Ep. 130: Get Your Board on Board or Get Left Behind
EPISODE 130
Get Your Board on Board or Get Left Behind
About the Episode:
Nonprofits, it’s time to rethink how you approach growth. The challenges you’re facing—the rising costs, donor fatigue, and constant burnout—aren’t going to be solved with the same old strategies. In this episode, I discuss why traditional fundraising methods fall short and how you can flip the script with bold, modern solutions. I am covering donor behavior shifts, how to tap into the $127 billion Creator Economy, and why mobilizing a Social Street Team™ could be your nonprofit’s secret weapon. Whether reaching new donors, scaling impact, or simply working smarter (not harder), this episode is about moving your mission forward. If you’ve big goals and are ready to invest in strategies that work, this one’s for you. Let’s make 2025 your breakthrough year.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The problem with old-school fundraising: Why traditional methods fall short in today’s landscape
The power of Social Street Team™: How leveraging influencers, creators, and ambassadors can revolutionize fundraising
How changes in donor behavior require nonprofits to innovate
Strategies to help your board see the value of investing in modern approaches like the Social Street Team™
Case studies of nonprofits that doubled or tripled their fundraising goals using this method
How to make the case for support, outline goals, and get started with a Social Street Team™ in 30 days
Why continuing education and new strategies are critical to nonprofit success
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“The Creator economy is a $127 billion industry, and it is growing.”
“People are already used to making buying decisions from influencers they follow, and so the value of that endorsement is so much more valuable than just an ad.”
“Your Social Street Team™ will help you stop solo fundraising.”
“I want you to flip your social strategy on its head and spend your marketing time developing relationships with influencers and creators so they are leveraging and creating their content, sharing your content to raise visibility, awareness, and fundraising for you.”
“Your Social Street Team™ gets to be your rock star fundraisers, great advocates, retention piece.”
“Some of our best street teamers are not necessarily celebrities, but they have engaged audiences online.”
“Continuing education should be in your company’s budget.”
“Get your board on board or get left behind!”
“Influencer marketing has 5x the return of every dollar spent.”
“You can start or grow your street team in 30 days.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 0:08Today's episode is a special one, because if you are a nonprofit and you have been wanting to join my program, you've been wanting to make the investment, and you've been wanting support in any way, shape or form, to grow your impact, to grow your nonprofit. This episode is for you, and this episode is perfect to share with your board. So if you want your board to better understand the challenges you face, to better understand what's possible and how you can get support in the club, share this episode with them. And if you're that board member and you're listening to me, hi, hi, hi, welcome, welcome, I'm excited to have you here. So I'm Christina Edwards. I'm going to share today a couple of different things. I'm going to share why old school fundraising isn't cutting it anymore. I'm going to share the changes in the nonprofit sector, and I'm going to share how boards can best support leadership, executive directors, nonprofit fundraisers and marketers to raise and impact more. This is the work we do inside my coaching program, the purpose and profit club.
So I just got off a call with my clients, and at the beginning of the call, we were focusing all on social street team, and at the beginning of the call, I talked to them about year end fundraising, and really, this time of year, all of us are looking back and going, how did last year go? What worked? And if you're in the segment that says last year didn't go great, or it felt really hard, or I feel like I worked more, or maybe you're like a lot of people that are coming to me who said, you know, we hit our goal, but it took more to get there, right? It took more effort, it took more time, it took more power to get there. And now I feel stress, depleted, burnt out. If that's you, that's a social Street Team problem, meaning the lack of having a social street team is why you're in this place.
So many clients come to me and they've got big, bold goals, right? They want to double their next fundraiser, they want to grow a program, they want to acquire land, they want to buy a building, they want to bring on a full time staffer, right? Whatever those goals are, I'm like, guess what solves that problem? Money, right? Fundraising, revenue solves that problem. And the way you've been doing it isn't getting you there, like, right? It's just kind of getting you status quo. What I've seen a lot happen in the sector is donor habits have changed. The way that you used to be able to prospect and lead gen and upgrade and solicit donors, isn't working anymore, because habits have changed, right? So the for profit sector has adapted to these changes, and my clients have adapted to this change, and so they're seeing amazing results, and the rest of y'all are lagging behind, okay? And that's when we see either dips in revenue, plateau in revenue, or just general kind of overwhelm and burn home. Okay?
