Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 472. Good Marketing Unplugged: How Marketing Can Mobilize Movements for Your Cause

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472. Good Marketing Unplugged: How Marketing Can Mobilize Movements for Your Cause · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: That entire situation, with Employee Giving Campaign, created an internal movement, and that movement then started to ripple.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hey everyone, my name is Noah Barnett.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I'm the VP of Marketing here at Feather and today in the studio I'm joined by John McCoy and Becky Endicott, the co-founders of we Are For Good.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: We Are For Good is a new media ecosystem for social impact sector, which is incredible.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: They're good friends, they're great people and I'm so glad to have them in the studio.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Hey John, hey Becky.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, so fun.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like I just got invited into the studio by our older brother, Like he's going to teach us some stuff.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Can't wait.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Well, we're hoping that you all teach our listeners a few things, because what people might not realize about you all unless they've listened to a prior interview with you all because usually you're on my side of the mic is that you all have spent a lot of time in and around nonprofits prior to starting we Are For Good.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: And so before we get into like what you all are doing with we Are For Good right now and how it really aligns with what we believe here at Feather that marketing is good and you believe marketing is mission I want us to go back a little bit and talk about John and Becky pre we Are For Good and how really what the squiggle was that got you into work with nonprofits, becky?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: You know mine was process of elimination when I was in.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Everyone was listening to this.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Like I didn't qualify for it.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It was a funny journey because I knew I wanted to get into marketing.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I knew I love storytelling but I didn't know which like sort of lane I needed to be in.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: So I did a lot of internships in college and had an internship at a creative agency decided very quickly that was not my people went and worked in the marketing communications department at a massive oil company that you all know and love here in Oklahoma and then kind of fell my way into Science Museum Oklahoma, the Disney world of Oklahoma, where you can go and play hands on science, and it was a nonprofit, tiny, and I just absolutely loved it and it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: There was never a time I wasn't chasing that high of connection, community philanthropy, gathering, learning, curiosity.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So that was me.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful and we're going to dig into some of that, those stories behind the story and just a little bit.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: But, john, how did you get into this work?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: What was the squiggle?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was in graphic design school at Oklahoma State University and all my friends were starting to get agency style jobs, you know, and I just never could get my head wrapped around going to, like, sell potato chips or soft drinks or whatever the things are.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: And it's not that it's bad, I like all those things too but I just wanted to do something that was like more mission oriented, of like just something that would feel like I had purpose and connection.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: And so I'm walking through the Bartlett Center this is the art school at OSU and there is this eight and a half by 11 flyer that is in Times New Roman font.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: It is like the most ugly flyer of all time and it says graphic design intern needed for the Oklahoma State University Foundation.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: And I truly thought I'm going to go at least help them make a better flyer to recruit somebody, because none of my friends are going to go work for this organization.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: And so I took this interview really seriously.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: I went home, got a clip on tie, made fake business cards, walked into the office and met Becky Endicott, who would now be one of my dearest friends in this world, but she was the director of marketing at OSU at the time and that started our friendship that has gone on for about 20 years now and led to we Are For Good.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: So I kind of stumbled into it too.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: I never thought that I'd be a fundraiser.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: I always felt like an imposter still feel like an imposter because I was a graphic designer, turned into a fundraiser.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: So I thought somebody would find me out at some point along the way and we decided to embrace it and be like.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: You know, we're marketers disguised as frienders, or that's really our identity, and we're really cool with that.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: So that's what we're still today.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: So, Becky, I have to ask did you design that poster?
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say that I made it because I probably would have put it in Times New Rome and knowing what I know about myself then and the way I used to stretch logos, so I probably did guilty.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So John's been cleaning up your design work ever since.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Literally there you go.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: So, john, you already hinted at this, but one thing you all say is that your marketer's disguised as fundraisers.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: What is the difference?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Why is the qualifier required?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: It probably isn't.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I think this is us, you know, trying to make sense in terms of words.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: That made sense to us, you know, and I think part of our we Are For Good story, that we can act, is that we wanted to show up and just like have real talk, you know, and quit like pontificating and, you know, talking in a way that I think makes the elite seem elite and it's like actually this is about relationship building, it's about movement building, it's about getting somebody to understand and connect with the story, and those are some of the things that, while probably marketing gets a bad rep from some people, to us that was like the thing that drew us to marketing the idea of getting to story, tell and talk about some of the softer things and do that through photography and video and branding elements and stuff.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Like we love the connection that it created.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: And I think what we realized along the way is we said those are all the elements that make a really great fundraiser.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: You know, you can have somebody that uses all the big words but they don't actually know how to connect with another human being and we just, you know, kind of wanted to flip the script on how we talk about that, and so we don't subscribe to just using the big words.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: We just want to be like, hey, we're real people just trying to figure this out, centering connections, centering community and just making it more about that, and that's really what set us up for this whole impact uprising.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: That's our North Star and the work that we do, because we believe that, like, philanthropy in itself is so revolutionary and the human and the person, not just the impact like we always talk about the impact and marketers are the worst we have to talk about the impact, but what philanthropy does on the inside of a human and the stories we've gotten to be part of, for people that do that at the biggest level and at just the smallest level, is like what gets me so excited and what continues to keep me inspired in this work too.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the reason I ask that is because I often find resistance when we say, hey, you know, this is the good marketing unplugged podcast, or hey, this is for people doing marketing at nonprofits, and they're like we, that's someone else's job.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: I'm a fundraiser or I'm a membership manager or I'm a volunteer coordinator and to me I'm like that's marketing and others are like no, no, marketing is this other thing Like why is that still Like?
