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Innovation in the Mission Space: Driving Impact and Transformation
Have you heard these three myths about integrating for-profit resources in nonprofit marketing? Myth #1: It's only about making money. Myth #2: Nonprofits can't compete with for-profit companies. Myth #3: For-profit collaborations compromise the organization's mission. In this episode, our guest, Matt Lombardi, will share the truth about the benefits and possibilities of integrating for-profit resources in nonprofit marketing.
My special guest is Matt Clement
Matt Clement, hailing from the Lone Star State, took an atypical route to marketing, beginning in the engineering field. With a deep-rooted desire to impact lives in the nonprofit sector, he traded blueprints for marketing strategies, earning his MBA from the University of Colorado. With experience in the tech industry and stints with agencies as war wounds, Matt honed his marketing skills with a keen business sense, paving his unconventional path to Water Street Mission. Three and a half years deep and he is committed to driving positive change in the lives of those experiencing homelessness, one innovative marketing solution at a time.
It's okay to not have negative things in this space. That's always a positive, right? Just seeing others in the same space innovate is enough, right? We're actually doing that innovation work that maybe 10-15 years ago wasn't happening. I think that's a good thing. -
In this episode, you will be able to:
In this discussion, the importance and influence of storytelling quickly become evident. Matt Clement details how Water Street Mission has harnessed the power of narrative on social media to connect deeply with their audience. Through sharing their activities and successes, the organization brings its mission to life in an engaging way, demonstrating the effectiveness of storytelling strategy in the realm of nonprofit marketing.
The resources mentioned in this episode are:
Discover the extraordinary journey of Matt Clement, a tech engineer turned nonprofit leader, whose path took an unexpected twist. From the challenges of a steep learning curve to the invaluable advice that saved him from being swept away by high-tech trends, Matt's story is one of resilience and growth. But what was the unexpected twist in his journey that led to remarkable success? Stay tuned to uncover the surprising revelation that changed the course of Matt's career forever.
Matt Clement, hailing from the Lone Star State, took an atypical route to marketing, beginning in the engineering field. With a deep-rooted desire to impact lives in the nonprofit sector, he traded blueprints for marketing strategies, earning his MBA from the University of Colorado. With experience in the tech industry and stints with agencies as war wounds, Matt honed his marketing skills with a keen business sense, paving his unconventional path to Water Street Mission. Three and a half years deep and he is committed to driving positive change in the lives of those experiencing homelessness, one innovative marketing solution at a time.
From an engineering background in the tech sphere to the helm of a non-profit organization, the journey of Matt Clement has been nothing short of fascinating. The transition was not a cakewalk; there was a steep learning curve. But it was the advice from a Denver mission that proved to be a saving grace - to pause and get business experience first. This advice, though challenging to implement initially, allowed Matt to stay grounded and not get swept away by the waves of high-tech trends. The integration of digital strategies with traditional ones at Water Street Mission, under his leadership, has been a commendable feat. Taking note of audience preferences, Matt believes in the power of consistency. It's all about doing the little things right, day after day, and not searching for a magic bullet. His journey is a testament to the impact of innovation and excellence in non-profits, a trend that fills him with excitement.
Imagine a world where different sectors come together and join forces. Fascinating, isn't it? That's precisely what's happening when the lines between for-profit and nonprofit organizations are blurred. Christian nonprofits, in fact, are not only learning, but they are also integrating practices from for-profit entities that are resulting in improved engagement with their audience. Creating positive impacts is at the heart of the Water Street Mission that Matt Clement works for. He believes that the blend of faith in God's provision and the aspiration for growth is pivotal to a nonprofit's success. An approach influenced by the for-profit mindset can better support Christian nonprofits in extending their reach and having a lasting impact. Surely, it's all about striking the right balance to make a greater difference.
Change can be daunting, can't it? Especially when it involves shifting gears from one sector to entirely another one. Quite like transitioning from the tech industry to the nonprofit world. Here, the focus shifts from primarily looking at profit margins to creating impact. But isn't it exciting to witness how skills from one field can beautifully be harnessed in another? Well, it's all about adapting. And trust me, with a little patience and persistence, one can start feeling at home in this new space. During his chat with Matt Lombardi, Matt Clement shed light on his own journey from the tech cosmos to the nonprofit sector. It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns for him initially. He had to adjust from the digital-focused to embracing traditional marketing tools like direct mailers, which play a vital role in the nonprofit universe. You would agree that every challenge comes with a learning opportunity, right? That's what Matt Clement realized during his transition phase.
Isn't it awesome how we live in an era where we can virtually connect with people across the globe through social media platforms? It gets better when these platforms can help organizations share their stories and connect more deeply with audiences. Regularly sharing bits about the organization’s work can create a more personal bond with the followers. And guess what? This bond can significantly boost growth in the long run. Matt Clement shares how regular storytelling worked wonders for Water Street Mission. When they start sharing their work snippets, like their cooks preparing meals for the homeless or life coaches interacting with the guests, it left a profound impact on their audience. These small stories, when shared consistently, led to an incredible 50% hike in their digital revenue that year. Who knew, right?