So first I want to anchor in on what is a social street team, because I'm going to talk a lot about that today. That is a method that I created I teach inside my coaching program, where you partner with influencers, creators and digital ambassadors, all online with in kind, free partnerships. These are not paid partnerships to raise your visibility, advocate for your cause and fundraise. Now the Creator economy is $127 billion industry. You cannot say this is a fad. You cannot say that this is a trend. This is growing. I can look at that stacked up to something like direct mail, which at best, is just seeing plateaued growth, right? And meanwhile, the rise of the Creator economy is just, it's like up into the right, huge. Okay, so what we do is, I teach how to tap into and partner with aligned influencers to raise that visibility and funding for your costs. That's why I say if you didn't hit your goal last year, or you're barely squeaking by with like incremental growth, it's because you don't have a street team.
Now, I love a street team because it solves two problems. One, it helps. You to stop solo fundraising. So for smaller shops where fundraising is one single person doing this, the executive director, it feels like, man, all I do is this all day, every day, right? And it feels very heavy. It feels it's all consuming. It feels like you're kind of saying the same thing over and over again, and it's a little maddening, right? And it also feels like a lot of pressure, a lot of weight, okay, so a street team alleviates that pressure, because you literally mobilize your street team when you are fundraising. Okay, so when you are going to get ready for your Giving Tuesday campaign, for your spring event, for your summer, something, right? You mobilize your street team, and suddenly, instead of you fundraising all by yourself, crossing your fingers, begging, hoping, praying, right, you have a team saying, We're in Put me in coach. We're ready. How do we use our platforms for good? They want to do this. These are influencers and creators who oftentimes have 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, or millions of followers online. And I was saying to my clients today, you know, these people, their audience is used to shopping with them, making buying decisions, right? So, for example, I follow a like a interior designer, and she shares a lot of home decor stuff, and it'll be all over the place. It'll be, you know, low and high end stuff, right? And so she really appeals to a wide audience. And if she says to me something like, My husband loves this robe, and here's why he loves it. And I know her esthetic and her vibe is similar to mine, I've been following her over years. I trust her, so when she shares a link to that, and this happened in real life, I bought the robe. He loves the robe. Okay? So people are already used to making buying decisions from those influencers, and so the value of that endorsement is so much more valuable than just an ad or something like that, because there's a trusted endorsement there. Okay, so I love it for a small shop, because your street team helps you stop solo fundraising. Now if you're a larger organization where maybe you have an executive director, a major gifts officer, a development person, fundraising too. Here's why I love it, you're still stuck in this, what I call like ominous brand fundraising, ominous brand storytelling, sterile, generic, ominous marketing, and a street team completely releases you of that. So you still are doing your fundraising appeals. You're still doing your online fundraiser, so you're still rolling out great email and social content that's happening, but there's so much less of this. Like it feels like a megaphone where you're just screaming at people and you're like, This is what our mission does. Help us get to 50k help us get to we got a donor match right, where you're just talking at large audiences, and instead, suddenly you're multiplying yourself. If you've ever seen that movie, multiplicity? It's an old one, but I rewatched it recently. It's pretty funny with Michael Keaton, and he literally multiplies himself as a stay at home dad, he's like this hard, and so he multiplies himself, he has him, and he becomes like superstar dad and husband, and then he has business. Oh, he's not a stay at home dad. He's he then he's the working father. So he multiplies, though, like one iteration of him is doing that, another iteration of him is doing, I think, like household chores, cooking, cleaning, things like that. He's multiplying himself. That's kind of what we're doing with the street team. So you yourself are still doing your normal fundraising activities. But I find two things, one, a lot less, like white knuckle pressure, and then there's a buzz and hype and energy and momentum, because you log into Instagram, you log into Tiktok, you log into LinkedIn, and suddenly your your organization, is tagged in posts from influencers with huge engaged audience, advocating and fundraising. For you, think about how that would feel, right? It feels amazing. And I want to offer it also feels amazing for the influencer. You know, the data shows us they want to use their platforms for good, and nonprofits aren't asking. So you board member, please listen up. Here be the pioneer. Here be the the nonprofit in your city that's like, we're gonna do this first. This is such untapped, like gold. This is untapped opportunity for your nonprofit to invest in this. And when I look at like, I think think of a pie chart of how your nonprofit is bringing in funding. Maybe you're bringing in funding through major gifts, sponsorships, online fundraisers, grants, events, etc, etc. I want your street team to be part of that pie. And so instead of waiting on, you know, a nine month grant that you may or may not. Get that took you 60 hours to pour your heart, soul and time into right? Instead, you're like Christina this next launch, we have a street team who are mobilizing for this big campaign, and we 5x our goal. This happened. True story, not unicorn. My clients regularly double their fundraiser year over year. We have a client in the club who reported back that she 3x her year over year, campaign against last year in the prior year, 3x tripled. Many of our clients are doing that. They're unlocking more funding. And it's not like she worked more hours. It's not like these organizations suddenly hired, you know, five staff members to go find major gifts, major gift prospects and No, no, no, no. Instead, we are mobilizing a street team. This is the secret to fast tracking, not only your growth, but I find this like awareness. Okay, this awareness piece. So I'm going to drill down. I'm going to I'm going to take it a little more to the point of view of a nonprofit leader who wants to join the Club. Or if you're a board member and you're listening, you're like, Okay, I'm into it, but I gotta get the rest of my board into it too. So I'm going to go from that lens for a couple of minutes here.
