Confused about all the options for nonprofit marketing? 🤔 Don’t let analysis paralysis stop your impact! 🛑
Krystal Covington, marketing pro turned nonprofit consultant, shares bite-sized tips to level up your marketing—even with limited time and budget. 💡 Krystal is a Marketing Consultant with GO Lead, LLC and the Community Outreach Coordinator at a Denver-based nonprofit called Hands of the Carpenter.
Her main takeaway: start small and stay consistent. Little steps like sending a social media post or pitching local media add up over time to stronger community, trust, and visibility. She advises getting your core team aligned on one clear mission statement first, then facilitating collaboration across marketing and development efforts.
And keep growing that email list! It helps sustain precious relationships with supporters.
“I’m passionate about helping anything and anyone with a cause and with a purpose that matters. They need to have … really great marketing and really great marketers that support the things that matter in the world.” – Krystal Covington
Tune into the full episode for more on how to prioritize marketing, even on a shoestring budget. Krystal’s pragmatic advice will help you overcome analysis paralysis.
Important Links:
DIY PR Podcast Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/167-diy-pr-with-rebekah-epstein/id1436858854?i=1000547416777
Email: krystal@goleadconsulting.com
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystalncovington/
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown.
Today, my guest Krystal Covington is the marketing consultant with GoLeap Consulting and also serves as a community outreach coordinator at the Hands of the Carpenter. And today we are going to talk about marketing on a shoestring budget.
Krystal, welcome to the show.
KRYSTAL 0:30
Hey, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you so much.
RHEA 0:32
Thanks for being here. Crystal, before we jump into all of the things, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found yourself to where you are today?
KRYSTAL 0:41
Yeah. So after college, I ended up finding myself in the nonprofit world inadvertently.
I, have been in marketing most of my career. I Even did marketing in college, making flyers and helping to promote school programs. I worked for the school directly and I did a lot of volunteering and when volunteering, they would always have me doing the marketing. So I did something called experiential marketing and so it’s just what I’ve been in my whole life and I’m passionate about helping.
Anything and anyone with a cause and with a purpose that matters. To really get the word out because the best marketers are always working for The things that don’t help anybody with anything or. Like cookies that make us sick and all that. They have the best marketers on those teams. So they need to have, there needs to be, really great marketing and really great marketers that support the things that matter in the world.
RHEA 1:29
let’s. Jumping to some definitions for those of us who don’t necessarily know the technical details. what does marketing mean? Cause we hear about like marketing, branding, advertising, PR, like what does all of that mean?
KRYSTAL 1:42
There are so many different pieces that fit together to help us.
Get the word out about what is being done at your nonprofit. For example, you have to do some marketing to bring in the people who need your services. And that might be putting up flyers. That might be posting to social media. That might include going out to events and having a table and telling people about what you do.
That is all part of marketing. So any of those aspects of spreading the word about what you do is marketing. Usually when people start going into the sponsorship area, trying to get people to donate or sponsor events and things like that, it’s called development. But there’s a really close hand in hand relationship between development and marketing also, because the marketing work spreading the word about the impact makes it easier.
For people who might sponsor your events or donate to feel that trust because they say, Oh, I’ve heard of this before. I know exactly what you do. And that engagement that familiarity helps them to feel trust to give their dollars because The biggest thing that causes someone to not want to donate is a lack of trust, either they don’t have the money, which is, they either you have it or you don’t, but if they have the extra money and they do donate, it’s a matter of if they like your mission and what you’re doing and then the biggest barrier after that is.
Do they trust you, and are they familiar enough to feel like they know you’re going to use the money in the right way, and they know that you’re good stewards in general, of that responsibility? Oh,
RHEA 3:18
that’s such a great definition, and actually, it touches on something I’d love for you to speak about.
Why is it, do you think, that there is, tension might be a strong word, but that sometimes, Marketing or communications isn’t working hand in hand with development or fundraising. Because I feel to my mind, it’s an obvious one two punch they’re partners, but sometimes in, you can see the two kind of, best siloed, at worst like, in actual conflict.
