Ep. 213: No Gala. No Auction. No Swag. Still Raised 81% More.
EPISODE 213
No Gala. No Auction. No Swag. Still Raised 81% More.
About the Episode:
What happens when a former midnight-shift postal worker with zero nonprofit background builds a health organization by ignoring every rule she never bothered to read?
In this episode, I sit down with Kathy Ruiz-Carter, co-founder and Executive Director of the Lichen Sclerosus Support Network, for one of the most energizing client spotlight conversations I've recorded. Kathy sent 33 emails for her sixth annual summit, kept unsubscribes under 1%, and nearly doubled revenue to $29K with the exact same audience as the year before. Her organization has grown 30-50% year over year. She raised $1,000 in seven minutes from a single emergency email. And she built all of it while working solo, serving a community that deals with a deeply personal and stigmatized health condition. We dig into how she thinks about email as a daily conversation rather than a campaign tool, why she stopped feeling guilty about asking her patients to donate, how AI collapsed her timeline and dramatically changed her results, and why leaving the nonprofit marketing rulebook behind was the best thing she never did.
P.S. If you're ready to grow the way Kathy has, The Purpose & Profit Club® is where we do this work together. Go to splendidatl.com/start to learn more.
Topics:
From monthly newsletter to daily emails: why more frequency means more revenue, not more unsubscribes
Asking patients and service recipients to be donors, and why the guilt around this is costing organizations real money
How AI collapsed her summit timeline and helped her go from $16K to $29K with the same audience
Why radical financial transparency builds more donor trust than any campaign strategy
The e-commerce and customer service mindset that outperformed the nonprofit playbook every time
The emergency email that raised $1,000 in seven minutes, and what it proves about community trust
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:
“If we don't have the funds, we can't do the thing, and if we don't do the thing, people don't get help.” Kathy
“We are mostly patient-donor funded; it's not my organization; it's our organization.” Kathy
“There are people in our community with the means, and if we don't ask, if we don't tell them this is what we need, then they don't know; they think we're good.” Kathy
“We could do some expensive event, get some rich people and influencers, and ask them for money, but we want to spend time with you; we want to empower you.” Kathy
“Every failure is a success, because every failure gives me the knowledge of what I need to do to be successful.” Kathy
“When you stop, that's when you fail. As long as you keep moving forward, you're succeeding.” Kathy
“Build a relationship, and it will grow.” Kathy
“You could be fake for a little while, but eventually your true self is going to come through.” Kathy
“Show up for real in the beginning, then your people are going to find you; not everybody's going to be your people, but that's okay.” Kathy
“Everything happens for a reason.”
ABOUT Kathy:
Kathy is a Lichen Sclerosus warrior. This "rare," incurable, progressive autoimmune skin condition primarily affects the female genitalia. Kathy's personal diagnosis inspired her to launch the Lichen Sclerosus Podcast, raising awareness and offering a supportive community. Her latest endeavor, the Lichen Sclerosus Support Network, guides LS patients through the emotional turmoil of diagnosis. Kathy firmly believes that every LS patient can effectively manage their condition and embrace a fulfilling life.
Connect with Kathy:
Episode Resources:
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Christina Edwards 0:01
All right, y'all, we have a very special guest today. So, I woke up this morning, and I was like, 'Yay, Kathy is coming on today. My client, Kathy Ruiz Carter, she is the co-founder and executive director of the Lichen Sclerosis Support Network, is back on the podcast. So, welcome back, Kathy. Tell the listeners a little bit about the LS Support Network. We'll start there.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 0:23
Yeah, thank you so much for having me back. I'm really excited. So, LSSN Lichen Sclerosis Support Network, we are an organization where we provide education, support, events, all evidence-based for people with lichen sclerosis, and we're really excited because we're actually starting to do a rebrand where we are expanding to other lichenoid conditions, so we will be renaming the Lichens Support Network. So, yeah, we're in the middle of that transition, big
Christina Edwards 1:02
news.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 1:02
Yeah, in the middle of that transition.
Christina Edwards 1:11
And for the person who's listening, who's like, what, what does that mean? What is that? What is LS? Tell us just like a brief overview of that.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 1:22
Sure, so lichen sclerosis is an autoimmune skin condition that mainly affects the female genitals. It can cause all kinds of signs and symptoms, from itching to color changes, anatomy changes, and as you can imagine, anything that affects the genitals is going to affect people's mental health, their emotional health, how they feel about themselves. So a lot of our work isn't just, you know, here's the information, here's the medical information, here's how to treat it's also about building up community, breaking down stigmas, empowering people to advocate for themselves and to find a way to share in a way that they feel comfortable and empowered doing so.
