Nonprofits face a constant challenge: delivering their message effectively with limited resources. For Nick Fynn, Head of Global Growth Marketing at TechSoup, this reality drives his mission to help organizations bridge the gap between technology and social impact.
Nick has a deep understanding of effective communication strategies through his work at TechSoup, a global nonprofit that connects other nonprofits with essential technology resources. "You cannot not communicate," Nick explains. Everything you do is communicating to your audience, and this includes when you are not saying something to them."
During this episode of Be A Marketer, Nick and host Dave Charest explore the fundamentals of nonprofit messaging and how organizations can maintain consistent communication despite limited resources. They discuss why email remains a powerful tool for nonprofit outreach, how to speak the language of different audiences, and ways to develop intentional communication strategies that resonate.
Listen in as Nick shares practical advice for nonprofits looking to strengthen their messaging approach. He also reveals how TechSoup's tiered membership model helps organizations make smarter technology decisions while building a collaborative nonprofit community.
🎯 What he does: Nick Fynn is the Head of Global Growth Marketing at TechSoup, a 501c3 nonprofit that helps other nonprofits and NGOs gain access to technology and learn to use it effectively. With an extensive background in communications and advocacy, Nick focuses on helping organizations connect technology with their mission.
💡 Key quotes: "Every nonprofit out there should be doing email. I don't think there's any one-fits-all frequency of how often you should be doing it, or what should it say, but everybody should be using it. It's a foundational tool."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
Chapters
Nonprofits face a constant challenge: delivering their message effectively with limited resources. For Nick Fynn, Head of Global Growth Marketing at TechSoup, this reality drives his mission to help organizations bridge the gap between technology and social impact.
Nick has a deep understanding of effective communication strategies through his work at TechSoup, a global nonprofit that connects other nonprofits with essential technology resources. "You cannot not communicate," Nick explains. Everything you do is communicating to your audience, and this includes when you are not saying something to them."
During this episode of Be A Marketer, Nick and host Dave Charest explore the fundamentals of nonprofit messaging and how organizations can maintain consistent communication despite limited resources. They discuss why email remains a powerful tool for nonprofit outreach, how to speak the language of different audiences, and ways to develop intentional communication strategies that resonate.
Listen in as Nick shares practical advice for nonprofits looking to strengthen their messaging approach. He also reveals how TechSoup's tiered membership model helps organizations make smarter technology decisions while building a collaborative nonprofit community.
🎯 What he does: Nick Fynn is the Head of Global Growth Marketing at TechSoup, a 501c3 nonprofit that helps other nonprofits and NGOs gain access to technology and learn to use it effectively. With an extensive background in communications and advocacy, Nick focuses on helping organizations connect technology with their mission.
💡 Key quotes: "Every nonprofit out there should be doing email. I don't think there's any one-fits-all frequency of how often you should be doing it, or what should it say, but everybody should be using it. It's a foundational tool."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
What is Be a Marketer with Dave Charest?
As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Dave Charest:
On today's episode, you'll hear from a communicator and storyteller that shows your nonprofit how to get more intentional with your messaging. This is the Be a Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:
My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:
Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be A Marker podcast. As always, excited to have you here and excited to see the one and only Kelsey Carter. Hi, Kelsi.
Kelsi Carter:
Hi, Dave. So excited to see you as well.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. Hey. I've got a question for you as we get into our conversation here today. But has there ever been or maybe what's a moment in your career or even your personal life where having the right support really made all the difference for you?
Kelsi Carter:
I would say definitely moments in career wise, but I think, like, a big moment personally was when I was in college and I ended up switching majors. The support from my mom, she drove down. I was at school in Ohio from New Hampshire, so that's, like, a long drive, about twelve to fourteen hours. And I was really panicking my freshman year because I was originally going for zoology, but I just I just knew that's not what I wanted to do. I was just doing it because I had no other idea what I wanted to do.
Kelsi Carter:
Mhmm.
Kelsi Carter:
So my mom came down, and we literally, like, talked the entire night and figured out what I was gonna do. And she's like, you're doing media production. That's what you're passionate about. That's what you wanna do. And she helped me get all of, like, my transfer documents done so I could submit them to Emerson College in Boston to be a little closer.
Kelsi Carter:
So I think without her support, I would've stayed there and I would've been very miserable for those four years.
Dave Charest:
Well, how was that making you feel to just, I mean, not have the right kind of direction, I guess, is a is a way to think about it. Right?
Kelsi Carter:
Yeah. You just feel lost. You kind of feel lost and a little helpless.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. Yeah. And you're just trying to do that on your own too. You must have felt a little bit out of sorts.
Kelsi Carter:
Well, and it's also too you I had to take it in account, like, money as a factor because Kent State was much cheaper than Emerson too. So there was a lot of like, oh, well, should I really be doing this? Because I would have to take out more loans, than what I was originally planning for. So it was just really an internal struggle. And then also I did some stuff in media production at Kent State, but I never fully like was on a set before.
Kelsi Carter:
So I was like, should I even do this? Like, I don't know.
