The Groupfinity Podcast

Anthony Wilson
The Groupfinity Podcast

The Groupfinity Podcast is for leaders of small volunteer non-profit organizations - Presidents, VPs, Treasurers, and Secretaries of parent groups of K-12 schools, chapters of larger organizations, professional associations, hobby clubs, youth sports clubs, church ministries or faith-based groups, veteran groups, and college & university alumni clubs. If the words club, group, association, chapter, or ministry appear in your organization’s name, this podcast is for you. This podcast is a resource for leaders to learn how to engage and inspire their membership, giving them the tools they need to execute their mission, support their members, and benefit the communities they serve.

  1. 03/09/2023

    Teri Beckman’s 5 Step Framework to Grow Revenue and Impact for Mission Driven Nonprofits

    #055 - Teri Beckman is the Founder and CEO of HIGOL, a consultancy firm that works to align leadership behaviors with business drivers to dramatically increase revenue, community impact and improve overall organizational performance.  Specifically, HIGOL helps mission driven CEOs grow revenue and impact by 50% in 12 months. After a long career working for nonprofits, even serving as Executive Director, Teri concluded that while technical knowledge is important, mindset is crucial if you want to be a change agent. “My capacity to grow and have impact didn't have much to do with my technical knowledge. I mean, that was important, but there was plenty of it out there, you know, to be able to access. What really made a difference was my mindset and as the capacity of my mind grew, so did the capacity for me to help an organization grow, for me to have more impact on the community.” In today’s episode, Teri shares her 5 step framework to transform non profit organizations.  She has particular success with small volunteer led organizations. Teri’s 5 step framework is: #1 Align around a shared vision; #2 Establish goals; #3 Three points you want to share with others about the organization; #4 Come up with a list of folks you want to talk to: and #5 Create a system to track your conversations. Be sure to stick around until the end to hear what in Teri’s background she attributes to resiliency and ability to navigate the Pandemic.

    39 min
  2. 01/12/2023

    Rachel Bearbower’s 4 Templates That Every Nonprofit Leader Needs To Connect More With Donors And Raise More Funds

    #054 - Rachel Bearbower is the founder and CEO of Small Shop Strategies, a nonprofit consultancy focused on coaching nonprofit leaders how to detangle their systems, so they can focus their time and energy on building relationships and raising more for their causes. In just 3 years, Rachel has built a community where over a hundred nonprofit leaders are showing up for themselves and learning how to boldly fundraise, tell better stories and become even more impactful changemakers. In today’s episode, Rachel shares the 4 templates every nonprofit leader should have locked and loaded and ready at all times to maintain connection with their donors: #1 An immediate automated thank you note or receipt; #2 Within 24-48 hours a heartfelt quick personal email that is NOT the receipt from your CRM that lets your donor know the gift was received and appreciated; #3 An email or video depicting the impact of their gift and reminding them that you did what you said you were going to do with their gift; and #4 A Connection email - Ask for their opinion / Send them an article / Find out why they gave Rachel emphasizes how important it is to ditch transactional relationships and develop real meaningful relationships with your donors - connect donors to the mission, connect them to what their gift actually did. “Donors don't want to fund the process. They want to fund the impact. And so you, the organization, you are the process, and so you wanna remove yourself. So instead of saying, help us buy new uniforms, it's, you can provide a kid with a new uniform.” The key takeaways from my discussion with Rachel are: #1 The best way to connect more and raise is to have a plan; #2 Communicate as quickly as possible after the donation comes in; #3 Automate and personalize your communication; and #4 Make your communication about the donor instead of your organization. Be sure to stick around until the end to hear now being a farmer in training helps Rachel be a lifetime learner and makes her a better nonprofit consultant.

    38 min
  3. 11/17/2022

    The 3 Characteristics Of The Most Trusted People, According to Minna Taylor

    #052 - Minna Taylor is a trained actress.  After earning her masters degree, she began teaching accent reduction to corporate clients as a side hustle in between acting gigs.  That experience is where she found the intersection of speech & voice, body language, and breathing. "Communication is a physical activity. We think about it as just coming out of our mouth, but our whole body is behind it. And if we go back to that statistic, which is 7% of the information people receive is verbal, 93% is vocal and nonverbal that means our body is doing most of the talking. What I see time and time again and what I saw at the very start of my career was people's bodies silencing them.” Minna outlines the 3 characteristics of the most trusted people: 1 Generosity; 2 Curiosity; and 3 Likability People come to her to increase confidence, to increase capacity, to speak up, to share their voice, to tell powerful stories, to influence people, and to become powerful agents of change. The key takeaways from my discussion with Minna are: #1 80% of your attention should be listening and 20% breathing; #2 Generosity is about energy and presence; #3 Curiosity is less about asking and more about how you choose to contribute without judging; and #4 We have to like someone before we can trust them. Be sure to stick around until the end to hear Minna share how giving up a little control and being vulnerable leads to being more trusted.

    43 min
  4. 11/03/2022

    A Discussion with Rhea Wong About Her Book - Get That Money, Honey! The No-Bullsh*t Guide to Raising More Money for Your Nonprofit.