So if you're like most nonprofits out there, you're looking at your budget, and it's increased, right? You need more funding. I had a call with one of my clients, and they were sharing, you know, just because of rising costs, even just to status quo their programs and staff. They need more funding. It literally costs more to exist, right? So you want to grow. You want your mission to grow. You don't even want to just homeostasis exist. You want your impact to grow. You want to serve more people, right? So how are you going to do that if it's not this? So if you're like, Okay, Christina, it's not going to be with influencers and ambassadors. What's your plan? What is the alternative? Ask your board members that question. I see that you would like us to bring in 10% more funding this year. 20% more funding this year. How are we going to do that with our existing strategies? How are we going, and this is a big one. How are we going to do that with our existing donor base? So this happens with a lot with organizations that are over, I'd say 10 years old, who've been around 20 years old, 30 years old, they have a lot of existing donors that are going, they are going to again and again and again. You know the feeling, if you're the fundraiser, you know the feeling you're like guys keep going to the same group again and again and again. You're not doing any new donor acquisition. There's no lead gen happening.
and that is a recipe for just drying up, right? You've got to bring in new donors at all ages, and especially new donors at younger generations. And that's why I love social media for this like we love tapping into the Creator economy for that reason alone is we know you can tap into Gen Z and millennials, and you can meet people on their preferred platform, where they are, and this is the most fun part, dear, dear board member. It isn't about your organization suddenly going viral and learning about Tiktok or becoming the best YouTuber and having hundreds of 1000s or millions of subscribers on YouTube, I don't even want your organization to spend a lot of time creating your own social content. Yeah, I said it your social media. That is not what I'm saying. Instead, I want you to flip your social strategy on its head and spend your marketing air quotes, time developing relationships with influencers and creators. So they are leveraging their content, creating their content, sharing your content, to raise visibility, awareness and fundraise for you. So it isn't about having these perfectly polished, you know, latest social media accounts. No, we're partnering with people who are already this is their zone of genius, okay,
so if you. Are a nonprofit leader, or maybe you're a board member, and you're trying to get more buy in with your board. You want to talk to them about what you'll create in the next six to 12 months of the club. So we see our clients double their online fundraiser just by mobilizing a street team. And a street team is something that you add on to so we start with your first 10, for example, and those 10 don't go away. You add on to it. So many of my clients started with their first 5 or 10. Now they have 20, 30,50, think about that. It's very similar. And we can use this in a lot of different ways. You can use it for online fundraisers, events, but I want you to think about almost in the way of like recurring, giving or retention. You are retaining those street teamers because they love the experience and it is so reciprocal and such a an important part of their philanthropic, philanthropic goals and value system. To be a part of your organization. They stay on with you long term, very, very like, key way to help you grow, I want you to think about outlining a case for support. You just bullet this out. Like, why do we need to do this now? And a good way to come up with your unique case for support will be to look at like, what did we do last year? What did we try? What was a time suck and didn't work? What did we do that did work but didn't work as well as it did the years before. What do we think would work really well and didn't What? What is taking the most time and bandwidth, but isn't bringing in the most ROI? And if you have board members who are like, Hey, I've been reading about recurring giving, we need to have recurring giving. We need a monthly giving program, and that's something they're really like prioritizing. I want to say great number one, I agree, and that's what many of the clients in the club are actually using their street team to do. Okay? So you get to decide what is the strategy or what is the goal. We want to use a street team to help accomplish recurring giving us one. We have another client in the club who says, Christina. I know, I know I shouldn't say this, but funding is actually really, really good. We're good on funding where we need some help is program enrollment. And I'm like, oh, street team. All day, every day, your street team can help you with your program enrollment, 100% so your street team gets to be your rock star fundraisers, your great advocates, your retention piece. You can kick off monthly donors with this. You get to activate them when you need them. For the the use case you