Dave Charest:
Yeah.
Kelsi Carter:
So it's like the lack of experience, but it's also, like I think I just expected, like, myself to be, like, great right away, which is, like, so unreasonable.
Dave Charest:
So I love that you you got help obviously from your mom, and then you started to go down this path of making decision. Did you also get help from people along the way when you made that choice? When you said, okay, I'm gonna go into this? Like, did you get help from people, like, again, getting the documents together, transferring, like, figuring out what classes you need to take, like, all of that?
Kelsi Carter:
Yeah. Actually, my teachers from Kent State, Specifically, my chemistry teacher. She was really, really great. She wrote me, like, a letter for recommendation, and then she prioritized getting my documents that I needed quick. So I literally asked her.
Kelsi Carter:
I emailed her saying, hey, I need my transcripts. I need, you to sign off on this. And she's like, come tomorrow. I'll have it ready. So it was just really nice that she prioritized that, and she actually even communicated with my guidance counselor there, I guess, at the time.
Kelsi Carter:
I guess that they're still called that in college. She actually communicated with them as well and asked her to send out an email to all of my other professors to make sure that it was, like, time sensitive. So that really sped up the process. And then transferring all of the Emerson, we had huge help just finding a place to live because I was originally told that transfer students could get housing. And then when I got there, we could not.
Kelsi Carter:
So I had someone help me from the school, actually, who is a sophomore there. She helped me find a place with other transfer students, which was perfect for my major. So it really was, like, help all the way that really got me to where I am.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. So it's that support. Right? It really does make a lot of difference. And I think, you know, particularly I I bring this up because when you start thinking about oftentimes, we talk about small businesses, which of course, you know, they're wearing many hats and doing things and it's a whole other level of thing there.
Dave Charest:
But also when you start thinking about nonprofits, right, where you've got a situation where, okay, they're a nonprofit. Right? So we're often constrained by resources, often constrained by people volunteering for their organization. And the support that folks can get to help them kind of overcome some of those obstacles, yourself included, and and myself too. Right?
Dave Charest:
Like, is so important. And I think even when you start thinking about just this podcast, I mean, the whole idea was that you don't have to be a marketer alone. Right? You don't have to do that on your own. We've got people here to help you make smarter decisions in the things that you're doing.
Dave Charest:
It's why this podcast exists. Right? So you can get advice from experts and other people who have kind of been there before you and how they're making marketing work for them. And, hopefully, you can take something away from those conversations and apply it to your unique situation. And today, we're gonna hear from someone that really focuses on the technology side of things and specifically for nonprofits.
Dave Charest:
And I think that's a whole other area where there are so many technological advances or things that may help you in your decision, but there are so many choices to make that it that even in itself can be overwhelming. So, Kelsey, why don't you tell us a little bit about who our guest is today?
Kelsi Carter:
Of course. Our guest today is Nick Finn. Fun fact, my dog's name is Finn. Nick Finn is the head of global growth marketing at TechSoup. So TechSoup is a five zero one C three globally operated nonprofit, and they help other nonprofits and non governmental organizations not only gain access to technology, but they also teach them how to effectively use it.
Kelsi Carter:
So TechSoup genuinely strives to really understand nonprofits and connect them with the right technology to support their specific needs. So, essentially, their goal is to determine whether a particular technology can effectively help a nonprofit achieve its mission.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. So as an example here, right, TechSoup partners with Constant Contact to really, you know, make our tools available within our online catalog of offers for nonprofits. And so we provide those essential communications tools at a discount to TechSoup members, recognizing that, of course, nonprofits can often benefit from having that type of pricing break. And if we go back to Nick, he brings this extensive background in communication and storytelling to TechSoup, which is why we had him on the episode here today. And he's focused on really spreading the word about the company's membership and the service lines that it has in place.
Dave Charest:
And both are designed to help nonprofits where they execute on their use of technology while bringing its membership community together so they can actually talk to each other and learn from each other and and be that support mechanism for each other. And fun conversation with Nick. I really enjoyed talking with him. He shares with us today how TechSoup uses email in its own marketing efforts. He talks about the importance of message discipline for intentional communication and how to prioritize messaging across multiple channels.
Dave Charest:
So let's go to Nick as he tells us a little bit more about TechSoup.
Nick Fynn:
We have three membership levels at TechSoup. There is a basic DIY level, we call it, do it yourself, obviously. That membership level does not cost you any money to join TechSoup. Right? You do have to still submit your nonprofit's credentials to become qualified to use the catalog.
Nick Fynn:
Right? You have to tell us your EIN. We have to make sure and confirm that you are a legitimate nonprofit. Right? But that DIY level is really designed for folks who who know exactly what they need.
Nick Fynn:
They just want access to the catalog to go get it, and then they know what to do with it, and they're gonna go on their merry way. The two other membership levels are the next level up is called Boost, and then the next level up from that is called Quad. Boost is $99 a year. That's an organizational subscription. Boost has a place where you sort of have a little bit of extra discount, a little bit of extra knowledge, a little bit of it's the cream on top of everything that really adds a little bit of extra value, limited time things that may come to Tech Soup that don't necessarily end up in the larger catalog because they're limited in time.
