Episode Transcript
Monica Pitts 0:00
Welcome to marketing with purpose. I'm your host, Monica Pitts. And today, I'm really excited because we're kicking off our very first RoundUp episode. Now, as web developers who build lots of websites for nonprofits, we understand the challenges that you face. And while at MayeCreate we don't run nonprofits ourselves, we do know how crucial it is to have an engaged and supportive board, especially when it comes to marketing. We interact with boards on nonprofits all the time, because those are the decision makers for many of our clients. And so we reached out to the real experts, we have the words and advice from eleven inspiring nonprofit leaders to share their actionable advice on the best ways to get your boards involved with your marketing, because we hear you you have a hard time getting your board involved with your marketing, and even just getting your marketing done. Because you're short on budget, you're short on time, and you're short on people, right? So I was really excited to be able to share this information with you. I really enjoyed every single submission and hearing what they had to say and all of their advice. And it really just made so much sense to me. So whether you are a nonprofit marketer just getting started or a leader, this episode is packed with actionable tips and proven strategies straight from the source. Now, before we get started, I just want to tell you, you don't have to take notes, because I took all the notes for you. They're over mayecreate.com, that's mayecreate.com. There's a fully formatted blog post ready for you to go over and read and consume. And the link to that lovely blog post is actually in the show notes, wherever you're listening to this podcast. So you can just hop right on over and click it whenever you need it. Okay, so with that, let's just dive right on in.
Monica Pitts 1:52
Let's hear what our experts have to say. And learn the tips and tricks that they use to get their board involved with their marketing. Let's get to business. You're on mission and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures. I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose. Just one more teeny tiny thing. Before we get started. I want to say thank you to our sponsor, MayeCreate Design. Yes, that's my company. But no, really. This episode is brought to you with love by our resource, the year end campaign planning checklist. It's a monthly breakdown of activities and campaign messaging goals from September to January. So you can download your free checklist in the resources section of mayecreate.com or by clicking on the link in the show notes. And now, drumroll please. I feel like I'm on Christmas vacation. Let's hear from our first nonprofit leader, Mr. Simon Hart, Deputy Director at Forge Youth Mentoring. So he's going to kick off this actionable advice train of an episode because I felt like he gave such a great big picture overview of the steps to engage your board with your marketing. Thank you so much, Simon! We're actually going to use his educate, inspire and simplify framework to organize the whole rest of the content in this episode because I thought that it flowed so well.
Simon Hart 3:55
When you're juggling so many roles and responsibilities, getting your board of directors involved in operations is a game changer. Here's how we're doing it when it comes to marketing. First things first, educate our board members aren't marketing professionals. So offering trainings, workshops, even just scheduling conversations about marketing into the agenda can be helpful in bringing them up to speed and the importance of marketing. Next, it's so important to create buy in from your board by allowing them to help create the marketing strategy. Sure, they may not know the ins and outs of marketing, but their insights are invaluable. Running your ideas by the board. Hosting brainstorming sessions and asking for their thoughts on specific channels or tactics will help get everyone excited about your organization's marketing vision. Finally, in order to have the board participate in your organization's marketing, we need to make it easy for them to get involved. Clear updates and specific action steps are crucial. For instance, when we launch our summer campaign, I'll shoot a quick message to each board member ask them to like Comment on and share our campaign video. It's simple steps like these that allow our board to have a real impact without overwhelming them. So there you have it, educate, involve and simplify. That's our three step approach to getting our board of directors engaged in our marketing efforts. I hope these tips help you too.
Monica Pitts 5:19
So Simon explained that we need to educate our board members, which is 100% essential, I mean, it's not just essential for boards, it's essential for handing off any task in any situation. And the first step to educating someone else is first assessing your audience. So in a way, first, we need to educate ourselves to make sure that we can lead and communicate with our team effectively so they can intake the information and roll with it. Now, Kari Hopkins, the COO of Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries starts by meeting her board where they are.
Kari Hopkins 5:57
I think the best way to get your board involved in your marketing is to ask for their help. Ask them how they consume content, where do they get their news? How do they communicate with their friends, and then think of creative ways to meet them where they are. I think so many times we want our board members to be on social media or to follow us on our blog, that they consume traditional media. So that's where we need to go. Because then they get more excited when they see our organization come through their information passed on by their friends. And I think that's one way you can get your board involved in marketing.