KRYSTAL 3:43
It’s very psychological. I’ve worked in the corporate world too. So even there, there is. An interesting dynamic between the sales department and the marketing department. I worked at a financial company at the financial company I worked at, we actually did a lot of things to try to create.
Relationship. And part of that psychology is the fact that we as marketers often feel like we don’t want to be held responsible for sales and for money and for revenue generation. Most of us are afraid of that. We just want to be the people who look, I buy your ads. I put the things out there. I make sure they’re statistical.
Results. But when you start getting held responsible for financial results, it’s really scary. And it is really hard because you’re doing all this effort and you’re expecting a return. And when there isn’t one, it’s stressful. if marketers can stay away from that, they can, they’ll You know, stay away from that world as much as that they can and just be accountable for these numbers of look.
Lots of people looked at this. Lots of people clicked on this. Lots of people saw this but didn’t get anything. And that’s the part where I’m always terrified because I needed to get something. I really don’t feel comfortable if I’m Putting this effort and putting this money in, and it’s not reaping any reward.
Because I know as a business person, a business owner, that hurts my business if I’m spending money on something and it’s not working. Development doesn’t always want to have a great relationship with marketers because they also might resent us for being standoffish about the money. the development folks are like, look, just get me the flyers I need.
Just get me the stuff I need and stay out of the way and don’t cost the company so much money that I have to do more work. it’s one of those things where I’ve realized that. We need to have good communication we need to have a close relationship and not just be, okay, I make some flyers for you when you say you have a meeting, I can help you put together this stuff in response to what you’re doing.
No, we should work together to decide what you’re doing and figure out if what either one of us is doing is, functional to figure out how can we collaborate to make sure that What I’m doing coincides with what you’re doing. So for an example, if I know I’m doing some pitching for television and we get an opportunity, then the development person needs to know, because there might be ideas they have of how to utilize that.
So for example, they might say, okay, once this airs, get me the link, I’m going to share it with our donors and get them excited. And I might not think of that myself or. That development person might say, give me some clips. I’m going to be doing a presentation and then I can put together that presentation to help them and they wouldn’t again know if I wasn’t communicating and they didn’t have ideas to share with me and I can vice versa, share ideas and say, you know what you’re doing this partnership here.
Maybe I can try to get some news beforehand and do this. And, we can find a lot of different ways to partner together. to boost the efforts of both sides of that. And I can still know that person is ultimately responsible for the intake of the money, but I’m helping. And then there’s a pride in that.
Yeah.
RHEA 6:46
here’s the thing that I didn’t really understand when I was an executive director, which I didn’t really understand the role of marketing as it pertained to fundraising, because honestly, in my mind, and I’m not saying this is the right. thing, but this is how I thought about it, which is why would I spend my time marketing without a clear ROI?
If I can’t point the finger to like, I spent X amount on your PR ad spend, whatever. And it. Yielded y amount of donations and like, why would I do it? I’m sure that’s a common refrain that you
KRYSTAL 7:16
hear. It’s a good question. So basically what I say is this, if you have an amazing development department and everything is just flowing so great and your relationships are so great and you’re so well known in the community, keep doing what you’re doing If you’re not.
And you need to have that boost, then you need to have that marketing. so I’ve seen some organizations that they have six development directors and they have, those people are out there really working and they may not be directors, but I’m saying development individuals that are out there fundraising and they have a really great in person strategy.
That is wonderful. So if that works, it works. But 1 thing when you’re in a large community. For example, when you’re in a big city, or you have multiple locations and things like that, you need to reach a broad audience with your message to let more people know about you so that you can call. For example, an organization with 1 2 people in the development team and a big.
working area will want to have more digital marketing and maybe some radio ads and things like that, or putting out flyers, things like that, but lots of different ways to reach people so that they can find out about it and call or respond. And even if they hear your radio ad once, and then they finally meet your development director.
