Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. Today we're gonna be doing something a little bit fun. I got Dave Raley on the show. Dave, how you doing today?        

00:00:14
            

I'm doing well. And we are actually gonna be doing. We're start off today. We're gonna do some live donut reviews. Well, I guess they're not live.        

00:00:21
            

You'll be. This is pre recorded, but we will be doing live. To me, it's very live for us. It's not a simulation, I promise. Okay, so, Dave, I'm going to let you start off.        

00:00:31
            

You have some special donuts there. And then I've got a standby that we're going to do. Tell us about the donut you've got. I'm so excited about this, Matt. And then give us your honest review.        

00:00:40
            

You're going to take a bite of it. I want to. We want to score it. Scale one to ten. You get to take one bite of it.        

00:00:45
            

That's the rules. And then give us your honest score on how that donut is. Okay. So just a little bit of context because. And.        

00:00:54
            

And I love the whole holy donuts theme because that is a secret passion of mine. Is anything sweet, really. But donuts are a favorite. And the town that we live in, I'm based outside of Seattle, Washington, is called Poulsbo. And the reason it's called Poulsbo is because it's a norwegian town.        

00:01:16
            

Like, it's a. It's known as little Norway in our area. Okay. Which means in the middle of our town, we have a norwegian bakery called Sly's Bakery. So I have my little sly's bakery here.        

00:01:30
            

Okay. So if you're ever in Washington and you get west of Seattle, you have to go to Sly's bakery. And so a little bit cheating on the review because I've been going to Sly's bakery. I just realized next month will mark about 20 years of going to Sly's bakery. So I know this doughnut, but this is called the.        

00:01:51
            

And for those of you that can actually see video, this is the danish doughnut. Okay. Which is ironic danish doughnut for a norwegian bakery. So it is a, like a flaky pastry. You know, it's a glazed doughnut, but it's like, sort of like a croissant meets.        

00:02:10
            

Yeah, like that. Yeah, yeah. So. So I will try it because I. I do love, uh, love the, uh, the danish doughnut.        

00:02:19
            

Isn't it fun trying, like, eating food live on a. On a video? I don't usually have people watching. I can't eat this whole doughnut on the. On the podcast.        

00:02:26
            

No, just. Just a bite. Just a bite. Okay. Honest assessment.        

00:02:30
            

What are. What are you getting out of this doughnut? Out of this? Dangerous. Okay, so this.        

00:02:32
            

This particular danish doughnut, because it is very, um, tricky how they make it. It's probably an eight and a half. Wow. So it's really good. Okay.        

00:02:42
            

But, I mean, easily nine. Nine and a half. Like, man, you told me not to give a ten, but it's my favorite. It would be pretty close. It's your favorite donut?        

00:02:50
            

Okay, that's fair. That's. That's what that spot should be reserved for. It's like, this is the best donut I've ever had in my life. Okay.        

00:02:57
            

Slice donuts link the shownness. We take our girls. We have. We. We've been taking our girls since literally they were born.        

00:03:05
            

Once a week, we go on Sundays before church, and we have a sly doughnut and have conversations as a family and go on with our day. So. All right, so sliced danish doughnut, eight and a half. Market for the history books. I am.        

00:03:22
            

I am way less interesting on this. So I'm going to do something that I've not had this doughnut in probably a decade, but everyone who watches this is going to know this doughnut. Anyone listening is going to stone it. So this is Krispy Kreme's classic glaze. Like, we are going with a staple.        

00:03:37
            

Gee, it is the OG. Like, american donut, I think. Or at least in the south. It is. I don't know about up in the northwest, but I have not had.        

00:03:45
            

Seriously, I haven't had one of these in a decade. My youth group and Sunday school days were just littered with cramming a dozen of these in my mouth and having an absolute, like, diabetic coma, but I've not had one a decade. So I'm going to try it, and I'm going to give you an honest review on this. The first thing that comes to mind seems are kind of small. Like, they're pretty, pretty petite little donuts.        

00:04:07
            

Right? And you need to point out that you have six in that box. I have six in this box. These. I am not going to eat six of these.        

00:04:14
            

These are going to go to my children if they eat all of their dinner tonight. That's kind of the goal. So I'm going to take a bite. We're going to see how this is.        

00:04:27
            

Okay, before I give a number, it is a sugar bone. I mean, this is literally, I could not eat nowadays, more than one or two of these. And these are tiny, and it's. It's got so much butter in it that it literally almost melts in your mouth. It tastes less like a donut and more like a.        

00:04:48
            

I don't know, almost like a piece of candy. Like, it's literally that kind of. Yeah. I'm not sure that I would call this a donut. This is.        

00:04:54
            

This is probably candy if you love Krispy Kreme. Sorry for the hot take. I couldn't eat more than one or two. It's delicious in its own right. As a doughnut goes, though, that doesn't really fall into category for me.        

00:05:05
            

That's. That's a sweet treat of something. That's something else entirely. I'm gonna give it. Man, I'm gonna get killed for this.        

00:05:12
            

I'm gonna give that a six. Eight. 6.8. I think that's a. It's okay.        

00:05:16
            

It's. There's a reason to eat it. Like, it's not. Not great. It's just.        

00:05:21
            

It's. That's not a donut. That's. That's something different. But I know why people love them, because, I mean, if you need a sugar high, that's your thing.        

00:05:27
            

So. Krispy Kreme, classic glazed doughnut for me, 6.8. Come at me in the comments. Totally fine. If you disagree, tell me why you disagree.        

00:05:36
            

But hot take, that's not a donut. Opening on a controversial note. That's okay. That's okay. I am also, though, because you were going to do the local thing, I'm rocking some coffee out of my nick's roast.        

00:05:46
            

Famous roast beef coffee mug today. Shout out, Beverly, Massachusetts. Local spot. My wife and I used to eat it all the time when I was in seminary there, so. Also got a little bit of my local flair to go along with my corporate consumerism of crispy cream.        

00:06:00
            

Love it. All right, Dave, let the people know a little bit more about you. We've met a few times now, you are someone who huge amount of history in the christian nonprofit space. Working on the campaign side, working on marketing side. Give us a quick snapshot of how you got into the space.        

00:06:18
            

You're now a founder at Imago Consulting, so kind of give us just your background. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you asked a question how I got into this. This space, and it really starts with, I met a girl.        

00:06:31
            

I was thinking about that. I thought, I can't. I can't believe that's the. That's the start of my story. But seriously, was living in southern California, engaged to be married.        

00:06:40
            

My wife is from Oregon, and we were living outside of Los Angeles. And candidly, neither of us wanted to stay living in LA. And so we thought, well, we're young, we're getting married. Where do we want to move? And I'm originally from Southern California, she's from Oregon.        

00:06:58
            

And so we, neither of us really wanted to move to our hometown. And so we said, let's just try the Seattle area. It feels like that's a cool part of the country. And we each had one family member in the area. And this is where the career comes in, is I just started looking for work.        

00:07:15
            

I did not know that you could work for charities and nonprofits. Like, I didn't know they were paying jobs. I thought that was like a thing you did, you know, on the weekend in a volunteer capacity or, or what have you. And so I still remember, you know, I was looking at, you know, Microsoft and Washington Mutual bank and companies like Amazon, by the way, were not on the radar when I was looking for work. And just through a whole series of circumstances, found a guy who knew a guy at this agency called Masterworks, which for some of our listeners, you'll have heard of masterworks agency that specializes in faith based nonprofits.        

00:07:57
            

And it was just like a light bulb moment because I had wanted to, I was a double degree in marketing and digital, and it's like, man, I thought I would just have to get a job selling toothpaste and figure out where the fulfillment side of life was. That was now 20 years ago, if you haven't picked up on the math. And so it's been a huge blessing. And I've served a lot of nonprofits, certainly a lot of faith based nonprofits as well. And just, it's been an incredible journey, but a lot of years in marketing and fundraising, building the digital team, certainly at the agency, as well as a number of other teams before launching the advising practice that I do now.        

00:08:41
            

Still working with charities and with businesses on things like recurring revenue and what's happening in their organizations, just around growth. So it's been a fun journey. Awesome. Thanks for sharing, man. One of the things I always like to ask is about campaign strategies.        

00:09:00
            

Your time at Masterworks, obviously kind of a unique role in that. You got to work with a bunch of different clients on a lot of different projects, a lot of initiatives, a lot of campaigns. Was there a lane of that that you think is really effective, that nonprofits need to be focusing on in terms of types of campaigns, types of programs that really are kind of the best ROI for their ministry. Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, thinking about, I mean, you certainly do need a diversified fundraising approach, but especially when you say Roi, there's so many different sort of channels.        

00:09:40
            

The thing, and I debt it earlier is, and where I've taken a lot of my advising practices around what's happening in the recurring giving space, it's certainly higher ROI when it comes to particularly long term value, as well as just kind of in the general direct response fundraising space. But from my perspective, it's always been important. But really, the last, you know, five to ten years has really completely changed the game in terms of accessibility for that, that type of giving and those types of programs. So you say the last five to ten years have changed the game. Say more about that.        

00:10:25
            

How, how has what's happened in the last five to ten really had an impact on that? Yeah, you know, if, if you look at the history of recurring giving, particularly in North America. Yeah, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, 100 years, something like that, which, you know, that's a long, long time. But actually, if you really do the, your history, the first recurring giving kind of sponsorship program goes back almost more than 100 years. It goes back to the 18 hundreds, the early 18 hundreds, by the way, not the late 18 hundreds.        

00:10:58
            

And so, you know, recurring giving has been around, you know, forever. If you even study history, biblical history. Otherwise, you realize that this idea of a recurring gift is not a new concept, but what is new and what has really changed is the subscription economy and what's been happening, particularly with how consumers have changed their behavior, their expectations and their engagement with what, what banking industry calls discretionary automated payments, aka, you don't have, like, it's not like your mortgage payment or your power bill. Yep. That has really transformed the way Consumers act and think, which has in turn changed the way donors are now behaving, because those consumers are donors.        

00:11:50
            

Right. You and I are members of the subscription economy. And, and so it's always been interesting to me, candidly, over the last couple of decades, to see these different kind of consumer trends really lead the way in terms of changing behavior, which then do impact donor trends. Yeah. Well, hey there.        

00:12:15
            

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00:12:26
            

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00:12:56
            

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00:13:20
            

Can you maybe speak to the nonprofit out there or the marketing director that saying, hey, listen, like we've got recurring giving as an option on checkout and we've got like a monthly newsletter that goes out. Isn't that leaning into the subscription? Isn't that having a recurring donor program? You can differentiate maybe that model, that's just very well, of course you've got recurring giving as option and you've got a monthly newsletter. From what you're actually talking about with building, these monthly donor programs are really leaning into the subscription economy for donors.        

00:13:51
            

Yeah. You know, and by the way, if you have the checkbox, which hopefully you do on your website, that's great. Like you should have one of those. You will. By the way, a lot of organizations are seeing just natural organic growth because donors are just choosing it as a convenience factor.        

00:14:06
            

Yeah. Now, I do think the real opportunity is to actually how fast can you grow and how much can you grow, if you really are intentional about it. But really, historically there have been three kinds of recurring giving program. I mentioned one, which is sponsorship or one to one. So I, the donor, give on a regular basis and I am paired with a beneficiary who receives some sort of value.        

00:14:32
            

So a child sponsorship situation or a staff support or a missionary sponsorship or in the idea is I'm paired with an individual recipient. The problem with that model is that the vast majority of nonprofits don't have the programming or the structure or the means to actually execute a one to one sponsorship type of offer. So that's category number one. Category number two of recurring giving is membership. So these are organizations that provide where the donor is often, at least partially, the donor is the beneficiary.        