Christina Edwards 2:15
Yep, I'm glad you said that, and kind of anchored everybody for this episode, because I think it's very easy in the nonprofit world to decide that, like, your mission, your cause area is taboo, and I'm like, if you feel that about your cause area, this episode is for you, or if you feel like, well, we can't tell stories of our patients or our clients because of privacy, or like, listen to this episode, it will be so good. I had somebody come up to me, and they were reminding me I was speaking at a conference last year, and somebody in the back was like, "Okay, but I hear what you're saying, but we serve colorectal cancer, so like, we can't, like, this won't work for us. Yeah, yeah, and I was like, "Buckle up, this will work for you. I actually want to start by asking you a question I don't know the answer to, which is fun for me, because we've worked together for several years now, which is how I know why you started, how you got started with LSSN, like I know why, but what were you doing before that?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 3:18
When I started LSSN, I was actually a postal worker in a plant, so I was working the midnight shift, 10 at night till six in the morning. Wow, yeah, and I was sorting express mail in the plant, so that's that's what I was doing. I always say I have no business doing this because I, the most, the closest I had ever got to a nonprofit was maybe giving a donation when my kids' school asked for something. I never volunteered, I've never worked in a nonprofit, and so you know it's a fun ride, but it's, it's definitely a learning curve, but I think I'm doing all right.
Christina Edwards 4:03
You are so smart, and so agile, and so technology digital forward, that I had to ask that question.
Christina Edwards 5:36
Your nonprofit has grown very quickly in a very quote unquote short amount of time, and sometimes I call that like being coachable. I think you're very coachable in that way, where you're like, I don't know how to do this, and I'm going to figure it out. Yep, and I'm going deep, and I'm not going to say this is too hard, or I can't figure out the tech, or I've never done, like, I've never done this before, is not a reason that you don't try something, which is a huge recipe, like a huge ingredient in your success, which leads me, like, perfectly to the next question I had for you, which is, like, what would you say is the difference between Kathy, like, three years ago than the one sitting here today? What's changed?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 6:16
The biggest change I would say personally is that I know, and I understand my organization and mine's worth. I think three years ago it was like, yeah, where there's just this little organization we have, you know, maybe 1000 2000 people that are following us, and you know we're just, we're just gonna do the little thing, whereas now we are the thought leader, we are it, we are the, we are the one stop shop, and I move accordingly. So the mind frame has moved from this little, okay, this is our circle to the world is my oyster, and if, and we're here, watch out, because we're, yes,
Christina Edwards 7:09
yes, yeah, you've developed a huge community of people with LS, a huge community of experts, a huge community of thought leaders, community of people just talking about it, and then kind of like the adjacent community, so sometimes that's like women's health, that sometimes is dermatology and skin care. You've really stepped into that, and I've watched you step into that more in the past year in spaces where maybe three years ago you might not have felt like you belong, or maybe more intimidated to be in. Yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 7:44
yeah, absolutely. And thanks to you and your coaching, because many times I've come to the coaching calls and it's just like, I don't know what to do, and I'm crying, and I'm like, and you're like, listen, step into the boss bitch era that you are that CEO energy, and that was a struggle for me, because again, there's that imposter syndrome, like what am I doing here, what I don't belong here. How am I supposed to talk to these pharmaceutical companies or the heads of these, you know, businesses or these other organizations that have been around for 25 plus years and have millions of followers, and here we are. Nobody's going to respect us, nobody's going to take us seriously. And over the last three years, it's like, but no, but no, they need us, they want us, because we are it, and the way we do it is so different from everyone else. That okay, the way we, yeah, it's just different.
Christina Edwards 9:01
Say more about that. What's different?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 9:03
So, I would say, and this is just from what I hear from other people that have, like, other conditions, but also have, like, in sclerosis, so they're like, we have this other condition, and we'll find an organization for them, and it'll just be a ton of information on their website, and you kind of have to shift through it, and the education is there, but the support is missing, or I have this other condition, and they do support great, but there's not a lot of education there, and we are like all the things, and we, we do the education in a way that's accessible, in a way that is not overwhelming, in a way I, I call it the auntie voice. I say, oh, that's good. Yeah, we are that auntie that you go to when you can't talk to your mom, because you know it's either too embarrassing or you. Don't know how she's gonna react,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 10:24
So our voice is not medical, it's not stuffy, it's very much laid back. I'm your auntie, I'm your friend, but I also care about you, so I'm going to tell you the truth, even though you may not want to hear it. And so that's the energy we bring into everything. I don't care if I'm dealing with a patient, a provider, a CEO, that's just who I am. And so that just translates into everything, from our visual brand to our tone of voice to our events, and so in that sense it's like very welcoming, it's very much your home, and that's what we want. We want you to feel like this condition is hard enough, but you have a home that you can come and kind of, you know, sit back on the on the couch, on the virtual couch, read an article, and it's not going to overwhelm you. You're going to stand up from that couch, feeling empowered, like, how? Yes, I got this.