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: why is marketing this like other thing that someone else does in the corner?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: But we don't see it as like part of what we do as fundraisers or program staff.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Becky, any thoughts on why marketing is still like pushed aside?
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: It's funny to me to even hear you say that, even though I know it is so entirely real, because I've lived it and I've lived trying to advocate to get marketing in my budget and I've had to advocate for why we should start something new that's never been done before, because the way that it's going to allow us to communicate is more personal or maybe more broad or maybe more niche, and I just think if you're someone who is still saying that marketing is not an integrated part of what we do, then I think you're living in the before COVID time.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: We are now dividing our lives into BC and AC, before COVID and after COVID, and the old style of thinking is that I'm only a one dimensional thing.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I am a fundraiser, I am a major gift officer, I am a donor relations person.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: The reality is our world is gray now.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: It's so intertwined you cannot have relationships in a one dimensional way ever.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And so we're not just fundraisers, we're not just marketers, we're not just anything.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: We're so many things.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: We're change makers, we're storytellers, we're impact amplifiers, we're community builders, we're design architects, and the world is shifting in that way and I would say the world is your oyster right now, however you want to be and a passion enthusiast.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: If you're someone who loves the data, put that hat on too and say this is a world in which we can build, and if it aligns with the things that we care about, if it aligns with our values and our passions, we believe it can be a much more richly rewarding world to live and work in, and that's really what we're fighting for.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've seen such success when organizations break down these walls of like marketing is this and fundraising is this.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Did you all see that firsthand in any of the organizations you worked with, where, when you were able to bring like the integration of fundraising and marketing together, the campaign was amplified or the impact was?
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And if you can get into the specifics, that's what we love here.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: On Unplugged oh my gosh.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: The answer is resounding yes, so many times.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: And so I think that's the other piece you know we brought to the table and I realized this was a gift that we had, as, like I could design, becky could write, so we, you know, for better or worse, didn't have to go through a marketing team to do some of the things, to bring some of the ideas we had to life, and it definitely worked in our favor.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: But I think what it allowed us to do is break down walls, and so I think of this specifically in this.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: If you hung around us much, we're sorry not sorry that we talk about employee giving, because we believe in the power of just starting from within.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Finding your grassroots people from within and that becomes an attraction, like a magnet to your organization is people from within that are so bought in.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: So I think there's so much to be unleashed with specifically employee giving if you do it the correct way.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: And so that was our story when we, Becky and I, both decided to go and chase this healthcare philanthropy position.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: So we both went to Oklahoma City to start at this role and within the first couple of weeks this is no joke we're getting sued by Garth Brooks as an organization.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: You can look this up, it's in the news, the organization is actively getting sued by the world's largest country music star.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: But what that meant on the inside is that you have a foundation that you're like what are we doing with a public perception all in this very moment Because you're managing a PR crisis?
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: That's on the national news and from our standpoint.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: We came here because we have this love of philanthropy, we have this beautiful belief that it's transformational, while the narrative outside is completely different and what it caused us to do was to have self reflection and wanting to get active and to do something.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: And I remember sitting in Becky's office and we were tasked with bringing an employee giving campaign to the campus.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: So, of course, we're doing like what we, what good healthcare employees would do we put on our hats and we're like we're going to call through all of our peer organizations, we're going to go find those best practices, and that's what we did.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: And we heard that you can do a casino Royale theme and you can do like the cruise ship theme and you can do like you need to pick the theme.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: And we were dying inside.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: You know, like the idea of this is a moment in time for our organization.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: It needs to be real, it needs to be authentic, it needs to cut through the noise.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: Philanthropy in itself is amazing, so why don't we just do something that's really authentic around that?
