Ep. 153: What Smart Nonprofits Are Stealing from E-Commerce: The Campaign Engine That Replaces 3 Staffers
EPISODE 153
What Smart Nonprofits Are Stealing from E-Commerce: The Campaign Engine That Replaces 3 Staffers
About the Episode:
What if your next major hire isn’t a person, but a system?
In this episode, I pull back the curtain on the “NextGen Fundraising Engine”, a proven campaign system that replaces the need for a marketing coordinator, development associate, and monthly giving manager. If you’re stuck in a cycle of burnout, chasing one-off donations, or hiring your way out of a revenue gap, this episode is your permission slip to do it differently. You’ll learn why the smartest nonprofits are stealing proven growth tactics from e-commerce brands, and how to streamline your fundraising, storytelling, and donor retention strategies without bloating your payroll. This isn’t hustle culture. This is what it looks like to fundraise smarter.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why hiring more staff isn’t the answer (and what to build instead)
The difference between a capacity issue and a clarity issue
How e-commerce strategies are helping nonprofits grow faster
The three essential fundraising functions most orgs try to hire for—and how to replace them with one system
Viral partnerships & the Social Street Team® Method
Monthly donor engines that work (without outsourcing)
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:
“Most leaders think they have a capacity issue when, in fact, they have a clarity and strategy issue.”
“Smart nonprofits are watching how decisions are being made online and adapting.”
“Becoming a part of and prioritizing the subscription economy is key.”
“Strategy saves time. What you're doing now is likely costing hours with little ROI.”
“You need to sound clear, passionate, relevant, and confident. That's what the modern donor responds to.”
“Your donors' expectations are now shaped by their day-to-day digital lives.”
“The modern smart nonprofits are adapting.”
“You're not stuck because you don't have more staff. You're stuck because you don't have the right system.”
“NextGen fundraising isn't about hustling harder, it's about fundraising smarter.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina EdwardsSo what if I told you the system you're missing out on isn't actually a new staffer. It's a campaign engine. Most nonprofits hit a ceiling or hit that level of stress where they think they're in a constant cycle of fundraising and assume we just need a major gifts officer. We need a marketing coordinator. We need somebody better on social. We just need, once we hire that development person, everything will be better. We need somebody to manage retention. What about recurring giving? Let's have somebody roll that out right. Or who of all of those things I can I just mentioned who, what volunteer could help take, take the ball and run with that. But what if you didn't, what if you didn't assume any of those things. What if you had one system that replaced all three of those staffers, the major gifts person, the marketing person, the retention person, and scaled with you. The Smart nonprofits that I work with aren't hiring their way out of a revenue problem. They're building a fundraising engine that drives results just like ecom commerce brands do and have been doing for many, many years. Now, I'm not against you hiring support. In fact, I love support, but we're gonna focus on what I call the next generation fundraising engine that scales your impact without actually bloating your payroll or hiring a lot of people who aren't set up for success, which we're going to dig into. So most people think that more staffers equals more results. If you've ever thought that and had a bad, bad hire and proved that wrong, you you're like, nodding along. You're like, Yeah, I know most leaders think they actually have a capacity issue, when, in fact, what they have is a clarity and strategy issue. So they think a new hire walking into a system without messaging, clear campaigns, clear deadlines, clear, deliverables, clear, SOPs, clear, standard operating procedures and processes right walking into that is just going to figure it out. The truth is, they're not set up to succeed. Plunking down a very bright new person into your marketing, fundraising or retention role just because they're very bright and very passionate about your cause. When they don't have a system and a strategy to onboard themselves, they aren't set up to succeed, and we saw a lot of churn when they are hired without these processes in place, and it's not their fault, because they were hired into the fog, right with the idea that more bodies, more talent, more people, is just going to fix it, when, in fact, more bodies equals more management, more questions, more confusions, more dilution, more group think, which you know, I hate more. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Well, let's loop everybody in. We're all hands. It's like hiring three drivers when your car doesn't have an engine. You don't need more people in the car, right? You need horsepower. So we're going to talk about that horsepower today. So what so many smart nonprofits are doing and copying from the E commerce sector is this, is this is this strategy. You're not running an E commerce brand, but your donors are shopping like consumers, and that's why we're going to pull we're going to pull some we're going to pull what's working. We're going to pull some strategies from that sector today, because consumers are donors, and donors are consumers. You with me, and those e comm brands are building their revenue quickly. They are collapsing timelines. They are growing very quickly, even in this economy, even in a challenging era, even even with the economy being how it is, the stock market, inflation, tariffs, how are they still doing well, so I like to actually lean on the E comm world in this instant and let it be a beacon of like, okay, if those companies can grow and thrive in this market, so Can my nonprofit. What are they doing? Well, smart nonprofits are watching how decisions are being made online and adapting. They're adapting faster launch cycles, faster campaigns, cleaner donor experiences, influencer style storytelling, influencer partnerships, not paid. We do not teach paid influencer partnerships. We teach in kind Influencer partnerships, repeatable touch points for retention and they see. See that systems and strategy are stronger than just warm bodies of staffers, because those staffers aren't set up to succeed when you don't have the strategy and system and leadership in place first.