00:15:11
            

So they're receiving some sort of maybe goods or services or maybe just they listen to the radio program, or they, you know, they are a member and they receive, you know, they receive value, or their family receives value. And in membership programs, you can think of organizations like your local zoo or museum or public television or public radio, where, again, I give, but I give at least partly because there's some sort of benefit to me, and I value that benefit, and I want that benefit for me and for my, you know, people that I love. Um, but there's a problem, Matt, and that is the vast majority of nonprofits don't have the kind of programming and sort of model where the donor is the beneficiary. And so they can't really tap into membership, which basically leaves the category. You just described the third category, which is everybody else without a, you know, like with a glorified checkbox or in the olden days, it was a glorified check writing program.        

00:16:12
            

Right. Please give us money monthly. Yeah, please, you know, friends of the organization. Exactly. Yeah.        

00:16:20
            

And it's actually that category, which my estimate is about 75% of nonprofits fit into that third category. That's the category that stands the most to gain from this shift. You don't have to have sponsorship, you don't have to have membership in order to actually create a strong, healthy, renewable, sustainable source of revenue that you can rely on to do the work that your organization is called to do. That's huge. That's huge.        

00:16:56
            

And if a nonprofit's out there and they say, hey, listen, like, where do you even start with us? What's ground? Step one, like, okay, so we've got this checkbox, or maybe we don't, we get that set up. Where would they even begin? Are there tools, resources?        

00:17:11
            

Are there tactical steps that you recommend just as starting off? Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is just take stock of what you have. That's that first piece. It certainly, yes. Do you have the checkbox?        

00:17:23
            

You know, can people actually sign up, go through experience? But, you know, how many recurring donors do you have now that are active? How many, how much revenue did you see from those donors in the last year? And by the way, look at total revenue from those recurring donors, because I found, and we found that recurring donors are often the most generous single gift to donors, additional donors. So on average, we see somewhere around 25% additional giving on top of the recurring giving amount.        

00:18:00
            

So if you have $10,000 a year or a million dollars a year coming in from your recurring donors, you should see in the case of 10,000, it'd be 2500. In the case of a million. It'd be $250,000 in additional giving from those nonprofits. So first step, take. Take stock of what you have.        

00:18:19
            

I had a wise mentor once say to me, it's really hard to know where you're going until you know where you've been. And so it's like, where are you today? Right? And start from that place. Don't look at the organization that's got the billion dollar program and 50% of their revenue from recurring giving, unless you're, you know, pretty close to that space.        

00:18:41
            

So take stock of where you're at, and then I would say, evaluate your current experience through the donors eyes. And this is really hard for leaders to do themselves, but you can do it. It's just you need to step outside of your, I know the reasons why things work the way they do hat because you'll have all sorts of good, very legitimate excuses why the experience maybe is not as awesome as it should be. So oftentimes either I'll suggest that somebody have an outsider, somebody, you know, somebody's spouse or a local, you know, volunteer to actually go through the, this process of, like, signing up to become a recurring donor and, you know, documenting what they receive. We do that for the clients we work with, you know, where they come in.        

00:19:29
            

And the one of the first things we do is a total secret donor project where we evaluate. And I've been doing this for years, Matt, and it's just like, I call them facepalm moments, because it's like, oh, my gosh, the receipt didn't go out like. Or what? It's like, it's not really advanced fancy stuff. It's like, did you communicate?        

00:19:52
            

How quickly, what did you communicate? Did you get their name right? Basic stuff on the response device. And so I think if you do, either you have an outside group like ours do that, or you do it yourself, you're going to find some pretty obvious big stuff if you just can take your I'm a marketer hat off and put your I'm a donor hat on and think through it from their perspective. Yeah, I love it.        

00:20:21
            

Yeah. And I would definitely recommend an outsider doing it, mostly because, you know, if you're, say, you're the marketing director, you know the quirks and, say, your user interface and how to get around them. Right. And how to over, you're like, oh, well, of course that button lives there. Well, you know that because you built it, right?        

00:20:38
            

Or your team built it, the donor doesn't know that. And so I would definitely recommend working with an outside team like you guys at imago or anyone. Yet again, it could be a volunteer who's shown up only a few times, doesn't give, have someone outside do it so that they really are coming at it with a clean slate. I think that's great advice. Okay, let's shift macro.        

00:20:57
            

We kind of get in the weeds there a little bit, which is great. I love that tactical stuff. Let's go macro. Tell me about a trend that's a little bit concerning to you in the nonprofit space right now and one that's kind of exciting to you. Oh, okay.        

00:21:09
            

So let's. Yeah, well, let's do concerning. I'm happy. I'm. I don't know that I'm happy to talk about what concerns me, but I think that's the piece.        

00:21:18
            

That's where we get the most motivated, and I really do think it's what's been happening with the state of generosity over the last, well, probably decades, but really. And we just had Nathan Chappelle. I don't know if you know Nathan, but Nathan and Chappelle and Brian Cremens just wrote a book just about a year and a half ago called the generosity crisis. And, um, it's a very good book, but it's one of those where you're like, oh, boy. It's like, yeah, it's gonna be heavy.        

00:21:51
            

Take my medicine. Like, oh, and it's true. Um, I I told. I told Nathan. I said, man, I'm two thirds of the way through this book, and I am just, like, depressed, whatever.        

00:22:01
            

You know? He's like, I promise we get to some solutions. I was like, okay, great. But it is really. I would call it a call to action, call to arms, you know, an important moment in the history of philanthropy, at least for those of us in the west, to understand that we can't just take for granted that our culture, our heritage is one of philanthropy and generosity that's changing the way younger generations, for example, see generosity.        

00:22:31
            

It's like, well, yeah, I've been mode of friend who, you know, needed help. Like, so I've. I've. I give charitably and. Right, right.        

00:22:39
            

But also, there are these 501 nonprofits, you know, and, you know, fewer. Fewer people than ever before are seeing, you know, are sort of thinking of charity through that traditional, you know, ir's designation lens. And so it is a call to action. They do propose some. Some solutions.        

00:23:00
            

I think they. They did a. A really good job, though, of just catalyzing, like, this is an issue, and that is the. Just to give you the short version, what is the generosity crisis? The short version is there are fewer donors than there were before, and the trends are negative that way.        

00:23:20
            

A lot of the headlines are about the number of dollars, which have mostly gone up, although last year they did go down in individual giving. Um, but that's because of a few mega donors right now, the Mackenzie Scotts and, you know, and the Bill Gates and, you know, the Warren Buffet who. Which is awesome. I think that's great. That's great.        

00:23:44
            

They're doing a lot of good, but it's, it's masking an underlying problem, and that is your core day to day, you know, citizen is not giving like they used to? Absolutely, and there's a lot of reasons why, but I'm more interested in the solutions to that problem. Yeah. Well, then that leads us nicely into something exciting that you're maybe seeing for nonprofits across the space. Yeah.        

00:24:09
            

So not to beat the dead horse. Yeah. Um, because one of the things they talk about in the book is, you know, um, certainly artificial intelligence, personalization, all those sorts of things. But I'm going to come back to, um, to the subscription economy and what's been happening with what I call subscription giving. Yeah.        

00:24:26
            

And it is so important because not only is it sustainable, ongoing, recurring. And so when you see these, these charts where giving is going down, you've got to look under the surface. So, for example, Matt, as we're recording this, three different nonprofit studies have come out in the last week on giving in the year 2023. And every one of those studies cites that basically, overall giving is essentially flat or down.        

00:25:02
            

But every one of those reports, when you look one layer under the surface and you look at the difference between one time giving or basically single gift giving and recurring giving, in every case, it's the one time giving that is down and recurring giving is up. So in the case of, for example, MNR, who is one of the, you know, they've done online benchmarks for years and been just a wonderful contribution to the industry. MNR found that, for example, in online giving, online giving was down 1%, which, by the way, as a digital fundraiser for years, I'm like, whoa. I remember the days where you could like, you know, you would have to, like, actively sabotage your fundraising strategy not to grow 20%, you know, in digital. And so overall digital fundraising, down 1% over the last year.        

00:25:53
            

But you look under the surface, and the truth is that one time giving was down five or 6%, and recurring giving was up five or 6%. And so what you're seeing is the under the surface trend is that one time giving is declining. And I'm not knocking one time giving, by the way. I've done a lot of that for a lot of years, and that's an important part of the puzzle. But it's just harder and harder to get those one time gifts.        

00:26:20
            

And so what are we doing to create true loyalty and ongoing sustainable giving from those donors who, partly because of the subscription economy and partly because of other reasons, are more warm and open to giving on a recurring basis than they've ever done before? Yeah, man, there are 35 questions I wish I could ask you, but we're going to be at a time crunch today. Okay. If folks want to. I always ask about resources, but you're kind of a walking resource hub.        

00:26:51
            

So I just want you to have space to tell us about some of the resources that you have available to help nonprofits and ministries grow. Think through digital, think through monthly recurring donor programs. Tell us about some of those resources and how people can contact you if they're interested. Yeah, thank you for that, Matt. I would say the best resource that I put a lot of, uh, mind and heart and effort into is a weekly column that I write.        

00:27:18
            

It's called the Wave Report. Yeah. And it is essentially trendspotting. So the wave report is a total, you know, surfing metaphor of the southern californian in me, which, by the way, I am a wannabe surfer. I am not good at actually surfing, but I have taken some lessons and I've learned a thing or two, and I think there's a lot we can learn from surfing, by the way.        

00:27:36
            

Yeah. But the idea of the wave report is, what are the waves or the trends, the insights, the leadership lessons that we can use to help grow our organizations. And so that comes out every Friday. Put a lot of time and research and effort into that, and folks can sign up for that on our website. It's imago dot consulting.        

00:27:56
            

So not.com, which is im a g o, imago dot consulting. And you can just click on weekly trends. And thats our wave report. I also post pretty regularly on LinkedIn. I love it that we now have, like, I remember the days when you were like, is my Facebook profile, like, where I'm supposed to post work stuff, professional stuff?        

00:28:19
            

Yeah. Like, my cousins don't want to hear. About what I do. No. So I love it.        

00:28:26
            

I saw very active on LinkedIn. Would love to connect with people on LinkedIn. But yeah, go to the website embago consulting or just hit me up on LinkedIn and, and then the last piece is we do a podcast, and so we record a podcast. A co founder and I created a podcast called the Purpose and Profit podcast. And the whole point of the show is to interview leaders of causes and brands.        

00:28:53
            

So we have people like, from brands like Disney. We have people from brands like Domino's Pizza and Netflix. We just interviewed a guy who was part of opening the third ever blockbuster store. That's awesome. And so it's like, wow.        

00:29:12
            

Everyone talks about, like, blockbuster, you know, as the cautionary tale of missing innovation. But I'm fascinated to learn about Blockbuster that literally invented a category like they were the innovator. Right? What can we learn from the early days of blockbusters? We interviewed Tom is his name, but then we also interview leaders of nonprofits.        

00:29:33
            

And so charity water Tom, who I just mentioned, is now actually head the chief people officer at Compassion International justice mission. And so the whole point of the show is, what are the lessons that we can learn from the world of business and brands? And what are the lessons we can learn from the world of causes? And how can we? What are the ideas that come at the intersection of those two worlds?        

00:30:02
            

And so that's purposeandprofitpodcast.com, or most people just use whatever their favorite podcast feed is. Big, bright pink logo so you can't miss it. But not as cool as the holy donuts logo, but pretty, pretty stand out. We're a little outside the box. We do our own little thing over here.        

00:30:23
            

We'll have to offline, guys. Matt, on how, you know, if you look at your podcast feed, like, how many logos are just, like, muted, you know, like, blend into the background? So I know I see what we're doing. I appreciate it. Okay, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time today, man.        

00:30:42
            

I learned a ton. I know our audiences really appreciate you coming on. Dave Raley, founder at Imago Consulting. Go check out the podcast, check out the wave, check out the website. Hire them.        

00:30:54
            

Do all the things. Wonderful people doing wonderful work. Dave, thanks so much. Yeah, man, it's been good.        

‍

Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. I'm your host, Matt Lombardi. This episode is sponsored by our friends at we give. If you are looking for the best donor experience on the planet, you gotta check out we give.com.        