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: And so the tenants of this employee campaign, we truly, through these best practice ideas out the table and said what if we centered authentic storytelling, this profile people from the janitor to the CEO on the same playing field, in our case, the same wooden stool.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: We put them on a stool and asked them to share their story and what their passion is.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: And the second piece was really like how do we tangibly show impact?
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Because I think, if you're starting from scratch, we have this fundamental belief that donors could be transactional.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: That description Believers are when someone's given and they actually have seen, felt, watched the impact happen, something switches and there's people I could point to in our careers that it's like you see, when that switch goes off, they want to invest at a deeper level.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Once they're a believer in it, they're going to open up their context, they're going to double their gift size.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: They're going to do, they're going to post about you on social media when they're a believer.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: It's very different than just being a transactional donor.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: So we thought how can we create an environment where you can cultivate believers?
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: And we do that by being really clear about showing people's impact.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: So we connected impact to the actual campaign through real clarity.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: I mean clarity of what your gift's going to buy and then clarity of when it came in the door.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: We're taking pictures, we're hosting parties, we're like showing off the equipment, because we wanted people to fundamentally see themselves and see the impact that they're creating.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: And I mean fast forward.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: There's a lot that we could talk about about how marketing fueled that, but just simply centering the storytelling and using the power of impact compounded over time to where we went from like 300 employee giving donors to like 3000 in just a matter of a couple of years.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: And they were people that got it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: You know, they weren't giving because they liked Casino Royale and I thought they could win a bunch of prizes.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: They're giving because they caught on to like what we were doing and it's recession proof.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like outside of COVID.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like pandemic proof in a way, because people are connected to the cause and that's the thing that's going to survive, no matter what kind of is thrown at you.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: So we really believe in that authentic storytelling and we just think it's like rife to be unleashed because so many organizations sell themselves short by making the gala about something other than the mission.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: You know, I think there's a gathering piece, but there's also just like such a beautiful story to be told if you do it ethically and center the right mission that it's like this is our secret sauce, like we should lean into that.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: There's so much there.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And I think, if I were going to put a bow on everything that John just said that entire situation with employee giving campaign created an internal movement and that movement then started to ripple.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: We noticed that it started with our employees and then it transcended into our boards and then our boards began to get buy in from their friends, you know, to be other donors.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And then so to John's point we applied this mentality to that we invoked in this employee campaign, to a gala Sorry, we're in Oklahoma, we say gala, not gala.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: We applied it to, you know, a $46 million mental health care facility.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: We were a campaign we were also fundraising for.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: We applied it to anything and it just kept working and it became the basis and the framework of what we are, for good is today.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And so we're basically inviting people in through marketing, through conversation and working to make them believers that we can live and work and do things differently in a way that serves all of us.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: And it's like I look at you know, and I'm like you're a believer of ours, you were an early believer of ours and through that relationship we became believers of yours.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: We became believers of feather.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: We used the platform, we saw how it worked.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: We saw how it was serving our community, and so you just cannot buy that kind of trust right now in marketing, and so I just think the believer concept is something that can bring nonprofits, anybody, in to building a bigger movement that's bigger than all of us.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: And the whole commentary about the design of the campaign reminded me of a conversation I have with the Boys and Girls Club in Tennessee, where they talked about the pandemic basically preventing them from being able to host all of these parties that they used to do to raise money, and it pushed them back to just tell the real story about what they were doing, why they had to stay open the whole pandemic because there were children that depended on them every single day, and so they got to celebrate and showcase the purpose instead of host a party, and they said it was a great reminder because it reminded them that their purpose was enough.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Their purpose generated philanthropy, not just a party.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: And it kind of again goes back to what you said, john, which is, if you can embed the actual purpose and not use distractions to convince people, but rather mobilize people or inspire them to be a part of something that's huge, that's really big.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: The other thing that I pulled out of there as a lesson we can all take is momentum fuels momentum, and so if you can build momentum and then you can continue to fuel that momentum by encouraging further momentum, things start rolling.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: It's the whole physics concept where, once something's in motion, it's easier to keep it in motion.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: It's like we're doing all this effort to get something in motion and then we're basically going back and grabbing another ball and pushing that.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Instead of just pushing a ball down the hill and allowing that momentum to go and continue to fuel it, we jump to the next thing because we're bored or it's spring, and so we have to come up with a new concept and we're like what should we do this spring?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It's like what happened to the thing we were just doing?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: People were behind that.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: So those are my two things.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Purpose is always better than a party, and sometimes we just need to believe that as marketers, as fundraisers, and then, too, momentum breeds momentum.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: So how do you think about your fundraising and marketing?