Christina Edwards 11:31
And I think, whether or not you are familiar with this condition or not, every person, particularly women, have experienced that moment in the doctor's office where their doctor is either brushing them off, hurried, not listening, like I, we go on and on and on and about this, and your organization is the opposite of that, is the voice, which is I've been given this diagnosis, or I might think I have this diagnosis, or I'm googling Reddit, right, and I'm, you know, I'm trying to self-type all of those, so from beginning to advance, it's that resource, so you have your educational component, you have.. I want to talk a little bit about your events, because you're not doing galas, you're not doing bingo nights. What are you doing for your events?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 12:19
Yeah, so our events again, the whole thorough line, everything we do is about bringing hope and empowering our community, and we believe education is power, so we educate and we support at the same time, and so all of our events are going to have some component of education, some component of support, but also always have a component of hope, and so we, we do a lot of events where they are presented by providers, experts in the field, giving education on certain topics, and one thing we do that I don't know a lot of organizations do is we are very community based, so we'll send out a survey. What are you guys struggling with? What do you want to learn about? And then we will build our events around that. So we just ended our sixth annual Holistic Healing Summit, which is our week long event where we have speakers, experts in all different types of fields to talk about living with lichen sclerosis. We want to give the patients the tools and the education on how to live with this condition from a holistic approach, because it's not just a skin condition, It's I look forward to it every year, and we have people that have been to every single one, keep coming back, and they're like, this gets better and better every year. And it's like it really is a community education empowerment, we have people that literally say, I learned more in the last hour than I have in the last four years from my doctor, and oh my god, 100% you know, 100% yeah, people who we had our finale, and in our finale, you know, I was able to bring people up to talk about their experience for the week, and so many people said they felt empowered, that they were ready to, they came in so depressed and not knowing how they were going to live with this condition, and now they're leaving, and they are energized, they are ready to tackle anything, because they know that they have a place that if they don't have the information, they know where they can go to get it right, and they know that this condition is not just, it's not a death sentence, it is, it'll, it's, it's a life condition, but they can still thrive, and that's the, that's the goal, that's the mission.
Christina Edwards 16:04
I hearing you talk about it, I'm like, do you realize, do you, do you like ever let yourself totally realize what the impact you've created, like, because of your perseverance, like, because of that. I know your community is very large, your web traffic is huge, so many people searching for answers, and because you decided to have the courage to do this, and then to keep doing it, and not make it kind of a small thing, but like go all in, the amount of people you've helped, like
Kathy Ruiz Carter 16:35
my husband just asked that question, and honestly, I did it once, and I start.. I always got so overwhelmed, and I started crying, that, of course, no, we're not doing that again. I just got to keep moving forward. I get the, yeah, I get the emails, and literally, like, I get a hill day. I was able to meet one of our members, so there's an amazing organization for any skin condition nonprofits that are listening, and you're in the US, there's an organization called the Coalition of Skin Diseases, amazing organization. It's they are an umbrella group that brings together peer organizations for skin conditions, and they do these events, and so if your skin condition and you're an organization and you're not with them, highly recommend checking them out. So they are the ones who sponsored this Hill Day, and they allowed us to bring two members from our community, and so I had never met these members in person and emailed back and forth with them, and I met this lady, and she literally, before, before we could even say hello, she was like Kathy, and I was like, oh, I've been looking for you, and she's like, you just don't know, you saved my life, and she starts bawling, and I'm like, I start bawling, and my daughter is standing there looking at us like, what do I do, and and we just hugged, and we just kept crying, and she was like, you just don't know, and I'm, and it's like, how do you like, I'm just a person in my bedroom, you know, working on the computer, and I try not to, like, think about that, because I would, I wouldn't get any work done, I just be,
Christina Edwards 18:34
you're a person in your bedroom working on the computer who also has hosted the sixth annual summit that y'all is also a fundraiser, bringing in multi five figures. You're a person who emails every damn day.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 18:47
Yes, a
Christina Edwards 18:48
lot of the time. So, yeah, it's all the time. Yes, yeah, we'll talk about that. Like, you have done this because you were willing to fail, you were willing to fail forward, you were willing to have the courage, I think I'm no doubt there's so many more of her out there. It's making me think about one of the, one of the challenges, whether, whether you're in the healthcare space or disease space or anything, skin care space. I think certain organizations have this challenge that I know you have experienced, which is, wait, do our clients or our patients also have to be our donors? That's messed up, right? Of like they're already going through this, and now I'm asking them to donate. How has that? I know that's something that you felt deeply in the beginning. How do you feel about that now? How do you navigate that now?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 19:41
Yeah, that was something I struggled with for a while. So our organization, for the first four years, was 99.5% donor and patient funded. Like they were funding us before we even incorporated, we, we, our first holistic healing summit was to raise the funds to start the organization.
