Ep. 145: You're Not Supposed to Do This Alone: Grow Faster with Digital Ambassadors
EPISODE 145
You're Not Supposed to Do This Alone: Grow Faster with Digital Ambassadors
About the Episode:
If you're still fundraising alone, this episode will change everything. Whether you're a solo shop executive director, a part-time founder, or running a million-dollar organisation, one thing is clear: you're not meant to do this work alone.
In this episode, I’m walking you through exactly how to grow faster using digital ambassadors—aka your passionate, everyday supporters who already love your mission and are ready to spread the word. From awareness to fundraising to enrollment, mobilizing others is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s essential. Because what worked in 2014 doesn’t work in 2025. And when you build the right team around you? That’s when you scale.
If you’ve ever said “we don’t have a big enough audience,” or “our team’s already maxed out,” this one’s for you. You don’t need a bigger team—you need the right people activated around you.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why fundraising is no longer a one-person job (and what to do instead)
The mindset shift from broadcasting louder to multiplying your voice
Why Gen Z and Millennials want to influence for good, not just donate
How to use peer-to-peer fundraising the right way
What digital ambassadors actually are—and how to find yours
Specific examples of how orgs are using digital teams to grow faster
Why your small-but-mighty community is more powerful than you think
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:
“You're not supposed to fundraise alone.”
“Fundraising in 2025 and beyond cannot be a one-person job.”
“Fundraising is no longer about broadcasting louder. It's about multiplying your voices, advocates, and energy.”
“73% of Gen Z and Millennials say they prefer influencing for good over simply donating.”
“You don't want to stop fundraising, you want to start mobilizing.”
“Digital ambassadors are a group of people who have raised their hand and said YES to become advocates for your organizations.”
“Just flicking the lights onto the website does not suddenly drop donors from the sky.”
“Your audience grows fastest through trust, not ads.”
“The organizations that build Digital Ambassador programs and networks now will dominate in the next three to five years.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 0:30Today's episode, I'm kicking off with some good news. You ready? You're not supposed to fundraise alone anymore. Okay? You're not supposed to be doing any of this in nonprofit growth alone. So today is going to be focused on that core principle, that core trend, that core value that we teach in both of our programs. So whether you're a solo shop executive director, a part time CEO, part time founder, or you're scaled up into the multi millions, and you're like Christina, we have a Director of Development Christina, we have our ED, who does all the fundraising. The best news I have for you in both scenarios is actually neither scenario are they supposed to do this all by themselves. So I'm going to share with you how to grow faster using digital ambassadors. And it's not the way that you think you've seen that's all boring, and people say they'll do something, and they don't do it, and they say yes, and then they never follow through. Okay, I'm going to help you see how to stop fundraising alone and actually lead a team of super fans, believers and advocates for your mission. So if you're still doing it solo, regardless of your actual org size and org chart, you're actually slowing your mission down. Now I had back to back coaching calls with several amazing nonprofit founders and fundraisers, and I knew I had to record this episode. Okay, so while the size and cause area of the two organizations were very, very different, the through line was the same. So here's the truth, fundraising in 2025 and beyond, cannot be a one person job. So the solo fundraiser era is over, and yet even larger organizations are stuck in the trap of the development. Person will handle it. This person over there will handle it. She's got it covered, while everyone else stays quiet in their own little lane, own little zone. But that mindset is a growth killer. If you want to scale now impact more people now, fundraising needs to be a team support inside your organization. And here's the huge distinction outside, public facing across your community, because it's no longer about just broadcasting louder. It's about multiplying your voices, your advocates, your energy. I'm gonna say that again, fundraising is no longer about broadcasting louder. It's about multiplying your voices, your advocates and your energy. That's how you bring people in. Somebody said to me on the earlier call, you know, so for our followers, but and actually, social media isn't really driving donation. I was like, stop. Hang on. Hang on. Remember, remember how I teach. We do not teach you to create beautiful content and put it on your social networks and then cross your fingers we flip it, we flip it on its head. That's what we do with the social Street Team method. So instead of you creating amazing content that no one sees or 1% of your audience sees, thanks to the algorithm, you actually have the team of ambassadors and digital advocates who are bringing up awareness, who are using their voice, their platform, to drive awareness, donations, enrollment for your cause, and if you're thinking cool, maybe later. Let's focus on this over here, and we'll get to that later. Christina, no, if you don't build that team now, not only do you lose momentum and attention in this noisy, faster world, you're just putting yourself last in line. Like, don't be the last adopter of this, right? Don't give yourself like a natural back seat to something that could be helping you now.
