In our chat with Dana Snyder, she shared four paid ads that nonprofits should run. Here they are: Reach, Video Views, Lead Generation, and Conversions.
Reach is all about getting more eyes on your cause. Video Views means creating great video content to engage supporters. Lead Generation is for collecting contact information from potential donors, and Conversions is all about getting people to take specific actions, like donating or volunteering.
Want to learn more about these ad types? Check out Dana’s website at
Dana Snyder | Positive Equation – Digital Marketing for Nonprofits for tips and tricks to help your nonprofit succeed!
“What’s an exchange of value you can offer?” – Dana
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown! I’m your host Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listener! Rhea Wong with you, once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today, I am speaking with my friend and guest Dana Snyder. She is a speaker, podcast host, and digital strategist for the positive equation. And today we’re going to talk about paid ads, which is not a topic that we talk about a lot in the nonprofit space. But before we delve into that, Dana, welcome to the show. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in nonprofit before we get to the juicy topic at hand?
DANA SNYDER 00:37
Yeah! It’s so fun to be here with you. Thanks for having me. I really think my Genesis origin story of starting the nonprofit space started back in my college days when I participated in a dance marathon. So shout out to anybody else who’s participated in a dance marathon before. I attended the University of Central Florida. Go, Knights! And our program was called Knight-Thon.
DANA SNYDER 01:00
And so essentially, if you’re not familiar with a dance marathon, all-year-long students fundraise for their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. And so it’s completely student-run. And when I started in 2007, oh, man, we were raising, maybe like $30,000. By the time I left, it was closer to about $90,000. And then now the students at the university are raising over $2 million dollars.
RHEA WONG 01:30
Shut the front door Are you kidding?
DANA SNYDER 01:33
It’s a little bit of a shame. But essentially, we put a lot of practices into place and change the board structure. It’s, either the first or the second-largest university in the country. And so I remember always saying if just every student if every person gave $1, that’d be like $50,000 to $60,000. And so that kind of sparked, I participated in it, then I was on the board. Then I was co-chair essentially and worked on external partnerships and sponsorships in the community.
DANA SNYDER 02:04
And it was a full-year commitment. It was like a job, a free job. It was a non-paid job. And that really sparked what I thought was going to be a job in some sort of community relations position. And then long story short, since then, I did work for nonprofits straight out of college for about two and a half years, and all things like PR and advertising and social media were on the come up. It was in its infancy, and trying to figure out what it was. And so I was trying to figure out what it was. And so I was just naturally, I was growing in my career as social media was growing, especially within the business world. And then I moved to New York City, worked in the corporate world for a few years, and then decided to take that leap of faith in 2017.
DANA SNYDER 02:57
And go back to working in the nonprofit space but on my own terms in running a positive equation. So now the business has over six years. It’s gone through lots of evolutions, as I’m sure you can relate to. But as of recently, I do a lot of speaking engagements and teachings and webinars, all on paid advertising, which we’re gonna talk about today for nonprofits and building monthly giving programs.
RHEA WONG 03:23
I love that so much. And thanks for having us to your origin story. And I love the dance-athon because I do think you and I were just talking about the fact that I was teaching a bunch of high school kids about social entrepreneurship. It’s like the sooner we can get them into fundraising, the better I think.
DANA SNYDER 03:41
And what’s fantastic about it actually is I speak about this in one of my keynotes that I was 18 years old when I was introduced to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. They have the balloons, if anybody’s ever seen, and some of their corporate partners are Publix, Costco, Walmart, and at different times during the year, Dairy Queen, they’ll have these balloons that they sell for $1, $2, whatever it is. And every time I see the balloon, I always say yes, like I will purchase and make a donation. And so it was ingrained in me about their mission and their brands when I was 18. And now I am about to be 34 and I still will donate every single year to that organization.