00:00:17
            

Tell them that we sent you from the Holy Donors podcast. We'd be grateful that you did. But today I am joined, really excited by this, by Lauren Wright. Lauren is a generosity strategist with generous. Previously the communications director at Water for good.        

00:00:33
            

And so, Lauren, thanks so much for taking the time to join me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. So to start, why don't you give our audience a little bit of an overview on your background and tell us a little bit more about how you got into this world of generosity strategy, but also nonprofit communication. Yeah.        

00:00:53
            

So I have kind of always been involved in journalism and mass communication and studied that in college, but also wrestled with this calling from God into ministry. And what do those two things look like together? And at the time, I didn't really know what that looked like, but come to find out, there's a whole field of faith based marketers and communicators that you can make a career in. And so I ended up in a church for almost a decade, serving in the executive leadership in a communications marketing type role, as well as doing some stewardship, and then moved into a faith based nonprofit and have been there about five years, and now making kind of a transition into consulting. So a little bit of everything.        

00:01:38
            

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I've seen it from all angles. Right. So the church side, the nonprofit side, now kind of outside the consulting side of it, getting a full picture of the entire industry, which is always helpful.        

00:01:49
            

So because you see the whole picture when you kind of look out and you're looking at your experience, whether that's with the nonprofit, with church, is there a campaign, a strategy, a tool, an idea, something that has stood out to you in your career that you think is really beneficial, that a lot of nonprofits should really be considering? Yeah, I think one of the things that I have reflected on recently and just been really, really sure that it was important or a monumental part of our fundraising was our storytelling aspect at water for good. All of our work is done overseas. And so it's few to know donors that actually get to see, smell, taste, you know, experience the life of Central Africans. And so you have a huge challenge, literally an ocean divide, to translate this into ways that donors can really experience and understand.        

00:02:50
            

And I think storytelling is just like, it's the heart. It's the heart of what Jesus did. You know, he went around and he's telling stories, and people are engaging with his mission, and that's what organizations do. And so making it so that we could tell those stories in an impactful way where people want to connect with the mission and vision of water for good. And so we had to really figure it out.        

00:03:13
            

It's a very complex environment, but we started telling stories from one child's perspective, from one person. And our donors started to know those individuals, like baby Sandra. And people knew baby Sandra because we talked about baby Sandra and the life, what her life would look like without clean water. And we were able to come back a year later and do a campaign for her first birthday to raise money for others in her community. And so it's just making that storytelling and that donation become very relational, so that you're connecting with someone, something, and knowing that your donation, your money, your tithes, offerings, whatever it is, is really going to make an impact, a kingdom and impact.        

00:04:05
            

Yeah. So I'm hearing a little bit of, like, a framework, right, that you all have, which is, hey, we actually want the story, which is so. Such a, like, unique angle, right? Like, you hear a lot about, oh, we'll tell the stories of the people who were serving. We don't actually hear this, like, oh, we're going to tell it through the lens of one individual's experience with our ministry.        

00:04:26
            

How did you all come to that as a kind of core concept or framework for how you told stories? I think it really started to originate when I traveled and I got to know these people, and I sat with baby Sandra's mom. I sat in the little hut with Pastor Walker and heard their stories. And I thought, if I'm so moved sitting here, I think other people will be, too. And we took those stories back and created videos.        

00:04:49
            

We created entire campaigns. And although it might seem like, hey, we'll get some campaign fatigue just hearing one person's story over and over, we recycled that content and used it in a lot of different formats, social, email, marketing, print, video. And then, you know, throughout, it might be in grants, it might be, you know, in follow up letters, thank you notes, whatever it is, they continue to hear about those names. And those names are, like, now the face of water for good. These people that when they think water for good, there's not thinking nothing.        

00:05:26
            

You know, you don't have a picture, but now you have a picture. Like, I know what baby Sandra looks like. I know what Pastor Walker looks like. And so I think it was a little bit of like, we stumbled upon it and then it was a little bit of like, here's what moves us as people connected to the organization. And we started to really see that impact in connecting not just individuals, but churches and organizations.        

00:05:49
            

Just really, hey, we love that Pastor Walker video, and we want to hear more about Pastor Walker. So that's so cool. I love that. Well, hey there, holy donuts. Listeners.        

00:05:59
            

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00:06:08
            

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00:06:31
            

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00:06:54
            

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00:07:02
            

So when you look out now in your new role as a strategist, right. You'll be working with a lot of organizations. What's the trend that you kind of see in christian nonprofits that's got you really excited, and what's one that's got you a little bit concerned? Yeah. Well, we can start with the bad news, but I mean, I think the big thing that our whole society is so instantaneous and everything's just now, now.        

00:07:25
            

And the minute we start boiling or watering down our fundraising efforts, when we start trying to replace things that are relational with very transactional things, I think we lose a lot of value. Donors can go anywhere and have a transaction. You can drive through the drive through. You know, you can get online. You don't even have to, you can just pick up your phone.        

00:07:51
            

But to have that relationship is actually really hard now. And so you have to work and you have to pick up the phone. You may have to, you know, do some visits. You may have to really connect with people. And so I think just really taking the time to build those relationships with your donors, with your people that you're marketing to.        

00:08:10
            

It can be, you know, it could be even like, focus groups or different, you know, just hearing from other people. But I think our donors, you know, always will really appreciate any time we take time for them. Because while it might be easy in our chair to just see people as dollar signs, they're not, they're, you know, entire beings. And we don't want to minimize that, that effort and those, those people are the reasons our organizations exist. And so just not taking that lightly, I think just not thinking, hey, we can throw up a social media ad, we can run this campaign and get 100 new donors.        

00:08:53
            

And, you know, that's great because we now need to nurture, we need to have a follow up plan for those donors. We need to be ready to prepare them and to cultivate them and to properly think and appreciate, too. I just think that there's, like a whole plan that goes in place when you want to put something. And I think I see a lot of organizations just jumping, too, will throw a lot of money at social media or Google Ad buying or these things that are awesome tools when used with a properly built out framework. But when you just throw it at them and yeah, you might get some five dollar donations or some new email names in your database, but to be ready to really receive, cultivate, and, you know, expand, you know, expand them into potential bigger donors or champions of your.        

00:09:44
            

Cause, yeah, it's, we talk about all the time with, like, you know, with nonprofits is like, if you treat people like a number, they will eventually return the favor. Right? Like, fine, then eventually when their budget gets tight or when they have to make a decision because saying, oh, well, supporting, like, you know, ten different ministries right now, you're going to just become a dollar sign to them because you treated them like a dollar sign, and they're going to say, well, okay, well, you're the one to go because, like, it's just another, you know, $50 a month I'm spending on the spend. That, right. So it is about building those relationships and letting donors know that, like, they matter to the mission, they matter to the vision, and reminding them that, hey, it's not just a transactional thing.        

00:10:23
            

So I love that. On the more positive side, what are you seeing that has you a little bit more hopeful for nonprofits? I absolutely think social media, on the flip side, is an incredible tool. I just think it more than ever, especially small nonprofits, can spread their reach really easily. I mean, there's just so much excitement there's so much room.        

00:10:45
            

I love seeing some of the viral challenges actually go viral because I think those things, free social media, it was a lot harder to get your name out there. It was a lot of, you know, word of mouth or different marketing efforts that were hard to like. Now we're, we're globalized. We're not just localized to our small community that our nonprofit was founded in. And so I think, you know, it has its own challenges, but it also has so much opportunity when properly leveraged.        

00:11:16
            

And there's so many great tools out there that you can use to track and, you know, make sure that you are being a great steward with those resources. Absolutely. No, that's great. Social media is, as much as it's a buzzword, it still somehow is like underused by ministries. Like, oh, we put stuff out, but it's like the actual strategy of, no, really dedicating someone who understands the platform deeply, who understands how to leverage it and how to interact and how to engage with people.        

00:11:52
            

That's, I don't know about you, but one of my things, like, it's one thing to throw out a post, but like, the real magic of social media happens in the comments. Like, that's where, like, you're actually going to interact with people. That's where it gets social. It's not social if you're just throwing out a post and someone passively is hitting a like button or you're like, oh, we got 5000 impressions on that. But it didn't actually lead to any conversations.        

00:12:14
            

That's not social. That's just a monologue from your organization. So, yeah, somehow, as much as a big deal, it's still underutilized in its proper formats. Yeah. And I think when you see it as like, because I think the beauty of social media is it's come and see, right?        

00:12:31
            

And anytime you can get people to be hands on with your ministry, mission church, people are automatically, they have a deeper connection. And so it's this come and see model. And when you can use that properly, it's like a, it's like a mini mission trip or mission trip. You know, you make a post and now people are commenting. That's exactly what would have happened if you had taken a trip over to the Central African Republic or downtown to the women's shelter or whatever it is.        

00:12:59
            

People are interacting, people are talking, you're seeing, you're touching, you're feeling. And so as much as you can recreate that in storytelling on social media, I think, yeah, absolutely. That's why those comments are so essential. Yeah. And so what resources do you like to give out to friends, people in the industry, colleagues?        

00:13:20
            

Like, are there books? Are there magazines? Are there articles? What are some of the resources that you like to share most often? I think my current favorite is the nonprofit storytelling conference I attended last year.        

00:13:33
            

It's great. They have some various, you know, tracks that you can go through, depending on if you want to concentrate more on social media or just different facets. But I think storytelling and marketing is such a unique thing for nonprofits. You can definitely learn a ton from the for profit industry, but then there's some unique quirks that we all have to live with within the church and nonprofit sector. And so it's a.        

00:14:02
            

It was a really refreshing time to go be in a convention center with a lot of other people who sit in your chair in different organizations. And I'm a huge fan of networking. I just think I learned so much from other organizations, and so I, right now, that's my. My go to. I really enjoyed attending and being a part of it.        

00:14:23
            

Yeah, I mean, there's. There's such a missed opportunity when it's like, you know, listen, books, podcasts are all great. You can learn a ton. But when of you get to have lunch with someone who's in the same chair as you, maybe an organization a little bit bigger, maybe the same size, maybe smaller, but they've done something that you've not done before and be able to just sit there for 30 minutes. Like, okay, but, yeah, you guys did that way.        

00:14:44
            

But, like, okay, how'd you get your data clean to, like, get this campaign to actually. Right. Or, like, how'd you. Okay, like, yeah, we're in this CRM, but, like, we've been trying to get our emails to sync up right with it. Like, how'd you guys do that?        

00:14:55
            

Like, just those really tactical what sometimes seem like to us in our spotlight, dumb questions. Like, having someone that you can trust, that you can just say, hey, what'd you guys do? And then what you find out usually is like, oh, well, we're having a problem with that, too. It's just a complete pain, right? And you're like, okay, like, now I feel better.        

00:15:12
            

And there's no amount of, like, podcast or article or book can really help with those sort of conversations. There's so much of our day to day work when we're working in nonprofit, so I love it. I love events that we all need to feel a little bit, like, normal or, like, you know, like, hey, we're doing the best we can with the resources we got. And sometimes that's really limited in nonprofit or church work. So that's for sure.        

00:15:38
            

That's for sure. So, okay, Lauren, if folks want to connect with you, if they want to figure out a way to, whether that's figure out what you're doing with this consulting strategy for generosity, like they say, hey, you know, that sounds actually something we could use. Or if they just want to connect with you and say, say, hey, ask a question, what's the best way for them to reach you? Absolutely. Like I said, I love networking.        

00:15:57
            

So happy to talk. Whether it's just to make more connections or, you know, if you need some help along the way, I'm on LinkedIn, so you can look up Lauren Wright, or you can also email me Lauren dot wrightenaris.com. So either way, very cool. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time today. Thanks for being so generous with your knowledge.        

00:16:19
            

Really appreciate you coming on the show. Of course. Thanks for having me.        

‍

Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast brought to you by our friends over at we give. If you're looking for the best donor experience on the planet, go check out we give.com. Super grateful for them making this partnership happen. But today on the show, super excited ministry that I want to dive into, learn more about, and have my friend Cory Aiken here, who is the director of development at the bucket ministry.        

