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In the world of non-profits, scalability is crucial for long-term success. Join us as our wonderful guest, Sadie Branson, shares powerful insights and recommendations for Christian organizations looking to grow. But be prepared for a shocking twist that leaves the main character in a difficult situation, making you wonder what will happen next.
My special guest is Sadie Brandon.
Sadie Brandon is a seasoned marketing professional who has found her true calling in the world of faith-based organizations. With a background in for-profit marketing and sales, Sadie felt a deep desire to use her skills to make a meaningful impact for the kingdom. This led her to join Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal ministry dedicated to defending Christians and people of faith who face persecution. During her time at ADF, Sadie focused on digital marketing and fundraising, working on campaigns that not only engaged donors but also provided valuable resources for non-donors. Recently, Sadie took a leap of faith and ventured into entrepreneurship, starting her own marketing consulting agency, Micah 68 Marketing. As she balances her newfound role as a stay-at-home mom, Sadie continues to bring her passion and expertise to help Christian nonprofits thrive in their mission. Her diverse background and unwavering commitment to the cause make her a valuable asset in the world of donor engagement and marketing for Christian organizations.
The key to achieving sustainable growth, as per Sadie Brandon, is the mastery of scalability. For non-profit organizations, it's vital to build a framework that allows for expansion and adaptation, rather than veering off towards multiple ideas that may lack longevity. Ensuring that new ideas align with the organization's mission and are thoroughly vetted for feasibility boosts chances for long-term success.
Sadie Brandon is an experienced marketing professional who has specialized in working with faith-based organizations. With a background in for-profit marketing and sales, Sadie's career took a meaningful turn when she joined Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a prominent legal ministry. At ADF, Sadie focused on digital marketing strategies and fundraising efforts, implementing successful campaigns to engage donors and provide valuable resources to non-donors. Recently, Sadie made the decision to embark on her own entrepreneurial journey, establishing Micah 68 Marketing, a marketing consulting agency. With her diverse background and expertise in nonprofit marketing and donor engagement, Sadie brings a wealth of knowledge to help Christian nonprofits thrive and achieve their goals. Her dedication to the cause and commitment to making a difference make her an invaluable asset in the realm of Christian nonprofit marketing.
Sadie Brandon is an experienced marketer with a diverse background in for-profit marketing and sales. However, she felt a calling to do something more meaningful and impactful for the kingdom. This led her to join Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal ministry dedicated to defending the rights of Christians and people of faith. As Sadie worked in fundraising and digital marketing at ADF, she realized the importance of scalability in non-profit organizations. She understood that donors are looking for value and want to see their dollars making a difference. To meet these expectations, Sadie and her team engaged with donors to gather feedback and focused on thanking them by highlighting the victories they contributed to. Additionally, they created valuable resources for those who were not yet ready to donate, which helped increase conversions. Sadie believes in the power of AI in marketing and sees it as a tool to enhance creativity and efficiency. However, she also emphasizes the importance of maintaining brand integrity and staying focused on proven strategies. Overall, Sadie's journey in the non-profit sector has taught her the significance of scalability and the need to adapt to new technologies while staying true to the organization's mission.
A trend that’s causing a lot of excitement in the nonprofit space is the advancement and integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It has the potential to take the guesswork out of strategies and push boundaries concerning creativity. Although an exciting prospect, it is important to remain cautious that we do not get carried away with AI, running the risk of overspending on cutting-edge ideas or diluting the essence of our brand. Listening to Sadie in the podcast, she echoes these thoughts quite clearly. There is genuine excitement at the potential AI holds within the nonprofit digital space, but caution is essential. She warns against over-reliance on technology at the expense of proven, time-tested strategies or risking brand integrity.
Networking is a crucial part of any industry, but even more so in the nonprofit sector. Engaging with like-minded professionals, consulting peers and specialists in other fields, and connecting with others who are passionate about the same cause can offer new perspectives and opportunities for growth. Throughout the conversation on the podcast, Sadie Brandon expressed her eagerness to use her platform and profession to connect, engage, and lend a helping hand wherever she could. Her open invitation for ongoing conversations about marketing, fundraising, and consulting services suggests her genuine dedication to being a resource and propelling forward with but also for her clients.
When it comes to creating successful campaigns for nonprofits, a couple of elements are key. Engaging with your donors isn’t just about asking for money, it's about establishing a relationship. Asking for their feedback can give you insights into what resonates with them and how to keep them engaged. Just as important is equipping your audience with the right information. Imagine putting out conversation guides, sharing valuable knowledge, helping your supporters to engage in critical debates is a rewarding strategy. Delving into the conversation with Sadie Brandon, it’s clear these were the strategies that had a strong impact during her tenure at Alliance Defending Freedom. Asking for donor feedback on email and direct mail strategies led to a distinct focus on showing gratitude and demonstrating the impact of their giving. Furthermore, providing conversation guides for supporters was a brilliant method of adding value and boosting contributions.