Nick Fynn:
More and more, Boost is becoming the place where we try to help you with decision making. Right? Not troubleshooting and tech support for what you've got, but decision making in the marketplace. Like, I have all these options. What should I do?
Nick Fynn:
Which of these things is even the right fit for me? Is there some tool out there that does something that I don't even know about, but would fit perfectly my use case? Right? So we're trying to build Boost more and more in that direction just to help people gather knowledge so that they're not on their own as they try to assess this stuff and make their own decisions. But then the third level that I mentioned earlier is quad.
Nick Fynn:
That's an organizational membership also. It's $200 a year. And in quad, you kind of get the deepest of the deep. You're gonna be accessing community in there with other nonprofits who may even work in exactly the same mission area that you work in. And it's an opportunity, again, to trade knowledge, to trade notes, to talk to each other, to collaborate.
Nick Fynn:
There's more TechSoup staff expertise in Quad as well, folks who can really step into a chat room and say, hey. I see you're really struggling with this Microsoft three sixty five implementation. Let me email some folks and get back to you and see if we can figure out how to solve this issue for you. So those are the three membership levels. These defined membership layers are a newer thing for TechSoup.
Nick Fynn:
Over the past few years, we've rolled this out. And it's like the rest of the tech economy is, we evolve as well. And so membership is the direction we're evolving in right now because we really want to stay focused on what the needs are of the nonprofits. That's our primary audience and that's who we care about.
Dave Charest:
You mentioned the team and yourself coming together and doing work that on many levels is rewarding. What do you love most about the role?
Nick Fynn:
What a great question because there's several things that I actually really love about it. It might depend day to day too. Well, I mean, first and foremost, I do have to say, like, the team itself. Like, the human beings who constitute the marketing team are they're just great people. They're fun to interact with during the day.
Nick Fynn:
I I really enjoy spending time with them. And and like TechSoup's leadership too, who I report to, just great people. I've worked in some environments where there weren't great people. And, you know, it just it saps everybody's energy, and and you don't stay and things don't happen as well as they could. But the people of TechSoup are just like their aces.
Nick Fynn:
I really love working with them. But today, like in a different pivot, I'd say, like, actually part of what I love about this job is the numbers because you get this incredibly complex view of what global civil society looks like. Now, just think about what that means for a second, right? We're in the business of supporting all these organizations around the world who do good. These are not businesses.
Nick Fynn:
They're not the government either. But we know lots about all the global businesses and all the global governments, but this this is a different group of people. And they're extremely focused on doing some things, making some real good change in the world. And it's fascinating to watch what that means and how those numbers manifest. And those numbers can be all over the place.
Nick Fynn:
Like, are we talking about organic Google traffic to your site? Are we talking about nonprofits that grabbed a particular fundraising project over the past year and participated? Maybe it's something to do with this program we have called digital resilience, which is where we're trying to work directly with funders and help them support nonprofits they already work with in updating the tech stack of those nonprofits. Because one of the big things that we know, nonprofits, when they fall a little bit behind in the technology that they're using, accidentally open security doors, and they become much more at risk. And sometimes when nefarious actors take advantage of those risks, it costs nonprofits and then therefore their donors and these grantmakers who support those nonprofits.
Nick Fynn:
It can cost a lot of money to repair that damage. And so, anyway, digital resilience is an effort among many things to address those kinds of issues and bring a nonprofit's tech stack up to date. So I guess that's me saying that, like, another part of the job I really love is that we're doing all sorts of different things all the time. And I just there's great enthusiasm for that work, and it's super interesting.
Dave Charest:
What do you find most challenging about it then?
Nick Fynn:
I think what every nonprofit worker out there would say is the same thing. It's like constrained resources. Right? Yeah. Back to this core issue that really faces the sector, like you know, and TechSoup, of course, has far more resources than a lot of other nonprofits, but technology is expensive.
Nick Fynn:
And if you got every tool you wanted to do all the things that you wanted, well, who knows what that cost would eventually look like, but that's one of the biggest challenges. And then, I guess the other big challenge I would say is what I was referring to earlier, that often we seem to be in the business of trying to hack these ecommerce tools and put them towards different uses than they're really designed for. You can have some success with that, but, boy, there are some moments where you just want to give feedback to the developers and be like, If you guys would just tweak this one thing, we could do so much with this. And I know it's not what you intended, but what a great creative use of it. Right?
Dave Charest:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious. Tell me some of the things about how you're using email marketing for TechSoup.
Nick Fynn:
Well, obviously, there's a a steady stream of email that's just informing nonprofits about various offers in the catalog, whether that's a technology product from, you know, Microsoft or Adobe or somebody else. Often, it's around the service offerings that I was talking about earlier as well. You know, things like, Microsoft three sixty five implementation or or managed IT, which is another big service offering through TechSoup where a nonprofit can contract with us for kind of like a large overarching management of their whole technology stack. And in some cases, that's exactly what they need is they need help because they don't have somebody to do that themselves, and they wanna stay focused on their mission. Right?