00:00:28
            

Cory, how you doing today? I'm doing great, Matt. How are you? I am good. I'm good.        

00:00:35
            

I think we've talked a little bit beforehand, swapped stories about Texas, and yeah, we're down here in Tampa, Florida, where it is, as always, brutally hot and sunshine, just like Texas. So super excited to have you on today. And really what I want to do is just dive into your story a little bit because you have a little bit of an unorthodox path to working in development for christian ministry. So why don't you just tell our audience a little bit about what you do today, but really how God brought you to that place. Yeah, happy to do that.        

00:01:04
            

And first of all, thanks for having me on today, Matt. Really been looking forward to this. But yeah, as you said, my story is a little bit different. You know, my background is actually aerospace and defense over 32 years. And my last job was a CFO of a midsize defense firm.        

00:01:25
            

And you know how I ended up in ministry and let alone on the mission side of it, it truly is a story that only God can write. And, you know, he moved me out of the last company I was with and I actually thought I was going to be headed into semi retirement, kind of cruising along, doing some interim CFO consulting work. And the Lord just closed all those doors and, you know, it was actually a little over a year ago. I looked at my wife and said, I don't think I'm supposed to be back in corporate America and making profit in that economy. I feel like the Lord's calling me into ministry and to work in God's economy.        

00:02:08
            

And she looked at me like I had three heads, which is okay. And, you know, she's like, no, you really need to get a job. And I'm like, hey, honey, all I can tell you is God told me to wait. And well, in March, bucket ministry showed up at my church. They shared their story, and God literally spoke right there and said, you need to go work for them.        

00:02:31
            

And he was real specific. He said, not only that, you're not going to do finance anymore, you're going to step into the world of fundraising. And, you know, the gift of hindsight is beautiful in that God has allowed me to look back, and he created a pathway for me to build a great Rolodex. I'm dating myself by using that term, but with the influential people that I've been able to work with and know inside corporate America and outside, within churches and universities. And so he's kind of prepared that way for quite a while.        

00:03:11
            

So that's kind of how I ended up at the bucket ministry. Wow. So two quick kind of side notes. One, give us a high level overview of the work bucket ministry does, because I'm guessing it was compelling enough that when you heard their story, you said, okay, I have. Like, it was God speaking to you.        

00:03:28
            

So give us a little bit. First, high level overview of the ministry that bucket ministry does. Yeah. In simple terms, our mission statement is to share God's love through the gift of safe, clean drinking water. And what we do is we take a water filter, a five gallon bucket, thus the name, and antiparasitic meds, and we give out free gifts, just like Jesus met the physical need.        

00:03:50
            

And what we found out is once we meet the physical need, it allows us to have relational equity with the recipient of that bucket to share the gospel. Yeah, that's amazing. And on the other note, the second question I had for you is, coming out of aerospace defense. What. What did God do in your life preparing you?        

00:04:12
            

Like, what skills did he give you there that you think really have translated in the nonprofit world? I've been blessed to be around some great leaders with people skills. I've done a lot of reading, been to a lot of seminars, and through that skillset and learning how to relate. And then what I would say, probably even more importantly, is how to ask questions. I used to do a lot of negotiating, and the skill I learned in that is to answer a question with a question, and he who speaks first loses.        

00:04:46
            

And so how to get people to talk, to be honest with you. Yeah, yeah. Which is so critical in, honestly, in fundraising and in donor development work, to get people where they're comfortable enough, where they feel like it's not just a high pressure ask. Like, oh, my gosh, there's coming in, you want something from me, but it's really a, hey, we're trying to get to know you. We're building a relationship building rapport so that when the time does come, there's real relational equity there.        

00:05:14
            

Built up. No, you're exactly right. Exactly right. Okay, so in your role as development director, so far, you're seven months on the job. It sounds like, from what we talked about, new in the role, which is fascinating because that's been a really common theme that, you know, from, we're 26 episodes into the podcast, tons of folks are new in the role.        

00:05:36
            

It seems like COVID really restructured a lot of the way that nonprofits work. And so I understand you're new in the role, but could you maybe speak to some of the strategies, campaigns, things that you all have done at Bucket ministry do you think have been really effective for you thus far? Well, I think the biggest thing that we do, honestly, is we're kind of working backwards. And what I mean by that is in today's digital age, everything's about the mass emails and the mass text. And we believe in the personal touch.        

00:06:08
            

We love having hospitality. And so for every gift that our friends provide to the ministry, we give them a personal touch in that it's either a phone call, a text, a text video, a written letter. And so we're working kind of back to old school, thus the gray hair. But, you know, we have found that people love that. You know, to be honest with you, they really do, because, you know, I know before stepping into this role, I've given them many ministries, and then you never hear from them.        

00:06:45
            

And so by getting that personal touch with every gift, we think it's making a difference. Absolutely. And so how do you all, because you are not a small ministry, right? Like, you guys are growing. How do you do that at scale?        

00:07:01
            

What does that tactically look like? Is that, hey, every Monday I have an email reminder or I have a task that comes up on my inbox. How do you guys logistically handle making sure that every donor gets a touchpoint like that? As a mid sized, not for profit christian organization, the ministry never had somebody in my role until seven months ago when I actually pursued that. And so I'm kind of building that out.        

00:07:28
            

We have another individual that works with us, and she's, I will tell you, she's the glue to the ministry because she's somebody that touches our donors every single time a gift comes in, and we kind of divide those duties out. And so we've done it that way where we are, you know, our founder will often tell me, he goes, you know, I want to grow this ministry where the biggest thing in here is a development team, and they're having to say thank you, and we need multiple people to do it. I love it. I love it. Yeah.        

00:07:58
            

One of the kind of axioms I have is, I talk about this all with our team, is when we say the word process, a lot of times what we really should say is people, right? Sometimes the process is just, oh, no, we need another person to do that. Right. It's easy to say, oh, well, we can automate that or we can scale it this way or we can some really complex thing. And sometimes a great process is as simple as can we just hire the right person to do this and staff up there?        

00:08:23
            

No. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, but process is such a key word and that's one of the things that we are implementing because again, a donor doesn't want to get contact the same way every single way. So, you know, in January, the touch point may be a text, you know, February the text point may be a postcard, those type of things. And, you know, you kind of asked the question about a campaign and, you know, one of the things we developed with makes it kind of unique, you know, because we work around the world and we're not local.        

00:08:57
            

We had some of our christian missionaries do a little video that we were able to put a QR code on a postcard to send to our people. They give every single month. And I'm looking, I'm looking forward to hearing the results from that because we're literally just sending those out today. But to hear it from the people in the field, I think it's going to be exciting. Absolutely.        

00:09:20
            

Yeah. It's such a great way to connect them to the actual, hey, boots on the ground. These are the people doing the ministry, and that's all the donors really want. Like they want to feel like, hey, I'm giving. Is my money actually making an impact?        

00:09:31
            

Are you actually following up with me at all? So that's great to hear. Well, hey there. Holy donuts. Listeners, ever feel like your nonprofit's donor experience is like a jelly filled donut with no jelly?        

00:09:42
            

Well, don't fret. We found the jelly. To your day donut dilemma, enter. We give the software tool that's like the cream filling to your eclair, or should I say the glaze to your donut. With we give, you're not just taking a donation, you're rolling out a red carpet for every person who gives to your organization.        

00:10:01
            

And with we give, you get an incredible donor portal, events, pledges, surveys, segmentation on and on. We could go on the features and those checkouts, though, smoother than my attempt to make homemade doughnuts, which, let's just say, didn't quite rise to the occasion. See what I did there. With Wegib's innovative engagement tools, your donors won't just feel the love. They'll be coming back for second because nothing says thanks for your dough better than a world class experience.        

00:10:30
            

So if you want to sprinkle some extra special magic on your donor relationships, check out we give.com.        

00:10:40
            

Harder question maybe when you look out over christian nonprofit space, what's a trend that you're a little bit nervous about or concerned about, and what's the trend that you're seeing that you're excited for? A little more hopeful about?        

00:10:55
            

A lot of people will flip on both sides of this coin, but I would tell you, AI, and I'm probably from my background, narrow space and defense, a little more cautious about it. Yeah. Because, you know, I also, as we went back, I don't want to lose the personal touch and what we provide people. I think it's a great tool, but I also think it can possibly be misused by organizations and not relay the personal touch to your donor base. Absolutely.        

00:11:28
            

And then on the hopeful side, if there is hopeful side, what's got you a little bit more excited? You know, I think there's just a hunger to connect, to be honest with you, to be a part of something greater. That's what I see with the people that I talk to and get out and go see in person. The fact, you know, again, our ministry didn't have this position, but as I go out across the US and sit down and have coffee with somebody or lunch or whatever, the fact that we're going out and actually touching our donors with a personal relationship and they're getting to connect, that part excites me because then you take it to a different level in the relationship. And, you know, I love that this is a christian podcast.        

00:12:17
            

And, you know, what I found is to end every conversation with a great question is simply to ask, how can I pray for you? And you want to talk about an immediate bond and to be able to sit there and pray in the coffee shop or the restaurant, it just really bonds the organization with the friend of the ministry.        

00:12:39
            

Yeah. And it shows them that you actually care. Besides just the check, you actually care about them as an individual. And I think you're right. As much as people look at, oh, well, you know, are people going to be giving as much?        

00:12:51
            

You know, like, are there all these negative trends for ministries? The reverse side is that the people who are engaged are engaged at a deeper level than ever. They want to be educated about the ministry. They want to really be all in as opposed to just, oh, well, yeah, I write a check to twelve or 13 different ministries just because it's an obligation. No, they really care about the ministries they're part of, so that personal connection is massive for them.        

00:13:13
            

So, okay, I'm excited to ask you this question because you come from a whole different space than a lot of the folks that I interview. So what content resources would you recommend to folks who are in nonprofit marketing or donor development? Whether that's books, podcasts would love to hear. I know you're an avid reader from your space, you know, your time in the aerospace defense industry. What kind of stuff do you like to recommend to your team or just people you interact with?        

00:13:38
            

Well, obviously, being in the people side of the business. Right. One of the first books I was ever given as a teenager by my father that made a difference was how to win friends and influence people. Huge, because if you can't relate, then you're not going to be successful in this role in the ministry. But then I will tell you, there's a second one as I stepped out of corporate America into this that our founder gave me that I now share with a lot of people.        

00:14:09
            

It's a book by Craig Groeschel, and it's called dangerous prayers, and it centers around David's prayer. You know, know me, try me, test me, know my anxious thoughts. And when you really start to pray that out, you know, all I'll say is, buckle up, buttercup, because God's, and it may not be how you expect. And that has been a real eye opener for me because, you know, if I serve with his heart, then I don't have to worry about the results. And, and that's what I think makes a difference, doing what we do in ministry.        

00:14:49
            

Yeah, yeah. That is the differentiator, right. It's not just, oh, well, it's a checkbox of, I have to meet with these people or these people. It's really that stepping out in faith, saying God, at the end of the day, the results are yours. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the work, I'm gonna stay busy.        

00:15:02
            

But like, the results are up to him at the end of the day. And that's what makes it a lot of fun and a little bit scary. That's for sure at times. So, Cory, if people want to. Yeah, go ahead.        

00:15:12
            

I was going to say, I'll tell you, that's the hardest lesson I learned. I came from results in making things happen, and what I learned in doing this in the christian world, in the nonprofit space all I can do is tell the story. It's up to the Holy Spirit to move somebody. And that's hard because I want instant results. We're in the microwave society, right?        

00:15:36
            

And that's been a tough lesson to learn. No. And I think it's one that every one of us as leaders have to continually learn, right? It's not one that we ever, it's not one that we ever get over. It's a daily, like, you know, as soon as we think we've arrived there, it's like God pulls us back and says, no, no, no.        

00:15:52
            

You're still thinking it's all about you. I'm going to humble you again and take you back up the mountain. So, man, I so appreciate you sharing the wisdom, insight, what you've learned both in corporate America but also now at bucket ministry. Cory, if people want to connect with you more, what's the best way to reach out? LinkedIn is probably the easiest way or you can to email me@coryphebucketministry.org.        