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: In a way, that's more movement, which it sounds like you all saw at your previous role, but also now with we Are For Good, which gets me to what you all are doing now.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Now you have we Are For Good, you have the opportunity to interview hundreds and hundreds of leaders in our space and learn best practices, while also uplifting these beliefs like marketing is mission and so many of these other things, like the impact uprising.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: What have you learned through those conversations into what makes good marketing.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: This podcast is all about good marketing.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: What have you all learned through those conversations about what is good marketing?
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I love this question because you're quoting stuff that is our values to us and it is why we started the company To perpetuate those.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: But I think what I was ill prepared for is just like how much more strongly I believe in those now after I've seen it, because it's not just our words on a piece of paper, it's people from all over the country and world honestly Storytelling back to us the things that we know to be true too, and we just like celebrate that.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: So I want to riff on marketing Is mission, because that's what we call.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: You know what feathers calls.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Marketing is good to us.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: This is something I've really learned and I hear it again and again and again.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: But the way that we market this is one of the bents that they come back to in the podcast all the time the way that we market can showcase the world that we are trying to create and I think that there is a Visible shift of what it looked like maybe 15 or 20 years ago, when we always pick on poor Sarah McLaughlin and McLaughlin and her ad, you know, and there's like the sad children, the sad animals and all this kind of stuff, and that's where we came from, and I think maybe that's why marketing has a kind of a bad taste in people's mouth.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: People don't aren't looking for that kind of uplift.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: You know, we as marketing is mission, that belief is that the way that we story tell can actually be a catalyst to the solution.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And, like I believe this because I see young leaders like emerging in the sector that are doing this, and they're doing it on tiktok, they're doing it on Instagram, they're doing it in the way that they show up and I think of, like dr Bertrude Albert.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: She is the founder of p4h global.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: This mission is, you know, like 10 years old.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: She started in her college dorm to go help raise up and train more Haitian teachers on the ground in Haiti, like the people of Haiti, to be able to teach fellow Haitians.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And she doesn't use her social media to talk about how sad it is in Haiti and like how upsetting it all is.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: She uses it to school all of us about our misconceptions, our misbeliefs, and Put all the power back in Haiti's hands of like not only is this a beautiful people, but they have got the solutions.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Actually, a lot of history has been rewritten in a lot of ways.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: That is maybe having our perceptive Shifted, and so what she's doing is like changing the paradigm by using the power of of media and the power of marketing To revise some of those things.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: So it's like her mission is well beyond just getting teachers deployed because, man, they're doing that.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: They're winning like Yinesco awards you know that he's global awards for their work but, on the other hand, she is impacting thousands of people she will never meet and that'll probably never give, but maybe that little Message, that little tick-tock, that little tweet, the real may have like shifted them to get a little more curious about the situation.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: And so I see people like that, leaders like that, using marketing to like change the story and change the narrative, and I'm like that's what this is about.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: This is an opportunity which is coming back to this.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: Didn't see this thread.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Come and know about.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: I'm feeling it of like this authentic marketing.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: That's why it's so powerful to like.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: Not use our megaphone to talk about casino Royale night.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Come early to get extra tickets.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Use our megaphone to like let's change some of the societal problems.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Let's change some of the narrative in the language and the words that we use, and it's the way that we photograph, the way that we video, like we get to be part of that in how we storytell as marketers, and it's a huge responsibility and it certainly is a huge thing to say, oh, let's cut that from our budget this year.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: It's feels so like counter.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: If you have a right view of like what it has the power to do Outside of just raising funds, you know really changing and shifting the narratives of this of the entire country, your world.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I mean the only thing I would add to that, because I agree with John just in the way that marketing can absolutely Revolutionize the way that your mission is seen.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: But I will say that I've also seen just unmatched bravery happen in this space with the way that nonprofit and impact professionals are taking back their power and Using what they know and what they have to save the world again.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: This is something very interesting that I've noticed that so many of us in the nonprofit space we're just these ridiculous idealist and these bleeding hearts and we were those kids growing up that we wanted to save the whales, we wanted to save Mother Earth, we wanted to feed, you know, the homeless and and Somehow we just kind of got into the grind of this and we got into the rhythm.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: That is the machine and Something happened in the pandemic and it reset all of us.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: And there are those that we are watching who are bravely stepping into their power and becoming leaders as thought leaders and they're really taking on this.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: How do I embrace being a change agent with what I know?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And I see them becoming that young kid again, with that Fearlessness, with that vigor, with that, with that passion that is unmatched and they're stepping up and they're saying things that they never felt that they had the agency to say before, about why their mission is important, the harm that's done in the world, the healing that's there for the taking, the opportunities for community to come in and be a part of radical change, and to watch People who have had so little power.