RHEA WONG 04:23
Wow! Yeah, you got to start early. And actually what was cool is with my group, they all raised money for a nonprofit of their choice and they raised like $1,000 each, which are 16 years old. It is pretty considerable. Okay, Dana, let’s switch tacks because I want to talk about paid ads. Paid ads are not a strategy that a lot of people think about particularly the smaller nonprofits and so generally when we think about building our email list or prospects, it tends to be more organic, word-of-mouth, friends of friends, social media, etc. Tell me why we should be thinking about a paid ads strategy.
DANA SNYDER 05:07
It’s so beneficial for two reasons. A: to reach the right audience with the right content at the right time. And so you’re progressively able to move people through this funnel. I think what a lot of people see in organic social media these days, it’s maybe 1% to 3% of your audience sees your content now. So you might think you are posting a ton about your impact on your programs. But 1% to 3% of your audience is seeing that. And then at the end, what about all the new people that you’re trying to reach out to and share supporters?
DANA SNYDER 05:47
So a paid ad strategy lets you really lean into very specific audiences that you’re looking to reach. And align that with very specific goals that you have just like you mentioned email. So like, list building might be one, or donations might be one or top-of-mind visibility might be one. So it allows you to really customize who you want to see that content that you’re working so hard on all the time.
RHEA WONG 06:12
Yeah, that’s really helpful. And I’m glad that you said that because I think in the back of a lot of people’s minds, there’s this idea of, oh, let’s just do the Ice Bucket Challenge, and I’ll go viral. So I think we can safely say that is not a strategy.
DANA SNYDER 06:29
Going viral is not a strategy, I would say. One of the biggest mistakes I see is there’s usually this is graph that I saw looks like a hockey stick, where organizations at the end of the year, we’ll do most of their ad budget, which logically right, we think makes sense. In November and December, we’re trying to catch everybody. But what about the rest of the year in building new leads and nurturing people and staying top of mind? So just like the idea of the biggest mistake is, I’m just going to all of a sudden run a donation campaign to these people who have no idea who I am.
DANA SNYDER 07:12
And it’s going to work. No, that is likely not going to work. Think about just human nature, right? The first time that you ever see a brand or get introduced to something, are you likely to buy it? Probably not right? You need to see things multiple times. You want to learn about it. You want to watch a video about it. Then down the line, you might take action and engage with that person or that brand, and donate. So going viral is not a viable strategy, I would say.
RHEA WONG 07:44
Yeah! So let’s talk about that. Because I do see that being a mistake that a lot of people make, which is oh, people will hear about us, and then they’ll donate. Not understanding that there’s a funnel that you have to get people through, which is there’s a difference between being aware of something being engaged and being interested in, and then actually committing. So can you talk a little bit, I want to talk about paid ads really quickly, but what is a nurture sequence for those of us out here who don’t have a marketing background?
DANA SNYDER 08:15
Yeah! So I think you just spoke to a few of those different stages, right? Usually, you’re in that awareness phase, where you might watch a video on something. And so you know it exists, then I would say the next step is to actually take some sort of action, and maybe that’s joining an email list, downloading a freebie, signing up for a webinar, like some sort of reading a blog, like just taking that next step of engagement. And then the third is actually some sort of conversion. So what’s the ask that you have? Is it a donation? Is it signing a petition? Is it joining an event? is it signing up for a run or a challenge?
DANA SNYDER 08:52
It is something where you’re committed and into it. And then I would actually say, on the other end that I like to also share that is really powerful with social ads that you can do is sending thank yous. So on the back half, you can use ads to target your existing audience of people. You can upload CSV files with email lists. You can retarget people who have engaged with certain posts or watched certain videos. And it could just be a thank-you video. And like, how powerful is that? It’s just to see an ad come across, and it’s just saying, thanks. And you’re like, wow! That’s amazing. What a nice surprise and delightful moment!
HEA WONG 09:34
I love that so much. Okay, we’re gonna get a little technical in a minute, but what would you say? And I can hear this in my head already. Dina, we’re a small nonprofit. We don’t have money for ads. What’s your response to that? And how big a budget do you really need in order to actually make an impact with ads?