00:16:15
            

And that'd be the two best ways to get a hold of me. Awesome. And if folks want to learn more about Bucket ministry, I'm guessing they can check out bucketministry.org, comma, google it, type in their browser, however they want to look at on social media. Cory, thank you so much for taking the time today. It's been a lot of fun.        

00:16:30
            

Always love getting to hear from really smart, thoughtful people in the christian nonprofit land. And this absolutely is not disappointed. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it and hope you have a great day.        

‍

Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Holy Donuts. Today I am joined by Emily Blackledge from Africa leadership. How you doing today, Emily? I'm great.        

00:00:13
            

How are you? I am good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I am really excited to dive into what you all do. Your story, I know it's gonna be a little bit different than maybe some of the stuff we commonly talk about or just kind of a different way to get there.        

00:00:28
            

And so why don't you first tell us a little bit about your story, how you came to the ministry, what you all do. Give us kind of the high level overview of it. Yeah, great. African leadership is an organization that works in Africa. Shocker.        

00:00:42
            

And really is built on the premise and the belief that the old paradigm and way of doing things is kind of broken. When you take your ideas and plans somewhere else and try to transpose them, they don't often, often work out very well. Anybody in the international development space can attest to what I'm talking about, just how many buildings don't work, or, you know, programs get tweaked. And so our approach has always been, for the last 25 years, to just start with the Africans. So we have built a massive network that we've got 90,000 people in our network across the continent of Africa who have skill sets in leadership, in pastor training, in community development and trauma care.        

00:01:27
            

And they walk with leaders who God's put a call in their heart, and just like, a leader here, God puts a call in your heart, and you're like, how the freak are we gonna accomplish that? How do you do it? What is, do I have to have a 501 C three? Do I need a CFO? Like, we have all the same questions, and so.        

00:01:45
            

And so do Africans. And so as they try to live out the calling of what God's given, given them a vision for, they don't, like, do we register? Do we go to the US and register there and make money there? Like, how do we do it? And we have, since we've been around for 25 years, we have, like, a massive expertise among Africans on how to build and how to build in Sierra Leone versus Malawi versus South Sudan.        

00:02:09
            

And so we have leaders in all of Africa that walk alongside other leaders as they live out what God's calling them to build uniquely in their space and kind of struggle with, like, where. How do I fit my family into this? And how do I make money? And do I have to have a day job? You know, just all the questions that we start off with.        

00:02:30
            

So Al is a group of african leaders who walk with other leaders to build Africa their way. That's great. That's great. And so how did you get involved with Al originally? Originally I got married and moved to Nashville and didn't know what to do.        

00:02:46
            

I have, all of my degrees are in economic development and post conflict rebuilding, specifically in Africa. And when I moved to Nashville, there were a few entities that did that. My husband was in music, is in music. So he was gone all the time. And I didn't, we didn't have kids, so I just started volunteering at Al and kind of flopped into spending time in Africa and fell in love with my friends there and colleagues there and kind of never left.        

00:03:15
            

And all of the people above me just kept quitting. Sudden or retiring. And so a, yeah, somehow the board looked at me ten years ago and said, take it. They said, you're up. You're up to swing.        

00:03:28
            

Yeah. What's been surprising about your role so far? Oh, gosh, all of it.        

00:03:38
            

I think the surprising thing for me personally has just been loving, leading, loving. I think the role that I love the most at Al is how important culture is that what benefits packages we offer and what we say in a marketing pitch and who we go after as a partner in Africa completely changes the sauce. And so it matters. I get to keep a reign and play with and build by bringing in a team member, bringing in an african partner or pulling the rug out from under. Like, I don't like that campaign.        

00:04:21
            

Change it entirely. All of those things affect our team and affect our culture. And so I have been surprised that I would like that because I would have told you, like, I just want to go do that stuff over there with those Africans and not have to mess in the, the busy network. That's great. That's great.        

00:04:41
            

So you sit in the present seat. A lot of the folks listening are going to be in marketing development. Be the kind of like voice of reason in the room for them for a moment. What do you wish that marketing and donor teams knew that maybe, you know, as president, right? Like, so speaking on behalf of all the presidents and ministries, speak into them a little bit from your seat of like, what do you wish they know that maybe they, they don't think of on a regular basis.        

00:05:10
            

It's probably a little bit of that culture piece. I think my, the team of people that I have around me that do marketing and fundraising and communication, they are driven to go and to accomplish. They, in a lot of other worlds would be in sales. Like, they would be performance objective based people. Like, I want this metric.        

00:05:31
            

And so they are, like, ready to go all day long. And I think what is challenging for me is to sit in a. Sat in a room the other day. We are kind of redesigning our feel and our look with our donor audience. And so I could sit in the room, and I knew I was frustrating every single one of them, but because I said, like, hey, this landing page and this invitation to this event is not.        

00:05:55
            

It doesn't feel not right. Like, and I can't tell you what's wrong with it. Like, I just know if part of my. If part of the responsibility that I hold is, like, how we get there matters, how people experience us matters. I often don't know what I want.        

00:06:14
            

I can just tell you when it's wrong. Like, I can tell you when the white that I want to paint my living room is the wrong white, but I don't know which one it is until it's there. And so I think that's it's challenging for my team because I can give more. I also appreciate that that means I bring more criticism often and not like, oh, my gosh, you nailed it. So it's finding that balance for all of us.        

00:06:39
            

We have a lot of honest conversations about our feelings, because I'm often like, I'm sorry to spend more. You know, can we tweak it? And they just have to. And then, like, I'm also a big believer that, like, perfection is the enemy of a lot of things, and so at some point, we just got to try it. So when is it my fear that's holding us back versus, like, we're not quite there yet?        

00:07:06
            

So that's probably the thing I would say the most, is, like, I know y'all are gifted to run wild and be strong horses, and we keep holding you back, and yet it's in the tension that really, I think, the best work gets done. That is so encouraging to hear. And also one that pretty sure every single marketing team is going to say, wow, I need to have that conversation with my president. Right? So thanks for sharing that.        

00:07:31
            

I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, hey there. Holy donuts. Listeners, ever feel like your nonprofits donor experience is like a jelly filled donut with no jelly?        

00:07:39
            

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00:07:45
            

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00:08:15
            

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00:08:38
            

For you all. African leadership what's been something that has worked well for you all? What's a campaign strategy? Could be even just like a philosophy or a set of values that you think, hey, this has really been something that's helpful for us. What's worked well for you?        

00:08:53
            

Man, I wish I had an answer for you on that. I feel, again, probably I learn more from the things that aren't working well for us that a lot of, I mean, we've talked about it before, but like, a lot of the kits I can buy, a lot of the kind of just marketing in a box or social media in a box, like, it doesn't work for us because there is such a secret sauce to the way our donors want to engage with us, to the way we want our donors to belong. It is, it's a hard space for me to, you know, we've gone through so many different marketing ideas and ideas where, like, you need the hero and you need the guide and all this, like, language around who's on. How do you put all the people in the right seat? And I think the thing that I've always struggled with on the marketing side is if I shove all of the work that we do through a gospel lens, then the hero is always Jesus.        

00:10:03
            

Jesus.        

00:10:07
            

And you need me at the table, and you need an African at the table, and you need a marketing person at the table. And all of us collectively are the workmanship and are the artwork that the Lord is crafting in Africa or in Haiti or in Philly, but it's not one or the other. And so I think it's really challenging for me when I get given advice or feedback of, like, make the donor the hero or make the beneficiary the hero. Like, there's always, like, this hierarchy, and I can't reconcile that with what I believe. And so one of the things we've continued to fight and push into with the way we market and the way we communicate is we're all on this team, and God's called us to do something, and we think you would.        

00:11:01
            

We could benefit from having you here, but you're not the star. Like, we need to work together. And, yeah, it's just. It's always. It's as murky as it.        

00:11:13
            

It's just murky. But I don't know that we've landed anywhere. Well, other than to feel like we. We're confident of who we want to. To be and how we want to be communicating to a database, how we want people to interact, that you have value you can do and are literally made to do something bigger than yourself.        

00:11:33
            

And so join a team. Join any team. I don't really care, but, like, get in the game. Join a team. Experience what the Lord has when we participate with him in something really big.        

00:11:47
            

And aren't the stars? Yeah. No, I love that because it's like. Every organization is different, and every single ministry is gonna. They kind of have to walk through that murkiness in their own way to say, okay, what.        

00:11:59
            

What's God called us to do? And, like, how are we gonna reach people? And that gospel lens, I think, is for you all. Like, I love that. Like, absolutely love that.        

00:12:08
            

And it's, hey, we know who we are. We know how we want to go about this, and we're, you know, we want to make Jesus the hero and everything. And so it's all about figuring out what works for your ministry and not, here's a prescription that should work for us. And it's like, well, but does it, like, just say someone wrote a book one time and said, it works for everyone? Doesn't mean it actually works for everyone.        

00:12:26
            

So I appreciate the honesty. I think the one thing, our marketing team has a matrix that we kind of work through, and there's always, like, you know, when you write a marketing, when you write a campaign, you are telling one microcosm of a story, whether you're talking about the person at Vanderbilt, that successful, or St. Jude hero, or. And. And so you have your microcosm story that you're using as kind of your litmus or your test case.        

00:12:54
            

Like, this is what we do. Meet Tito. So you all have that, and then there's this organizational level of, like, this is what we do, and there's the donor. And so one of the things we found that works really well for us is there is usually a shared feeling or emotion. Right?        

00:13:11
            

Like, people can't understand if I tell you people can't put themselves in the seat of somebody who was wrongfully imprisoned. Most people in the United States can. But I can talk to you about the place of feeling lost, feeling forgotten, feeling alone, and the beauty of when somebody walks alongside you in that or comes into that and how jesus redeems what we think is a really terrible story. Or, like, left turn in my story that I didn't really want, because an american can resonate with that half a world away. And so that's probably the one kind of trick that we found of, like, right at that crux in the story, when we could either start telling you, like, well, we helped them do this, and we helped them do this, and then we gave them a shirt and a t shirt and a tent and a tarp.        

00:14:01
            

Like, that's what every marketing pitch does. And then that's where people quit reading. Right. In a nonprofit pitch, they're like, oh, now you're telling me about you. Yeah.        

00:14:09
            

And instead, if we figure out how to reframe that of, like, this is what he needed or she needed, and this is how you helped us accomplish that for them. And. And that. And that feeling is also experienced by the donor. Yeah.        

00:14:27
            

Yeah. It's kind of this one secret sauce. I don't know about it. That's great. Answers any of your questions, but it is.        

00:14:33
            

It's great. It changes the story. Yeah. And it brings them into, you know, whatever that lens is that you all have as a ministry. Right.        

00:14:41
            

Whatever that may be. Everyone's gonna have something different. It's, how do you connect the donor to the person that actually needs them to give. Right. The more you can connect them and make them feel like this is a real human connection, the more you're gonna have success with them wanting to be part of your mission, so.        

00:15:00
            

And it doesn't make them the star of the show. Right? Like, so it's your point. It doesn't. You're not making the donor star the show.        

00:15:05
            

You're just making them feel it. The organization is at the start, either. Like, right. How many times have I stood up in front of an audience at an event and somebody's been like, we need you to tell them what we do. How boring is that?        

00:15:16
            

Like, we offer spiritual and emotional and mental health. Like, yeah, I can tell you all that, and it's true. But, like, you're not listening for the dessert, right? Like, you're waiting for the pitch. Yeah, but if I can.        

00:15:30
            

If I can reframe that around, like, what we do is we help him feel alone. Yeah, absolutely. That connects, right? So you're in ministry world. I'm guessing you're reading a decent amount as a leader.        

00:15:44
            

Listen to what's happened in the world. Taking in resources. What's something that you love to share with your team or with others who are in the space? Is there a resource? Oh, my gosh.        