Monica Pitts 6:37
from an education standpoint, Kari's advice is spot on, we always have to meet our students where they are. But also, that's the same thing that great marketers do when they're planning their marketing campaigns. And usually, as a nonprofit, you want to attract more people like your board members to your organization. So Kari's advice just make sense. Now, Rebecca Vickers, VP of Operations at FMO Media is taking Kari's thought one step further. She suggests that marketers who are just getting started with an organization need to become educated about the board dynamics and functions, like the inner workings of the board and the organization. So they can create a marketing plan that everyone can rally around and to focus on developing a relationship with your board members in much the same way that your development staff would be developing a relationship with your donors, which makes a lot of sense because you are asking them to do things for you right?
Rebecca Vickers 7:39
You absolutely need to have buy in from your board to strengthen advocacy for your organization's mission, vision and initiatives. I believe every organization must have full company buy in and most certainly from your leadership. I think one of the first things is to ensure your marketing program supports the overall strategic plan for the organization. And then understand how your board functions and their group dynamic before you approach them to assign any key roles or responsibilities. I do highly encourage marketing leaders to know and get to know your board members and build those relationships just as you would in marketing with a customer or a client and understand the individual board members motivators and strengths and align those with the appropriate opportunities where they can make an impact in your organization's marketing, and be that advocate. I've seen more friction and boards where members and staff are at odds over priorities and equally great situations where leadership fosters healthy connections. One of my best experiences was as a marketing coordinator, where when I was developing a new group sales program within our theater to generate more revenue. Before pitching to the board, I carefully aligned the messaging data, visuals to tailor my communication and presentation to the group's goals. Then we leveraged key board members with extensive sales backgrounds to assist in launching our program. I know the program is still alive today. And I believe it's partially due to a successful board buy in and engagement from the beginning. So remember, always praise your board too. And remember to encourage them for the impact that they're having encouragement can go a long way in maintaining that advocacy and support. But make sure you're building those relationships with them first.
Monica Pitts 9:35
I love Rebecca's advice. She's so right, because a good leader understands our team and when we're trying to get our board to rally and work on our marketing with us. We are a leader of the team. Now for our last self education tip. Natalie Hayek, a professional content writer with extensive experience in nonprofit, education, and the military community builds on the idea that Rebecca just presented about developing those relationships with your board members. She says that we can evaluate each team member to pair their responsibilities with the reason each was brought to serve your organization.
Natalie Hayek 10:18
If you want to empower your nonprofit board members to be more involved in your marketing, you want to think about targeting that purpose that each member was brought in to serve either wealth, wisdom, or work. So number one, you can target their wealth of connections to people with deep pockets are great reputations. So ask them to invite these people to your events where you can promote your cause more deeply. They can connect you with companies with Corporate Social Responsibility efforts that align with your mission. Number two, you can leverage their wisdom by asking them to be your ambassador, that might mean that they write a testimonial or record a video testimonial that speaks about why they support your nonprofit. And you can use that and repurpose it across traditional media. Or maybe they're a great public speaker. And they can speak about topics that align with your mission at big corporate events, or even smaller community events. Finally, number three, leverage their work by asking them to share your events, your fundraisers, your requests for volunteers, when they share with their their networks, they expand your reach by the thousands. And finally, a little pro tip, if you don't have a junior board yet, put one together, they'll infuse energy and innovation in all three of these areas.
Monica Pitts 11:41
Setting up a Junior Board is also excellent advice for those of you who may be trying to reach a younger donor demographic. Okay, so what I'm hearing from all of this advice from Kari, Rebecca and Natalie is that, once you've educated yourself about your board, and you understand how they want to communicate, and you're developing relationships with each member, then you can consider how they can best contribute to your organization's marketing. And after that, you can move forward to educate your board, so you can set them up for success. And Tami R Benus, serial board member and CPA, has something to say about that. She says that we should think about our board members like new employees.
Tami R Benus 12:27
Think of your board members as a new employee you're bringing on they need guidance and direction. An easy way to help our board members promote and market our nonprofits is with talking points, like a little recipe card that has different items on them that will help them open up a conversation with someone. It doesn't have to be formal networking like at a chamber event or something, it could be something as simple as being at the park watching your kids play ball. But when you have these talking points, it makes it easier for some folks, we do have those that can talk to anybody about anything anywhere. But that's not the bulk of our people. One of the things that also helps is stories. If you can have, you know, if you donate 50 bucks to our organization that will provide school supplies for a year for a child, if you donate $100, that will provide a meal for the family for a holiday. When people know where their money's going, they're more likely to donate. And also make sure to always say thank you. I mean, that is so important to think people, whether it's your donors or your board members.