At an event or something, they can say, Oh, I’ve heard of you. So now this is a second touch. And we know the more time that someone gets a touch. They get closer to that trusting relationship and they get closer to action and it takes a while before someone is comfortable taking an action. you might bring those people in and say, you know what?
We have some volunteer opportunities. Then you promote the volunteer opportunities. So promoting volunteer opportunities, it’s a form of marketing because you get those people to know what you’re doing. You find the people who want to get involved in that action of getting involved, helps to build the trust and it builds the connection.
And now they have a relationship and then they ultimately will probably end up being donors in the future or help to find donors and bring other people in. So all of the things. Become a kind of a circle of gathering. Folks that would be the best audience for your organization, the best supporters at Hands of the Carpenter.
They’re called champions, people who champion the organization. So digital marketing and all the other forms of marketing, like the PR, the public relations and the branding, all of those things culminate into helping to make the job of development easier because they help build that trust and they make the job easier by helping to build a first or second or third touch from somebody that may not have ever met you or been at the same event as you and things like that.
Someone saw one of the social advertisements that we put out and then they said, this was with regard to Hands of the Carpenter, and they said, we pass by you all the time. Please reach out to our business. And it’s A local business nearby that does like landscaping, I think.
And they said, we’re really excited to learn more about this. I didn’t really know what you do. So they’d been passing by on the way to work basically. And the owner was the one that posted it and said, this is the owner who to reach out to and made a little note there. it’s one of those things where.
If they hadn’t seen that social post then they wouldn’t have commented and they learned about what the organization does and said, Oh, my goodness, I had no clue. And I pass by all the time. And so it made them excited, made them respond. And now they want to get involved in some way.
And they want to find out how they can be a champion.
RHEA 10:44
Okay, Crystal, let me ask a different question, because I know a lot of folks who listen to Nonprofit Lowdown are in small shops, or they may be listening to you Crystal, we don’t have bandwidth, we don’t have a budget to do, big marketing things.
And I will say having, run, running my own business, I get very overwhelmed. I’m like, okay, there’s social, there’s organic, there’s paid advertising, there’s PR, it just becomes very overwhelming. where do I even begin? Where would you recommend that people start if they’ve done nothing at all?
If they have done
KRYSTAL 11:12
nothing at all, the first thing I would ask them to do this was something that I thought was a really easy thing to do, is basically come up with a really good social media post idea. So get a really good picture and come up with a social post and ask other people to share it.
So ask your donors, your volunteers, your community, To share it. So send out a newsletter and say, Hey, we’d love if you share this. And that’s a really great way to get a nice boost of visibility. And it’s just a simple action. And you can do that regularly. You can make it a part of your newsletter and say, here’s this month’s social share and make it a thing.
There are also other things that are really easy to do. They sound intimidating, but if you have an event coming up, or if you have something that you’ve accomplished, literally just go to your local news, the one you like to watch, or just open up all of them and go to the contact page. Find the news at so and so email address and just send them a quick message that says, Hey, our organization just accomplished this, just wanted you to know, and you never know they might respond and say, Oh, that sounds great.
Can we do a story on this? Those are just easy actions that can get you some potential visibility and they don’t take much time or any money.
RHEA 12:20
And this might be a little bit in the weeds, because I know this is not about our social media specifically, but, there are all these social platforms out there, LinkedIn, Twitter, now Threads, and X, and I guess Twitter’s now X, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest.
Like, all the things, right? Very overwhelming. Yeah. If I wanted to get started, with just one which platform should I choose?
KRYSTAL 12:42
That will depend on you. So basically… I’m seeing in my mind, I’m seeing someone who’s a founder of a nonprofit who has a small organization or something.
