Ep. 187: Influencer Partnerships for Nonprofits (And Why This Isn’t a Social Media Strategy)
EPISODE 187
Influencer Partnerships for Nonprofits (And Why This Isn’t a Social Media Strategy)
About the Episode:
Most nonprofits think influencer partnerships mean celebrity shoutouts, paid posts, or “social media strategy.” That’s not what this is.
In this episode, I break down why influencer partnerships are actually about borrowed trust, not follower count. I explain why 99% of nonprofits are missing this opportunity, how to build true ambassador relationships instead of transactional posts, and why this works even if you don’t have a big budget. I talk about the Social Street Team® Method, why influence is a free visibility superhighway, and how to use it to warm donors before you ever ask. If your organization feels like the best-kept secret in town, this episode is your blueprint to change that.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why influencer partnerships are not social media tactics
The difference between creators and influencers
Borrowed trust vs. follower count
Why transactional posts don’t work
The Social Street Team® Method explained
How influence builds donor momentum and retention
Common mistakes nonprofits make with influencer campaigns
Why campaigns must convert before influencers amplify
Real-world example: Jones Road Beauty’s growth strategy
How to build long-term ambassador relationships
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Borrowing the audience of an influencer is a beautiful, scalable, free way to get visible.”
“Influence is not about follower count; it is about borrowed trust. Influencers influence people because people believe them.”
“Influencers invite us into their lived experience.”
“We are influenced every single day.”
“A creator is somebody who creates content online; an influencer influences behavior.”
“You don't need a famous person. You need somebody with an audience, to borrow that audience.”
“An influencer partnership should be an ambassadorship; it should feel like an honor for them and an honor for you and your organization.”
“Transaction sounds like, can you do this for us. Invitation sounds like, we'd love to help you carry this story.”
“Influence doesn't operate in a 24-hour news cycle. It builds through familiarity and repetition.”
“People buy for the first time because of trust. They come back and buy again, because the experience was good.”
“Influencers and influencer partnerships are not a marketing trend.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Double Your Donations - Raise More From Your Laptop Without Chasing Grants or Galas
Easy Emails For Impact™ - Turn Your Inbox into an Income Stream
Donations on Demand: Build a $5K Email Campaign System in 30 min/week
The SPRINT Method™ - Fundraise Like a Pro, 5 Figures At a Time
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 01:01Has your organization ever partnered with an influencer, or thought about partnering with an influencer or wished you could figure out how to we're going to dig into what it means, why you should consider doing it, and honestly, why 99% of nonprofits are not partnering with influencers in the way that I'm talking about so I'm really excited to share with this episode with you today, if you're listening,
Christina Edwards 01:49
We are opening enrollment for the purpose and profit club, my fundraising and marketing accelerator program that is opening on March 4. And I don't want you to miss it. We only open doors a few times a year. So now is a beautiful time to come in grab some special bonuses. You can get all of the links to join in the show notes. So this is not just your average social media strategy, and in a lot of ways this has nothing to do with social media. So we're going to talk about what I mean there today. And this does not cost you extra money out of pocket. This is not an advertising strategy. So I actually never really hear nonprofits say we don't have a lot of influence, right? But what I hear is we're talking to the same donors over and over again. Our donor base is getting smaller and smaller. It's getting harder and harder to enroll in our program, and our program is amazing. We have so many great testimonials, so much social proof that what we're doing is working, and yet we're kind of a hidden secret, or our audience feels stagnant. Why don't more people know about us? Why is it so hard to raise money without a big event? Maybe I should just apply for another restricted grant. Again, those aren't really marketing complaints or fundraising complaints. They're signals that influence should exist, but it's not activated yet. Now let's kind of level set on a misunderstanding when I talk about influence, when I talk about influencers, influencer partnerships, people immediately think of celebrities. Right, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, all of the big celebrity accounts. Kylie Jenner, right, paid endorsements, I'm going to pay them to talk about our organization. Right, paid endorsements, ads dressed up as posts. We've all been there. We pick your favorite platform. You're scrolling on Instagram, and all of a sudden you see somebody you follow, and they're trying to sell you like some sort of juice drink, right? Or some sort of face cream or some sort of random thing. And you're like, I yep, I can smell that a lot a mile away, that is a paid endorsement, right? And you're not interested. They're like, dressed up as posts. And if you know, you know that this celebrity, this creator, got paid a ton of money to post about this random beverage one time, and that's what that is. It's very transactional. That is not what we're talking about. That is not social Street Team