DANA SNYDER 09:55
This question comes up all the time, as you can imagine, and this is the best thing about ads. The question I always like to ask and I’m like leaning into the microphone is, do you actually know how much it costs you to send out that mailer? How much does it actually cost you to put on that Gala? Are you calculating all the hours of the time of your staff? Are you calculating how long it takes you to put together all of these email sequences? And what’s the return on that investment? The great thing about ads, is you have this beautiful dashboard that is giving you back feedback. specifically saying this copy is working. This content working.
DANA SNYDER 10:37
This is how much this podcast video is. And for organizations with small budgets, I just wrapped a visibility ads challenge where the budget was $1 to $3 a day. And the only goal was to be top of mind. So it was trying to reach out to warm audiences. So people who already knew them with three pieces of content. It’s $1 to $3 a day. So calculate that based on a month or two weeks, or however long you wanted to run it. But depending on your objective, ads can be extremely reasonable. One example is just sharing a video of a new campaign. If you are looking to get eyeballs on a video, then you can retarget people that watch that video, which is super smart. It goes into a funnel we talked about.
DANA SNYDER 11:26
You can get video views for 15-second video views for a through-play. A penny to three cents is usually the range. That is far cheaper than a stamp these days. And now you can actually retarget them to take the next action. They don’t have to be expensive. It’s just backing out of what is your goal. And there are so many averages. There’s an online tool that I like to use called Rebel Bots. And at any given time, it’s pulling together thousands of ads happening and it’s giving you an average of, what’s the average cost of an impression right now? What’s the average cost of a link click right now?
DANA SNYDER 12:11
And so you can look at that and you can gauge, okay, where do I stand in the scheme of things for the participants of the challenge? What we were looking at? What’s the cost to reach 2000 people, which is that impression and impression is reaching a thousand people? And I’m running ads right now where it’s costing me $1 to reach a thousand people. There was an organization where it was costing them $5 to reach a thousand people. You can’t do that with any other types of platforms. So a hardcore myth at the expense.
RHEA WONG 12:43
Again, to get technical about it, because I know very little about that. What’s the hereabout the algorithm changing? And does that impact the ad strategy?
DANA SNYDER 12;54
So the biggest change that happened recently was the iOS changes. So for anybody that is like, what is an iOS change? If you are an iPhone Apple user, when you visit certain websites or download certain apps, you have been prompted within the past year and a half with this pop-up that says would you like your activity to be tracked or not tracked? If you’ve said not tracked, then Facebook does not have that exact data anymore than it used to, to know exactly what you’re doing, and what you’re clicking on. So that only means that when somebody is leaving Facebook, some of that data is lost.
DANA SNYDER 13:39
So you just have to do a little bit of detective work. Any actions on Facebook or Instagram because Facebook owns Instagram, META technically, are still accurately tracked because you are on their platforms. So there are now you can run donation ads on Facebook. You can run video ads. You can run engagement. Anything that’s keeping you within the platform is still going to be pretty accurate. It’s when you leave. That would be the biggest change. That’s not technically an algorithm change. But that’s the biggest ad update that’s happened recently that’s affected a lot of people.
RHEA WONG 14:19
So when we think about all of the different platforms that we could run ads on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok, where would you recommend that people start?
DANA SNYDER 14:31
So Facebook and Instagram are by far the easiest and low cost. LinkedIn also does have an ad platform. And what’s great about theirs is that you can target people based on job titles, which is pretty cool. But in my personal experience, it’s very expensive. So I am always an advocate of testing. You always have to test and you can’t shut something off. This has happened so many times. Somebody runs it for a day. And they’re like, oh, it’s not working on Tuesday. I’m gonna turn it off. No, you have to give these ads time. I had a great conversation with Mark Dombkins from the nonprofit Forever Projects.