Nick Fynn:
So it's a lot of connecting the dots between users and potential offers that they could take advantage of, but that's only one part of it. Another big part of it, of course, is talking more about the content area of technology and nonprofits together. Right? And that can be super interesting because it covers a whole lot of territory. We've actually been in a little period of time recently where we're backing away and retooling our blog a little bit to bring a little bit more focus to that.
Nick Fynn:
But, generally, it's talking about these larger issues that nonprofits face around, you know, tech and fundraising, how to troubleshoot this particular thing. Of course, right now in the current state of affairs, everybody's fascinated with AI. And where is that gonna impact nonprofits? It already is. How does it help us?
Nick Fynn:
What do we need to watch out for that? So so all sorts of content themes that emerge in that email marketing. Of course, email itself, we use automated programs as well in the back, and that's been a very, what would I call it, extremely interesting and deeply powerful tool that maybe not everybody gets to work with. But when you have a well integrated CRM that's getting data from your other business systems, you can really set up some very interesting programs where you're reaching out to users, maybe reminding them of things, letting them know things that are coming up, renewal dates on subscriptions that they are relying on, for instance. So that back end automation, I think, is super interesting as well.
Nick Fynn:
And then, of course, using email to just move people through the process of actually the sign up and onboarding process in the first place. Because like I said for TechSoup, since we only serve nonprofits, you have to, again, qualify with us. You have to show us, you have to prove to us you're a nonprofit and then you can use the catalog. But that means there is a defined set of steps we need to go through. And email is part of making sure that we're just reminding people, like, hey.
Nick Fynn:
You finished step
Dave Charest:
two. There's another one. I'm still
Nick Fynn:
step three. Maybe you should walk back in and check that out, see if you have the answer. What can we do to help? Right? I have always found email marketing fascinating because sort of hearkening back to I'll date myself a little bit here, but, like, my very early, twenties, you know, work in in politics, like, that's really pre internet.
Nick Fynn:
Nobody's running a webpage yet. There's not email going out. I mean, people are starting to talk about what that could look like if we someday did something like that, but it was all that stuff was completely nascent. But we had a version of email back then, which was sort of a eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, and the top third of it was occupied by an image. And then you had a big splashy headline, and then you had copy underneath it that explained an argument.
Nick Fynn:
And this is direct mail. Like, everybody has seen this in their own life in your mailbox during election time. Right? If you're registered to voter, you've got tons of direct mail. And email, honestly, is fairly similar to that these days in the sense that you can get an image, you present a main argument, you've got some data underneath it.
Nick Fynn:
But the whole thing that email does, of course, is, like, now I've got a click engagement. I can follow through on this right now and go do a thing that might somehow contribute to something that I wanna be supportive of or is gonna help me in some way. But I've always found email in that way very interesting because you can have more copy than you could ever really do in an ad. You can flesh out an argument. It's the space where you get to say what it is that you have to say.
Nick Fynn:
And that's kind of part of what I was thinking about when I was thinking about the whole concept of message discipline, right, is really linked to knowing what it is that you have to say, having thought that through, and then presenting it thoughtfully to your audience.
Dave Charest:
Let me ask you this, and then I want to get into the message discipline stuff. But does it surprise you that email is kind of still the thing and a valuable kind of messaging and communication tool?
Nick Fynn:
Doctor. No. No, it doesn't surprise me. I think that the format itself just, it is what it is and can be very effective. And because of those things, like, there's an element, you can put a visual in there, keep it small enough so the download time isn't too bad.
Nick Fynn:
You can put more argumentation or copy in there, more message in there, and people could control that space. They own their own inbox. They make their own decisions about what they want in there, what they don't want in there. They can unsubscribe from whatever they don't wanna see. And so I'm not surprised.
Nick Fynn:
I don't think it's going anywhere. You know, will the rules on the edges of how it's managed change? Of course. They always do. They evolve and different platforms and email providers come up with all sorts of innovative little tools prompting you to unsubscribe when you haven't opened somebody's email for so long, that type of thing.
Nick Fynn:
And those are probably all good evolutions from the user's perspective. Right? Because it just gives you a little bit more control over it. I'm not gonna touch on the privacy piece of it because I think that that's a whole separate ball of wax and, you know, that's not my domain to be commenting on. I think everybody should be concerned about your email privacy and who's got your address and what they're doing with it, etcetera.
Nick Fynn:
But I think it'll remain a powerful
Dave Charest:
Well, how important then, from your point of view, is it then for nonprofits, specifically smaller nonprofits, resource constraint? How does this work as a tool for them?
Nick Fynn:
Yeah. A fundamental question that everyone can think about in every nonprofit they work in. I think my view would be it starts with really understanding and thinking clearly about who your audience is or who your audiences are because there's usually more than one in play here. And at the very least, I'm thinking about the fact that most nonprofits have an audience of the folks that they serve, and then another audience is the folks who fund them. And so right there, you have to start thinking clearly about who are these two audiences?