00:00:00 - Matt Lombardi
Well, what's going on, friends? Welcome to today's episode. I'm Matt. Just wanted to give you a quick heads up on the episode. Today I got a chance to talk with Matt Clement from Water Street Mission in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A few things that I loved about this conversation. First, we talk about why the little things stack up and Matter how it is that the small things on social media, getting your content done consistently are going to help you achieve huge results. Two, I love Matt's story. He talks about coming from the tech space, from engineering space and into nonprofits, how that was a little bit of a challenge and a transition to understand that, hey, just because we're doing it super high tech over here doesn't mean that that's always what works in nonprofit land. And then number three, I just love Matt's attitude towards nonprofits. Honestly, it was so much fun to get to talk to someone who is so consistent and so just like, hey, this is what we do. We're stacking day on top of day. We're not getting all amped up about this and down in the dumps about this. But just so even keeled, I think that attitude comes across. I know it's one of the reasons why Water Street Mission has been so successful in his leadership as director of marketing. So enjoy this episode. Hope you like it. Well, hey, how's it going, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. Today super excited. Joined by Matt Clement, marketing director for Water Street Mission up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. How you doing, Matt?
00:01:28 - Matt Clement
Doing well. Thanks for having me on.
00:01:30 - Matt Lombardi
Yeah, man, thanks for joining us today. Super excited to talk all things, I mean, specifically what you guys do at Water Street Mission. There's kind of a whole group of just missions across the United States. I think this will be really valuable, too, because it is kind of a niche or a subcategory within the general kind of Christian nonprofits that we get to work with. So first, just give us a layman. How did you end up at Water Street? What's a little bit of your story of how you ended up in the marketing director?
00:01:53 - Matt Clement
Yeah, yeah, I actually would start off as an engineer down in Texas, and, yeah, got involved with crew and that's kind of how I grew up in my faith and yeah. So as I went through the process of being an engineer, I just kind of always thought, like, I'd be in this nonprofit space. I always had a heart for the nonprofit space and to help people and use the gifts and talents that God's given me to do that. So she went overseas for a couple of years with crew to Argentina, and when I came back, I was looking at engineering degrees and potentially working for Habitat, but things didn't work out and so ended up getting my MBA at the University of Colorado, Denver and really starting to look at, okay, how can I make a difference? As I moved up in the corporate world and got my bases set, which is kind of what when I talked to Denver rescue Mission, they told me, go to the for profit world first and then come back. I think that's going to be really helpful because what the nonprofit world needs is people who understand business, they understand how things work efficiently and things like that. So, yeah, I've started with an agency, worked with a tech company for about six, seven years with both of those jobs. And then this position just happened to pop up. My wife actually mentioned it to me. I wasn't necessarily looking, and I applied and was given the position. So I've been here three and a half years, and it's been a whirlwind. It's been quite a bigger learning curve than I expected, but I'm enjoying it.
00:03:21 - Matt Lombardi
That's fascinating. Say more about the learning curve. What about that has been more than you expected? Hearing the advice from the Denver mission, there one good on them for saying know, like, you're young, you're talented, you're really into what we're doing, but push pause for a minute, right. Go get the business experience. What has made that kind of a challenge for you in the transition?
00:03:41 - Matt Clement
Yeah, I think there's a little bit of old schoolness, I think, to the mission space. Anybody who works at a mission kind of understands that direct mail is still our bread and butter. It is the bread and butter for a lot of organizations, but I think missions take it to the nth degree. We have a very old donor base. And so having to go back and look at more traditional methods, looking at direct mail and fully understanding that entire process, I thought I would kind of walk in here and be able to just focus on digital the way that I focused at a tech company that I was working at. Focusing on SEO. Focusing on Facebook ads. Focusing on Google ads. When I came in, it was we're still focusing on radio, we're still focusing on PR, we're still focusing on newspaper. So learning those methods and making them efficient and making them work within an entire marketing strategy has been more complicated than I thought it would be.
00:04:38 - Matt Lombardi
Yeah, that's great. And I think you're not alone in that. It sounds like when I talk to marketing directors who come from kind of business world, they think, oh, it's going to be digital first, and they're often shocked at a few different things. One is the prominence still of traditional print TV ad as part of their real marketing stack. So, yeah, sounds pretty common. So with that transition, right, going from, okay, working at a tech company in marketing there, moving to Water Street Mission, what has been for you guys as you try to integrate that digital in with the traditional? What have been some of the big wins? Like what's? A strategy or something that you've seen in the nonprofit space working Water Street Mission that you think, hey, this has been a really big win for us, kind of in your context and maybe even speak to a little bit for other missions out there who might be in the same situation. Well, hey there. Holy donuts listeners ever feel like your nonprofit's donor experience is like a jelly filled 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 WeGive's innovative engagement tools, your donors won't just feel the love, they'll be coming back for seconds. 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 doughnut relationships, check out WeGive.