DANA SNYDER 15:13
And they do a lot of ad spend. And I like to think about ads manager, like an employee. I can’t fire them after a day if they’re not performing, I have to give them some grace. And it’s the same thing. Facebook and Instagram ads need about 3000 impressions, so 3000 people to start to learn and understand what’s working. And if you shut it off, and it’s reached 50 people, you haven’t given it enough data to do anything. TikTok, or YouTube, I would say, again, it goes back to what is your goal and your objective. And what are you looking for people to do? Essentially, you could test them. The other one that is not mentioned is, of course, Google ads. So search functionality.
RHEA WONG 15:59
Yeah, honestly, Dana, it becomes a little bit overwhelming. I hear SEO in my head. If I’m a small nonprofit, and I’m listening, I’m like, Dana, I’m down. What are the four ads that I should be running?
DANA SNYDER 16:13
Totally! So number one is reach. I would say reach and video views, together, they’re technically two separate types of ads, so one and two, to be top of mind. Just to be out there. Because what we forget is that we’re so bombarded by noise all the time. Reach and video view ads are extremely. I teach about reach campaigns in my Visible Reach In A Week mini-course, 27 minutes long, it’s a very easy ad to get set up and created. Three, lead generation, if you want to grow a passionate email list, it would be lead generation.
DANA SNYDER 16:52
You can either do that within Facebook with their forms or send people off to your website where they can fill out names, email addresses, etc. The best tip I have for lead generation is to think about what’s an exchange of value you can provide to somebody. A great example, I have a case study. I shared on my podcast a few months ago, where organization which I’m sure you can totally agree that. This is the best feeling in the world. I had an organization email me, It was like, Dear Dana, I’m on your email list.
DANA SNYDER 17:26
And I’m taking your course but you don’t know who I am. But I had this great case study about data I wanted to share with you. And I was like, oh my, gosh! I love people like this, who actually want to share with me. They are a school. And they took my lead generation course to grow their email list. And she had over, and it’s more than this now, but over 600 new emails for less than 50 cents. And what they did was so brilliant, based on the relevant holiday, they created a coloring book. So I think it was for Halloween and their school, right? So they were looking for parents and kids.
DANA SNYDER 18:05
So they created a Halloween coloring book. And then it had its branding in the coloring book. So that was their free download for Christmas. They had a recipe book. So very basic things that you can create in Canva. Very similarly, or have a graphic designer help you. And she’s got a ton of traffic. And then what you do is you have all these emails, and now you’re ready to put together a nurture sequence through email, which is where most people tend to give anyways.
DANA SNYDER 18:33
So that’s ad number three, growing your email list and you should do it all year long. And then number four, of course, is one that everyone wants to run is donation-based, which is actually called conversions. So a conversion can be anything. It can be signing the petition. It can be joining the event. It can be donating. It can be buying something like a sale, or an item on your website, but those are the main four. So reach, video views, lead gen, and donations.
RHEA WONG 19:01
Okay! So let’s talk about reach, what does that ad look like? Is it just, hey, we’re here and learn more about us? What’s the call to action with reach?
DANA SNYDER 19:09
So it depends on if you are trying to go after a cold audience that has no idea who you are, or if you’re going after a warm audience who is already engaged with us on Instagram, or Facebook followers. So during the visibility challenge, there was an organization for example, who is looking to grow its monthly giving program. So she has a video that’s introducing their monthly giving program. She went through my mastermind and I said you should use your video.
DANA SNYDER 19:42
So she’s running her video currently to her warm audience to explain like, hey, you may have never known that we have this program. But I’m going to share this video with you. And so the call to action really then is just to watch the video and learn about it. And then her next ad is going to retarget people to give donations but it can be different. Usually reach is just like a hey, we’re here, status update, impact update, see us in the feed. It’s that subconscious top-of-mind consideration. It’s all it is.
RHEA WONG 20:18
Got it. Now let’s talk about the video for a second because I think, myself included, I’m self-conscious about the video. What do I say? Any tips on that? And particularly thinking about length, right? Because we know that people’s attention spans are waning. Any feedback or guidance on that?