Nick Fynn:
What is it that they are interested in knowing from me? And what is it that's important to me for them to know about me? And just starting with those basic questions that form the structure of how to be deliberative about this. I think every nonprofit out there should be doing email. I don't think there's any one fits all frequency of, like, how often should you be doing it or what should it say, etcetera.
Nick Fynn:
But everybody should be using it. It's a foundational tool, and there are a few other tools in your arsenal that can be as powerful as a good email program. If you're in the position to have a dedicated tool around that, great. You should explore all its functionality. You should learn everything you can about the email marketing tool that you're using.
Nick Fynn:
You need to understand subject lines. You need to understand preview text. You need to understand what the numbers are that go with this, and you need to understand what those numbers are over time so that you're not overreacting or underreacting to a change in something that may actually not say what you think it says. But, like, historical context is really important when you look at those kinds of things.
Dave Charest:
So when you say the term message discipline, what are we talking about here?
Nick Fynn:
Yeah. Again, as I was saying, coming out of that advocacy world, message discipline there is very much about just controlling the narrative, drilling home through repetition your message at every opportunity, ignoring questions from reporters and just saying again what it is that you have to say. But I think while that may be true in that industry, I think it's not necessarily true in every industry. And maybe even in that industry, we need to evolve a little bit more too. With the World Wide Web and our extreme electronic connectivity now, the capacity to have a deeper conversation about everything has just expanded.
Nick Fynn:
Right? It's like you don't get one shot at just saying one thing to people. There's a whole deeper conversation you can have through various medium and channels. I think of message discipline for nonprofits very much being around being intentional, being very clear about what it is you have to say about knowing who those audiences are. And, you know, there were a couple of points within this that that really jumped out at me as I as I put together some thoughts around it.
Nick Fynn:
One is this notion that comes out of communication theory that you cannot not communicate. And what that is to say is, like, everything you do actually is communicating to your audience. And this includes when you are not saying something to them, that's communicating to them indirectly, right, That you don't have anything to say or maybe you don't wanna say anything, but it still communicates something to them. And so thinking about how your audience is perceiving you, Like, what are you doing unintentionally that might be communicating things to them? And you can think about in a practical way something like, well, my website like, what does my website communicate to my users?
Nick Fynn:
Does it communicate that I am very outdated and don't know how to update my own website and it needs major work, but I don't know what to do? Because if that's what it's communicating, you should think pretty seriously about putting some resources toward it. Those websites are a also, you know, next to email, a critical piece of your communications with your users, whether they're donors or the public or somebody else entirely. So just always be thinking about this notion that everything you're doing is communicating. Now the flip side to that also, I think is like you have to be quite cognizant to not overcommunicate because I think that can also be quite damaging if people just start to tune you out because you've got so much to say all the time.
Nick Fynn:
And there is this instinctive need when we're not sure what we have to say to just say everything because we think it's all important and surely our users need to know this. And if I'm as transparent as I can be about everything, well, everybody will get to know just the things that they need to know, but that's really not how it works now. Right? It's actually people just hit overwhelm and you tune the whole thing out. And that's disastrous.
Nick Fynn:
Right? That manifests in your email marketing as unsubscribed. You feel like it's not interested in this. I don't wanna read it. I'm turning it off.
Nick Fynn:
I'm going away. And you've lost that person forever until they if you miraculously succeed in getting them to re opt in somehow. But good luck. But so, yeah, thinking about how your audience sees you. And then that leads you to another piece of message discipline, which I think is really important as well, which is this notion of going where your audience is, which is very different than trying to pull your audience to where you are.
Nick Fynn:
There's a huge gap between those two thoughts, but there is certainly in marketing this element of having to pull your audience towards you because that's what marketing is. Right? You are saying to the marketplace, I have something interesting and you should engage with me because of it. But you have to know where they are first. You have to understand what they're thinking about.
Nick Fynn:
What is the pain point that you think you're even addressing? What is the challenge that this organization faces that you even think you have a solution for? And so running around and just spouting the million benefits of your value proposition and yourself or your organization, There's some value to that, but you're missing the whole piece of, like, where's your audience? What are they thinking about? How do you connect to the language that they are using?
Nick Fynn:
And, sort of going back to an earlier thought, like, when you're talking about having different audiences, for instance, funders versus your the users or the public group of people that you're talking to, even the language that they use is very different. And so perhaps as a nonprofit, you have a grant funded project, and there's a lot of language as you build these grant applications and you work with funders. But then you use that language to describe what you're offering to users, and it can completely fall flat because they talk about a completely different set of words, and they don't think about things the way that you and your funder are thinking about things. It's very different. So that's another piece of message discipline, I think, to really think about where that audience really is and what it is that they really do need from you.
Nick Fynn:
Let's see. There was another big one that I was coming to as well, which is don't bury the lead in journalism. One of the folks I work with who uses that phrase with me. But I think there was, maybe there still is, this element of thinking. It's like, you should really use email to tease your users.