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I mean you're surrounded by C-suite executives and and people you know, donors who have millions of dollars and they have just affluence and influence and All of a sudden we're realizing we have power too, because we've seen so much.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: We've seen change.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: We've seen what happens when people don't rise.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: We've seen what happens when they do rise, and so Unleashing that which we have seen, that which we know and that which we see is there for the taking, is Become a beautiful anthem.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I believe in the way that community is building the problem or solving the problems of today together, and so those leaders that are stepping in bravely and embracing how to be a change agent they're not asking their board's permission, they are ridiculously Optimistic and radically chasing that impact.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: That's been probably one of the most heartwarming things that I've seen come down in this three-year journey.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: So much of what you all shared anchors back to, like this idea that marketing isn't just about convincing or Inverting or targeting or reaching or doing that.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: It's actually like mobilizing people or instilling Courage or confidence.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: And I think there's a few things that stood out to me when you were talking, becky, which is something we share internally a lot, which is that confidence is contagious.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Chaos is also contagious, but I think confidence can win in the midst of chaos, because so often we talk about change and chaos and like we're just living in this new state and that's real, like that is a real reality of what we're in, and so, instead of fighting against it or fighting within it, using confidence or courage to Convey a different message is not only something that you said people are Capturing and owning in themselves, but they're also reflecting out and giving people these, these buoys to come to.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I think the pandemic provided an opportunity, not only for those that are in the sector listening to this podcast, to Reconsider their priorities or recapture.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: You know, their purpose is also for others that maybe our lawyers or or professionals or tradesmen or just you know a mom or a dad or a person in a school that they could say well, what do I want to be?
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: What's a bigger story I can do?
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: And so that confidence being contagious is something that's really powerful.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: And the other thing, john, you shared is that marketing also has this ability to Do three different things, and I think it's what makes good marketing is that your marketing should always be focused on Reinforce connection to the cost, and so you talked about that, john, in your campaign.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: You just reiterated what you're observing when you've interviewed people is that it's about reconnection to the cause.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: The second thing is, I think we need to always be building confidence that we as an organization are the right Group to be a part of it or to be able to take action on that cause, like, why be in this you know boat or this vehicle, or be a part of this movement?
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: And so you're both reinforcing connection to the cause and building confidence that you are the right organization.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: But then, most importantly and I also think this is something I've seen so present in what you all have built that we are for good Is that you also need to be fostering community amongst people that believe that and that.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: That third thing of being able to drive connection, drive community and be able to reinforce that, as you all have built community, both in nonprofits and now we are for good.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: I what if you learned?
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Or what would you advise someone that's like I want to build a movement, I want to mobilize people to be a part of my cause, like, how would you advise them?
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: What are two or three things that you would say hey, these are the things that are going to make you.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: They have an outweighed impact on your success, on mobilizing a movement.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: I mean I'll just start and then we can ping ping pong probably, but I'd say the first one Is see people and see the people that are often overlooked, and I'll say this has been just a narrative of my story, probably like harkens back to being truly like the last one picked always in my life.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Thanks for this kills me.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: You're talking about little John seriously picture yourself playing dodge one.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Your last one picked that frame of mind.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: When you're coming in to build community, if you actually have the, the ability to stop for a second and see the person that's not usually uplifted, not usually amplify, but they're there Like that is absolutely game changer.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: You know now, I gotta be honest most of our like professional career, that was not what the goals were set up on us and a lot of that you know.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: Expectations are set up because you're trying to cultivate this big gift portfolio and certain people with certain capacity.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: But what I've absolutely seen is true in, like the employee campaign example and we are for good Is that people that are believers like if you don't activate them, you're missing out whether they have got a millions of dollars of net worth or whether they don't even know what net worth means, but they are a believer in this, like they, those are the people that you want closest to you, because those are the people that Really will share the story and tell and do and open up their network and post about you and all those sorts of things.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: And if you're gonna create a community, you have to be a place that's willing to like Truly see people as people and not about dollar signs and not about what they're bringing to the table, but like, hey, you're welcome here, you're celebrated here and we're so glad you're in this with us.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: And I think the people that have surprised us along the journey, of the people that you never expect that pull out this random moment in time connection or this random In moment thing that's just boosting or encouraging or truly opening a door to a different partner or whatever it may be like.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: That is fundamental and I think in this day and age With social media, that door barrier to entry is so low, like make sure you're seeing people and that you're not missing people, because you got so many automations happening and you got so much stuff, so much focus on the big that you're never looking at like who's People.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: That's my first thought.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go more on the messaging side of what council I would give, and it is Know who you are, know your values, know what you stand for and say it out loud.