need them. So bull it out all of the initiatives your board have said, Wouldn't it be cool if Now, if your board has ever said, Wouldn't it be cool if we could have Oprah post about our organization, or we could partner with a celebrity? Right? Here's the distinction. The best street teamers may be creators with a million followers on YouTube or subscribers, and they may not have been anyone you or I have heard of. So I love it because they are thought leaders, but they're not necessarily celebrities. And in fact, you don't need a celebrity, you need somebody with mission alignment. So some of our best street teamers are not necessarily like household names, but wow, did they have engaged audiences online. And so do micro ones. Micro ones can be great too, where they have 5000 10,000 followers too. So they're really, really great, great for that. And I have combined the process so we can actually bring in your street team of influencers and combine them with your volunteer and like, what I call, like superstar ambassador. Sometimes that's board members, volunteers, people, community members, and we actually combine them together, and they are an amazing mix of change makers.
If your board says this isn't in the budget, here's what I would tell them, of course, it's not in the budget, right? Like, how, like, of course, many organizations aren't putting in continuing education programs in the budget. And from now on, I would add that to the budget, that should be something that is included period full stop, year after year after year. How is your organization supposed to hit your strategic plan without having guidance, support, training and tools to do it. The for profit sector does. Have you seen the continuing ed budget of employees at Google, Microsoft, MailChimp, right? They get to go to conferences. They have money to spend every single year. Not only does that help with employee retention, but it helps them do their job. So continuing education should from now on be in the budget. The second thing is, there. How does your board handle things that are not in the budget that literally come up all the time? You know it, and I know it. There are circumstances that come up throughout the year that aren't in the budget. Right? Hey, we need this piece of equipment. We need a new roof. We need X, Y or Z. How are we going to fund it? It's not in the budget. What does your board do when that happens? This is a time for an emergency session. This is a time to call 123, trusted major donors and ask them to sponsor you or fund this investment. You need to paint the picture of the result that you're going to create in the club. So you get to decide where, what am I building my street team for? How will this help me accomplish my goal? And this is my favorite part, the process I learned inside the club is something that will come compound, is something we will create an SOP for inside our organization. Is something that will leave our organization better in years to come. This is not something one or done. So you're not taking this investment and saying, boom, we spent it on a first class ticket and that was fun, right? A one and done experience. You're saying we invested in our staff, we invested in our organization, and now we have our process. So literally, anytime we need funding, we can run a campaign with a street team, anytime we need awareness, anytime we need events, ticket sales. We have a client who she sells out, her her ticket her event tickets. Now they'll sell out one to two weeks earlier than ever before. She never used to sell out events. Now they're selling out right? Anything that you want to help your organization accomplish faster, collapsing the timeline, bringing in more funding you can use a street team for. I've been saying lovingly, get your board on board or get left behind. Get your board on board or get left behind. So 10 years from now, you're going to see this is way more normal in the nonprofit space. Don't wait 10 years. Don't wait till everybody's doing it. I have friends. I actually have family members. I have colleagues, I am constantly DMing them who are creators and influencers, and saying, Hey, have any nonprofits reached out to you to partner? And I would say 90% of the time they say, No, have nonprofits reach out to you about anything? Advocacy? Nothing, no. Now the 10% of the time that the person says, yeah, actually, like, helped them with one of their fundraisers, and it was really cool. And I never heard from them again. They said, thank you. And then that was it, you guys. This is just such ripe, uncharted territory, It doesn't take a lot of time, and it's not hard. We have clients in the club who are using support staff, who are using virtual assistants, who are using admin who are using more junior employees, who are using interns to help them with their influencer outreach. This doesn't take a lot of time. We have trackers, we have pitch templates, we have pre written scripts. We have workflows. So it's very, very easy. It is just, am I committing to it? Am I doing it, and am I not kicking the can further down and going maybe next year, while also being frustrated with how this year went? Right? You with me?