Nick Fynn:
You should get them to open the email and then click through to the site by just giving them enough to just take that action. I think that that actually is not a good way to do it. I think that that doesn't build trust. I think that builds a little bit of resentment actually because it's like you're really asking me to do a lot for what may not be much payoff here. Right?
Dave Charest:
Right.
Nick Fynn:
So instead, what I think about don't bury the lead, it's more about, like, whatever it is that you think you have to say, let's say it right up front as close to the top of your messages really make sense because you're delivering your message quickly, and then you're really you're empowering your users to choose what they do next. They could ignore it and move on and do whatever. But if you quickly get to the point, I think people appreciate that, I guess, is the core idea there. So I think don't bury the lead, be clear with what you have to say to people upfront. And that includes in the subject line and not using the subject line as like a throwaway, please open me thing, but just sometimes the subject lines I read most in my own personal inbox just have the core details in it where I don't even have to open the damn email anymore.
Nick Fynn:
Right? It's just like, hey. This webinar is occurring at 10AM on Thursday. The link's in the email. I was like, great.
Nick Fynn:
I know everything I need to know about this right now, and I appreciate the person who sent it to me that way. And it actually makes it for me more likely that I'm gonna go back and make sure I click and I'm there on time. So I'm like, they appreciate my time. They made it super easy. Great.
Nick Fynn:
I'm in. Let's see what other great tricks they have up their sleeve. Right?
Dave Charest:
Yeah. One of my favorite things is I'm just like, don't worry about the trick. Just tell me what's in the email. Let that be the thing that gets me to open it. So, you know, sometimes that's all I need to know.
Nick Fynn:
That's right.
Dave Charest:
I'm curious. There's a lot to kind of unpack here. Right? Particularly when you start thinking about all of the different channels and the different ways that you have to think about your messaging. Right?
Dave Charest:
You you mentioned the websites. You mentioned email. Now, of course, there's social media. There's SMS. Right?
Dave Charest:
There's all of these things. And how do you recommend nonprofits really start to prioritize their messaging kind of across all of these different channels?
Nick Fynn:
Yeah. That is a really great question too. I think I would start by kind of ducking it a little bit and saying, honestly, again, it depends so much on what it is that you need to accomplish. But I would say so far in my experience, like email is a pretty easy channel to get into. There's plenty of platforms that let you do it.
Nick Fynn:
Everybody knows what an email is. Right? SMS, I don't use at TechSoup at the moment. There are technical issues around it. It's not as easy to deploy.
Nick Fynn:
It's email. There's permission around it. There's also, I think, a little bit of expectation around what it's appropriate for and not appropriate for. But I don't use it at TechSoup, and I don't know tons of nonprofits who use it, but I know that some folks do use it and that it can be a particularly good tool on fundraising efforts. Right?
Nick Fynn:
You know, certainly right now during the election period, like, my SMS is being bombarded by political outreach. But other than that, it's generally like, hey, thanks. We got your payment for x, y, and z, or, you know, here's the dual factor login code that you've been waiting for so you can get into whatever platform you're locked out of today. Advertising, I think, is a channel that more nonprofits ought to think about. But, again, there's real technical things about, like, which platform even makes the most sense for you, how are you finding your users.
Nick Fynn:
But Meta's got plenty of good nonprofit users in it. We do lots of Google display remarketing, just talking to users at TechSoup about whatever offers and services we have to communicate about, but, like, really looking at the broad trajectory of who's been on the side and what they're doing. More and more these days, I've been leaning into LinkedIn quite a bit because I think it's fascinating what you can do there in terms of trying to talk to specific professional levels. For instance, like maybe executive directors at nonprofits. You can also do a lot of work in LinkedIn around just nonprofits specifically and how do you target that sector.
Nick Fynn:
Because again, going back to this notion that, like, we're always hacking e commerce tools to try to help civil society, when you look at all these advertising platforms, I mean, for us, it can be a real challenge because nobody's really designing anything to like, how do we target nonprofits and talk to civil society? No, they're like, how do we accelerate the bidding structure on this really interesting tech product so that more and more people get involved in the action and there's more ads and more revenue and right? Like, that's kind of what all that system is designed for. But like I said, it depends because our user base is nonprofits, but other nonprofits like maybe a social healthcare foundation in the middle of Missouri, like their audience is completely different. They might be talking only to folks within a particular socioeconomic bracket within a particular geography.
Nick Fynn:
And so then thinking about, again, I think there, like, how could you do some zip code targeting in Meta or something like that to lean in and talk to those folks more? I don't think it's like a game stopper and essential that you like, if you don't do ads that you're gonna fail in some way, but I think they are another path that's worth exploring if you've got the resources to do it. But I think I would first make sure that my website and that my email coverage was working out as well as I really thought that we could get it to before I started to look at those things. Here and there, I have this fantasy of, like, oh, we should do some direct mail again. Like, wouldn't that be super interesting?