Christina Edwards 20:09
Yep,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 20:09
and so it was all it's been patience, always been patience, and one of the things that I feel deeply is just like you said, we suffer from this. We are the ones that are being harmed by the medical system. We are the ones that have to create the space to start reversing that harm, and we also have to fund it. Like, give us a break, right?
Christina Edwards 20:37
Like, come on. Yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 20:38
yeah. But what I found that in the beginning I was very hesitant to ask for money, like it was, I would only do it on certain occasions where I felt like I always felt like I had to give before I was willing to receive, so I never was the type that, like, had you know, PS support the organization in the bottom of an email, unless I was running a campaign. Now I feel comfortable, because here's the thing: if we don't have the funds, we can't do the thing, and if we don't do the thing, people don't get better, people don't get help, people don't get their lives back. They're still struggling, and so one day, yes, and it is happening. We're entering year five, and it is happening where we are starting to see funding from other places, but we still are 85-90% patient donor funded, and that's okay, because they feel invested, and they are invested. This is our organization, it's not my organization, it's our organization, and so when I'm talking to my donors, it's, hey, look what we did, look what you made possible, look what we're going to do, and they are excited about it, they're cheering us on, they're like, you know, literally my friends, like people, people at the end of the summit, they're like, take a break, go on vacation. We don't want to see you, we don't want to hear, we're not emailing you, you need a break, because they care about me as a person, because I care about them as a person. And we have done this together, even the new people, we got a big influx of people, new people this year, and hearing even back from them, they already feel that sense of community, that family again. Yeah, Auntie, they just come into, you know, talk to their cousins.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 23:22
Yeah, and I'm very transparent. I think that's another thing. I know there are organizations that are like, should we, you know, should we tell them about this? Should we tell them about.. I tell everything sometimes to the point where we had a coach. So when we started off, we had a met. we were mentoring with the YWCA to help us get started, and I'm very transparent, and my coach was like, "You don't have to tell everything, you don't have to, and I was just like, "Listen, that's just who I am, I'm an open book, and so even in all the things, how much we raise, I'm always letting them know, hey, this is what we did, down to the penny. This is what we're, this is what we're trying to do with this money. This is why we need.. so I think in having that transparency, there's that sense of trust that you, you know, we know what these dollars are going for, and we know that you are a good steward of these dollars, and so we don't have an issue giving you these dollars. And when I ask, you know, I was last year, I did like six different campaigns. There was a lot of fundraising going on last year, but that was our biggest year. You know, imagine that,
Christina Edwards 24:40
you guys, it's like if we want to raise more, we have to have more fundraising. I've said it
Kathy Ruiz Carter 24:45
before, I don't email, I don't get donations, it just doesn't happen. And I think I think there's a lot of fear of, well, if they know that we're making all this money, then they won't give more money. And the thing is, if you're making all the money and you're doing the work with the money, and you let them know we get more money, we're going to do more work, they're going to want to give you more money, because they're excited, they want it,
Christina Edwards 25:13
if they have the capacity to write a $5,000 check, even though they are a patient with LS all day, every day, they're like, 'Here's my $5,000 let's go.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 26:20
Yes, yeah, that was a space I had to learn, and then thanks to your coaching to lean into was major donors, that was a goal last year that I had was to get more major donors, and actually this year is when I really, really stepping into it, but what I learned was there are people in our space, in our community with the means, and if we don't ask, if we don't tell them this is what we need, then they don't know, they think we're good, right? They're just like, okay, they don't ask, they're, they don't need it,
Christina Edwards 27:18
I'm thinking last year you had to do a pop-up emergency fundraiser because your web traffic is so high that you needed more whatevers calls, right? We had to have a developer on it very, very quickly, and your audience, if I remember correctly, they raised $1,000 in seven minutes, and then went on to raise the full amount needed to bring the website, so that it had the capacity to handle that traffic, and again, it's like with that level of trust, people are like, oh, they need this, it doesn't matter that they already donated to the spring campaign, they're like, I'm all in,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 27:59
yeah, absolutely, it was, it was amazing. I literally cried. I literally cried, because I was like, how are we going to do this? This is not in our budget, you know. This was not a problem we foresee, we saw coming. Yeah, and we need to fix it. And literally, our life blood is down, our website is down and we couldn't get it back up and doing and again this is why email is so important we sent it was only email we sent out an email saying hey this is the emergency we needed $5,000 to create this fund we needed $1,000 to get the website back up, and within seven minutes we had one donor who she, she only gave $1,000 a year, but at Giving Tuesday she never donated other than that, and so within what, within seven minutes she made that $1,000 donation, and we had the website up in less than 20 minutes to the point where people thought we had got hacked, and I had sent a follow-up email, like with me crying, it was like I have to capture this because this is crazy, and they do, they show up, and I love my community, and I feel the love back. I am not in a silo, I don't see them very often in person. We're starting to do some in-person things, but for four years I only knew these people virtually, and I still, their family, they're all over the world, but I know, and, and this showed it, that if I need, they will show up, and even before then, so back in COVID days, you know, I had just started the organization, it was September of 2021 we in court. Operated in August of 21 but I had been.. I started off as a podcast and created content and things like that, and in September of 2021 my husband and I both ended up in the hospital with COVID. My board, my amazing board, put out a.. they put up a GoFundMe page, and the community raised over $3,000 just for me and my husband, because we, you know, we were sick. They knew they hit.. we had kids, we obviously weren't producing any income, and I.. it was like that was back in the very, very, very beginning, you know what I mean. And it was. oh, it's always, always a same formula: trust, family, hope, connection, community. Is it? We don't do transactional, everything we do is relationships.