And they’re doing a lot of the work on their own, or they have 1 person that’s managing operations and that operations person is trying to do all the things. And I would just say whatever they like the best. Just do that. Because at this point, there are too many. And when you stretch yourself out like that, You’re not gonna see much action on any of them. back in the day, so I ran a membership organization for years and it took even back then, I started it in 2013. It took years to get to 5,000 Facebook followers and to build the audience. I think Twitter had 2000 something LinkedIn, maybe 2000 something.
So it was like all those years it took to build to those thousands of followers. That was with years of me posting regularly. I would boost with things with 5 ads. I would just do a 5 boost on anything. At one point I had, I think it was a 50 budget a month, and I would just do a 5 boost on any video that I did, and that would help me to get that visibility and make sure that people following would.
See what I posted, but at that time, I was focused mostly on Facebook and I said, I’m going to have a profile on these other places. I had one of those tools that let me post whatever I posted to Facebook could go to the other platforms, even though it wasn’t in the language of Twitter or perfectly suited for those things.
My primary was Facebook. So I said, okay. Whatever goes on those other ones, it just keeps them active. But what goes on Facebook it needs to be really good for Facebook. And it needs to focus on that primary style. For example, if you were doing TikTok, it’s a very different style. I know that every platform had started to create their own kind of TikTok thing that you can do there.
So they’re trying to mimic that because it’s become super popular. But TikTok has its own format and style. And so if you’re going to do TikTok, you focus it on TikTok and don’t put a Facebook post on TikTok. And all of that, again, is just where is your comfort zone where you’re going to feel like you know what you’re doing and you are aware of how that platform functions.
And how things become successful on those platforms and always have an open mind to understand it’s not going to, I see all the things where somebody says, Oh, I did this one thing and I blew up and I went viral and I have all these followers and you cannot get discouraged by seeing these things you never know if they bought those followers, if they are real, if they joined a group where sometimes there’s these groups where they Follow each other and create these real interrelationships where they boost each other.
Those things still work and people do them but you never know what they did um, and it may not be for you to have 100, 000 followers. Did 100, 000 followers bring 100, 000? It may or may not. You have to just understand and have expectations that your goal is to just start doing the actions and those actions over repetition over years.
Help to build more visibility, help people to find you where they are. So some people do their searching on these platforms. So being searchable being findable, it just is a cumulative effort. Your main thing in nonprofit is always development and making sure that you have whatever you’re applying for grants regularly.
You’re reaching out to build relationships with people. You’re asking folks for, more introductions to the next person and the next person. So you start building that list in that way, because those in person relationships, when it comes to getting the bigger dollars, that stuff is, always the most essential.
RHEA 16:13
Yeah. So let’s talk about that because you said something that I feel like we skated over, but I think it’s really critical. You said in your newsletter. Now, personally. When I hear that nonprofits have an email list, but they don’t communicate. Regularly or they don’t have a weekly or monthly newsletter.
I just feel like it’s such a missed opportunity. Can you talk about the value of an email list versus, social media followers as an example?
KRYSTAL 16:35
I will use my own behavior as an example. So there are. Things that I’ll look up and I’m interested in. So, for example, I wanted to start getting into linen and natural cotton clothing.
And so, but I’m not ready to buy it now. I went to look for websites and then I said, where’s the newsletter list? So I could find that newsletter list and put myself on it so I can get communications. I know that some of those websites have not emailed me at all. I don’t know if I’ll ever find it again.
if they will email me when I do have the money set aside to spend on those new clothes so I can have my natural cotton clothes and my natural linen clothes, I will be ready when they email me. When you have people on your email list, it’s a sign. People today, they don’t want to be on email lists and it’s very hard to build an email list.
And so when people are on that list, they want to hear from you. They joined it so that they can know what’s happening and keep being reminded that you exist. And when they go all this time and they do not unsubscribe, they’re really interested. And so you need to be talking to them. It’s very essential.
I had, like I said, I had that membership organization, and I would promote my events online on social media, and I would boost it with ads, but most of the people would register from getting the email. And I would ask people all the time, where did you find the information for this event? They said well, if you didn’t email me, I didn’t see it.