So let me talk about the campaign engine that replaces those three roles that you think, Oh, if we could just have the funding to hire the marketing coordinator, the Development Associate, the monthly giving manager, then we'd be peachy keen. That's actually not the truth. You actually need the fundraising engine first. You need this next gen engine first. And this is what we teach in the club, this idea of next gen fundraising. We give you the strategy, we give you the support, we give you the tools, we give you unlimited feedback, we give you the community. And we are launching at the time this is recording very, very soon. So at the time this is being released. If you haven't already signed up for our webinar, make sure that you do. So here's what it what this engine actually replaces. It replaces the marketing coordinator, so the person making endless posts, Canva graphics, random content that isn't converting the amount of times that I've sat on calls and I have heard I love our social content. We've got the best marketing coordinator. We have the best marketing freelancer, amazing, great. Are they driving new donor leads? No, they're not actually, are they diving, driving new donations? Oh, no, actually, okay, great. So you're just paying them to pay to post content that's pretty that very little people are seeing. That's actually not moving the needle, and you're wasting time and money. So the marketing coordinator, instead of having them do that right? Your campaign engine, your fundraising engine, you actually replace that awareness marketing with high converting viral partnerships. This is the social Street Team method that I teach to build buzz and bring in real donors, real support, real advocacy. This is where we see retention rates skyrocket.
What about the Development Associate? So you're not manually tracking stewardship. Instead, you have campaign systems that guide donor journeys from first gift to repeat gift to recurring gift. And it's part of your rhythm. This is where we really look at the E comm sector and see that they're doing this beautifully. If you have become a new customer for any product or service in the E comm sector, I don't care if it's a mug, a straw, a cool pen, a lipstick, these or these. Companies are nimble. They are fast, and they are putting you through new welcome series sequences. They are put putting you through automation. They're offering you a free gift to make a certain purchase. They're offering you a discount. They know the value, the lifetime value of you as a customer, if they can get you to shop a second time, and they are not wasting any time making those moves. Okay? So having those campaign systems in place is key. We have templates inside the club. We have templates, scripts and tools so that you can set up those campaigns without having to start from scratch. And you can also narrow in on, what are the campaigns I need to start, what are the campaigns I want to layer in? What makes the most sense here?
And what about the monthly giving manager? You're not dabbling in retention or launching a monthly program once a year, right? You're just like, poke. You're doing a little bit of this. You're doing a little bit of that. Instead, we teach a process. You have a monthly donor growth engine with consistent campaigns that you run at key points throughout the year, with positioning, strong tele storytelling and a branded, branded recurring Giving Program. None of this requires you to hire an outside monthly giving manager. You with me, when you have the right tech, the right branding and the right campaign system, you don't need to carve out this to be a part or full time role. This can be an in house role with your current staff. So that's why one well built system and strategy can replace three jobs when you know you think you've got to go outside versus bringing it all in house. And it doesn't mean I'm asking you to do all of it yourself. It means that I'm asking you to streamline the work you're doing to high ROI activities. And this is what better strategy actually looks like.
So I'm going to share some ideas of what it could look like in practice. So one, a goal heading, campaign system. Most organizations throw ideas at the wall, emails, events, social posts and just hope donations come in. They're very arbitrary. We're just talking about general needs and stories from the organization versus, and then there's a call to action to donate. They're very, very arbitrary, versus what we teach is that. Actual campaign system. We have the three phase campaign system, where we teach you a process to warm up your donors and prospects ahead of time, so that when you launch the campaign, you actually hit your goal early. That's the process we teach. Then we teach the retention part of that process so your campaigns are reviewed, optimized and implemented, and so that ahead of time, before you even hit go, press send on those campaigns, you've had feedback, you've had my eyes on every piece of creative copy, your landing page, your emails, anything that you want copy on, we have optimized ahead of time, really, really key here. This is what ecom brands are doing. They're iterating, they're reimagining those sales campaigns, and you should do.