Christina Edwards 30:52
Yes, yes. And for anyone who's like, okay, love this, but I'm only one person, maybe that's where exactly I'm like, so is Kathy. Oh, maybe we could talk about email here, which is email really has, and that's the part of me that, if you told me, Christina, before I started this, this organization, I ran an e, I worked at an e-commerce business, or I was an online business owner, like that's how you have stepped into this, this role really well, where I'm like, does she have a past life where she was doing this? So you really have foundationally made email the backbone of your fundraising engine, and really just your trust building, your community engine. And you email every day, talk to us about email,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 31:40
Monday through Friday, yeah, we send an email Monday through Friday, so it didn't start off that way, to be fair, it started off, you know, a monthly newsletter, and you got, you know, maybe two or three emails when we were doing a campaign, and in the beginning we did have someone who had an MBA who was running it, and I kept pushing for more emails, and they were like, no, we don't want to give email fatigue, and they ended up leaving the organization, moving on, and I took over, and I was like, you know what, I got a lot to say, you know, I have so much to say. I don't have enough days that I'm sending emails, and so I slowly started ramping up to where we are right now, where I send emails Monday through Friday, but all of my emails are value, they are there, are not just, hey, this is what we're doing, or hey, you know, it's not about
Christina Edwards 32:50
us. Yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 32:50
I, uh, one of my tenants, and, and I was in customer service for a long time. I love customer service, and so this is, I think, where the foundation of how skill
Christina Edwards 33:00
is transferable. Yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 33:01
absolutely. Yeah, we have a schedule where we can't do events every day. We can't even sometimes do events every month, just because we have so much going on. So, we are a support network, so we support through our emails, you know, so we are hitting topics that we know are on our community's minds. We are sharing resources, whether they are our resources or resources from one of our partners, or on Sunday on Wednesdays. So I got a shout out, Danny. Danny is she started as a volunteer, and she is now a board member, but she also now works in the organization, and she has taken on the role of communication coordinator. So, between she and I, we do the emails and all the all the social media and things like that, and so she decided on her own that she was going to implement Affirmation Wednesdays, and so every Wednesday there is a short email with a with a one sentence affirmation, and people love it.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 34:43
We get so many emails back. That's the other thing. That's when you know your community is touched in, because we get so many responses from our emails that literally I went on vacation, I have like 50 emails that I need to respond to, just from. He's just from our emails, the
Christina Edwards 35:01
biggest metric
Kathy Ruiz Carter 35:02
station
Kathy Ruiz Carter 35:45
I had to get better at, like, doing the calls and, you know, finding the people. That's that was that's my goal for this year. But again, because I am one person, I have learned the word capacity, because I used to try to do all the things, yep, but you know, but I don't beat myself up for it, because what I'm doing is working. When I get to the point where I have the capacity to do those extra calls and the letters and that personalization, it's just going to skyrocket what I'm doing. But for now, I feel good in maintaining what we're doing, because it's still growing, you know. I was about to say,
Christina Edwards 36:25
your year over year growth, you're expanding. Yeah, we
Kathy Ruiz Carter 36:29
have the last year over the year before, we had 30% growth, the year before that was 50% growth. I mean, so
Christina Edwards 36:38
it's phenomenal. And yeah, I also want to talk about how, because you have first of all, again, underscoring this is not an in-person thing, you're doing this all remote, your audience is remote, your board members are remote, your events are mostly online remote, and you're bringing in sponsors, you're bringing in pharmaceutical sponsors, again going back to where we started, which is I have no business doing this. Okay, I'm, you know, and let's go, let's go negotiate a long-term sponsorship, a long-term pharmaceutical. Like, talk to us about even still, I'm thinking of like some of the creative ways you're bringing in funding right through these,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 37:22
yeah. I love it. So, you said you know we don't do a gala, we just did our summit, that is our gala, that is our gala. I, and I let them know, hey, we could probably do some expensive event, get some rich people, some influential people in there, and you know, ask them for money, but we want to spend time with you. We want to empower you, and so this is our big event. This is our fundraiser of the year.