Nick Fynn:
Because nobody does it now, so, therefore, wouldn't it be great to do it? And maybe there's some of that out there for folks. It's expensive. It certainly costs more than sending an email. Right?
Nick Fynn:
And it's clunky in the sense that, like, you go through this whole process to create artwork. You print the artwork. You send it out. But it's like, then you're done. And if if everything changes and that artwork is no longer accurate, you have to reoutput new artwork.
Nick Fynn:
You have to print a whole new set. You have to send the stuff. So I I don't know about direct mail. You know, I think it still definitely happens in the political realm. Like I said, my mailbox is full of it right now, but maybe not for other nonprofits.
Nick Fynn:
But in some cases, maybe if your user base is small and you have a great number of volunteers, well, gosh, do some letters and get some folks together and write some letters to your users if you wanna communicate with them in that way. And that could be a great exercise in just building volunteer capacity and doing some one to one communications. Like, for a couple of months now, my mother up here in Berkeley has been doing exactly that with one of the candidates for election, and and she's quite convinced that sending these personal letters can be really effective. And I think she's probably right, but yeah, that would be another channel folks could think about. Events is another place where I think everybody can be honest.
Nick Fynn:
Like, we we really miss that pre COVID ability to do an event and really get, like, a nice big attendance and and talk to some folks and really have everybody in the same room. And, you know, even though the world has really moved on since 2020 and the period after that, I still don't have the sense that events themselves have really ever fully recovered as a marketing channel in that way. It would be nice to be doing more of that for sure.
Dave Charest:
You mentioned a couple of things here that I think are interesting and and real problems that you really kinda need to think about. Right? So when you think of a nonprofit with a small team, for example, and there's often turnover, there's often volunteers and new people coming into the mix and multiple people communicating with the audience. Right? Well, how do you recommend people start to maintain that consistency and message, right, when you've got
Nick Fynn:
all these new people coming in? Well, again, actually, I think this is one of the great strengths about having an email platform is because the first thing you ought to do is go backwards in time from where you are right now and look at the other emails that the organization has sent over time and read them. Right? Try to understand what the historical communications have been. You may not think they're all correct, but if you read 20 emails that we've sent over the past year, you'll at least start to understand, like, okay.
Nick Fynn:
There's some things here commonly that we really are emphasizing. So if you're new on a nonprofit staff and trying to really come up to speed on the comms area, start by looking through that email stack on what have we written about over time. Pay particular attention to the fundraising pushes that the nonprofit has done because that will speak very directly to the kind of language that the funding universe is thinking about when that nonprofit communicates. I think you can also look back through the social stack that might be a little bit harder to do, and sometimes there's just a little more whimsy and less strategy there. Like, it's sort of a day to day struggle to get eyeballs on your page.
Nick Fynn:
And sometimes it's a puppy dog and a kitten versus, like, something that's truly strategic relevant to your nonprofit, but, you know, in the day that worked. But I think kind of any comms platform that you've got, go backwards in time and read what people have done in that platform for starters. This point of turnover and new folks, and particularly because nonprofit work is often a place where young people will begin their careers as well, because they are impassionate about wanting to really do something meaningful and make a difference, and that's so much of what nonprofit work is about. So I think there, there's a couple of things that that happen. The first thing is that you may have fantastic digital skills, and you may actually be in the business of teaching some of your superiors a little bit about how this works and that works.
Nick Fynn:
But at the same time, believe it that there's a two way street there and that they may also have some deep knowledge about how people understand the work that that nonprofit does and why we wanna frame things a certain way. And so I think both sides have a great conversation where you can really try to translate some of that into more modern digital tools. I also think, though, that back to this notion of focus and brevity and knowing who your users are and that people need to think really precisely about what it is they're doing and why they're doing that. I guess another part of coming in new to a comm staff at a nonprofit too, though, is that you may have a lot of opinions about why aren't we on TikTok, and
Dave Charest:
why aren't we doing this, and
Nick Fynn:
why aren't we doing that? And there's probably really good reasons related to resource allocation as why you're not doing that. And I'm not saying abide by that, but understand that that might be the case. And then maybe it's more about make a business case to folks about like, Hey, this is a channel we should really be in because we could accomplish X, Y, and Z for us and we should give it a try. But there is a lot to learn there.
Nick Fynn:
And I think the other part of it is like, be prepared for the fact that sometimes nonprofit work can feel chaotic and very high it's very fast in some ways. People think it's slow, but it's not because everybody is juggling many, many things at the same time. So like follow-up is key. Follow-up on your ideas. Don't make other people follow-up with you when you have something that they are waiting for.
Nick Fynn:
Like, try to be really proactive around that stuff. Pay attention to little things like spelling. Don't be putting stuff out there that's spelled incorrectly. There's too many tools that can instantly fix all of that for you. And yet, I still see it every day, particularly in social media feeds.
Nick Fynn:
Right? There's no excuse for that kind of thing.
Dave Charest:
So here's what I'm curious. You mentioned a lot about this idea of, of course, know your audience, right? And there's multiple audiences that you need to talk to and think through. And so, how do you tailor these messages in a way to speak to the specific audiences in the language that they're going to understand, but without losing the consistency of the message? Does that make sense?