Viral partnerships. Very key. This is so key, especially if you think, well, we need a more of a marketing team. We need a marketing agency. No, you don't. You do not need a marketing agency that you pay 5,10, $1,000 a month on retainer so that they can post great looking content on your channels. No you need viral partnerships with micro influencers in regular old influencers and ambassadors. We like to actually mix up. I like to have a hybrid of all of them. These are partners. These are partners with your organization who become partners as your street team, leveraging their networks to build influence and trust. These are collaborations with people who already have a following, building those mini movements with ambassadors and community champions, right? So that you have these user generated content campaigns that build traction fast. There's a blanket brand. I'm like, I've heard about it. I've seen Instagram ads. But the real reason why this blanket brand is on my radar, it is summer. I don't need a big fuzzy blanket, but I probably will ask for one for Christmas, because I really do like them, just like super luxurious, soft blankets, and they are so top of mind for me in the summer. Why influencer partnerships? They're releasing collabs. There are interior designers I follow, there are lifestyle influencers I follow, there are content creators I follow, who all are raving about this blanket. It's like, not the blanket you'd get from Target. It's not the blanket you'd get from Amazon. It has this really luxurious quality to it. It's like the best, right? And so the only reason I even know about this emerging company, which I'm gonna bet, I don't know, I'm gonna bet, didn't even exist five years ago, is because of this. This is the power of partnerships, and I want you to think about, how does that translate to my nonprofit? My nonprofit's five years old. My nonprofit's 15 years old. Where are your partnerships? Why aren't you doing this now? Why are you doing all of these other tactics when five meaningful partnerships with influencers, five meaningful collaborations with influencers, could change everything really important to go. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I helping or hurting my big goal.
A monthly donor growth engine. So we know the subscription economy is here. I'm embarrassed. I don't know how many subscriptions I have right now, from Netflix to Spotify to my toothbrush head replacement to razors to everything. I have so many subscriptions. And now what I thought was kind of silly to get way back when, like, my razor subscription, right? Shave my legs. And now I'm like, I'm so glad I have it. I never have to think about buying that again. It's like, I bet I've been, I bet I've had that subscription for at least five years, right? Be becoming a part of and prioritizing the subscription economy is key. This is really key for sustainable revenue growth. So beyond the importance of recurring giving for your organization, it's about recurring connection. So we see that recurring donors, people who give monthly, stay longer their average lifespan of a recurring donor is over eight years, versus just over a year for most one time gifts. So we want to think about, how can I start to prioritize monthly donor growth? Well, you need a fundraising system. You need a next gen fundraising system, and we can help you do that in the club. We show you how to position your program, craft the story behind it, run scalable re engagement and growth campaigns, so that you're bringing in new, recurring donors into your network at key points throughout the year. It is scalable. It is sustainable. We have clients who do this as an email only campaign. We have clients who do this as a board engagement campaign. We've had clients who do this with with email and social. This isn't about bringing in extra staffers.
And let me make a big shift of why you might want to consider bringing in. In a 360 degree strategy coach. It's a hybrid between a coach and a consultant versus another department head, another person to handle your touch points on your marketing plan or your fundraising plan. What if you brought in a strategy coach so you don't need another leader to manage? You actually need one to guide. And my favorite thing about working alongside nonprofits, but not in nonprofits, is that I can see the forest through the trees. I can see that low hanging fruit of what you should do now, what you should include in your pipeline and your strategy this year, and what you should stop doing immediately. And I can help support you, your board, your leadership to get on board right. I can play good cop or bad cop, whatever you need to do to get them on board right. So you get that buy in really, really important. So when you join the club, you actually get that retained strategist for a year. It's like having an expert consultant in your back pocket with weekly coaching, with tracks, role based tracks. Did you know I don't talk about this enough that when you join the club, you actually get three seats. So you get you and two other seats to get access to our program. Most often it's the executive director who joins the fundraiser or development person and the comm slash marketing person. That's who we have joined in each person we put through different tracks. You with me. We put the comms, marketing department, we put them through the social Street Team track, and they rock at it. They're in the DMs. They're doing the collabs, right? They're doing it. We put your fundraising person through that track. So instead of doing a little bit of everything spaghetti at the wall fundraising, they are hyper focused on running these recurring giving campaigns throughout the year, at key points throughout the year, optimizing maybe your signature gala or event. So we actually sell out tickets early. That's what our clients do, right or so that our event, we have so many people who do an annual or biannual event that aren't actually fundraisers, but they want them to be fundraisers. Well, they get the coaching and support to raise money at these events. I'm thinking about one that raised 10k in an event where she normally raised about 1000 bucks. From the 1000 bucks to 10k just from joining the club. That's what we coached and supported her to do. So you're not exactly hiring a person when you join the Club. You're investing in a system and support that delivers then we put your people through tracks.