Christina Edwards 38:57
That's it. It's data, and at least I got, I broke a sweat, you know, I'm in the arena, I'm doing this work, versus I really, I wrote it down, I wrote MBA down, because your MBA person would have said, right, we'd still be sending a newsletter a month or twice a month, it's not always the degree or the person who has, you know, all of this training and this and that, or the MD. You know, MDs are great, not usually great marketers, right? So it's like letting yourself fail forward has been such a secret of yours in this idea of not hiding and going, we're going to be visible, we're going to be invisible, we're going to be visible to different audiences in different rooms, and then you have pharmaceutical companies reach out, you have brand sponsorships reach out, because they're like, oh, your audience aligns with our audience, or how can we get in front of your audience, and that has been such a cool thing to watch.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 39:56
Thank you, and being yourself like. Being yourself wholeheartedly, because I could, you know, again, I think me not being from the nonprofit space or being from the health space helped me, because I didn't know what was expected. I just said, this is the way I want to do it, this is the way I would want to, I do things that I would want to go to? I do. I write things that I would want to read or listen to. I am my, my avatar.
Christina Edwards 40:32
That's right. And you're leaning into her, and you're like, what is what does she need right now? She does not need to hear from me twice a month, she needs an affirmation today, or she needs, or she needs to know. And one of the things you did with the summit is you had less time to promote it, and you were able to raise more in less time. We even covered that, and it came from the thought, or the belief that, oh, she just missed my other emails, or I want to make sure she gets ahead of this and marks her calendar, instead of going to the place of, like, they don't want it, they would have signed up by now, or they were, you know, that sad place.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 41:07
Yes. Oh my goodness, yeah, that's been a struggle in the past years. This year, so I want to talk about this year's summit and marketing and fundraising, because this year something magical happened. So this is our sixth year, and every year what I do is I make note of what worked and what didn't work, and what I want to do differently,
Christina Edwards 41:32
yep,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 41:32
and so, and I build on that, and I don't, I know that it's controversial, some people are like, no, some people are fully in Gemini. Is my best friend. Okay, Gemini AI is my best friend. We would not like.. we would not.. we love
Christina Edwards 41:51
her. She's great.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 41:53
She's amazing. And we would.. I fully, wholeheartedly believe that we would not have the success that we had this year without AI. I fully leaned into AI. She is my sidekick, my unpaid VA, and you have in the membership, you have in Chat GPT, you have a coach.
Christina Edwards 43:22
I love your AI, best AI forward, because she came to you, came to a call, and you're like, I don't have a lot of time to promote this, and it was like, let's bust out these emails, let's look at this page. You were going through a huge web redesign, like huge, which looks incredible. And then I'm like, give me, let me look at your emails before they go out. I give you some feedback, that's it. Like this is how you can use AI to collapse timelines, which you absolutely did on this. Absolutely,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 43:53
I traveled all of basically was it March, and yeah, March. We launched in April. I had to push it back three weeks, like you were saying. We pushed our launch date back three weeks, because I was traveling and didn't have the time to set up the marketing. In two weeks, I had a web page, a landing page, I had all of the marketing, I had the automations, everything was back and forth. What do I do? I had it was amazing. And long story short, last year we did for early bird week, which is our discounted week, we did $5,000 This year we did $13,000 which
Christina Edwards 44:38
hell yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 44:40
I was just like time, less effort,
Christina Edwards 44:43
less everything.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 44:45
By the end of the the event last year, we did a total of 16,000 This year, you don't even know this yet.
Christina Edwards 44:55
I don't know this.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 44:56
This year we did 29,000
Christina Edwards 44:59
Oh. My God, what?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 45:06
Yes, 29,000 and we had the exact same amount of people registering last person as this year.