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: And say it out loud many, many, many times.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And this is something that we did as, as a company, is we really outlined a core values of how we're gonna show up and why we show up, and we ended up creating content around all eight of them.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: They were our original Friday series, so John and I talked about why we picked those, how they play out in our content, how we've seen them in movements, and it's more than just saying I believe in you know, integrity it's.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: It's gotta go deeper than that.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: It's gotta be that trust is the basis of everything, or everyone matters.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: We believe that, no matter who you are, what your past is, that you are a human being and you matter.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: We believe that you should steward relentlessly.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: We believe that if someone chooses to make a gift and I don't want to say gift like a financial gift, I want to say if somebody put something into your pot, whether it's a like on your social media, whether it's bringing a friend to one of your events, whether it's sharing their story.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: You know, on your tiktok they have invested and we should steward and recognize that and come back and say thank you and ask more questions and make more alignments and figure out what more connections could be made.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: And I also think your values tell the story of who you are and where you're going.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, our second core value is we play the long game.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: So when we make decisions as a company or as a community, we're not thinking about how is it gonna impact us tomorrow.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: We think about how is it gonna impact us in five to ten, twenty years down the way, and it means we're not going to just do things that are tactical.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: We're gonna make big, we're gonna ask bigger questions and we're gonna go to maybe a little bit more risky side because we believe that in the long term it'll pay off.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: There was two things that stood out to me that I'm taking away from this and I think, even infusing in how we think about marketing here at Feather but I think listeners can take these as well as well is that when you're building a movement, you have to value net worth and network in the same.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: It's actually both.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: You need money, but you also need network, you know so net worth and network are equally valuable when you're building a movement.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: The other one, becky, that you were sharing, and not only in kind of showcasing that through the core values that you all have but these core values are designed to be shared and I think we need to be thinking about that when we're Designing.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Messaging for our community is that we get to design the story, but our community is the storytellers.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Like we get to design the story, but our community, people in the movement, are the storytellers and we have to equip them or enable them to be successful.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: So it's not just us hearing it and saying it.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: It's about us thinking about when, what we're going to say, how is that going to then be reset?
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: And you guys have done that with your core values and I think a lot of successful movements powered by marketing lean into that design to be shared.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: That's incredible.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: We talked about what makes good movements, but I'm curious who you all are seeing do good marketing.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Are there nonprofits?
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: You look at that?
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: You're like, wow, they're using marketing to mobilize movements around their cause.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Who do you look to and who can our listeners be inspired by?
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll lift.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: You know one of our favorite organizations.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: They're based in Miami.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: They're known as the Elevate Prize Foundation.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Their mantra is make good famous, and so I think I always tell them like they had us at their motto, like I hear, make good famous, and like that's what we want to do too.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: But what I love about them they are just a few years old and they, you know, have now created partnerships with CNN, heroes and the Malala Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative and all these like different huge organizations across the country, including the Streamy Awards, because they're all about elevating the, the talk of philanthropy.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: And, of course, you know, their marketing is really incredibly disruptive too.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: Their mission is to really create conversation and use media.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: They also have this huge unrestricted giving aspect of what they do, so they're like a funder in the same vein.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: So imagine not only someone that gets the power of media, but they're also funding it, like they're also powering and they're giving award winners that come through their program Not only like unrestricted cash, but they're coming alongside them to help them story tell, like building a documentary for them or sort of things like that.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: So they totally have our heart on every level.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: But then they go out to Instagram and they're like we want to use the power of community and engagement to like find our next recipients and we're gonna do this on a monthly basis.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: So they started what's called the Get Loud campaign.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: It drops every month and since Elevate works with organizations of all different kinds, they'll pick a different theme each month.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: So for 24 hours on Instagram, they ask the community to get in, get engaged, tag their favorite org or upvote their favorite org or share, post all those things and in 24 hours they do like the fastest ever due diligence process and then they give a $25,000 unrestricted gift to that organization that had the most engagement.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: This is truly like what you know trust-based philanthropy looks like, because they're in touch with their community, they're activating community and they're using media to like grow their reach.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: So I think, just watching what they're doing, there is a ton of ways that you can apply this and we were just kind of breaking this down on an episode on our podcast, because so often we hold every decision in our nonprofit to be within our walls.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Could you take one decision today, this week, and take it to your community, like, ask hey, what do you prefer about this?