Dave Charest:
Yeah. How do you think through that?
Nick Fynn:
Yeah. This links to actually another note that I have put down for myself, which is, you know, words matter, sentences sometimes less.
Dave Charest:
Explain that, please.
Nick Fynn:
What I was really thinking about there was that, you know, sometimes over time a particular word can really be imbued with some greater meaning between a nonprofit and their audience, then, like, the layperson may read that as meaning. Right? And so I think about, like, what are particular words that you can use constantly in your communication with your audience that over time, you are developing a shared understanding of what that word really means. Like, when this nonprofit uses this word, here's what they're talking about. Right?
Nick Fynn:
So I think it's thinking about what are those specific words where you can develop that meaning over time. I was thinking the other day as well, like related to this, there's this old fashioned notion of KISS in marketing, if you remember that, which is keep it simple stupid, which I don't I've never liked and and still don't like and like even less, in fact, because I don't think we wanna keep things simple stupid. Like, I don't want the world to be simple stupid. I want the world to be intelligent and thinking, but I do want it to be simple sometimes. And so I think there's a difference between writing for your audience and just dumbing everything down.
Nick Fynn:
And I think that you don't make the mistake between the two things. Like sometimes your audience might be able to understand more than you think. And if not, think about exactly how much clarity you're using. And so how'd you get to that clarity, I think, is really the core of your question. There's a lot of different ways.
Nick Fynn:
One way is to rewrite your own stuff. You don't write something and then just send it out. Like, I certainly don't do that anymore. I write it and it sits for a few days, and then I come back to it. And I'll find almost every single time when I come back to it, I'm like, oh, most of this is wrong, but I can rewrite it.
Nick Fynn:
Yeah. Yeah. Right? You rewrite it again. Hopefully, there's a colleague you can bounce this off as well.
Nick Fynn:
They may have a better way of doing one thing or another. There are, again, endless digital tools to let you do this as well that can look at the complexity of the language you're using, the word count. Right? So there's not a one size fits all, but I think I guess the overwhelming thing I would say is just like, yeah, you can't just write it and send it out. Communication is too important for that now.
Nick Fynn:
You you write it. You write it again, you get some help, you bounce it through some tools, really polish it, put the effort into it, and then I think you end up with materials that actually can resonate even around very sophisticated ideas.
Dave Charest:
What advice would you have for nonprofits who may be feeling overwhelmed by the idea of creating a messaging strategy for their cause?
Nick Fynn:
I feel you. That's the first piece of advice. Yes, it is hard, but it's not undoable. And sometimes it's as much about just putting the time into it and working through some steps. I think that, like, coming back down to this notion of discipline, like, if you really think about a few core ideas, then your nonprofit's messaging strategy just grows out of that.
Nick Fynn:
And those core ideas again are, you know, who are your audiences and where are they? What is it specifically that you really are connecting with them on? What are you helping them with? What are the keywords that describe that in their minds, in your mind? And I guess also, don't overcomplicate it either.
Nick Fynn:
Like, when you get to that point, and I think there's their own personal sniff test about it, like, if you get to a point where you're starting to feel like this is getting too complex and there's too many layers, it's too much, you're probably right. And then I think it makes sense to, like, maybe dial back a little bit because your instinct around these things probably aren't wrong at all. I think the place where folks may sometimes get distracted is sort of like, well, I read online we should do it this way, or somebody said we should do it this way, or I heard that we should try this, or so and so said this, and you feel like you're obligated to follow every single one of those recommendations, and maybe, like, that's part of the modern world is that there's so many suggestions and ideas about how you can do it that it just is overwhelming, well, then I think, you know, you can kind of back into your own human experience there a little bit, and you need to cut some of that stuff away and just zero in on how you're connecting with that specific audience.
Dave Charest:
Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, zero in on your specific audience. Nick reminds us that your nonprofit's messaging strategy really grows out of a few core ideas. Who are your audiences and where are they? What is it specifically that you're connecting with them on?
Dave Charest:
And what are you helping them with? What are the keywords that describe that in their minds, in your mind? Getting clear on the answers to these questions allows you to start building your communication strategy. Number two, be intentional with those audiences. Now most nonprofits have at least two audiences, the people they serve and the people who fund the nonprofit.
Dave Charest:
And so right there, you start to recognize how your communications need to be different. What is it that those audiences are interested in knowing from you? What's important for them to know about you? These basic questions form the structure of how to be deliberate with those audiences and allow your communications to resonate more deeply with the people that you're trying to reach. Number three, take advantage of the resources available to you.
Dave Charest:
You can often find resources in your local community, of course, but TechSoup has resources to help you with the technology that supports your mission. And, yes, Constant Contact has resources and tools to help you do more for your cause. So remember, you don't have to do it all alone. Here's your action item for today. Check out the resources that are available to you.
Dave Charest:
TechSoup and Constant Contact, we'll include some links in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show.
Dave Charest:
That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.