Monica Pitts 13:47
That is great advice, Tammy. Thank you. And I especially love the part about the recipe cards, because that's something that we use at MayeCreate as well when we have new employees. Before we send them off to go to networking events or conferences, we make sure that they know how to explain what they do with the organization and what the organization does, our competitive advantages, and why we do things in a way that we feel is so advantageous to our clients, because they don't want to talk about things that they don't know about. It's really intimidating. And so if we follow Tami's advice with these note cards, man, that's a huge step in the right direction towards getting your board involved. Now another person who totally agrees with Tami is fundraising coach, Jamie Freidrichs, and actually with Jamie's advice you can do more than just educate. You can do all three of the action items in Simon's framework that we're threading through this episode, educate, involve and simplify.
Jaime Freidrichs 14:47
My best advice for involving the board of directors and marketing is to make sure you give them scripts, scripts, and more scripts, and FAQs, and event flyers and brochures or one pagers board members need to be equipped. Most board members really do want to help you with building awareness and promoting your services and events, especially fundraising events. They have great intentions, but it is so easy to get sidetracked. Typically, I find it's a combination of life getting in the way, and a fear of saying the wrong thing. written scripts make it easy for board members to share your social media posts or forward your emails, or talk to people about your organization without overthinking it and feeling overwhelmed. And don't think just because you have a powerhouse board with experienced community leaders full of professional expertise, that they won't appreciate you helping them craft what to say through a script. In fact, busy competent board members especially appreciate this level of help. So if you want to make sure board members follow through on sharing your marketing messages, give them detailed scripts that make it really easy for them.
Monica Pitts 16:04
If you are a regular listener of the marketing with purpose podcast, you probably recognize Jamie's voice because she's actually been on quite a few podcasts with me, she's got one talking about asking for donations, and also how to embrace no premium fundraising. So if you haven't listened to those, they are oldies but still extremely relevant goodies just packed with information for you. Okay, so Jamie's advice wraps up our education part of this trifecta for board involvement. Now earlier, Natalie Hayek gave us some advice about targeting the purpose that each member was brought in to serve either wealth, wisdom or work. And after making those observations, you can really put the advice of Amparo Vazquez, founder of Astekah to work, she builds her marketing team by considering the strengths of each board member and then grouping them together to accomplish specific tasks.
Amparo Vazquez 17:12
A great way to get your board involved with marketing efforts within your organization is to designate a small team of members of the board that will serve as more local brand ambassadors, and your marketing team can create simple campaigns and marketing materials that can be shared by that team of more local brand ambassadors. They can be things like promo video clips, or Instagram posts or Instagram shares. A sort of Rolodex of materials to be able to choose from that are either just purely about the organization or that allow for customization to include bits of the board member stories that can be included that speak to why those board members are involved in the organization. And then those materials can be shared by that team with their wider community, and then report back to the board to share about those efforts.
Monica Pitts 18:08
Our next expert Rebekah Robertson, Executive Director of Stonebridge House also involves her board in marketing by giving them specific tasks. And she shares a few examples about how she involves her board members during events and allows them to be the stars of the show while she fields questions in the background.
Rebekah Robertson 18:28
I think one of our most successful marketing events was the open house that we hosted at Stonebridge house. The Board of Directors kind of enjoyed giving people tours of the house, each room kind of had a theme. And we talked about who donated service and items to the nonprofit. So that was kind of fun to talk about. I set up my table as executive director out on the yard. This with the kind of marketing materials and of course, a QR code for folks to make donations. And so if people had questions, they could step outside and so the tours could continue, you know, kind of continuously through the house. That was a lot of fun and get everybody involved. The other thing that our board of directors got involved in was our the dance that we did for como gives and so at a board meeting, we just had one of the board members who was not willing to really do the dance, but she was willing to record us doing a dance and we had so much fun coming up with dances. It was awesome.
Monica Pitts 19:42
Like Rebekah, Jennifer Rice, founder of Sent with Love, also involves her board members by assigning them specific tasks and then she takes it one step further. She simplifies, remember because we are educating, involving and simplifying. She's simplifies assigning those tasks by assigning them at board meetings.
Jennifer Rice 20:04
One of the best ways to engage our board has been to actually have assignments, where people sign up during a board meeting to do particular tasks. In addition, our donation platform givebutter.com allows folks to have their own donation page, and also have a running total of how much they have helped us to raise. Those are two primary ways that we have been able to engage our board. Also, outside of marketing, I wanted to mention that as we have had special events come up, asking board members to sign up for particular tasks for a given event has also been a way to engage the board in a greater way.
Monica Pitts 21:01
You know it's good advice when you hear it more than once. And Jennifer isn't the only one who leverages board meetings to bring marketing to the forefront. Anika Jackson, professor at USC Annenberg and a philanthropist who has helped create multiple nonprofit organizations, echoes the advice that Kari offered earlier to meet her board members where they are, in this case physically, like at the meeting. So she simplifies the process by carving out time in the meeting agenda, to have her board members physically take action and do marketing tasks during the meeting.