partnerships, the way that I teach it, the way that I've created this method inside the purpose and profit club coaching program. So it is not these one off shout outs I don't like, I don't even want you to think about it as a one off shout out, right? If only I could get so and so to just post about our organization, then everything would change. No, the social Street Team method are not one off anythings right, not transactional ads. These are partnerships, aligned partnerships. These are ambassadors. They're longtime relationships rooted in trust, and the influencer very often is. Not a famous person, not in the traditional sense, not in the Brad Pitt sense, right? The influencer may be a food blogger. The influencer may be an interior designer. There's an interior designer I follow, and she, she probably has over a million followers, I would say, and she, we're going to talk about her. She, she does really great content. I've purchased because she influenced me to purchase through true like she found a brand. She liked it, she talked about it, she linked to it, right? I found out about a pillow I really like. I bought my husband a robe that was very cozy, right? And so she's influencing, and these, if you want to think about like the robe company, right? The robe company is, instead of running a bunch of Facebook ads, they're getting in front of her audience, right? And using that influence, because she's like, husband loves this robe, here's 10 reasons why it's great, right? And you might be thinking, that's great and all. What does this have to do with the nonprofit sector? And it has everything to do with it. The last episode, I talked about how many donors need 15 to 17 touch points before they actually act right. And borrowing audiences, borrowing the audience of an influencer, is a beautiful, scalable, free way to do this. So influence is at foundationally. Influence is borrowed trust. Influence is not about follower count. Influence is about borrowed trust. Influencers. Influence people because people believe them. Their audience trusts them by ask my friend for a restaurant recommendation. I trust her, right? And if I'm like, Listen, I'm really in the mood for, oh, I've been going down like a very Mediterranean rabbit hole, like, I really want some yummy Turkish food, right? I'm going to trust her. If she's like, try this restaurant, versus me just Googling, right? And what happens when I google? By the way, if I Google, I'm going to see reviews. What is that that is influencing me positively or negatively to go try a brand new restaurant? So is borrowed? Trust? Influence. Influencers invite us into their lived experience. I sometimes call this like kind of they'll fly on the wall. You're like, looking through and you're getting, like, a little bit of a taste of their lived experience. They show us what something looks like in real life. That's a big one too. Instead of looking at the perfect picture from, you know, from the vendor, right from the retailer's website, you could actually see the robe on. You can see what it looks like. You're looking at close up shots, right? All of that matters, right? We are influenced every single day. Like it or not, what to buy, what to try, what to believe. Hello, that's big. What to support. Giving works in the same way. I do want to take a quick moment to just define and differentiate creator the Creator economy and influencers. Now, a creator is somebody who creates content online. They might be a YouTuber, a tiktoker, an Instagrammer. They document their life, their lived experience, their perspective, an influencer, influencers behavior. Now, sometimes there is an overlap right where creators are influencers. Sometimes influencers don't think of themselves that way at all. This matters to nonprofits, okay? Because some of the most powerful voices are not promoting anything. They're simply simply sharing their lived experience. That's where the trust comes from. Is because they're not like on a Tuesday, talking about some new juice on a Wednesday, trying to sell me a nail polish on a Thursday, trying to sell me an exercise bike, right? That's not what it is, right? Instead, it's like very day in the life, very behind the scenes. So I'm going to give you some examples of community voices and what they look like and how they could align with your organization. So for me personally, on Tiktok, there are creators who are in the blind and low vision community who share their every day experience. They're not selling anything, they're not posting ads. They're not talking about juices and nail polish, right? They are showing how they navigate the world. Molly Burke is a amazing, amazing creator who is sharing what it is like to live in the world as a blind woman. She lost her sight when she was a teenager, and she talks about all of that. She really cares about fashion, she cares about makeup, she cares about all like she's and it's so cool to hear how she she'll literally talk about how she'll go to a Sephora and tactile, right? A feel the different she'll she can guess a lipstick brand by the way that she's feeling it, and that packaging and things like that. And it's so interesting, not only from that, from that lens, but you're understanding accessibility. You're understanding the advocacy, the lack of accessibility. In this world, and she's giving people, without that lived experience, an idea of what it's like, right? And because of that, people lean in. Because of that they care. They learn. I follow another blind influencer on our blind creator, excuse me, on
Christina Edwards 10:18