okay. Next point, like most things that I find are, you know, very common in boards. You're probably not going to get 100% of boards being like, I totally get this, and this makes a lot of sense, and I'm so, so excited, right? You with me? So that's okay. I like to, like, go into these conversations knowing that, like, not everyone's gonna get it. And that's okay, because I get it, and maybe my board chair gets it, or my board president right, my vice president gets it. People get it right, but not expecting that everyone is going to be like, slow clap. This is the best thing. I totally understand it. So when somebody is like, I don't really understand it. I don't think social media is valuable. Blah Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I would say to them is influencer marketing has 5x the return of every dollar spent. That means that for profit, brands that invest in influencers to market for them, they see, they put in $1 they get $5 out from the influencer machine. Okay, put in $1 get $5 out the process. I teach. No one else is teaching in our sector, full stop and is free. We're not putting the dollar in. We are not paying the influencer. And that's part of why it's so valuable. It's such a valuable mission alignment, okay, that's the first thing I would tell them, is the influencer, the ROI there is is so valuable. Two, the creator economy is just growing. It's only getting bigger. okay, it's only getting bigger. So do we want to wait till you know your your husband, wife, brother, sister, or neighbor is an influencer? Or can we just go ahead and start it now? Because we can see the stats. Go to our page. We will link to it. You can go to our sales page for the club. I have a graph that shows the rise of the Creator economy against something like direct mail, which is tried and true. And guess what you get to keep doing. I'm not telling you to get rid of your direct mail program. I'm telling you don't expect to send out direct mail piece appeal to that same list, add on 20 people a year and suddenly see exponential growth. It's not happening, right? It's not happening, okay?
The last point I want to leave you with is it's fast. You can start or grow your street team in 30 days. 30 days from now, you could have your first launch for your campaign 30 days. I've had clients come to me and say, it's q1 Christina, we don't even have a plan to fundraise, right? They're like, what are we doing? Right? Great, social street team time. Okay, you can start or grow your street team in 30 days. Oh, second. One more. One more piggyback point on that, which is, if you're thinking, I've already tried this, we have already tried this. Here's the thing, no, you haven't. You have not followed the process that I teach. I can promise you you have it because you're listening to this and haven't gotten the results our clients get doubling their next fundraiser, 50k in additional revenue. One of our clients uses the same concept our digital toolkit the whole thing, they follow our complete process. They have unlocked major gifts from this. They are now, because of this process, bringing in hundreds of 1000s of dollars of revenue using this process. So this works for small shops. This works for large, established organizations. And if there's anything I can just say to like, button this up, is, don't wait. Don't wait. Because what is the alternative? The alternative is, like, we're going to do a little bit of this. We're going to try that. Please don't invest more in a 5k or an auction or something that you've never done before, that is a time suck and money suck, right? Meaning there's a lot of upfront expenses attached. There's no expenses attached with this. This is you grabbing our scripts, grabbing our templates, branding your street team, which we teach you how to do this. And if you're thinking, How will I even find people misaligned? You're going to come to our coaching call, and I will help you through that. We have video trainings, we have worksheets to help you establish those audiences. And then I'm here to support you when you get stuck, when you're not sure, when you're ready to activate your street team. We support you all the way through the process. So that's it for today. If you have specific questions, I want you to do a couple things. One, you can always reach out to me at splendid consulting on Instagram or send me an email. two grab our brochure. Grab our brochure. We're gonna link to it in the show notes, and you can grab our brochure. We also have a done for you, pre written template for your board. We'll also link to that in the show notes, so you do not have to, if you have to get approval, you don't have to, you know, come up with what to say from scratch. We've written it for you. Attach a PDF of our brochure to bring into your next board meeting, and and and, and one more. One more to the one more thing, which is, don't wait until your board meeting that's three months from now. Do not wait. Okay, call an emergency session. Ask for this to be approved. You don't want to start your street team in three months, six months, nine months from now, when you could be activating it and growing it today like there is no reason to wait on this. No reason to wait All right, that's it. I'm fired up. I'm excited. I'll see you next time. Bye. You.