I just this year, we've had clients who have hit their ticket goal early. We have clients who have run recurring giving campaigns and blown their goal out of the water. We have clients who sat down in major donor conversations with the hope to secure over $100,000 and ended up securing $300,000 transformational amounts of money, transformational new donors, that retention, upgrading donors, Brit layering on and bringing on ambassadors, board members and and influencers to be a part of your street team. If I were to distill down what we do, it really is, instead of getting your organization in that sort of like shouting at people, hoping that they become donors, that solo fundraising mentality, where it is you the executive director or you the organization fundraising, we actually create an army, a street team of advocates and ambassadors. So we bring up that awareness, we bring up the authenticity, we bring up the trust and the credibility and the connection. So that people start raising their hands going, can I get a meeting? People start raising their hands going, how can I help? Suddenly, those disengaged board members are very, very engaged, right? And there's that accountability and that cheerleader energy, so they actually feel like they're moving towards something very special. They're building a movement, versus, I've been voluntold to do this activity, right? They're not checking a box. They're a part of a movement. These people who are in and around your organization, the donors, the volunteers, the recurring givers, the board members, the Advisory Board, right? Those people are passionate about the work that you do. They're passionate about your cause area. But many times, that passion has gone a little dormant, and we re engage that passion for them.
So if you're thinking we're under resourced Christina, we just need someone to do the work. Here's what I want you to think work. You're already doing a ton of work. You're doing the work, but you don't have a system that's converting work into results, at, you know, work for work sake, into revenue, right? Or if you're thinking, we hired before and it didn't work because you brought someone into the chaos, this is the number one problem I see. Be people thinking that a junior account manager, a junior fundraiser, a junior freelance marketer, is going to fix their million dollar fundraising problem. That is not your hires fault, right? That is on you. The onus is on you. You brought someone into the chaos. It's like onboarding somebody with No Map, just vibes, fingers crossed, right? So first it's like, we've got to clean up the house before we have the party. Invite more people in, and that's what we do. So we work with the people that are already here. We work with your team. We work with your board members. Then we can layer on some help. If you say, you know, we don't have this time to do this ourselves. We just we're out of time. There aren't enough hours in the day. Strategy saves time. What you're doing now is likely costing hours with little ROI. This is a big one. It's a mindset one. Well, I just don't want to sound too salesy. I want to turn people off. Can you imagine your favorite brand if they thought that? Can you imagine if Apple said, we just don't want to sound too salesy guys or rolling out the Apple watch, like, keep it on the DL, just like, word of mouth it we don't want to, like, inundate our Can you imagine it sounds ridiculous for me to say, what if Yeti, you know the YETI Coolers, those like, so super popular. If you look at a Yeti cooler, I feel like it's like 5x of like an igloo cooler. It is so much more expensive. Both of them do the same thing. If you're a yeti person, I'm sure you're gonna tell me that the Yeti ones cool things longer, or they do something better. But can you imagine if they were like, you know, what? Like? We don't want to sound too salesy, selling our coolers, the Yeti brand was like, just like, it's chill, you know, like, put on the website, do some social posts, but like, we would like to, you know, see $10 million in sales. It doesn't work, right? You it doesn't work. You need to sound like you. You need to sound clear, passionate, relevant, confident. That's what the modern donor responds to and by the way, they need repetition. They need reminders. They can't just go, you know, I said it, I said it last week. I don't want to say it again, and I don't want to sound too salesy. And if you're thinking, okay, but we're not an E commerce business, stop talking about e commerce businesses. I hear you exactly. But your donors are e commerce customers, your donors are getting things delivered on their doorstep that they ordered last night. Your donors have forgone cooking for Uber Eats. Your donors stopped going to the grocery store and now are getting Instacart or food boxes home chef delivered. Right? Everything has changed. Habits have changed. Their expectations are now shaped by their day to day digital lives. You can either get adapt or get ignored. The modern smart nonprofits are all in they are adapting, and I want you to adapt too. This is the work we do inside my program, the purpose and profit club. This is where you get that next gen fundraising engine, the campaign system, plus two extra seats when you join. I highly recommend booking a growth plan call at splendid, atl.com, forward, slash start for more information.
So to recap, remember, you're not stuck because you don't have more staff. You're stuck because you don't have the right system. We have to clean up the house first before we invite more people in, more people aren't going to fix the problem. We have to figure out the fundraising engine first, then we can optimize, then we can iterate. Next Gen fundraising isn't about hustling harder, it's about fundraising smarter. This is what 100 million dollar organizations are doing, and they've been doing and I want to invite you to do the same. You don't need to hire your way or throw money at, you know, fixing your growth. You need to engineer your growth. So let's do that together. I'm cheering you on. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.