00:15:54
            

One. You said a resource. Pick a few. A few resources. Read.        

00:16:01
            

I am notorious for a board member of mine never reads a book. Like, from page one to the end. Yeah. And that was a trait I picked up from him a while ago. So I read a lot of pieces of things all the time.        

00:16:16
            

I think the thing that I would say more than anything else is I read way outside my genre. So I read books about hospitality or books about medicine or, you know, like, I go way outside the scope. I pay attention to, I'm a, like, our house full of boys and we love sports. I pay attention to, like, those stories that they're telling you in the midst of, like, master masters, we can assist. Yeah.        

00:16:43
            

In the midst of that, the story they're telling you. And I'm just like, I'm seeping in how you make this guy that, you know, accidentally will win however many millions of dollars this afternoon. Like, you just made him feel like he's my friend. Like, I'm just, I don't care where it comes from. I just, I'm in my garden all the time.        

00:17:05
            

I'm reading gardening books. I'm not a big podcaster because I'm a visual, so. Yeah.        

00:17:12
            

But I also have kids yelling in the background all the time, so I'm just at that age where I'm like, I need to maybe hear if this is blood curdling. Yeah. Yeah. So I tend not to have things in my ears usually. Um, yeah, I read everything I love.        

00:17:26
            

The thing I'm currently hooked on is Harvard business reviews, top ten everything. So I'm reading their book on change management because we're changing a ton at Al, and I want to do that. Well, yeah, if people have done it, like, I want to read about it, I'd rather not flop around and get it wrong. If I can get it right, it's. Usually a good way to go for it.        

00:17:49
            

Forward is not have to flop around if you don't have to. I flop around in so many parts of life, like parenthood and budgeting and, like, why flop around if I don't have to? Like, somebody teach me what you've learned. That's pretty good advice. That's gonna be the title of the episode.        

00:18:03
            

Don't flop around if you don't flop. If you don't have only the ocean you should use. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If people want to connect with you, if they want to get to know more about african leadership, get connected with your ministry, how would they find you?        

00:18:16
            

Africanleadershipinc.org is our website and from there you can find me and email me directly. I think I'm tethered in our LinkedIn world and our Facebook or Instagram world to all those places as well. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to spend a few minutes with me.        

00:18:36
            

Tell me a little bit more about african leadership, how you guys are doing and share really just your heart of like, hey, here's what makes us different and here's how we can help serve others. So I really appreciate Emily. Yeah, thanks for your time.        

00:18:53
            

Our.        

‍

Transcription

00:00:05
            

Well, how's it going, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. I'm your host, Matt Lombardi, joined today by my good friend Corey Unger. Corey, how are you doing, man? Doing awesome.        

00:00:15
            

Awesome. Well, Corey is the former vp of digital solutions with Servant IO, along with numerous other organizations where he served in helping ministries think through growth, digital transformation, all the things that are critical to do ministry in the 21st century. So, Corey, thanks so much for joining me today, man. Could you just give our audience a little bit of a background on you, how you got into kind of the digital space and specifically serving ministries in that role? Sure.        

00:00:43
            

Well, it's honored to be here, Matt. It's going to be fun, interesting, interesting, maybe set of stories. I don't know that I knew that I was going to be working in the intersection of technology. I had been a denominational leader for a while, and then I started working in networks, working behind the scenes all the way up to work in some settings where people were in governmental settings, a couple presidents in countries where they had these really challenging problems. And I was part of a couple think tanks and then found that some of the problems were needing to understand the human network side of it.        

00:01:22
            

But then also what were the tools and technologies that institutions and organizations were using. So out of that work, found myself working adjacent to things like large, distributed, federated platforms and AI and all that stuff. Now, I came into it with an eye to what are the human interactions and where do the technologies fit in. I've been doing that for probably about the last five to seven years. But in the last two years, I was working with Servant IO, who is a digital transformation consultancy.        

00:01:55
            

And really what servant does is servant does a section of strategy for the organization. They also do design and creative as well as data and engineering. What they really serve is those ministries and platforms who have pretty large scale, like reach larger organizations that serve many churches, more so than building a single website for a church. So it's been an amazing journey because serving really servant fish that niche of caring for, connecting the church at the technology level and trying to bring it into the modern era because it's, and there's others out there doing it. Servant is just one of many, but we as servant really are in a unique niche.        

00:02:37
            

So it's pretty honored to be there. So, yeah. So in that role in working in the world of kind of digital transformation and working through helping these organizations think through, how do you, how do you, you know, have better platforms that serve tons of organizations? Are there any, any strategies, any things that you've worked on that you think are absolutely mission critical for people in the nonprofit, the kind of church space to know about, or some things that have been interesting to you that you'd like to share with the audience? Sure.        

00:03:09
            

Yeah.        

00:03:12
            

The word, the phrase human centered design is one of them. Often when you build technology, you think that your problem is that you don't have a tool. And that may be the case, but quite often is that we don't understand a process, and it's usually a process around people. Good design, good technology usually tries to fit into making life easier. What is it?        

00:03:38
            

To reduce some friction, and often churches or organizations, there's so much intuitive and very relational work that's happening when you build technology. It's probably one of the best things you can do is start thinking from the end user, the last person, what are they feeling on the ground? So human centered design thinking, all those things are extremely helpful. That's one side of things that I'd say. If you go to design thinking, empathy is the first thing that you start with.        

00:04:11
            

If you're in the world of solutioning whatever it may be, whether it's digital or it's working with donors, if you raise your empathy, you'll find that you start to understand the audience you're trying to reach. That counts for digital. It also counts for just about everything else. So that's one. The second would be is even though there's all the hype and the buzz about AI right now, it's getting, you know, you look at Nvidia stock and, yeah, I think they're doing.        

00:04:38
            

I think they're doing okay right now. Yeah. Many, many countries in the world. Yeah, yeah. That, the scale of that and how it's going to impact the world and the church, I think is just something to.        

00:04:53
            

Is it to be fearful? I don't know. I think there's a lot of opinions on that, but all I know is that the printing press changed things a lot, and we're pretty happy with sola scriptura and having the, the Bible available to us. I think that because this is a shift on how information is disseminated, I think it'll inevitably have a similar kind of shift. So those would be two massive things would be, or two things to know is pay attention to how AI is going to change things and then, you know, really think about people.        

00:05:25
            

Yeah. So can you, for those who are not familiar with design thinking or, you know, centered design, and I know you kind of said pay it kind of summed up with empathy for the end user experience. If you're an organization out there and you typically just build campaigns, products, services around, well, anecdotal things that we see, oh, well, we think there's need for this or that. How do you get started with this kind of design thinking? That's going to be a little bit more of a framework of how you build.        

00:05:55
            

Could you kind of walk just the basics of how someone even gets started with that? Yeah, I mean, if you look up design thinking on Google, everyone's going to find it. So I'm not going to walk through the entire process, but I'm going to talk through the premise of design thinking. It came out of Stanford University. A guy named George Kimball built it out, or was one of the people that built out Stanford to build design thinking.        

00:06:19
            

Where it usually starts off is this world of empathy, not just feeling the emotion of something, but living in the shoes of a group of people, whether that's trying to create a solution. It's kind of like when you go to exegeta city as a church or a community as a church, and you want to learn who is that community? Who are you going to serve? In design thinking? That is the process of gaining empathy to understand the other groups that you want to work with.        

00:06:43
            

There's a couple steps in it and there's six or seven steps in it. The middle step is going to be this step of prototyping, because every time that you think you have a solution, a lot of times your solution is a solution that you might be perceiving but it may not be what the people want. Yeah. So imagine if you build your church program, your discipleship program, or you have an idea that this campaign is going to do a certain thing. You go and you listen, you empathize, listen to a whole bunch, and then you want to design, and then you want to prototype.        

00:07:11
            

And the prototype. One of the probably skills of prototyping within design thinking is to say, I might be wrong. I thought this solution was going to work and your prototyping should come back and go, maybe it wasn't. So lots of feedback. You don't even have to be building product to leverage it.        

00:07:33
            

It's a Matter of listening well and trying something out and seeing what happens. Did that resonate with them? And then once you start actually getting things prototyped out, you then can start building and then getting constant feedback from that build. So you prototype out. You want to build it out.        

00:07:52
            

Now, the process that I find is really helpful there is that you get you closer to the root cause problems or the root cause? Or what are the opportunities? Often we build with a lot of presumption, like we think we have the solution, so we go build it. We spend a bunch of money design thinking as a process. Imagine at the highest level, it's like, listen, learn, build.        

00:08:21
            

Yeah, it is a little more scientific than that. And they get into like it's based on fractals and all this other stuff and how you build the right size teams and everything like that. But for the context of this, it's pretty much listen, learn, build. That's great. Well, hey there, holy donuts.        

00:08:36
            

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00:09:01
            

And with we give, you get an incredible donor. Portal, events, pledges, surveys, segmentation on and on. We could go on the features and those checkouts, though, smoother than my attempt to make homemade donuts, which let's just say, didn't quite rise to the occasion. See what I did there? With Wegib's innovative engagement tools, your donors won't just feel the love, they'll be coming back for second, because nothing says thanks for your dough better than a world class experience.        

00:09:30
            

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00:09:41
            

A lot of the ministries that we get a chance to work with or just that we talk to, right? I think would be a little bit nervous. When they build things, it tends to be we need to have certainty and we all move in the same direction. Because what if we build a prototype and it's wrong and invested all this time and money and we all look dumb, right? So how do you help organizations overcome some of those roadblocks when they traditionally have thought through, if we build it, they will come and we measure success or failure at the end of the project and we say, well, I guess that was a failure.        

00:10:13
            

Yes, no one wanted it, but they don't actually take that step along the way to prototype or sometimes prototype 234567 times. How do you help organizations kind of break out of that and think more along, hey, you got a prototype and learn along the way. It's a great question. You know, it's funny because depending on how big the organization is, they may, they, we as organizations may not have the muscle to slow down to realize that you may want to test a very small thing before you go build a big thing. So even using the concept of a prototype in design, thinking, it's supposed to be very light and very small.        

00:10:49
            

So an example, it's similar to like lean startup where they have build, measure, learn stuff. It's this idea of, I forget if it was peapod, but they used one example in that book where they said, this gentleman went out to create peapod. And the way he got started was he walked around with a notepad. He walked to a person's house and said, hey, if I go get your groceries, did you pay me a couple bucks? And he basically got the groceries, came back.        

00:11:14
            

So what was his prototype? It was a notepad and a pencil and his gas money. Yeah, they validated it. It was like people were like, yeah, I don't have to go shopping. I love that.        

00:11:23
            

And then his next upgrade of prototype was he started using a spreadsheet. So prototypes are actually supposed to save you from tremendous amounts of cost where all of a sudden you thought a market was going to love something, or you thought that a group of people were really going to care about this program. So do a very light version of it and see if people are like, yeah, I do like that. You know, so ultimately, when it comes to stewardship in the church, this is a way to hopefully steward best because you make a couple estimations and then you can validate those and then go, cool, let's build now, God, I mean, God can always have you go a different direction to say, build an art because I know, send water, you know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.        

00:12:04
            

No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, so I moving on just to keep it because we could probably sit and talk for an hour, you know? You know, we could. So just to move on kind.        

00:12:14
            

Next question I like to usually ask our guests. What's a kind of macro trend you're seeing in the space right now in nonprofit ministry world? This guy really excited. What's one that's got you a little bit concerned if you're kind of getting the truth serum there? Macro trends, there's probably a lot of those.        

00:12:36
            

A macro trend that I think has me excited is that the next generation of young leaders are hungry and thirsty for not just authenticity, but really experiencing God and knowing one another. I find that there's a lot of opportunity in the next generation of people who are in generation is not just age, it's a season of people. Post COVID, I feel like we have an incredible opportunity to grow and just lean into where the Lord is moving. As a trend, often it's hard for us to move and then God disrupts us. You know, like if you look at the bible, how many times does God displace people, including his own people?        

