we already live in the metaverse because your phone already augments reality.
• 36:15
  Nick Lynch: Glasses are starting to become like are gonna come out Apple's building one that already augments you're already in the metaverse in some way, shape, or form. And so I think everybody thinks that like, I'm going to strap on this like VR headset.
• 36:25
  Nick Lynch: I'm going to be in the metaverse. We're already in it guys, like people are buying digital shoes as filters on their phone so that when they look at their feet, they have brand new Nikes on right like that's the metaverse, we're already in it. And so when Apple drops their lenses that like we can see much like that's, that's really the like the scale of Metaverse, but we're already there. Because snap allows us to make a, you know, I can paint my face like a filter or whatever, right? Like we're already there.
• 36:52
  Becky Endicott: But it's given this identity, and people want to give in unique ways, and I think of an NFT as being such a badge of honor, in the metaverse, I'm connected to Make A Wish, here's my NFT that says that we're aligned, there's a brand influence there. There's a community influence there. And I just I'm feeling the heart of the nonprofit going man, I just learned Bitcoin and crypto and now that had that crashed, and or what whatever is gonna happen with that. But it's like, I think what we're saying is be open to this nuance of the fact that people are engaging and exchanging goods in different ways and how your nonprofit's mission can be a part of that story. It can be a part of funding that I just I just think this is a great conversation, it's an early primer, we're going to point back to it and five years and just talk about how much it's changed since then, but you know, I want to move to story because I think that, you know, you're a tech guy who just sees markets before they exist. But you're also incredibly heartwired, like the fact that you would take your Make A Wish story and create your own chapter in the midst of doing this startup. It's just so cool. Nick, like, talk to us about a moment of philanthropy that you've seen, either with Collidescope recently or somewhere in your life, that's really left an impact on you.
• 38:10
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, I mean, the thing that I think has still stuck with me since I learned about this cause is, I mean, how much I don't know. And how much perspective is so key. I mean, it sounds like no duh stuff, but sometimes you just get hit with things. You're like, oh my god, like that's Wow. And so, you know, one of our early clients who trusted us, which I'm so thankful for, was an adoption focused, adoption focused nonprofit. And, you know, in learning more about them before they came on, just kind of learning about the adoption process and why people adopt and which is really a lot of the times an infertility journey.
• 38:54
  Nick Lynch: And around the situation around what happens or why infertility and stories around miscarriage, and I mean, heart wrenching stuff that I honestly hadn't, I didn't, I didn't put them together, I knew all of these things happened. But I didn't really understand the connective tissue and the complexity of the issue or the cause. And so for me, I think it just always stuck with me that like, the work that they do, to enable people to have families is is way more than I ever expected from a life changing perspective. And so that to me, like that's, if you were not, you know, we, you asked me this before, and obviously Make A Wish. And I'm super biased too. But like, just, I'm a guy who doesn't have to worry about those kinds of things. And so I really digging in and understanding like the root impetus for a lot of these conversations to happen to me, I was like, Wow, these guys are absolute, life changing miracle working people. And the work they do is I knew it was important, but it is now way more important that I that I ever could have could have thought so that's for me that was the big thing is really digging into a perspective in a situation that I just don't know given. You know who I am, but I mean, I'm very grateful and thankful that they do the work they do.
• 40:21
  Jonathan McCoy: Holy smokes, you know how to poke the emotional bear over here. We're both like doe eyes of like, you know.
• 40:26
  Becky Endicott: We've both gone through infertility and independently, of course with our own spouses, and so that really resonates and I and I just really appreciate you lifting that story and bringing more awareness to it. Thank you, Nick.
• 40:38
  Jonathan McCoy: You know how all these conversations and we're going to ask you for your one good thing. What's a piece of advice you could share with our community or mantra that you'd want to lift today?
• 40:46
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, I mean, I think I kind of, I let the cat out of the bag early. I mean, I did my whole I mean, pull up mode area that we have to just pull up, everybody's got to pull up, you got to pull other people up, you got to ask people to pull you up. I mean, it's pull, it's 2023 is pull up, you got to pull up and show up, right. So like, pull up, show up. And so that's my whole thing for moving forward. And they both before.
• 41:09
  Nick Lynch: You know, my mantra always used to be like, what got you here isn't going to get you here. But like, to me, like that sort of feels like dated and very, like businessy. Let's just pull up together. Like, let's pull up other people. Let's pull up and show up and do the things we need to do. And you guys have pulled me up multiple times. So thank you. And I hope that I can, can can pull up people and continue to pull up people and the stuff that we do,
• 41:32
  Jonathan McCoy: Dude, right back at you. Holy cow. I mean,
• 41:35
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, that's what it's all about. When we link arms and get in lockstep, we can move so much faster. And if our values align, and we're all chasing the same thing who cares who gets the credit, you know, let's just move faster toward it. So thank you, Nick.
• 41:49
  Becky Endicott: And we will always always champion whatever you're working on because you're such a good guy. And we absolutely love your tech and the way that it is changing the face of not only nonprofit but the way that people interface and have impact so Okay, people are going to want to know how to connect with you and Collidescope and I want to say if you're looking at Collidescope it is not the twisty color name it is collide in two things collide Collidescope.io So talk to us about where they can find you and where they can follow your thought leadership.
• 42:20
  Nick Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah. Collidescope.io when when when the worlds collide, and we're sculpting on what we're doing Collidescope.io, you can always email me Nick@Collidescope.io. And anything that is involving management, measurement and logistics of social good. That's where we sit in the intersection of data and so we're here to help across the board and can't wait to learn how we can help deliver your guys's mission.
• 42:46
  Becky Endicott: Love it.
• 42:46
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean definitely reach out and connect with Nick because he's he has his finger on the pulse of this but he's also just a great thought partner and has had so much great experience working with so many nonprofits so reach out to Nick. It is good to see you my friend. Thanks for coming back. We love this conversation.
• 43:01
  Nick Lynch: Likewise, thank you
• 43:03
  Becky Endicott: And keep us posted on your chapter your Make A Wish chapter I can't wait to hear the stories that come out of it. It's gonna be cool.
• 43:10
  Nick Lynch: You guys are you guys are going to emcee the gala
• 43:13
  Becky Endicott: You got it. You know, we love galas. So I'll be doing it in my pajamas. It'll be great. Thank you my friend.
• 43:20
  Jonathan McCoy: Perfect.
• 43:20
  Jonathan McCoy: Appreciate you man.
• 43:22
  Nick Lynch: Thank you guys.
• 43:24
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• 43:24
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• 43:26
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• 43:56
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