Because social media is, it passes through. Sometimes you think you saw a post and you try to go back, you can’t find it. They need to be able to say, Oh, I’m going to bookmark that in my email. And they put a little star next to it, or they can push the bookmark sign or whatever signal they have in their email box to save it and go back to it.
They can re reference it. A monthly newsletter is essential if you can do two two is great as well and it’s not too much to do two.
RHEA 18:24
lEt’s talk about content for a second because I also think that’s really important. So a lot of times people will send out emails and they make the mistake of making every every communication a solicitation, which I think is a huge mistake.
But I’d be curious. Is it a huge mistake for every communication to be a solicitation? And when we think about sending out communications, what sorts of things should we be thinking about? Because I think a lot of times the other mistake I see is that people just like talk about the nonprofit Oh, our new staff member or whatever, and respectfully, people don’t care. People want to know about the impact of the work. They want stories of the people that you’ve helped. They don’t care about the new snack bar. What are your thoughts on that, Krystal? I think
KRYSTAL 19:03
almost anything is fine. Honestly, I get so many emails. because I’m in marketing, I analyze and I I really pay attention to them.
But I don’t think any of those are wrong. I think that you should have a nice mix I think when we’re in the nonprofit world and we’re making an impact, we feel like Everything should be focused on the impact, and when we’re asking too much, it makes us feel bad, but if you think about retail, I’m on many retail lists, and they email me multiple times a week asking me to buy something, and it’s okay for them, but for some reason, we feel like it’s not okay when it’s the nonprofit, but it’s okay.
If that’s what you need to do and people want to give you can continue to ask every month and you can also add some stories about what’s going on. for Hands of the Carpenter, the organization features a story of a woman that has been supported Through the program in every newsletter, and that’s what the newsletter is about underneath.
It is any ask events, things that are going on. And there’s always a donate now button for, some emails that I receive that I think are really great, so there’s a couple really big organizations that I love. They do a lot of events, so they focus on their events, and they, part of their social enterprise model is they make money on the events because you pay for them.
And they are soliciting almost every newsletter, so they do have, they have some awards that they give out, but those awards, again, have event that it’s related to, and the event costs money, so I think they’re mixing this apply for the award here’s what we’re doing, here’s some thought leadership, some things that we’re saying in the world that we think you should imitate and then here’s an ask for our next event, and I don’t think it’s a problem at all that they put the events in almost every newsletter, and I don’t think it’s a problem at all that they email.
I know I get them at least once a week. Sometimes I think they’re multiple times. I can probably look at my email box. I’m not going to share the organization’s name, but I can probably look at my email box and find four of them. and I have not unsubscribed. And so I think, Because I admire the organization and what they do, and I just keep looking at it and thinking thinking, well, one of these days I’m going to go to one of your upcoming events.
RHEA 21:06
Yeah. I think there are two things here that I really want to lift up. The first thing is I think we have a fear of emailing our list too much and fearing that they’ll unsubscribe. The truth is If someone’s going to unsubscribe, they’re never going to be a donor to you anyway.
However, I do think that there is something to be said for sending emails and communications that are value additive, right? I think the question that we really as nonprofits have to ask is what is the value to my donor for this email? Does it teach them something? Does it delight them? Does it?
touch them emotionally? Does it connect them to a community? Does it invite them to a thing? thing? Like, What is the value I’m offering before I ask for value back? Yeah, I
KRYSTAL 21:43
like that. I love the concept of value, but I also want to make sure, because I know who the non profit audience is, I want to make sure they know it is okay to ask, and it’s okay to ask regularly, because we all, as donors, need to remember that, Oh, you need something from us, too.
We’re not just here to admire you. We do need to support, and knowing how to support, Even if some of your emails are how we can support as volunteers and putting your volunteer opportunities in an email, things like that, events that you’re hosting, it is an ask as well. And that’s okay to continue to do that.