00:13:21
            

Constantly. Yeah. So as a macro trend, I'd say that the encouragement to see that when, as hard as things are, when they get shaken up, there's incredible opportunity. So I see the trend of kingdom opportunity. Yeah.        

00:13:38
            

And that's a trend, you know, for me because, like, sometimes the worse, the more things get shaken up, the more, the more the ground. It's like the soil getting tilled up and turned over. It's a great place for new seeds. Yeah, that's awesome. So on the other side, opposite go.        

00:13:52
            

A little bit pessimistic for me for a minute. Pessimistic, wow. I would be super vulnerable or transparent on this one. I think our, and I'll include myself in this one. I think our own confidence that we know the answers to things that lead to polarization, whatever that means, whether that be political, spiritual, all these other things.        

00:14:17
            

I think if we're willing to let our mindset be humbled before the Lord and have the Romans twelve transforming of the mind, I think our own hubris. My hubris, our pride. I think pride is the thing that is concerning is like, are we willing to be corrected when the Lord corrects us? So. Good one.        

00:14:39
            

Yeah, so that's, yeah, that's, is it a concern? I don't know. God wins. It's a concern, but it's concern in the short term, right. That we wouldn't kind of walk into everything God's got for us, right.        

00:14:51
            

Or that we wouldn't. I mean, it's ultimately about, okay, God's going to win. He knows where he's going with his plan. Do you want to be part of it? Do you want to get the joy of being part of that mission?        

00:15:00
            

Or are you going to like, sit on the sidelines, right. And think, oh, I know better. So I'm just going to watch that go by me and look at the end of your life and say, man, I missed what God was doing in my generation, right. And so I think that's not, that's the challenge for all of us is say, hey, do you want to be part of what God's doing in this generation or do you want to sit on the sidelines and live with that regret of man. I could have been part of something that was really world changing.        

00:15:23
            

So, Corey, what's a resource you like to recommend? I know you're a big reader. You're a big learner. What's a resource? Podcast?        

00:15:31
            

Book article that you like to recommend to people working in industry space? I don't know that this one would be on the normal list. It comes to mind as you ask that question. Yeah, I love it. It's the book called Range, and the author is escaping me.        

00:15:50
            

I'm gonna look it up right now. Yeah, look it up. It's like David something.        

00:15:58
            

It's about general triumph in a specialized world. There it is. There you go. So that is by David Epstein. David Epstein.        

00:16:05
            

Ah. Thought it was esteem. Okay. So the premise of the book range and the reason that I think it's relevant to today is so many ministries and so many organizations have specialized their skills around being specialists in a particular area around knowledge. Like, oh, we're, we're, we're the experts in this thing that moves this bit of knowledge around, this bit of content, because think about how many things in the church are content driven.        

00:16:34
            

Yep, it's a lot, you know? And now all of a sudden, we have these shifting tides of how people distribute and deploy content. So people who used to be specialists in one season may not be specialists in the next. So there's going to be a. Could be a pretty substantive transference of how many people are being leveraged to do tasks that we used to do before.        

00:16:55
            

Yeah. Now the book range, talks about how generalists and specialists operate differently, and it really highlights that when you specialize in something, it talks about the 10,000 hours. You know, 10,000 hours. You become Tiger woods and you can play golf and be the best in the world, or Serena Williams. Then they talked about all these examples where there was these people who had done some of this musical instrument, some of this computer programming, and they did all these really adjacent things.        

00:17:27
            

But it was the creativity and the ability to see the patterns between all those pieces that some of those people would become the ones who actually went further than, or in some ways more integrated. It was a fascinating book because I've seen some people in my life that became absolutely essential because they knew how to integrate things. And the more these different tools and the different shifts in society, I see a rise of the need to know how to see how things fit together. And the people who know how to think and operate in those ways, I think are going to know how to use the tools that operate in those ways. So it's a little bit of a different book, but people who tend to see how everything's connected together on a spiritual level, you can say, that's John 17.        

00:18:15
            

Yeah. How does the body fit together? You know, I think there's going to be more need for people to integrate tools as opposed to be specialist as creating the tools. You know, that's so good. Yeah.        

00:18:27
            

And more and more, it's organizations need, I would say at least one or two people on the team. Right. No Matter depending on the size, that are generals that can kind of look across the board and say, okay, I know I'm not a specialist, but there's that curse of knowledge that happens when you are a specialist in a field where oftentimes you limit the possibilities. Cause you know too much. Right.        

00:18:47
            

And there's a. There is a. I think it was Marc Andreessen who had an x tweet, storm, whatever, whatever they're calling these Twitter threads now when it's x. About this the other day, that the hubris of most tech founders to think, oh, this will be easy, is a necessary requirement to innovation, because if they were actually specialists who knew how hard the task would be, they would never do it. But it takes that level of general kind of that range, right, to say, well, I know enough about this to be dangerous, and I'm just foolhardy enough to jump in with everything that, that actually allows real cool products to be built, transformation to happen.        

00:19:32
            

But that only happens we have people who are generalists who actually don't know the field maybe as well as they should. I mean, I think of someone like, you know, the most famous example right now is Elon Musk, right? Like, Elon Musk had never built a car before. He had never built a rocket before. He had never built a brain chip before.        

00:19:50
            

Yet being in general, is he able to see patterns across the board and lead teams that come up with some pretty cool, innovative stuff. So love that book recommendation. Love that's outside the box range. David Epstein will definitely put that in the show notes. Corey, if people want to connect with you, if they want to say, hey, can you come talk to our organization.        

00:20:08
            

About this, this stuff? Can you, can we work with you? Can we just connect on a virtual coffee? What's the best way to get in contact with you? What's the best way to kind of follow you on the Internet that's out there?        

00:20:20
            

I'm one of those odd people that does not do a lot of Internet things, even though I work in technology, so believe it or not. Corey Unger ctmail.com is my personal email, so that's probably the best way. It's funny, I did a lot of work for almost a, almost just under a decade where the work that I did was not really highly public in the front facing of things. And I just kind of built this process of just serve and work behind the scenes. And it was kind of, it was probably one of the more amazing things that I got to do because oftentimes when you walk in and serve people, there's usually like a hook like, well, what are you trying to like, what's the way?        

00:21:04
            

Like, how are we going to help each other and all this other stuff? I was in a particular scenario where I was working with a group who said, hey, let's support people behind the scenes and not actually try to get credit for anything. And, you know, literally no website, no business cards. But what I learned about it, at least on a personal level, is go where God sends you and serve behind the scenes and just be helpful to people. And so with doing that, I actually shut down all my social stuff.        

00:21:30
            

I think I have a LinkedIn page that makes sure that I can still say yes to people, but I don't use it. Yeah, that's about it. All right. So email for you is the best option. Corey, thanks so much for joining me today, man.        

00:21:40
            

Really appreciate it and always grateful for your wisdom and your insight. Awesome. Thank you.        

‍

Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. My name is Matt Lombardi, and I'm your host today, joined by Sam Wheatley. Sam, how you doing today? I'm great.        

00:00:14
            

Thanks for having me, Matt. Yeah, absolutely. Great to have you. You're joining us from New York City, where you work with avail ministries as the director of digital services. Tell us a little bit more about what that means.        

00:00:26
            

What does day to day look like for you? What's the ministry all about? Just give us a little bit of context for your role. Great tee up question. So availnYC works with basically decision making around the issues of abortion and unexpected pregnancy.        

00:00:45
            

We sort of take a third way approach. We're not classically aligned to either of the sides of the spectrum, but we instead, we take a very pro person approach that's really based in research and 26 years of experience of helping women and men facing the situation. So we really focus on helping them make decisions in a pressured situation that their future selves will be happy with. And so when we find out that we help people, provide them the tools, give them the listening ear, lead with empathy, people are able to slow down and make more confident decisions. And so we've been doing that in a traditional brick and mortar type of situation for 26 years.        

00:01:32
            

But two years ago, I came on to help project manage the build of our online platform called Better Clarity. And better clarity was designed specifically for Gen Zs who are online all the time, who are comfortable with talking about their most intimate issues with, you know, in spaces that older generations are not. And we were also creating a self guided platform that had no sort of counselor on the back end. So it's all geared towards the audience and then being able to sort and go through the material at their own pace to reach better decisions. So that's what I've been doing the last two years with avail, and so started out project managing the site and then came on a year and a half ago as the director of digital services.        

00:02:30
            

So covering marketing, content, tech support for all of our digital platforms. That's awesome. Well, I want to put a pin in the better clarity conversation because I think there's a definitely something to come back to when it comes to a topic that we're seeing a lot with clients and just with people that we talk to in the space, which is how do we take our traditional brick and mortar service programs offerings and now update those in kind of a digital transformation way to make those platforms available, those programs available asynchronous, kind of as you go for the people we're trying to serve. So I want to come back to that, but first, want to dive into a little bit of your background. How did you start working with nonprofits?        

00:03:11
            

How did you get into the digital space, specifically, give us a little bit of the Sam Wheatley background. Yeah, so I grew up in the southeast, graduated college, came on staff for the christian ministry, moved to New York City in 1989, and was working in an inner city neighborhood called Washington Heights. Here in Upper Manhattan, we were sort of working with existing parachurch ministries, house churches, spanish speaking neighborhood. And so we created a community development ministry from that, where we were working mostly with younger teens, basketball, after school tutoring, ESL, the whole sort of kitten caboodle. Started feeling a call to ministry as a pastor, went to seminary in the mid nineties, graduated, and really from about 1998 until 2016, I was in pastoral ministry at a church in Atlanta and 16 years in Salt Lake City as a planter slash replanter of a congregation there.        

00:04:22
            

And then in 2016, I came to New York again to work on an exec team as with Redeemer Presbyterian, as Tim Keller was stepping down as the senior pastor. And we were kind of taking this one large mega church and figuring out a way to sort of right size it for the next phase of its ministry. That's amazing. So cool. Well, we have a lot of similarities there between pastoral ministry, going to a nonprofit, even Tim Keller connection there, that I'm sure we could explore more.        

00:04:54
            

But I'm gonna keep this moving for the sake of the audience. In time, we can have an offline about that stuff. So. Okay, so you work with veil digital transformation. I said, let's put a pin in that.        

00:05:05
            

Come back to it. One of the questions I like to ask guests is, hey, what's a strategy that has been really impactful for your ministry that you think would be helpful for others? Is that something where we kind of camp out on the way that you all kind of took? What avail's done for 20 plus years for Mordor and come online digital? What's that process been like for you all, and how's that actually started to serve your constituents?        

00:05:27
            

Yeah, that's a great question, Matt. I think so. Back it up. So they had been doing this for 26 years, began to see changes in the marketplace, began to see clients more amenable to online services just in their normal operation. Then Covid hit and began to see, oh, it's not just possible.        

00:05:50
            

This is actually pretty preferable for many of our clients to interact around complex issues with a little bit of remove from being face to face. So, actually, during COVID we went online immediately without a hitch. And even today, when we're still back up and running in person, 90% of our clientele see have one on one appointments digitally. So that's sort of stage one, is just doing what you're doing sort of online. But we wanted to take it a step further.        

00:06:29
            

And right before COVID we commissioned some research. And I think this is one of the key principles, is basing change and actual research. And so we hired a third party, top of the line market research company to help us to understand the people we weren't seeing. We knew our own clients, but we didn't know what it was that kept people from coming in our doors. We didn't understand the user journey of those clients around the space of unexpected pregnancy and abortion loss.        

00:07:05
            

And so this company did an incredible job of a deep dive into understanding that experience and then mapping it out for us in a very detailed journey map that helped us to understand sort of the start to finish what happens? Where are the key benchmarks? What are the pain points? Where are there opportunities for intervention? And where is there sort of a closed door?        

00:07:34
            

It's basing it on research that the key thing is making sure that your research drives your change. And so without that research study that we had done, we would have made a lot of missteps. But because we had the research that really grounded our understanding that there was a reason we weren't seeing certain people in person. And so it shifted us to not just being digital because digital is cool, but being digital because that was actually the place where our audience was. Yeah.        