00:06:32 - Matt Clement
Yeah, I think the power of story is, of course, key in any marketing work that's being done. We do quite a bit of appeals through Facebook. We do quite a bit of display advertising through Google and things like that. But what we are finding specifically that I did not expect is that just getting our basic posts out there to a higher degree has actually been really impactful, and it's led people into a deeper relationship with us. If we're looking at our organization and benchmarking us against other people who we know how they're doing from a digital standpoint. So our agency kind of gives us benchmarks across other missions. And so out of the 50 or so missions that they're working with, we're in the top eight in terms of revenue growth over the past five years. And where we're seeing the growth consistently is on that digital side. And I think the way that we are engaging, especially across Facebook, where we know that audience that's big givers 55 and over, we're just seeing incredible growth. We've more than doubled our followers in the past three years. Yeah, it's just getting those posts about our cooks making a great meal for people experiencing homelessness. It's getting those posts about how staff are going out of their way, or it's a post about how a guest is just deciding to have a conversation with a life coach. Like those little things that you think, okay, it's just postworthy. It's not really worth doing more. We're seeing those take off, even bible verses and things like that are just important to our audience. Boosting those is just creating so much engagement and so much connection to our brand. And yeah, we are bucking the trend. It seems most of the missions that are in the space that our agency works with, they saw a downturn in digital revenue, whereas we saw an increase of about 50% last year. We're really intentional. We know that we have an older audience. We're just trying to engage them in the best way possible, but we're also at the same time, trying to engage the community that's underneath that too, that will be our future donors. So that's anybody from 25 up, we're also giving them some good content and some good brand connection.
00:09:00 - Matt Lombardi
That's awesome. Yeah. Well, it sounds like it's just kind of, hey, meet your audience where they are. Right?
00:09:04 - Matt Clement
Exactly.
00:09:04 - Matt Lombardi
Sometimes not rocket science. I think we're always, at least I am I'm always attracted to, well, what's the kind of sexy new thing, right? What's the magic bullet that's going to solve all these issues? And sometimes the answer is doing the small things consistently that don't seem like much. Like those just add up when you're doing them consistently over months and years to where all of a sudden you look back and you're like, wow, you just grew 50% right. With digital. So I love that, man. I love that shifting. Next question here. What's a trend you're seeing with Christian nonprofits that's got you really excited? And then maybe on the flip side, give us one that you're a little concerned when you see this trend out there. This is your section where you can have some hot takes, if that's cool with you.
00:09:43 - Matt Clement
Well, to be honest, in the mission space, I love the amount of innovation that's happening. I would honestly say I'm not the most well versed in how other Christian nonprofits are doing. So to be honest, a lot of what I have to say is positive. I don't have a lot of worries. Yeah, that's great.
00:10:02 - Matt Lombardi
I mean, just seeing others in the same space innovate is enough, right? We're actually doing that innovation work that maybe 1015 years ago wasn't happening. I think that's a good thing. It's okay to not have negative things in this space. That's always a positive, right? Okay. Whether you're bringing on a team member, whether you're talking with someone else on your staff, maybe you're at a conference and you run into someone else who's also worked with a mission or a Christian nonprofit, are there any resources, any books, any websites, any blogs that you're consistently sharing with others in the space?
00:10:33 - Matt Clement
Yeah, I may be biased, but I tend to go to the more for profit pieces. I think part of that's painted by my MBA and some of the things that I've gone through being in the agency world and the tech world. So, yeah, actually we're going to remotely join the inbound conference next week, and we're super excited about that. The amount of things that are coming out about AI are just incredible. And part of the reason I lean on the for profit space is because there's a constant need to enhance how you're caring for your stakeholders. I think on the nonprofit space, and this is just something I've noticed working here is there can be a little bit of everything will turn out okay, like God's got us. Yes, that's absolutely true. But I think there needs to be a desire to continually grow and have almost a for profit attitude because God wants the kingdom to move forward. And so, you know, I think there's just so much opportunity out there and that just grabs me all that to like I love inbound Anne Hanley is somebody that I've constantly looked at in terms of her content writing. Behance is kind of my design inspiration website that I go to. So a lot of those are not necessarily Christian in their base, but they're coming from places where there's almost this consistent pressure of revenue generation and things like that are going on behind the scenes. But in terms of from the mission space, citygate does give us a lot of resources. A lot of the times the resources they give us though, have already been said in for profit publications and things like that.
00:12:15 - Matt Lombardi
That's great. I think what you're touching on is like in for profit world, there's just this demand for excellence because if you're not excellent at what you do, you'll be put out of business by competitor. Your customers will move on to the next thing because they have a million other things they could be paying someone for. And so there is this constant pressure in for profit that things have to be done with excellence and if they're not, you cease to exist. So it just drives the ball forward. And in some ways, I think it's healthier than nonprofit world. We don't have that right because it allows us to really focus on things that are upside down, kingdom impact things where it's like, well, I know that this doesn't scale and I know that this isn't the best for the bottom line, but it's important for the kingdom. But we have to blend that with those principles of okay, we need to do things with excellence.
00:12:59 - Matt Clement
My email is mclement@wsm.org. I would welcome anybody who's in the mission space or outside the mission space to just take the time and check out our podcast. Just search for Water Street Mission wherever you find your podcast and you can learn more about what we do and how we care for those experiencing homelessness.