Tiktok, and he's a skateboarder. He's a dad, and he always starts, he always starts his video. I'm blind, and this is how I blank play with my toddler. This is how I skateboard. This is how I go to Disney World, whatever it is. And it's like, again, it's like getting a glimpse in okay. Now imagine, imagine dream with me, a nonprofit that aligned with the blind or low vision community, partnered with voices like that, not to get them to post, but to invite them in to advocacy. That alignment is so natural, it's so powerful. It's such a beautiful partnership, and it is such a missed opportunity, because these creators may have 50,000, 100,000 or even a million plus followers who are like we're in we're interested, right? And it's such a missed opportunity that they're not partnering with organizations. So that's where you come in. So where else might this show up for your organization? We've had organizations develop a social street team across all types of cause areas. We've had clients and youth development working with mentors and community leaders who already had their trust. So do you need the million plus famous person to talk about your local animal rescue? Not really. That's not it. You need the influencer to join your social street team in your local community, in your local in Chicago, if that's where your animal rescue is, that's it. You don't need a famous person. You need somebody with an audience to have to borrow that audience that where the trust is already developed and the natural alignment is there. Now do not ask a cat lover to partner with your dog rescue. These are all of the little steps that I see whenever somebody tells me we've tried it and it doesn't work. These are all the checklists, and I'm like, you tried some other version of it. You did not try the social Street Team method. Here's some other examples food insecurity, partnering with people who deeply care about food access in their own neighborhoods. So you might partner with local chefs, local businesses, local influencers who are talking about food insecurity. There's so many different areas that you can like call in that that alignment there healthcare and rare disease, collaborating with thought leaders, patients, caregivers, street team members who live in the reality every single day. One of my clients is a mom who her son has leukemia, and the community of support, right? The community of advocates, and then the community, the curious community on Tiktok, is huge. The people who follow her, who are not cancer moms, cancer caretakers, is wide, right? So there's already that like group in there, and the the next level for her is leveraging that group, creating even more connection.
Christina Edwards 13:18
Now, in every case, success didn't come from reach alone, meaning number of followers, meaning Brad Pitt posted about my thing that ain't it right? It came from residents. These weren't strangers. They already were in their orbit. And whenever things are a mismatch, that's one of the things, it's because the mismatch was it felt very transactional. So the big misstep is treating this like a tactic where organizations really get tripped up is they think I'm going to go find some influencers and get them to post the red flag. Word is Get. Get is a red flag for transactional. It's the same thing we do with donors. I need to get them to donate. Right? That mindset breaks everything. It's not get them an influencer partnership should be an ambassadorship. It should feel like an honor for them and an honor for you and your organization. That's why we brand your street team. That's why we don't just say, will you be our ambassador and post this post on Tuesday? Right? That feels transactional and people disengage. In fact, they may not post at all. They'll just stick it up as a story, and that's it. When it feels relational, when it feels like we are rowing in the same direction, we are moving to real change, and that Ambassador feels like they're genuinely helping your cause for which they already have natural alignment, they step up and they stay. That's the next thing I see. Is sometimes we'll see people who are, yeah, we worked with an influencer, and they posted one time in 2004 and that was it like, no, they should be again, very similar to your monthly giver. They should be part of your community. They should be retained. Okay, so let's talk about the invitation. Invitation versus the transaction, because this is a core shift. Transaction sounds like, can you do this for us? Invitation sounds like we'd love to help you carry this story. It sounds like the work they're already doing, and in fact, a way to lift up their voice and your voice together for change. There are so many people who are using their voice online. They're influencing online because they want to see the world, their community, the causes they care about better than it is today. That's it, and you can help them achieve their goal, not just your goal, their goal, if they want to make sure that there are more books in the hands of young children, right? If that's something that they maybe are a voracious reader, I'm thinking about book talk, right? So book book talk, Bookstagram, all the readers, right? Huge, huge on both social networks and maybe you serve young literacy right partnering with them, that's their goal. Why are they talking about their favorite book? There are people who read a book a day, a book a week. Why do they keep saying you've got to read this book? I couldn't put this book down. And really bridging the gap for them so that they can be an amazing social street teamer for the work that you do. Like, it's right there. It's like, right there, and you just don't miss it. Don't miss it. Now I usually will hear that I tried it and it didn't work, and I immediately am like, red flag. It looks like we tried this influencer stuff. It didn't