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: What do you like about this and just get people to start talking and I mean you don't necessarily have to tie your entire giving program to it at this point, but just starting an engagement strategy is so worth it.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: And watching Elevate do it like they're now taking that same thing to LinkedIn and they're taking it to other platforms.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: So just one to watch and just really good humans too.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: So reach out if you want to like connect with them, like reach out to them, because they're amazing people that are really generous with their time and resources too.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, you got to talk about Elevate Prize.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I got to talk about Sick Kids Foundation and because we were at Healthcare Philanthropy for so long when we found a massively disruptive Healthcare Philanthropy who puts everything into marketing and to storytelling, like our eyebrows just quirked in the best way.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: But if you're not familiar with Sick Kids Foundation in Ontario, it's just an incredible children's hospital.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, how subversive is that name?
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: No, it's like it's literally called Sick Kids Foundation and they have poured so much marketing into telling their story and owning their narrative and they have made these kids superheroes in the way that they are photographers and the way that they put such high quality video production behind their storytelling.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And it is such a great feel good movement and you can get involved.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Whether you know anybody at this hospital, whether you know anybody in this country, whether you know anyone with this disease, it's something that we can all rally around.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: They have massive social media presence sharing these stories and one of the ones that really stuck with me was they did a Mother's Day campaign.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It was a video campaign and instead of interviewing the kids, they interviewed the moms and they interviewed moms about what it was like to have a sick kid in the hospital and I'm telling you, I was all the waterworks in the world watching this video go down and I 100% made a gift and now I'm in their database because the storytelling is so powerful and I see the way kids are empowered there, I see the way families are uplifted with dignity and with care, and to me it's like a no big deal when you get on their Instagram and you see, like Ryan Reynolds is one, but he's, like you know, the least impressive thing on that Instagram, because there are so many other incredible things going on with the kids that are in this hospital that even that seems secondary.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: And to me that's when you know you're doing good.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Marketing is that people are coming, they are looking for your channel, they are looking for your content.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: They want a jolt of joy, they want a jolt of humanity, they want a jolt of knowing what it's like to be human and to know that we're not all suffering alone in silence.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And to me, that's what I think nonprofit has the power to do.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: If they can be brave enough to give up that marketing, don't give it just to your comms team, don't give it just to your one marketer.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Like give it to your people.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Give it to your believers, have them interpret your story, have them interpret your values, have them plug in.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I can guarantee you the story will be richer and more authentic as a result.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, both of those examples are beautiful and I think it combines many of the insights or the practical tips we shared with listeners today on how do you build a movement.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: You know, it's authentic authenticity.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: It's about story crafting or story making so that our audience can be the storytellers.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: It's about reinforcing connection to the cause.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: You know, all of those things are very important, but as we wrap up, you know we, one of our core values here at Feather is to be practical.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: So what are one or two practical things you would encourage listeners to do, maybe this week, maybe next week, maybe this month or this quarter, as they consider how they can mobilize movements for their missions?
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, love it, and I love forcing us to practical, because we can definitely talk in the clouds alive too.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: So this is a good way to round out, but you know you'll probably hear us talk about this if you tune into our podcast lately, because this is a, this is a bent.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: That we're really talking about lately is the power of stoking your content, and so I know we're probably talking to people that are responsible for the content of their organizations.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: But, friends, do not post and ghost Like I see this happen all the time like the stories are so good, you spent so much time creating a really great piece of content and then it's like literally like ghost town, like no one's engaging.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: But it's probably not the content's fault, it's probably the missed opportunity to stoke, and that's the word that we chose to say.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: How do you help drive engagement?
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: And there's a lot of practical ways to do this.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Linkedin is one of our favorite playgrounds right now, because if you're not a LinkedIn, if you're a non-profit, not on LinkedIn.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: Here's your twofer Get on LinkedIn, because all of your donor, all of your board members a lot of them probably have profiles and the ability to be able to see into organizations see who works where, and I think the content just vibes at a value level a lot more frequently, at least in my feed, than in any other social platform.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: But stoking can just look like tagging somebody, trying to get people to talk in the comments, trying to draw out a connection, but just tagging a few people that you think it'll resonate with, whether you want to do that publicly or whether you want to like shoot in at a DM to them.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: It's such a missed opportunity for an org not to DM a new post to a board member or to a new donor and say hey, when we share this, I thought of you.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: If you don't want to put it in the public, I totally get that.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: If you want to shoot in a DM, like that's the perfect place to say hey took me two seconds.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: I thought of you when we shared this today and I thought it would resonate with you and I guarantee you, if it comes from an authentic place, it's going to create more engagement, more positive mojo and all the things that you want to do on a post.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: But what are other ways, becky, that we tell to stoke?