DANA SNYDER 20:38
Yes, I would say video, honestly, with iPhones, are your best friend to keep it raw. I think people just think video and like, oh, I need this high quality or high produced thing. No! The best stuff that’s working in reels and TikTok popping off is very raw content shot selfie-style, making sure that you’re formatting for vertical and not just like the horizontal. I would say you want to, you always want to start and this goes for copy, too, you have a hook. So how are you going to hook people into the video?
DANA SNYDER 21:13
It’s normally a question, a staggering statistic, or something that’s gonna grab somebody’s attention. One of the biggest errors I see on video is a lot of organizations want to have their logo on the video in the first five seconds. And it’s just like a logo. No, that’s not gonna get anybody’s attention. Immediately start with someone’s face that somebody can connect with. Length-wise, if you are going to be running the video as a reel, you have to be less than 90 seconds. So that’s just a great tip is to keep it less than 90 seconds across the board.
RHEA WONG 21:49
Just to think about producing content for video, who do you recommend should be the person? Is it always the ED? Should it be a young fun staff member? Who is the spokesperson?
DANA SNYDER 22:01
It can be anybody really. I think one of the organizations that I love that some this so well is a new story. And they highlight different people in their organization all the time. Dependent upon what the content is when they were doing trips down to Mexico, maybe they had a program director talking and doing the update, and maybe it was their social media person. There are obviously times when it should be your CEO or your ED that’s providing maybe a status.
DANA SNYDER 22:27
One of the organization’s in the visibility challenge, one of the pieces of content I say to share is like a thought leadership moment. The ED can come on and say, wow, it’s been an amazing quarter. Let me talk to you a little bit about what we’ve been working on the past couple of months. And now this is where we’re going. And this is why we need your help. So I think it just depends on what you’re looking to share. And who’s the right voice to share that story?
RHEA WONG 22:53
Is there a tension here between being raw and being real? Because I was looking at TikTok last night and it is very authentic, or at least it appears to be and stays true to the brand. Because I know there will be lots of people out there particularly board members who are very risk averse, who are like, we got to have the talking points and the brand. So can you talk me a little bit about if there is a tension between brand fidelity and authenticity?
DANA SNYDER 23:21
I think what’s so interesting about the board comment is most boards have worked for for-profit companies. And it’s looking at your social content. What is it doing? And how is it performing? And then lots of times the advice for the nonprofit is so different, which is so weird to me. You obviously want to keep it within your brand voice, of course. But that is the nature of what makes social is that peer-to-peer connection aspect. You can do graphic videos and one of my great recommendations is I learned by watching, right? I either use the ads library.
DANA SNYDER 23:59
That is a totally free tool by Facebook. You just google search Facebook ad library, and you can see a ton of ads that are currently being run by organizations, You can type in Nike. You can type in Children’s Miracle Network. You can type in St. Jude. You can see the ads are running. And start to just pay attention to what you naturally click on. Like you’re saying you’re scrolling through TikTok. If you’re scrolling through Instagram or you’re scrolling through Facebook and an ad pops up, and you notice that you paused or you clicked on it, screenshot it. Why did I click on that?
DANA SNYDER 24:34
And then you start to just create this like albums The next time that you’re having a brainstorm about ads, maybe you can look back and be like, oh, this caught my attention. Are we doing something like this? Would this work for our audience? I think we are our own best assistants in learning. It is truly gauged by our own actions. So yeah, definitely stay true to your brand voice. But you also want to stay true to and understand what is that platform’s business objective. What are they focusing on, so that you can make sure that you’re creating content that is going to then work on that platform the best?
RHEA WONG 25:15
Yeah! That’s really helpful. I know this is not necessarily your area of expertise. But I know for myself personally, when I start to think about things like building my email list and whatever, or even ads, I get very anxious about copywriting. And getting into the weeds on that. Or, if I have an email nurture sequence, what do I say it? And so can you talk a little bit about the relationship between ads and writing good copy?