But I think it’s part of the spirit of people who are helpers to feel like they shouldn’t ask for anything, even when they really need it. And so I want to make sure that they feel confident that it’s okay to do that. And if all you can do is get out in a newsletter As many times as you can and just let people know about events and donation drives and things like that’s also okay.
So you don’t have to feel like, Oh, I haven’t sent out a newsletter with any information recently or anything informative or fun, so I can’t do an ask. But you still can. You do not have to feel like you Can’t put that out there.
RHEA 22:51
Hey, I agree with you. I think we can’t be afraid to ask. I guess I’ll, I differ a little bit in that I think not that you can’t, you can do anything you want, but I think the likelihood of success is probably better if you warm up your audience.
sometimes the mistake that I see is you haven’t communicated with your audience all year and then giving Tuesday rolls around and you bomb them with, a million solicitations. I’m like, Whoa, like where have you been this whole time? I just think there’s something to be said to you about warming up the audience before you, spring the question.
Last question for me, and then there’s a fun question coming in from Zahini. If I’m listening to this and I say, okay, Crystal, I hear you. I know marketing is important. What is the bare minimum that you think that I should do if I’m like a single shop, no development department, no communications department.
KRYSTAL 23:33
The bare minimum that you should do if you’re a single shop and you don’t have. Anything is always making sure that you are making calls that you are continuing to build and rebuild relationships with people who have donated and asking them for referrals to other people who may be interested in learning more.
keeping a volunteer community on hand because those volunteers can help you to spread the word more quickly. So if you only have a few hundred social media followers, nobody on your email list because you haven’t worked on it. You can at least ask your volunteers to share things or to help you to build some new relationships so that you can have that coming.
So those are the two main things. Okay,
RHEA 24:16
making the phone calls, the volunteer list, what about the tier two, if I have a little bit more bandwidth, like what, where should I go next?
KRYSTAL 24:21
If you have a little bit more bandwidth, I would make sure that you’re reaching out to your local news on a regular basis, because I’m a believer in PR.
It is the biggest credibility factor. People love to see that you’ve been in the news. It makes great content and the news loves to feature nonprofits. And so if you’re doing great work and you have things happening, always reaching out. To the local news. It takes no time. You do not have to have a publicist.
I know that it can help because they’re thinking of it. They can come up with the right timing and pitches and they know the emails and all of that and have the connections. But my first times getting press. I had no clue how to get press and I just emailed the news and said, Hey, we’re hosting an event and we’re doing this and they showed up.
RHEA 25:01
Yeah. And Yeah. Just to be clear, so I’ve done another podcast interview with PR. there’s lots of good tips there. I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes, but the PR pitch should be tied to something in the news, right? like a back to school angle or it’s like Earth Day angle. If you’re an environmental organization, it can’t just be like this random. Maybe it can, but
KRYSTAL 25:20
it can be. So if you have low bandwidth. So there’s two different tiers of doing PR. So yes, you can have a calendar when I worked for a retail company and it was the easiest PR ever gotten in my life because I could come up with an idea on anything.
They have all these national day calendars. And I remember one time even seeing it was like a national beat day. And I said, I’m going to call the news and I’m going to offer them a beet brownie. And I didn’t even have a recipe and I pitched a beet brownie idea. They said, come on and do the beet brownies.
And so we made up a recipe for beet brownies. that is one way of doing things, but the first time I ever got PR and many other times there’s been other times that I will just send anything that’s coming up to the news. And I want it to feel like for them. It’s easy, and I agree with what the DIY PR said, and they’re correct, and that’s what we do as publicists, is they’re paying for publicity, we put out.
Really relevant ideas. We tie it to the news and get them responding to things that are going on. So that is really essential. But if you’re doing this on your own and you have five minutes a month to do something like that, you can literally get PR by just saying we have something coming up.
This is what we’re doing or this is what we’ve achieved. you might have just accumulated your stats for the year and you say, Oh, my gosh, we helped 600 people this year. And so you can reach out to the news and say, Hey, we just tallied up our support for the year. And we’ve helped 600 people by making this impact and just putting that out there to the news website.