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, anytime anybody says anything, reply to them.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: If somebody does a peer to peer fundraising campaign, share it, get in there, like this is what John's talking about.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Like get in the mix of the conversation.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: If somebody adds content that's very valuable, you know, reply and then go to their DMs and tell you what it meant.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Tell them what it meant to you.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: This is what we call like elevated cultivation.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: For all of us who used to think that cultivating donors was about going on the next coffee or taking them to lunch, this is the way that you cultivate your believers in a digital space.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: You see them, you react to them, you show up and you just keep getting conversation and content churning in their house, in your house, in whatever the house is that you're tagged in.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: And yeah, john's right, if you're not on LinkedIn, please get in there, because people are talking about you, they're fundraising for you, they're making a business case for you and you want to be a part of that conversation.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: I love that, and I'm going to throw down a challenge too.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: You may have another practical and be, but another challenge is that a lot of times, especially when we were in full-time nonprofit work, we would spend like years, decades writing the impact report, the annual report.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: We would spend so much time creating this piece of content and then literally it would get like one post on social media like, hey, the impact report is live.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Or an email, here you go, or one email.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: If you can flip the script in your head, let's spend instead 20% of our time creating the content and 80% of the time pointing back to that content in different ways, and we think there's a lot of power in just syndicating it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: So flip through that impact report.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: How can you break this up into 20 different stats, into 20 different tagging of people that are mentioned, into little teasers and quotes, and dropping a photo, dropping a video, and it's so much more runway out of your content.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: And then, if you're stoking that along the way by tagging and engaging people in conversations, that one piece of content that probably has just been one post for years on your feed can now be like an actual strategy to engage people around something that's a really brilliant, beautiful piece of content.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: So I think, just flipping that, that equation in your head, how can I spend more time sharing it than I did on creating it?
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: And just always doing that as much as possible.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I would say, the gift that I want to give to your listeners is I want to give them the gift of building a culture of storytelling, and here's what I want you to do with it.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Storytelling is going to be the basis of all the most powerful marketing that you put out from your organization, and so start cultivating it.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And I will tell you that I was a really old school writer and marketer.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I used to think about storytelling in a way that I could control it, and it was only outbound.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Whatever I could control was the net, was the narrative, the arc, the call to action, every part of it, and that's really one sided thinking I learned.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: And so I want to give you the gift of creating an inbound way to get stories in.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: And what do I mean by this?
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, go to your donation page right now and put an open text box underneath the pay now, maybe above the pay now, because we do want them to click on it and just say optional.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Why did you choose to give today?
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Put that in your direct mail.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Let us know why you chose to give today.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Put it in the footer or the header of every single one of your emails, every time you have a chance to grab story.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Do it Like can you once a week, say, put a question out into your social media community and ask a question and gather story.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: This is going to do so much for you.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: One, it's going to save you time on going out and finding them.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Two, you're curating story from the people who are lurking, following tagging, responding, giving already, so those people are already bought in.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: And three, it's something that you can collect and go back to because it's social proof.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: This is social proof that somebody has some connection to your mission and there's a reason that they're sticking around.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: And when you can mix that outbound and inbound storytelling, that's when you've really created community, because it becomes the voice of the community, which makes it trustworthy, which makes it believable, which makes it something that we all want to get involved in and be a part of.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: So start building some kind of a repository for storytelling.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: And, ps, if somebody tells you why they gave, all of a sudden you have the keys to the kingdom, you know why they showed up, you have the most easy entry point to call them and thank them for that gift, because you also get to thank them for that story and create a relationship that was incepted at that story, which is also incredible.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that and I think it's a great reminder that in mobilizing movements for your cause, you aren't the hero.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: You're like a host to the movement, you're an enabler of the movement, you're a platform for the movement and I think too often it's about why you should give to us, or why you should give to me, or how do I get you to take some sort of action, and so we tend to focus on where we're at.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: But, as we talk about in the good marketing framework, your community should drive your campaigns.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Your community should inform how you connect and cultivate that connection.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, you want to activate them to some sort of action, but it's about your community first and being that platform, that host, is so powerful, whether it's, you know, in them taking action or, as you said, becky, them telling the story you just elevating and amplifying.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Love it, john Becky.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: We could talk for hours, so grateful for what you all are doing for the community over at we Are For Good.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: If you haven't checked that out, look for the we Are For Good podcast in the podcast place.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: You're listening to this right now.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Just click and find it's lovely.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: You guys have great conversations and you're great friends and ambassadors for good marketing.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: So thanks for being here in the studio with me, and we'll have to do it again soon.