Mastering the art of persuasion in marketing can be a game-changer. Understanding the psychology behind creating ads and displays when there’s limited time to pitch your organization's value proposal can significantly impact your success. Learning these techniques can deepen insights into email structure, design, copywriting, and also reveal the thought process of potential donors. When Matt Lombardi asked Sadie Brandon for book recommendations during the episode, she enthusiastically recommended 'Persuasion.' She recounted how she'd dog-eared many pages, indicating it to be rich with strategies and insights into the psychology of persuasion in marketing.
One of the main challenges nonprofit organizations face is scalability. The need to aim for scalable solutions, rather than investing effort and resources into ideas that may not contribute to long-term success is something many struggle with. It also reveals a weakness in the evaluation processes of many organizations, as ideas need to align with the overall goal and be feasible for expansion. During her conversation with Matt Lombardi, Sadie Brandon stressed nonprofits' struggle with scalability. They must focus on building for growth instead of pursuing ideas that may not necessarily be beneficial in the long run. Sadie emphasized the necessity of thoroughly vetting ideas before pursuing them to prevent distractions diverting resources from the main goals.
00:00:05 - Matt Lombardi
Well, hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. I'm Matt Lombardi, and joined today by Sadie Brandon. Sadie, how you doing today?
00:00:13 - Sadie Brandon
Great. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
00:00:15 - Matt Lombardi
Yeah. Thanks for showing up for joining us. You've got a ton of experience working with faith based organizations. On the digital marketing front, how did you kind of get into this? Give us a little bit of your background. Give us the fancy titles, kind of what you're doing these days.
00:00:29 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, awesome. So my background is a little diverse. I was always in for profit marketing, sales. I did what I call my gap year in supply chain management, working for a semiconductor manufacturing company in Phoenix, which was phenomenal. But it really just I think, like, a lot of I'm sure your audience felt a tug and pull on my heart to want to do something more for the kingdom and to not only be making rich people richer. So I applied for a role at Alliance Defending Freedom and got into fundraising and a lot more digital marketing, focusing on resources and getting people involved in what our nonprofit was doing. And it's been awesome. I love the nonprofit space.
00:01:23 - Matt Lombardi
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more for those who aren't familiar with alliance for Defending Freedom, tell them a little bit more about what that organization does and kind of what their mission is.
00:01:31 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, absolutely. So the mission of alliance, pending freedom, is to keep the door open for the gospel, and they do that by providing services to Christians and people of faith who are being persecuted in our environment and culture today, who just want to live out their faith. And so it is a legal ministry where we have attorneys and allied attorneys come and defend these people all the way up into the Supreme Court. Most recently quite most recently, but probably most famously, ADF was involved in the overturn of Roe v. Wade. So that was a monstrosity of a victory and goodness in that.
00:02:12 - Matt Lombardi
That's amazing. Very, very cool. And so now I understand that recently kind of made a huge transition going into entrepreneurship life. What's that journey been like for you?
00:02:22 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah. If you had asked me or told me a year ago that I would give up the career world and the ladder climbing and all of that to be a stay at home mom and run my own business, I would have laughed because I fully intended to do it all. Have the career, have the nanny, have all of everything so that I could continue my career. And through many events, that the Lord used to open my eyes to say, hey, I want you to trust me in this new venture, which was kind of scary to walk away from everything and to start at my own marketing consulting agency. It's called Micah 68 marketing. So I'm doing that now and staying home with my one year old. And it's been great. It's been great. A great journey of faith as well. That's awesome.
00:03:14 - Matt Lombardi
I love it. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's huge. I can remember three years ago or so, whenever we kind of made that jump as well with Cher say, hey, I didn't really think I was going to be anything besides a pastor. And now we're making the jump into entrepreneurship and yeah, God uses those sort of opportunities as a huge way to grow our faith personally, but then to be a huge blessing to others. Okay, want to dial in a little bit on your experience working with faith based nonprofits at ADF? Tell the audience a little bit about a campaign, a strategy, something that you all worked on ADF, that you think was one of the coolest things you got to do, or something that's been a really successful campaign in your time, ADF, or even now that you've been on your own with your marketing company.