Christina Edwards 45:16
What,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 45:17
the exact same
Christina Edwards 45:18
amount of people?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 45:20
It wasn't more. Wow, yeah, the messaging was clearer, the repetition. The website was amazing. And let me tell you, who designed that website? Because it wasn't me, it was Gemini and Chat GPT. Okay, they literally helped me. I had all I had to do was keep them on task of this is the vision, this is what we wanted to do, and then they helped me craft, and then I just had to implement, that was it, and it literally, we almost doubled what we did the year, that's
Christina Edwards 45:56
incredible, congratulations, they incredible
Kathy Ruiz Carter 45:59
you, and and this wasn't the first time, there's yeah, Giving Tuesday last year, you know, the year before that we had raised, I think it was 18,000 Giving Tuesday of this past year we did 32,000 yeah, and I fully say it's my girl Gemini helping me out now. I'm implementing Chat GPT in there with it, but it's.. it's.. I'm also gonna say to the tech,
Christina Edwards 46:29
and you're working on your donor relationships, you're securing matches. We're.. we're building out a comprehensive strategy, but using AI when it knows you in that way is so smart, you really can, and it's not formulaic, it's specific to your voice, your audience. It is working really beautifully.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 46:50
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So, it's I say, as long as you, you have to have a clear vision and brand voice. If you know who you are, and you're able to translate that into the, so I use gems, I use Gemini, so it has it knows us, it has, we were able to give it all of the how we speak, our brand guide, which she did also help us create, you know, it, and if anyone's listening, they're like, "Well, how do I get started? Just ask, say, "Hey, it will tell you yes, it will tell you yes, it's what I want to do. What question do you, what do you need from me? And you literally just go and answer all the questions, and then once you do that, you're the follow-up question is, how can we make it better? You got to reiterate, because it's going, it's going to go deeper, and the deeper you're able to go, the better it is going to be, the more the message is going to hit home.
Christina Edwards 47:58
I love it. What would you say to a nonprofit leader or fundraiser who sees themselves, maybe from this conversation, still playing a little small, or they're just far away, farther away from their goals than they want to be? What would you tell them?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 48:18
Do the scary thing. Yes. Do the scary thing, because one thing I've learned from Christina is you're on the right track when you feel that pit in your stomach, and you're like, I don't know, and I've had that scary, that thought, and those feelings,
Christina Edwards 48:38
yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 48:38
and you still got to do it, you still got to lean into it, and just know that there is no failure. There's no such thing as failure. You're just learning, you're learning, you're one step closer to your success. Don't stop. I tell my community that all the time, don't.
Christina Edwards 48:54
Yes,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 48:55
when you stop, that's when you failed. As long as you keep moving forward, you're succeeding,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 50:01
we learned that this just wasn't what my community wanted, either at this time, or I didn't market it well enough. And will I do it again? Maybe, but I know that auctions, or at least this type of auction, is not for my community right now. My community likes to solve a problem, and they like events where they can learn and be empowered. Those are the.. oh, that's so
Christina Edwards 50:27
good. So, it's like, let's reverse engineer the next campaign, knowing those two things. And when we know those two things, and we also know your bandwidth, and all of that, then we're able to go.. Is it an event, is it an auction, is it something just digital? Okay, let's go.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 50:44
Well, here's the thing. So we had the auction in October, and then we had, we started Giving Tuesday in the end of November. So for the auction, we brought in, I don't even remember, it was a couple $1,000 yeah. And then we killed it in great and give it Tuesday, so they could get something in the auction, and they didn't, but they give me money for nothing. Is
Christina Edwards 51:09
it like they, they are getting something? It is just not a physical item, but no, I'm glad you said that, because I think that's the like misbelief, right? Is like they have to give them something, I have to give them a swag bag, a water bottle, an auction item, and it's like we just want to give, we just want to give, and we want lots of opportunities and lots of reasons and lots of reminders, and we want you to make it very easy for us, and when you do those things, we give, we give again, we tell other people about
Kathy Ruiz Carter 51:39
it, and talking about email, so I want to highlight this, because yeah, for the summit, guess how many emails we sent out in those.. oh boy,
Christina Edwards 51:52
lay it on us. Everybody's going to be like,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 51:55
we sent out 33 emails, 33 marketing emails, that's not including automation emails after they confirm, after they registered 33 emails.
Christina Edwards 52:09
Yeah,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 52:10
and our unsubscribes was less than 1%
Christina Edwards 52:13
Thank you.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 52:14
Not even less than 1%
Christina Edwards 52:16
because the emails themselves were valuable, because the people want to stay on your list, like it's more does not mean more unsubscribes, more means more value, more connection, more trust. I'm so glad you said that.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 52:29
Yeah, yeah, I've leaned email, email is how I talk to my community, and they want to talk, they want to talk back, they talk back, it literally is a communication, and when you know there are people that they're like I haven't been getting your emails, am I still on the list? Yeah, okay, let's work, yeah, let's figure it out. Maybe I'm in your
Christina Edwards 52:52
promotions folder, exactly.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 52:53
But think you know this, these organizations emailing me every day, I don't want to hear about them no more, but it's not, it's not about us, it's about them.
Christina Edwards 53:03
Yep, exactly. It's
Kathy Ruiz Carter 53:04
not about us, it's about them. So, you got to center your community, and I understand too. There are organizations that they're like, well, our, we're not emailing our patient group or the people who are receiving our services, and you can still email the about what you're doing, about how they're helping.