work. But when I look closer, what actually happened is there wasn't a compelling campaign behind it, meaning the donation experience wasn't set up to convert. Maybe it was a visibility or awareness campaign that wasn't set up foundationally, right? The story was thin. The follow through was weak, and influencers amplify what exists. So if you foundationally do not know how to create a high converting 10k campaign, the sprint method is for you, my other program that is for you that is foundationally essential. It's like, I bought a car and it wouldn't go and I'm like, is there gas in the tank? Does the battery work? Right? Has the car had an oil change? Like, we need to know that we can go cruising before we, like, hit the highway, right before we go on our road trip. So foundationally, when people come to me and they say, you know, we have less than 50 donors. We haven't raised more than $50,000 in a year. I'm like you. We are about to unlock everything for you. Join the sprint method. Join the sprint method. Now, if you're past that point and you're like, we tried the influencer stuff and it didn't work. It's because you didn't have a high converting campaign. It's because the influencer didn't even know how the value of your alignment, they weren't retained, and they didn't really have a place to orient people towards. Because if you think about their community and they're like, they're mobilizing their community, if we they don't know what they're mobilizing their community towards, then they're going to be less likely to post, and it's not going to convert. So sometimes it's not, you know, it's not an influencer issue. It's not an influencer failure at all. It's a campaign design issue. It's a follow through issue. Influencers amplify what exists. They amplify what exists so they don't really compensate for what's missing. That's your job, and that's the work we do in the club. Is that's that's it is that we can help you create an influencer marketing campaign, a social Street Team campaign that lifts up something that is structurally already there, and that's why I love it. So if you already have an event happening, or you already have a fundraiser happening in we'll say June, right? One of my clients is actually doing a 5k one of my other clients is doing a monthly giver drive. Another one of my clients is working on increasing program enrollment. Another client is really a visibility. We need to stop being the best kept secret in our town, in our community. Influencers are amazing for that, but that starts with you. It's not a board job being an influencer, being a social street team or shouldn't feel like a board job that they're taking on. So you really have to come to them with something that is done and they run with your that's it, passing the baton versus, like, building the entire system. So usually that's one of the biggest issues there. I also want to name another pattern that it mirrors traditional fundraising, which is leaders try something new, work with an influencer, they work at an ambassador, and they expect immediate traction, but maybe you don't get it right away, and then what happens? You stop. There's no dopamine. You're like I put myself out there. You worked with this influencer, maybe my board or my executive director was like, I don't know what you're doing, and then immediately you don't have a huge win to celebrate. And so what do you do? You stop. But influence doesn't operate in a 24 hour news cycle. It builds through familiarity and repetition. I'm going to go back to the robe example, or the pillow. Example, I probably saw her talk about the robe or pillow several times, many times before. I actually was like, You know what? I buy this over my pillow. Try something different, right? And so when you quit early, you never let trust do its job. And that is a huge part with your social street teamers. When you treat them as one and done, they feel that that feels icky and very transactional, and their audience never gets really any resonance with your with what you do, the people you serve your cause. And I want you to think about brands. I want, I want to walk you through a pretty new brand that launched in 2020 that significantly outperformed early projections. It's called Jones road. Jones road beauty, and it's created by Bobbi Brown. So if you remember, if you're like a woman of the 90s, like Bobbi Brown was a huge makeup brand, brand because it was very natural makeup. And Bobbi Brown created a new brand in 2020 called Jones Road. And here's the thing, it's not in stores like at all. You can't touch it, you can't test it, you can't smell it, you can't look at it in stores. And yet, that is a huge hurdle. I just want to name that for makeup, it is a huge hurdle. If you've ever bought a mattress, how many of us have laid on the mattress before we bought it? Like you go mattress to mattress to mattress to mattress, right? I know that's changed with a little bit of D to C direct to consumer commerce. However, like you get my point right, and with makeup, it's pretty similar, like it is risky to buy makeup without touching looking at it, swiping it on your hand, right? And yet, Jones road has significantly outperformed early projections. So it's revenue in 2020 460 million, and it's not public, while not officially public. This is from Google. It says that it is close to approaching or exceeding, now, a $1 billion valuation. And this is the second unicorn brand that Bobbi Brown has launched. And I just want to name it because it's really interesting. There's tons of makeup brands that have, in the past four years come out and or six years now, have come out and have not even had close to the success she's had. So you go, why? How could