DANA SNYDER 25:44
Yeah! It’s so important. It’s a really good question. You always want to think about who you’re talking to and have it be one person. So think about the one person that you’re trying to speak to, and what would resonate with them. Again, the ads Library is a really good place to go for ad copy and content inspiration for this. But a lot of times, we sound so corporate, and that’s not going to touch the person on the other end. Or, when we say big numbers, I was just consulting with an organization on their ad campaign.
DANA SNYDER 26:21
And since 1987, we’ve serviced 400,000. That is so hard for somebody to visually compute in their mind. You can’t. Talking about one person that’s usually what works best. So I would say with your copy, really think about who are you trying to speak to. Is it going to resonate with them? Look, the best thing about ads is you can test them. You can have multiple types of copy and content. I do A/B tests all the time.
DANA SNYDER 26:56
So that you can say, Oh, this stat-driven post did really well, or this emotional-driven post worked really well. And what I mentioned in the video about the hook, it’s the same thing. There should be a hook with your copy. So like that first line, it’s like a teaser, what’s new and grabs somebody’s attention. It was a little story. And then what’s your call to action? Always want to make sure that we’re leading them somewhere else?
RHEA WONG 27:22
Yeah! I’m just trying to think about that. Because the other thing, too, that you didn’t say, which perhaps is implied, is that I think generally speaking, we don’t know our audience. And I don’t talk to our donors enough. We don’t understand what they care about enough. We don’t spend enough time understanding their worldview. And therefore, we have a hard time creating content that speaks to them. Because we just don’t know because we haven’t asked the question.
DANA SNYDER 27:49
Yeah! There’s a really great exercise they have that could share a link with you on your donor avatar, and put together that persona, which I’m sure you share about all the time. But what I add to it is, like their social media avatar presence, like where are they active? What other accounts are they engaging with? How frequently are they on social? Are they on it because they have kids? Right now, since I’m about to have our first child, I’m getting targeted and interacting with all like labor and delivery and what to do with a new one.
DANA SNYDER 28:24
So it knows that I’m engaging with that. Therefore, it’s showing me everything about that topic. So it’s like, when is this person interacting on social when we post, and when you mentioned email, the same thing goes with email. If you’re running a lead generation campaign, getting new email addresses, and you’re putting them into this automatic email sequence, you need to remember where they came from. Right? They came from downloading this recipe book. So maybe the first thing about you is that you hope you enjoyed those recipes.
DANA SNYDER 28:57
Here’s a little bit about what we do and remember how they came to you and how much context they have around you. So that you continue informing them. The other thing I would say is, and this goes for everything that we’re talking about with social and this is a little bit technically outside of the ad conversation. But in our sector, I wear a lot of hats and tend to bear a lot of weight and almost I don’t know a little bit of I’m so proud that I wear a lot of hats.
DANA SNYDER 29:29
But I really think when it comes to social, it shows whether you have a passion for it, and you want to be doing it or not. And I think it is one of those roles especially now in 2023. It should be mandatory, whether it’s a VA, part-time, a consultant, or if you can hire full-time. I just interviewed Kimberly Bryant from Black Girls Code yesterday, and I asked her, at what point did you make digital a priority in hiring for your team, and she’s immediately from the get-go. I knew it was important for us.
DANA SNYDER 30:08
So if you or someone listening to this, who socials are not your jam, that you’re just doing it, stop doing it. Give it to somebody else who likes doing it, who understands the strategy, who wants to learn the ad space, because it’s not going to be worth your frustration. And I just think it’s worth bearing and repeating that you are not going to probably see success if you’re just churning the same thing over and over again. You need to bring in somebody who can help you with that, and that will be your greatest investment.