00:03:55 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, awesome. I'll give ADF examples. I think this is not unique to any nonprofit, but what your donors are looking for is value, and they want to know that their dollars are actually going to the work that they are passionate about. And so two things. We called in a bunch of our donors and had like a face to face meet and greet and said, hey, how are we doing? Give us your feedback on our email strategy, give us your feedback on our direct mail strategy, give us feedback, these sorts of things. And then we tried to get a little more in the weeds of a B testing. If we said this, would you like this? Or how would you respond? And the number one element of feedback that they gave us was, we just want you to win. So we're a legal organization defending Christians, and we're like, how do you feel most thanked? That sort of thing. And they were all responding, we just want to know that you're winning. That's the biggest thanks that you could give us. We don't need your chotchki, we don't need the pen. We don't need to send us a mailer with a penny in it, so we'll send it back. And all of those work in different audiences, but that was really unique. So we tried to really up our game as far as thanking people and saying, hey, you were part of this victory, you were part of preserving Jack Phillips freedom, that sort of thing. So that's a huge element. The other piece is adding value for people who aren't necessarily bought in enough to your mission to give you a dollar, yet to give you any money. One of the things that we did, because ADF obviously has a lot of controversial topics and stories to talk about, and a lot of people are uneducated in how to converse in the public square about abortion, about marriage, about family, the rights of parents, those sorts of things. So what we started doing was creating these conversation guides. And you can go on Ads website right now under the resources tab and get these for free. But what they are is they're downloadables that give you three myths, three facts about the First Amendment or how to talk to your family about being pro life, those sorts of things. Conversation guides, free downloads that you can download. But how we really upped conversions was by saying, okay, thanks for downloading this guide. It would be like a squeeze page, like a thank you donation page. And that increased donations, conversions, first time, second time, gifts. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but that is a continual element that helps us generate revenue.
00:06:34 - Matt Lombardi
Yeah, it's just such a great I mean, it's just a lead magnet, right? It's classic marketing, right? Like, hey, we're going to give you something that's actually maybe you're not there yet, and that's okay. Let's not say, well, if you're not there as donor yet, we just won't even do anything for you. We're just waiting for it until you convert, instead saying, hey, how do we engage you before you're a donor? Because in a lot of ways, you're talking about telling the stories of wins. One of the things we talk about all the time is how you get them, is how you keep them. And so if you get them with great content, that's showing them how they can stand up for these values and stand up for these core truths that as believers, we have in the political space, then when you follow that up, you can keep them by showing them the wins and showing them the stories. So I love that. That's so, so good. Well, hey there, holy donuts listeners ever feel like your nonprofit's donor experience is like a jellyfilled donut with no jelly? Well, don't fret. We found the jelly to your donut dilemma. Enter WeGive the software tool. It's like the cream filling to your Eclair, or should I say the glaze to your donut. With WeGive, you're not just taking a donation, you're rolling out a red carpet for every person who gives to your organization. And with WeGive, 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 we, give 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. So if you want to sprinkle some extra special magic on your donor relationships, check out WeGive. Okay, so shifting gears a little bit as we kind of look at broader nonprofit space, I know you were at ADF. That was kind of your primary nonprofit experience when you were there. Even with organizations you work with now, are you seeing any trends that are really exciting to you in kind of nonprofit digital space?
00:08:44 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, absolutely. I think AI is super exciting. I'm probably not the only one who's responding that way, but I think the potential with AI is really awesome. It can take a lot of the guesswork out of what you're doing. It can help boost your creativity. I love some of the digital testing that you're able to do where you really remove yourself from the test and saying, my limited I see. We can change the color from this to this, or we can put this here and here. And letting AI take the analysis of what you should test out of your hands, I think is a real benefit. I know a lot of people are afraid of it because it's like, oh, it's going to replace us. AI is not going to replace any of these jobs. You can definitely use it as a third arm to get more work done, to be more efficient, that sort of thing. So I'm really enjoying following all of these AI bots and videos. Just all that you can do with it.
00:09:46 - Matt Lombardi
Yeah. So on the A B testing, that's really interesting. Any tools specifically that you recommend for generating those A B test suggestions, anything you like to use?
00:09:57 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, so we were just in the middle of transitioning to a new platform to do that because we were using Google Optimize, and obviously that's gone now. So the two contenders that we were playing with was called Chameleon, and it's spelled with a K, and Web Trends was the other one.
00:10:19 - Matt Lombardi
Web trends and chameleon. Okay, cool. We'll link to those in the show notes. I don't know if you get an affiliate deal on that. Send us that link if you do. Awesome. Okay. Reverse side of the coin of the penny in the mail. So exciting trend. Anything concerning that you're seeing in kind of the digital space for nonprofits?
00:10:38 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, and it's actually going to be the same answer. AI. I think if you have unmonitored AI that you are too much removing yourself from, you're really going to dilute what you're trying to do. AI. Can be great for generating new ideas. It can be great for changing tone, that sort of thing. But anyone who's in branding, anyone who is in true marketing, you mess too much with the tone, the structure, those sorts of things, you're kind of threatening your brand a little bit. So that's something to be cautious of. The next thing is trying to be, I think, too innovative with what AI can do. And you're spending so much time trying to come up with something new and exciting that you are taking yourself away from what you know is tried and true. So I think you have to have really good self control with how you're going to use the tool and make sure you're spending your time where it's actually going to be most profitable?