    #051 - Rhea Wong makes a return trip to the Groupfinity Podcast, this time to discuss her new book - Get That Money, Honey! The No-Bullsh*t Guide to Raising More Money for Your Nonprofit.  Rhea points out that that mindset is a big limiting factor in fundraising.  We assume people will only give the minimum and we get too emotional about rejection, which impacts our ongoing fundraising efforts. "I think people get so emotionally tied up in that if they don't give to my organization, that means all these bad things about me and I'm somehow inferior and less than, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, let's just drop the story.  AND how could we do our job better without this disempowering story?" Storytelling is a key to your fundraising success because we all want to believe that our lives have meant something.  We all want to think about legacy and believe we lived on the planet and the world is a little bit better. You need to help your donor see themself as the hero in the story.  They are the hero, not you. Rhea tells why investing in systems is so important.  We’re always freaking out about money and not spending it and we end up missing the forest for the trees.  Think about how to automate your organization to make you more efficient rather than just the amount of the expense itself. “If I spend money, it's either going to be because there's a monetary ROI, so it's gonna help me bring more money in, or It's going to give me back my time, or it's going to increase operational efficiency. If the expense that you're putting out doesn't do one of those three things, I think you really need to think about your expense.” The key takeaways from my discussion with Rhea are: #1 Evaluate your systems by mapping your processes to where the problems exist; #2 In Fundraising a story is important because it accesses the empathy part of our brain. And empathy is where generosity lies; #3 Don't spend your time doing stupid manual things like data entry. Spend the time creating relationships with humans; and #4 Your meetings should be 75% of them talking, 25% you talking. Be sure to stick around until the end to hear what Rhea learned from an FBI hostage negotiator.

    42 min
  5. 10/20/2022

    Marketing Specialist Lynn Ruby Shares The Email Marketing Mistakes You Are Making And The Changes You Need to Make Get Your People’s Attention.

    #050 - Today I am speaking with marketing specialist and strategist Lynn Ruby.  Lynn works with small businesses, solo-preneurs and nonprofits who are really good at what they do, but still struggle and get intimidated by online marketing.  The pandemic brought about 3 primary changes to email marketing:  1) Email volumes exploded; 2) 75% of us tried new habits and those habits are sticking; and 3) Brand loyalty was shattered. “…. the volume of email drastically expanded during the pandemic and is continuing to go up after the pandemic. Consumers changed their values, they changed how they're doing things. Email was a big part of that and they're changing their loyalties to brands and all of those things are continuing to change” Lynn shares that if you are not clear and concise, your emails will get lost.  You are not competing with other nonprofits, you are competing with EVERYONE your tribe is getting emails from - large corporations with experienced copywriters. “...if you're a really small non-profit, if you're a larger non-profit, if you're a relatively medium sized business or medium sized non-profit, you're competing with them because they're setting the expectations of how email should be done and they do it very well. They're clear and concise with their messaging and their visuals. And if we as smaller entities cannot rise at least somewhat to that level that those big brands are doing because that's who our audience is also seeing emails from, we're going to be not as effective as we can be.” The key takeaways from my discussion with Lynn are:  #1 Email is being used more than ever; #2 You need to move social media followers to your email list; #3 You need a subject line that causes the recipient to open it; and #4 Write the way you talk. Be sure to stick around until the end to hear why you should segment and personalize your emails.

    37 min
  6. 10/06/2022

    Can You Really Use Paid Search And Paid Social To Boost Your Email List? Rishi Malhotra Tells Us How To Do It So You Get Better Fundraising Results.

    #049 - Today I am speaking with digital marketing specialist Rishi Malhotra.  Rishi says there is a lot of interest in using paid search and paid social in fundraising efforts.  Rishi has a different perspective, however. “I'll probably say I get a lot of questions about using it directly for fundraising, but I would say, the best use case I've seen is typically, to use it to boost your, your email list.” He advises organizations to use paid search and paid social to drive your ideal tribe to a lead magnet - they trade their email address for the promised piece of collateral.  The good news is this strategy will not break the bank.  In fact, Google provides $10k in monthly grants to registered 501(c)3 organizations. The application is easy enough, but he says you may want to get a little implementation advice so you achieve your desired results. Rishi got his start advising small and medium sized businesses on search marketing.  Later he went on to hone his non-profit marketing skills at Blue State Digital. When I asked Rishi if this strategy works for small organizations he said… “I would say that if your goal is to grow and build your supporters and subscribers, and potentially donors, then I would say, it's worth doing whether you're small, whether you're large, if that is kind of in line with your goals. And I think you should pursue it.” The key takeaways from my discussion with Rishi are: #1 Include your location when picking your keywords; #2 Develop a Welcome Series for new subscribers; #3 Use negative keywords to fine tune your search parameters; and #4 The Google Grant Program approves most nonprofits, with only some exceptions. Be sure to stick around until the end to hear what you should be targeting for cost per click.

    23 min
5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

The Groupfinity Podcast is for leaders of small volunteer non-profit organizations - Presidents, VPs, Treasurers, and Secretaries of parent groups of K-12 schools, chapters of larger organizations, professional associations, hobby clubs, youth sports clubs, church ministries or faith-based groups, veteran groups, and college & university alumni clubs. If the words club, group, association, chapter, or ministry appear in your organization’s name, this podcast is for you. This podcast is a resource for leaders to learn how to engage and inspire their membership, giving them the tools they need to execute their mission, support their members, and benefit the communities they serve.

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