Christina Edwards 53:27
I would want, I would want to think closely on that decision, and go, is that to not exclude them? Do you know what I mean? Like, I, an organization that's like, we don't do that. I would, I would want that organization take a closer look at the why. If the why is a fear, and then you want to look closely, because I'm hearing service, I'm hearing this is of service.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 53:50
That's what I had to change in my mindset was this is number one, this is not about me. Yep, right. To take the ego out, this is about them. How can you service them? How can you help them? How can you let them know that they are making a difference in the world? How can you let them know that they can do more, right, whether it's volunteering, donating, sharing, sharing, getting more people involved, whatever it is, and then letting them know, thank you, always, always, thank you. We appreciate you, whether it's your time, whether it's your money, whether it's just your attention, that's it. Thank you.
Christina Edwards 54:38
Yes,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 54:39
thank you for showing up. Thank you for being here. Email, yes, yes,
Christina Edwards 54:45
yeah.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 55:01
yes, even, and it's so funny because even at the summit, like, we, I do a welcome session to start it off, and you can tell I'm very animated, I just have this energy, I can't help it, I'm a Latina, we're loud, and so, so in that, I'm like, even I remember in my opening speech, I'm like, "Hey, I'm Kathy Ruiz Carter, you know me, because I get you, get my emails every day. Thank you for still being here, because you gotta get more, you know, literally made that joke. Oh yeah, like hearts, hearts, hearts, you know?
Christina Edwards 55:45
Yes,
Kathy Ruiz Carter 55:45
they got to feel connected. We, it's not me versus them, it's us.
Christina Edwards 55:50
Yes, not we versus them, it's us. It's so good. Thank you so much. It has been an honor to have this conversation with you, and to coach you inside the club, and just I feel like you're such an amazing marketer, storyteller, fundraiser, founder, auntie energy. So, I know a lot of people will take so much from this conversation today. We ask our guests if they would share a thought they like to think on purpose, an affirmation, a mantra, is there one, maybe even a quote, something that's, would you, would want to share with our listeners that resonates with you?
Kathy Ruiz Carter 56:28
Oh my goodness, everything happens for a reason.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 57:53
I have so many memories of if I didn't do that, or if I didn't take that chance, hell, if I didn't, if I didn't make the investment into your coaching program, which let me tell you, as a little organization that had to go through board approval, because that was our budget, was like, yeah, dude, really, are you sure, and I was like, yes, we are ready. I am ready. This is it. I know this because I wanted coaching years before. I just couldn't afford it. I didn't have the time. I didn't have the infrastructure. And then it was like, okay, this is the person I met you. I started doing a couple of your smaller webinars, and I was like, I click with her, I love the way she's teaching. Actually, did the Giving Tuesday. Oh yeah, well, and we had results from that, and then from there you offered the club, and I was like, I'm in now, I got to get my board in, and my board trusts me. So there you go. Saw the figure, they were like, okay, are you sure? And I'm like, I'm sure. They're like, are you ready? Can you take this on? Because did his work. That's the other thing I want to say. Yeah, you have to do the work. It's not just gonna happen.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 59:32
you gotta do the work, and you have to make the time and do the work, and you know, I recommend your program to any nonprofit leader that I'm talking to, I'm like, you got to get a coach, you know? I would not be here, we would not have seen the growth that we seen without a coach, without Christina, without the encouragement, because it's not just doing the thing, it's the mental part, that's what I. Love working about with you is that I love being able to come in there like not feeling great about myself or feeling hesitant or not sure where do I move forward and you're not like okay do ABC you're like okay let's investigate why are you feeling this way let's investigate what's underneath that then we can talk about how do we remedy remedy ABC by doing DCC, because you know if we don't do that, then that feeling is going to keep coming back.
Christina Edwards 1:00:31
That's right, and there's a little anchor, yeah, just drag it with you,
Christina Edwards 1:00:40
Okay. Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for saying that. That's so fun. Where can.. where are you? Where's your favorite place to hang out? We'll link, of course, to everything, but I like share with us your website, and maybe is Instagram your go-to.
Kathy Ruiz Carter 1:00:53
Instagram is where we hang out the most, like in Sclerosis Support Network on Instagram, and yeah, we have a thriving community there. We post almost every day there as well. So, again, value showing up community, not transactional. Build a relationship, build a relationship, and it will grow.
Christina Edwards 1:01:17
Yes, don't don't worry about the number, brave. Yes, don't
Kathy Ruiz Carter 1:01:22
worry about the numbers, just show up authentically yourself, because if you could, my husband said you could be fake for a little while, but eventually, eventually, that's right, your true self is going to come through, and if you'd switch up on people, then they stop trusting you, so you show up for real in the beginning, then your people are going to find you, and not everybody's going to be your people,
Christina Edwards 1:01:46
and that's okay