00:11:32 - Matt Lombardi
100%. No, I think you're right that AI is I think of it very similar to I talk about this because we work a lot with organizations on their design and visual identity. I've seen it with copywriting specifically and with brand messaging start to have the Canva effect that canva had on design, which is it's a great tool in many ways to democratize design. But there's also problems when everyone now is a designer who doesn't have formal training on text hierarchy and font selection and all the things that you have to do really well to actually create great design. And yes, we're happy that people have that tool, but it so sets the bar low for anyone can enter in, which means anyone can enter in. And AI, in some ways, it's turning people who were not copywriters previously into, I can be a copywriter. Let me spin this up because I have AI now and it's a little bit different. You still need to know the foundations and understand the brand and do the heavy lifting on the back end. And so we always say, like, hey, listen, AI is a great tool when used in the hands of an expert who knows what they're doing already that has the foundations in place. So no 100% agree. So what resources are there out there that you love that you'd recommend to other folks in the kind of digital nonprofit space? Any books, any podcasts, any websites? What is there that when you're just saying, hey, I'm just scrolling through this on my feed. This is the stuff I like to learn from. What of that do you like to pass on to others? Anything there?
00:12:57 - Sadie Brandon
Absolutely. Well, if you're new to digital marketing HubSpot, their blog is phenomenal. I mean, I feel like that one goes without saying. And Next After has a lot of great resources and tests and those sorts of things. So definitely subscribe to their blog as well. Promoters of Neo, when I got the questions that you asked, I was like, oh, the books. Because I love the business. So I'm going to give two, if you don't mind, because one is complete bear. And if anyone's listening and they want to get this one, they might be intimidated by how long it was. But it's called The Phoenix Project, and it's a fiction, business novel, which I had never darkened the pages of a business novel before, but it's based on a true story. And it really shows the necessity of building to scale, of making sure that keeping the most important thing the most important thing. And I don't know. It's an excellent book that shows so many business processes that I think highlight the weaknesses of many nonprofits where you're not building to scale, you're chasing ideas that potentially could lead to donors, that could lead to leads that could, that could. That could. And sometimes I feel like we lose our focus because we've got so many of these passionate ideas that could be really cool, but they're never fully thrown out and vetted all the way. So I love that book. The other one, for any marketers or advertisers, persuasion, it's called. This book is basically into pre selling what you have to offer your donors. So it's getting into the psychology of how you create your ads, how you create display ads where you don't have enough time to actually sell your value proposition, and you're really trying to get the click and then combining the elements of design and copy, how to structure emails. And they go through a lot of tests that they've done that show like, oh, yeah, you can see the thought process that people are going to and the reasons behind why the funnel is the way the funnel is. So I try to keep my books pristine. I don't like to mark in them, I don't like to break them. And I have so many pages dog eared in this book. So I totally broke all my rules saying, like, oh, my goodness, I need to try this, I need to try this, I need to try this. So those are two books I definitely recommend to anyone who's getting into.
00:15:33 - Matt Lombardi
Very cool. Very cool. Now, those are great. And what I love about those is they're like, I've never had someone recommend those before. So I've got Persuasion on a bookshelf somewhere. I had a professor in seminary one time tell me that books on your bookshelf are not for reading, but for reminding you of how little you know. And so I've taken that mantra. I just collect books that I've not read yet. So it's on one of my shelves somewhere. So now I'll go dive into it. I'll make that next on the list. So thank you for the recommendations there, sadie, if folks want to connect with you on socials, what's the best way to get in contact with you? Whether they want to work with you, whether they are just saying, hey, no, you just got a lot of interesting stuff. I'd love to pick your brain more, or, hey, I have a question about this with our nonprofit. How would you attack this? What's the best way to get in contact with you if they wanted to chat with you?
00:16:19 - Sadie Brandon
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm starting to be much more active on there. And Sadie Brandon is my name, and if you want, you can check out my website, which is Mike M-I-C 68 Marketingllc.com. And those are probably the two best ways to get a hold of me. Happy to chat with anyone who has questions or looking for a third party to come in and do some consulting or just grow the network. I do want to be a resource for my clients of saying, hey, I might not be super strong in this element of marketing, fundraising, that sort of thing. But let me connect you with someone else who is. So I would really love to expand my network with people who are passionate and great at their job and wanting to help others grow in their business. So let's connect.
00:17:05 - Matt Lombardi
Awesome. Well, Sadie, thank you so much for time today. Seriously. So enjoy the conversation. I learned a ton. I know the audience learned a ton. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today.
00:17:14 - Sadie Brandon
I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for having me. Great chatting and take care.