Anika Jackson 21:38
One of the best ways to get your board involved in your organization's marketing is to make sure that you are meeting them where they're at, for instance, set aside time at each board meeting to discuss marketing, and to give them easy access to materials, whether that is flyers, invitations, social media posts, take a few minutes to have people like and comment or to share posts. And one board that I was on also had thank you notes to donors where we could sign them during the board meetings, which made a very effective use of our time and our assistance in helping donor cultivation, which is in itself marketing. We want to make sure that board members feel like they have enough information and the right calls to action and the right materials to properly promote campaigns to make sure that they're doing advocacy work, that they are communicating on social media and that they are sharing invitations to events, and whatever other calls to action that you might have. So again, the best advice that I have is make it very easy. Make sure that you have all of the materials prepped for them, the backgrounders make sure that you have all of the graphics, images or other support materials that they might need, and meet them where they are, whether it's the board meeting, email, Slack, or however you communicate with them on a regular basis.
Monica Pitts 23:03
We have had some incredible advice from all of our experts. And to wrap up this nonprofit roundup podcast I want to close with this awesome piece of advice from Liz Sensintaffar. She has more than a decade of experience working and volunteering and nonprofit marketing and she does a really good job of giving us a wrap up of Simon's educate, involve and simplify strategy and then some giving us actionable and specific examples on how we can put all of his awesome advice to work.
Liz Sensintaffar 23:34
Here are my top four tips for getting your board to engage with marketing. Number one, get them involved right away. As soon as they join the board give them meaningful ways to take action. New leaders and members are generally eager to dive in and follow through. They're just waiting for you to show them how to help. Number two, give them meaningful bite size action items. Don't just say help with spreading the word or please help us with sponsorships. Say I'm launching a campaign please share this specific post or could you call this donor here's their number a script and why I want you to be the one to call them. Number three, keep their eyes on the mission. For us. This means we start each meeting with with a student or job candidate success story and why we always have a former clients or graduates serve on our board. When the mission is front and center. They can't help but feel inspired. Number four, impose term limits. Burnout is a real thing and it can negatively impact the morale of your board and even influence newer members. Boards are tricky because you're dealing with wonderfully compassionate and probably overcommitted humans, but they're such a gift to your organization if you just give them a chance.
Monica Pitts 24:44
So there you have it, advice from 11 experts in under 25 minutes. Now as you move forward with the goal of involving your board with your marketing keep Simon's three part method in mind. First we educate we start with ourselves. So we educate ourselves about the board, their motivations, and abilities, and then flip it educating the board members about how your marketing aligns with your mission, and provide training and resources to share and talk about your organization. And using that education, then you're ready to involve your board members. All of our experts agree that providing resources and assigning specific tasks is the best way to make sure your board is involved with your marketing. And of course, we're going to simplify throughout we have heard so many examples of simplification from our experts, from notecards, to templates to leveraging board meetings to get your marketing done. So I just want to offer one last round of thanks to everyone who contributed their wisdom in this round up. Simon, Kari, Rebecca, Natalie, Tami, Jamie, Amparo, Rekah with an H, Jennifer, Anika, and Liz, thank you so much. I really appreciate all the time and effort that you put into the advice that you shared today.
Monica Pitts 26:00
And if you listener if you enjoyed this podcast, or if you learned a thing or two, then by all means subscribe because we have more great episodes just like this one coming your way. Like in our next episode, you'll discover new ways to market your organization locally. For my guest, Shannon Houchin, owner of Roadside Republic, Shannon shares her story of how she revamped her whole life and started running over 200 roadside stands selling peaches, and she has tons of advice for both nonprofits and businesses. So before you do another carwash, or a bake sale for your nonprofit, or before you choose that next location for your business or decide on a marketing tactic to connect with a local audience, you really need to listen to this episode because Shannon has figured out exactly how to do it. And of course, thank you to our MayeCreate resource sponsor, our year-end campaign planning checklist. This checklist outlines a monthly breakdown of activities and campaign messaging goals from September to January. It talks about how to market your year-end giving campaign using social media, emails and peer to peer fundraising. Plus it links to resources for more support and offers answers to commonly asked questions. So hop on over to mayecreate.com, That's mayecreate.com. And click on our resources section to download your copy of our year-end campaign planning checklist. So thank you so much for joining me today. Make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening so you don't miss out on our next episode. And don't be afraid to use that link in the show notes to go over and enjoy the fully formatted blog post with all the pictures broken down and covering every single thing that we talked about today because your next step is to put this information to action. And until next time, go forth and market with purpose.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