RHEA WONG 30:44
Yeah! I love that you said that. Because as you might be able to tell. not a big social person. And it did feel drudgery, but it could feel like delight to somebody who, for whom this is their zone of genius. And I would just also underscore just because you don’t do it, it doesn’t mean that you will get value from doing it as an organization. I think about we everyone talks about charity water all of the time, and it’s like this gold standard, but like they have a digital strategy. In fact, I would say they’re probably digital-first, honestly.
DANA SNYDER 31:17
Yeah, totally! And I talked to Vic Harrison all the time about this. And at the beginning, they were just throwing spaghetti on the wall too. But eventually, the ad hoc approach does not work, you have to turn it into like you’re saying no strategy. The other thing that was compelling that Kimberly said, and this is just so fresh, in my mind, because we just spoke yesterday was to think about your team and their talents. She said they had somebody in programming, who they noticed had a really great knack for design.
DANA SNYDER 31:51
And they started to watch him do some design stuff. She’s maybe you would be better served in a marketing role. She’s oh, it pains me to have somebody leave our program department. And then he ended up becoming their marketing communicator, then our marketing director, and just now is doing she said, branding for Snapchat, and Twitter and all these things. But make sure to look at the true passions of your staff, too, or they best served in their current role, or is there something that might be missing, and ask them about it and see if they’d be interested. So I thought that was fascinating, too.
RHEA WONG 32:24
And I also think that we have to be intentional about investing in people’s talent. And I think as a sector, we like to throw $1,000 into professional development and think that’s enough. But actually, if we want to think about the long-term sustainability of the organization and the tenure of our staff, like we have to be willing to invest in things like yours, for example, if we want to get a relatively young person into a more senior position or with more responsibilities.
DANA SNYDER 32:53
Absolutely! I had a conversation. I was doing a thought leadership engagement with Anne-Marie Grey. And she just retired from being a CEO of a large nonprofit. And over eight years, she took the organization from 3 million to $225 million. And I asked her how? What was your magic touch? And she said I invested in the people. And she said I invested in my staff with training, a lot of mindset training. And I invested in my board with training. And she’s hands down, though, that was what was a game changer for us. And I thought that was so true.
RHEA WONG 33:38
Yeah! I love that. Because I think in the nonprofit world, we’re so used to turning and we’re so used to like burning through people, the revolving door. And we think that, oh, that’s just how it is as a sector, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And I think if we actually took the approach of investing in our people, and I do think that can be a challenge because there’s this narrative from funders that like its overhead training, or investing in staff is overhead and not programs related. But I think as a sector, if we’re serious about longevity, we have to invest in people.
DANA SNYDER 34:13
But people are the ones doing the work. So if we want the work to happen, we have to invest in the people to help them make a difference, right? It makes no sense to not be investing in the people or else it’s not going to happen.
RHEA WONG 34:25
staff, how do you think the work happens? It’s like magical fairies come in and do the work. We have to pay, to do the work, anyway. I could go on but I will not do it. Is there anything else about ads that you think the audience should know before we sign off,
DANA SNYDER 34:46
I would just say test it. You have to be willing to test with ads. You have to be willing to have started with a small budget and need a couple of $100. One tip, if you know someone that works at Meta, they get a $250 a month ad credit that they can give to anyone and apply to your account. So if you happen to know a Meta employee, that’s just a little tip, or a suggestion to ask them if you can use their ad credit.
DANA SNYDER 35:15
But yeah, start small. I would say, look at my Visible Reach In A Week course is $27. It takes you less than 30 minutes to do to practice a reach campaign. And it’s a really great place to start if you’re just getting started. But I would say just to get your feet wet. It is a really great strategy, and to just start paying attention to the ads that you are naturally seeing yourself engaged with online.
RHEA WONG 35:41
That is awesome. We will make sure to all the info on that in the show notes. Thank you so much. It’s been super interesting and helpful.
DANA SNYDER 35:48
Thanks for having me. It’s super fun chatting with you.
RHEA WONG 35:51
And we’ll talk to you soon. Take care, everyone.
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