And you can get a Press feature and if they have some time coming up, they might just want to feature a nonprofit and they can feature that. So that puts you on their radar. And if at the very worst you’ve emailed them, they might’ve seen it. And now you are on their radar for the future.
And they say, Oh, that nonprofit sounds interesting. And then when something comes up, they’ve heard of you. So don’t be afraid to just send them. a contact email and say, Hey, this is what we do. I love you on TV. If you ever would like to talk about this topic, we’d be happy to talk about the impact or the issues that are happening with this group that we support.
So those kinds of things in general, without even having to tie it to anything can be helpful to get that pitch out and make sure that they know about you and you could be surprised what response you
RHEA 27:35
get. And along this list, where should we be focused on our email list? I keep coming back to the power of the email list.
KRYSTAL 27:42
The email list is extremely powerful. with focusing on your email list are you saying maybe how many times
RHEA 27:48
what you should? No, I’m just thinking. In the phase of building out my marketing arm, if I’m a single person, single ED doing it, like at what point should I become focused on my email list?
I heard you say the first thing is I should be on the phone with my supporters. I should be talking to volunteers on social. Next phase would be talking to newsletters, but we’re in that is the email list building. The
KRYSTAL 28:09
email list should always exist. So no matter what, even if you’ve just started and there are five people that have expressed interest and they’re willing to allow you to email them, you should be emailing them regularly and just saying, Hey, this is what we’re doing.
I’m so excited. Thank you so much for being a supporter. those messages are priceless. and never be afraid, like I said, of reaching out to people. It doesn’t have to be a formal email newsletter. You can just have a regularity of reaching out to your constituents, your champions, and just making sure that you’re building that relationship and letting you know what they’re, what you’re doing.
And at what
RHEA 28:45
point should we be thinking about things like a professional branding or rebrand for some folks or hiring a PR agency or, getting into paid ads? Is that sort of like several steps down the road or when would be a good time for all of that?
KRYSTAL 29:00
I think it’s just when you have the budget for it.
I haven’t seen anybody that hasn’t benefited from doing regular marketing. And even, at the smaller levels, I often meet people who run nonprofits, who started nonprofits, but they market for themselves.
And we meet each other in the process of doing things out in the community and all of that. And so there are many of them that. Basically start from nothing and one piece upon another.
RHEA 29:27
Okay. I have a question coming in. It’s more of a discussion point. Not a question per se, but This person writes, especially in larger orgs with a full department, the person who does marketing is not necessarily the person who does media relations. So if you’re hiring someone to get you into the New York Times, that’s awesome, but not the same skill set as PR advertising. I guess the question is like, how do you make sure that all of the different pieces and skill sets are working together?
KRYSTAL 29:51
Asking people, I guess the first step is just asking people to do that. So I think I recently talked with a nonprofit and she was a nonprofit CEO, and she was kind of complaining that the people that she has hired in the past to work with her didn’t.
Collaborate together and she was trying to figure out How do I get them to collaborate together? And I said did you invite them to and she said I just thought they would do that. Somebody she’s expecting someone else to lead that. And so if you want those groups to.
Collaborate together, you have to create a format for it. And some people do things like strategic meetings, you have to get, work on getting a little bit of training sometimes for that to know how to get people to talk to each other and collaborate. Because people will think they’re collaborating by just writing stuff on a board, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
And so trying to figure out how to create a culture of true collaboration, even if in a lot of times for smaller nonprofits, they are contractors, they are different groups. You can’t, you don’t have them 40 hours a week in the office. And that’s even harder, but trying to facilitate those conversations and facilitate those opportunities for them to talk to each other and letting them know it’s okay.
You have an idea, please contact the social media team that I’m working with and tell them your idea to see if they think it makes sense. If you, have an idea for PR, why don’t you run it by the social media team and see what they have going and how can you mesh what you’re doing?