she do this when it's not even in a drugstore, it's not in a Sephora, it's not anywhere. Because she did one thing really, really well, and she did this. She doubled down. She went all in. She shows everyday people how to use it, how it looks on real skin, not models, everyday people, how they fit it into their routine. And she partnered with influencers early, and she has not stopped hitting the gas. It's all over all the socials. So influencers use their own channels, not hers, their own channels. So Christina Edwards would use her channel. I would use my channel to be like, this is all the makeup I'm using. That's her straight team. People buy for the first time because of trust. They come back. This is this is important. They come back and buy again, because the experience was good. The community keeps showing them what's next. They feel part of something that is not an ad strategy, that is influence plus continuation, that is retention. Now I'm naming her in this because I probably took 20 touch points before I was like, All right, I'm gonna wing it. How do you buy a foundation that matches your skin online when you can't even look at it in person? I don't know, and I did, and it's great. I'm so happy. I will definitely buy more stuff from her. But I was able to do it because I found other people online who were showing me the product, testing it out on Tiktok or wherever, showing people with similar skin tones, showing me how to use certain products. And it was like, I'll give it a go. That's what it took. Now, had Bobbi Brown only use her own channels with models and just done the traditional advertising route. I don't think it would come close to the billion dollar valuation, particularly in less than six years, like it's wild, it's wild, and yet the opportunity is wide open for nonprofits. So how do we translate it to nonprofits? I want to, I want you to think about the nonprofit who mobilizes their street team around key giving days. If you are salty about giving Tuesday or your nonprofit Giving Day, whatever time of year it is, you need a street team. They will make it so much more fun. They will make it so much more high converting. You can use your street team to use trusted voices to warm up your audience before they ask. I love this. So that could be part of your pregame where you're just priming. Your audience. You're using your street team. You're deploying them because they are trusted voices in your community. They're trusted voices in your community. It builds energy towards moments that matter. So maybe you serve the autism community. You should be deploying you should have a street team. There's so many different voices who are talking about autism right now online, and they could be such amazing partners for you, like it's so you know, it's really a blue ocean opportunity. This is something we talk about in marketing. Is right now, it would be very hard to it'd be very hard to launch another makeup brand, because there's so many, right? But for nonprofits, so few of you are partnering with influencers or creating creators that it's a wide open it's a blue ocean opportunity for you, most creators have never been asked, ever by nonprofits to become a true ambassador for them, not a one off transactional ad, a true ambassador blue ocean opportunity.
Christina Edwards 26:08
And that way each campaign isn't isolated. It actually crescendos because you're not the only one. It's not Bobbi Brown being like, I have makeup instead. It's like a whole army is deployed saying, look at it on this skin tone. Look at it on this skin tone. Here's, Wow, I love it, right? And so suddenly people are like, Oh, that's me. I want to be that I'm with them, right? This is the possibility of a straight team, and that giving leads to belonging, that belonging leads to retention, and that's how influence becomes a true donor pipeline and then a retention pipeline. So influencers and influencer partnerships are not a marketing trend. They're not a one and done. They are a visibility super highway, a free super highway. It is a way to expand your reach without exhausting your staff. It is a method of warming donors. Before you ask, I love it for that. I love it for awareness. I love it for advocacy. It is a way to stop relying on the same few people the this is how momentum starts before the fundraising cycle even begins.
Christina Edwards 27:26
So if you're like, yes, we need this. How do I do it? What do I say? Where do I find them? Then what? That's what we have inside the club. We have an entire module on the social Street Team method. I give you template scripts, the entire process, plus we have support for you to build up your campaigns. We have our million dollar campaign system so you have the entire 360 degree support. You need to come to our webinar on March 4. It is at splendid courses.com, forward slash live, where I will give you behind the scenes of how the framework works.
Christina Edwards 28:14
I will show you how high performing Nonprofits Fundraise faster and the system that our clients are using to double their next campaign. So that is the place to be. And then we will open up enrollment for the club.
Christina Edwards 28:40
In the next episode, I'm going to be talking about monthly giving, and here's a little bit of a sneak peek. Monthly giving doesn't work when it's introduced in isolation. It works when trust visibility and momentum already exists, and influence helps create that momentum. It is not just a monthly giving form on your website. It is still part of that community, right? So I'll show you more in the training on how campaigns, influence and continuation work together in harmony as a single system. All right, I'll see you in the next one. Bye.