00:08:06
            

And so we needed an outpost in that place where our audience was. Yeah. Sam, I can imagine a nonprofit leader right now saying, oh, that sounds awesome, but it sounds crazy expensive. Right? It was crazy expensive.        

00:08:21
            

Okay, thank you for confirming or denying that. So at least we confirm that, maybe then speak to. Okay. The importance of ROI on that. Yeah, it was crazy expensive.        

00:08:32
            

And our CEO was really a thought leader in this. She went out and raised the money for it. And, you know, I don't know exact figures, but it was six figures to do the research. But it was really invaluable for then guiding every step of the way. And so it guided our research.        

00:08:54
            

The research then guided the way we rethought how we would provide services. It then opened up opportunities when we started thinking about a digital strategy, how we would execute on that, how we approached our marketing, how we approached our user journey, what content we created. I mean, everything came out of that research. And so if you're asking for the best marketing strategy, it's nothing really cool or innovative. It's really just listening.        

00:09:27
            

If you can listen well to your audience and get out of your own headspace of what you think they need and hear what they actually say they need, you'll be amazed at the areas of alignment and the places that maybe you thought there was no entry point, that there are actually wide open doors for entry points. And I will tell you, like talking about ROI. So we spent a lot of money for that. We built this website, and then, you know, what we've seen is we have quadrupled the number of people we've served in less than a year. It's huge.        

00:10:06
            

That's huge. Yeah. What are some of the mechanisms outside of? So you hire great firm, come in, do all this market research, help you build that kind of, that user journey, those user maps, are there any feedback loops that you all put in place or any mechanisms to continue that process? What does that look like for you all as a team to kind of build those, that listening happening?        

00:10:27
            

Yeah, no, absolutely. So one is data. This is the other thing. It's like, mark, you know, solid marketing outcomes come from listening and research solid marketing outcomes come through listening to data. And so creating data analytics that are actually helping you understand the traditional marketing funnel.        

00:10:48
            

You know, why are people attracted, okay, why are they, why are they engaging or not engaging? What's keeping them from converting is our call to action. Clear a b, testing market, testing those kind of things. So we're asking about food back loops. One of the things we keep doing is refreshing the data.        

00:11:12
            

Our data. Our research is now four years old. So we're talking to the Same research company about, well, okay, that research was primarily around a New York City based audience. Now we're national. How does that change?        

00:11:26
            

The landscape around our issue has changed dramatically in the last four years. How do those new fears affect our clients? How do we understand the adaptations that have happened in the user journey because of the political landscape? And then also international, we have a huge international growth, even though we're not marketing internationally. Yeah, we see a huge potential internationally for these issues.        

00:11:53
            

Yeah. That's amazing. So one of the things I've seen ministries do before, and I'm just deep diving on this because I love this topic, is they build this cool tool, right? They go digital with something and then they, it's as if they think, hey, if they build it or if we build it, they'll come and they'll show up and it's the classic problem, right? Every tech startup does this, but a lot of ministries do this too.        

00:12:14
            

They just think, well, of course, if we build this great thing naturally, people just come. But you all have actually had success where it's, you know, I think the word viral is overused, but it's growing in areas that you're not even intending growth to happen. What's any, any insight into how that's happened, why that's happened? Was there, I mean, sometimes it's as simple as like, oh, we got really lucky and it got picked up for a pr piece on, you know, Forbes or on CNN. Right?        

00:12:41
            

Have there been any linchpin moments that have helped this thing kind of go pseudo viral or kind of get outside your own gates of what you expected, or has it just been consistent effort? No, I mean, our organic traffic is pretty low for better clarity. Our organic traffic for avail is very high because it's an older website, it's got a lot of credibility. There's a clientele for it. But better clarity is starting from zero, you know, last May.        

00:13:10
            

So it's been a classic startup and it really has relied heavily on marketing and advertising. And so that's partly the research, gave us clarity around our Personas, so we know very deeply what our Personas are looking for.        

00:13:30
            

I won't say you talked about AI. One of the creative ways I think a lot of people aren't using AI yet that we've been able to use is we've actually turned our Personas into GPTs, and then we interact with our GPTs to refine our marketing messages. That's fascinating. So let me just see if, just to make sure I'm understanding correctly. So you essentially built prompt agents within that are chatbots back and forth.        

00:13:59
            

And so when your marketing team goes to that, are you just asking it, hey, what type of creative would appeal to you? Or like, what kind of, what are you feeding data into that in terms of questions to get the response they look for? So with GPTs, you can now create your own GPT bots. And so we have taken our research, loaded it into the GPT knowledge base. We've also done some other analysis, like personality tests and things like that.        

00:14:32
            

So we know, like our persistent Penelope, you know, is this kind of person, she has these, you know, we know everything about her, and so we interact with that bot. Hey, how would you react to this ad content, clarify this call to action in a way that you would respond to? It's like an in house focus group. That's amazing. That is such a cool use case for AI.        

00:14:59
            

Like, just completely outside the box of just, oh, rewrite this copy for me in a generic way, but instead say, hey, make it Persona specific. That's great. Yeah. I think this is the misuse of AI is people are using it to substitute for work instead of using it as an aid to creative work. And so for us, we see it as a, we can quickly iterate this ads not working, or this ad is working, or this ad is working with the wrong audience.        

00:15:24
            

So how do we retool it? Yeah, Sam, when you look at the macro space of nonprofit ministries right now that are doing fundraising, marketing, this kind of stuff, the kind of larger ones that have real budget put behind that, what's a trend that you see that's really exciting for you, and then what's one that's got you a little bit nervous? Yeah. What's interesting to us right now is on the social side is we were struggling with the influencer based social environment. How do we make space for our brand when we really are trying to avoid tying a person to our brand?        

00:16:04
            

We want to make it personal and approachable, but we don't want to have a face Jane X as our influencer face because we want it to appeal to a broader audience. So actually, we're very excited about sort of the rise of faceless influencers or faceless content. And we're beginning to adopt that strategy for a lot of our social, because, as you know, social is moving more and more and more towards video. And basically, this gives us the ability to do sort of faceless interfluencer without tied to one individual or one particular niche group. Yeah.        

00:16:45
            

And does that look like for you all, working with an agency is going out and finding these folks for you, or are you just. No, we've actually found. We found our best folks already work for us because of the, you know, again, it's genuineness. Right? Like, that's the behind influencer is like, hey, here's another real person talking to me, a real person about this real thing they're facing.        

00:17:08
            

And so we have found folks who are already working for us that are in that age demographic that have sort of our philosophy of approach to the issues. Being able to. Just to talk as they would talk to their friends is the most powerful thing we have. And then being able to, one of our concerns was their privacy and nothing, you know, putting their images out there. So sort of the faceless marketing or the faceless influencer gives us the ability to sort of give their vibe without necessarily just, you know, disclosing their identity.        

00:17:48
            

That's so cool. That's a really, really great use case. Are you all, I'm guessing because we're talking Gen Z here is a lot of TikTok. Yeah, we use, we use every platform. I mean, Instagram is still big for us.        

00:18:02
            

Our Google Ad campaigns are very strong. I think also, here's one of the shifts we saw, again, with AI that's happening is you're moving from keyword search to AI empowered search, which is going to be AI gives you an answer. It doesn't give you a list of pages. And so this is one of those other things that you're asking about trends. I think one of the trends that's going to be very important is credentialed sourcing so that your marketing isn't just, I'm cool, I'm hip.        

00:18:36
            

I've said, you know, I'm just saying these things. But your content is actually deeply rooted into spaces, credentialing agencies, creators that are considered highly credentialed by AI. And so that means affiliating more with credentialed sources like universities, research centers, making sure any information you're putting out there is really rooted in science and credible sources. That's so helpful. So helpful.        

00:19:13
            

Sam, on the, on the other side, any trends in, in this space right now that are concerning for you? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the trends that I don't like is, and it's just hard for everybody, is the proliferation of platforms. Is that, I mean, and oftentimes based on spurious concerns, you know, like TikTok is tick tock and get banned in the US. What does that mean? What happened to Twitter?        

00:19:44
            

You know, what is that now? You know, threads. Do I do threads? Do I? Yeah.        

00:19:51
            

It's like new platforms. There are all these platforms that just keep splintering your audience. And so it becomes harder and harder to gain traction on a platform because it could be gone in six months. Yeah. And so I don't know what the solution is.        

00:20:10
            

We've been, you know, it used to be just pick one platform, you know, and that's your platform. Right. We found we have to sort of have a foot in every platform possible. Yeah. It seems like more and more that generations are selecting, like self selecting into their platform.        

00:20:35
            

Right. So, you know, you think boomers self selecting into meta, Facebook. Right. Millennials oftentimes kind of pushing towards Instagram, Gen Z towards TikTok. And so it becomes a question of okay, well, what's, what's the use case for each platform?        

00:20:49
            

Right. And you're probably not going to be looking for donors on TikTok. Right. Whereas you may be like, LinkedIn may be a great platform for that, or Facebook may be a great platform. Exactly.        

00:20:59
            

I mean, so this is just part of your Persona. Research is like, okay, which platforms are my Personas on? I mean, we're starting this project as well with our development team to sort of do the Same project with cultivating future donors because we don't want to be just having donors in one generation that's sort of on the way towards retirement. We need younger generations of donors for sustainability over the long haul, and so we have to start reaching those donors in the places again, research, locating yourself where your clients are beginning to build awareness and trust so that then you can actually have a conversation about partnerships and things like that down the road. Absolutely.        

00:21:48
            

Okay. So I mentioned before we started recording, I follow you a lot on LinkedIn. Read a lot of your stuff. It's always great. I'd recommend anyone watching go give Sam a follow.        

00:21:55
            

Really, really great content that he puts out there. So I know you're always reading, always learning. Any podcast, books, resources that you just love to recommend to others in the nonprofit development and marketing space. Yeah, I mean, there's, again, sort of, we began our conversation offline about sort of how I'm using AI a lot, but it's really not about AI. It's really about these more fundamental issues.        

00:22:22
            

And so the things I would recommend really center around communication. The better of a communicator you are, the better you're going to be able to market, the better you're going to be able to understand your client base. And so one of the places I would recommend is there's a communication writer named Nancy Duarte. And Nancy has a great book that's a great starting point on some of these topics called resonate, where she talks about how to think about classic approaches to communication, like the greek rhetoric, you know, ethos, logos, pathos, and applying it to very contemporary settings. Or how to think about storyboarding as a methodology for communicating your message, which then translates directly into website design and all kinds of stuff.        

00:23:18
            

So I can't recommend Nancy Doherty highly enough. She's been very helpful for me in, in this journey. The other more approachable probably, that maybe a lot of your audience has heard of is Donald Miller's story brand project. And that has been incredibly helpful for understanding the hero journey as, again, a classic model of storytelling applied to marketing and user journey kind of issues. And so story brand is great, and any sort of hero journey stuff you want to read is well worth your time.        

00:23:57
            

Yeah, absolutely. The original Joseph Campbell on that. So good as well if you want to go back to the original source. Yeah, we're huge fans. A little thick.        

00:24:06
            

I won't recommend Joseph Campbell. It's a little thick if you're, if you're a nerd like me. It's a little heavy sometimes, but it is fun. It's a, there's, it's dense, but there's such good stuff in there. Sam, folks want to connect with you if they want to, you know, if questions about what you guys are doing to avail.        

00:24:23
            

Questions about. Okay, we're working through this. We might want to talk with you about, hey, could you give us some advice on this? What's the best way to reach out and contact you? So two places.        

00:24:31
            

One is my LinkedIn page. Just Sam Wheatley. And then also I write on Substack under the, the nonprofit leader. The nonprofit leader. On substack.        

00:24:44
            

On substack. Okay, great. We'll absolutely direct people there in the show notes. Sam, it's been so much fun, man. Really, really enjoyed it and would love to have you on again soon.        

00:24:52
            

Yeah, look forward to it. Appreciate it.        

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