When I worked in for profit and I had a larger executive team. I had regular. Work meetings with the social media director. I was the PR and we would coordinate our efforts because that social media and PR our ideas kind of blended together. You have to think of creative things, just like I’m looking at the weekly day, the, the holidays every month and all that stuff.
He’s doing the same thing because he needs to come up with content for social. And so the two of us can collaborate on which, special days are we going to do National Hot Dog Day and what are we going to do and how can we do PR and social to mesh well and boost the efforts of both.
RHEA 31:48
what I’m hearing is to create a specific container and expectation that everybody is talking to each other.
I know I keep saying last question, but there’s so many things to explore. one of the things that I’ve. heard, and I think makes some good sense, is this concept of a controlling idea that is the source of all of the different pieces, whether it’s like your website, your annual appeal going out, the press release how do you help people get to that one idea that It’s almost like the ring that unites them all, that one idea that unites them all, because I think if you’re in PR, you may have a different take versus if you’re in content marketing versus if you’re social versus if you’re the development office.
KRYSTAL 32:25
That part, I think, has been… With any organization, I think is the hardest thing because people sometimes have different ideas of the main thing that organization does. that’s another thing where you really have to work to have a cohesive understanding of what is the 1 thing and people get really hung up on.
We do X and X and somebody will have a connection to one of those three things. And so everybody’s going in different directions. creating that cohesiveness requires the leader of the team. To really make sure that they come together for one functional definition of if we do this one thing, if we make sure everybody knows this one thing, we will succeed.
the hands of the carpenter, they did this recently. I say recent, my sense of time is bad. It’s been months, but they, a few months ago, they sat down and they came up with this one thing as an executive team. And they said in one sentence. If we do this one thing, this is how we’re going to succeed and they really targeted it and it was really wonderfully laid out.
RHEA 33:28
I love that so much because I’ve worked with nonprofits and the minute someone starts. A sentence with, well, it’s complicated. I’m like, my brain already, I’m like nope, I cannot anyone listening work with your team so you don’t have to start a sentence. We do a lot of things are well, it’s complicated.
I’m like, nope.
KRYSTAL 33:44
Yes. I worked for years for a nonprofit that I had no idea. I would keep asking, what do we do? How do we make our money? Because I didn’t, it was a complex organization. it was actually multifamily housing for low income families in section eight.
But I was like, I don’t understand, I still don’t understand the model here. And it was years before I finally figured out what was happening because I thought How do we operate? Where does money come from? Because we didn’t ask for donations a lot. It was a very different sort of situation.
The money came from the government. And so it was like, I never really understood what is the real way that this organization functions as an employee. I didn’t understand this for so long and no one could really do a good explanation. That’s a bad
RHEA 34:28
thing. also feel like, executive directors and founders, like they’re great at what they do, but they have the curse of knowledge.
they know too much about it. And so they get into the weeds of the thing and as a, normal everyday person. I didn’t need to know like the ins and outs of all of the details of the program, like a high level 30, 000 feet. What do you do in one sentence? 140 characters.
it’s so hard for people to get to that simplicity, that clarity, that one sentence of this is what we do. Folks out there listening, that is the starting point for all of your marketing. Figure out the one thing you do in one sentence. don’t tell me all of the million things you do I’m not asking like, what are your programs? What I’m asking is what is the change that you’re making in the world? And you do that via your programs, but you are not your programs. You are a mission. The programs are the how, I want the what. Exactly. Crystal, this has been so great. Thank you so much.
I’m going to put your information in the show notes for folks to get in touch with you. What’s the best way for folks to reach out?
KRYSTAL 35:22
krystal. Go lead consulting.com
RHEA 35:26
and I will also put your LinkedIn info in the show notes if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please give me a review on Apple Podcast.
Why don’t you and share it with your friends. Thanks so much, crystal. This has been so fun having you. Thank you so much. Have a good day.
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