So let's dig into some of the most common reasons why I see teams, boards, stakeholders, staffers resist. Here's what this looks like. We tried Peer to Peer ones. It didn't really work. This sounds like more work. I don't have time for it. Our team's already maxed out. I'm maxed out. We don't have a big enough audience. Yeah, who would even work with us anyway? Who would even be our ambassador anyway? But the truth is this, 73% of Gen Z and millennials actually say they prefer influencing for good over simply donating. This is a new stat. This is from LinkedIn for good in 2024 that's 73% of Gen Z and millennials. They do want to use their networks, their voices, for good just over donating and you're not letting them you're not inviting them in. You don't have a you don't have a way to make this a simple yes for them. And 53% of Americans now say this is huge. They trust personal referrals more than they trust nonprofit marketing. This is from the Edelman Trust Barometer in 2024 that's 53% personal referrals. And if you drill down on that, sure, I always, always trust personal referrals first over a Google search. Or even if drill down, let's say I'm looking for a wonderful allergist for my child. True story, what am I going to do? Am I going to take it to Google and type in allergist Atlanta? I could that's an option. Or am I going to go to the pediatrician and ask for a referral? Go to another mom and ask for a referral, go to a mom group and ask for a referral, right? People I already know, like and trust, people who have first hand experience, right in that cause area? It makes so much sense. So if you're not activating your community to advocate for you, you're going to be invisible. It's going to feel hard. It's going to feel like that fundraising is a solo sport because you're making it a solo sport. Do you see that sort of like self fulfilling prophecy? Right? Is that like you wish other people would help you fundraise, but you're not getting other people to help you fundraise because you're not inviting them in, because you're telling yourself you don't have telling yourself you don't have enough time, because you're telling yourself I wouldn't they all say no, or it's too hard, or maybe later, and then you continue fundraising all by yourself. The problem is donor behavior has shifted, and it's not changing. It's not slowing down. It's not going to make like a U turn and go back to the way it was in 2004 it's not and I personally think that that's a beautiful thing, right? I personally don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem that what worked five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, doesn't work anymore. So that's like, the first layer is like, not to be mad at it being different. The next layer is like, okay, the good news here is, don't somebody can become a donor instantly. That was so much harder 10 years ago. Think about it. It was so much harder to go through the awareness phase, where somebody went from not knowing about your organization to knowing about your organization to suddenly you know, leaning in, hearing more about your organization, what you do. And then they're getting out their checkbook and making their checkbook and making a donation, then they're mailing in their check. Versus right now, right now, a friend of mine could text me and tell me, Hey, Christina, I'm a peer fundraiser for this animal rescue. Would you make a donation today? That would take me, I don't know, 30 seconds. If they have a frictionless donation platform, which you should right 30 seconds, versus weeks and weeks and weeks days and days and days. So if you're operating from the get energy that I see that is so rampant and makes sense, which sounds like, how do we get more donors. How do we get visibility? How do we get more reach? How do we get into their wallets, right? You're working too hard. The solution is not another social post. The solution is not another Gala. The solution is not Facebook ads. The solution is not get a auction going, right? It's not it's activating the people you already have around you to carry your message forward, mobilizing those people in a powerful, passionate way, so that they are a hell yes on the front end when you ask them, and they are a hell yes at the finish line, going, Oh my gosh. Look what we did together. Look what happened when we connected and came together for this one cause. Together. Okay, that's the piece. So you don't want to stop fundraising. You want to start mobilizing. Okay, start mobilizing. Because people fund what they feel a part of that ownership piece, that connection piece, do not underestimate that, especially with younger generations.
So. Let's dig into digital ambassadors. I'm going to define it for you, because I've seen the word thrown around, and here's how I define it in my programs and for my clients, digital ambassadors are a group of people who are willing, who have raised their hand and said yes, to become advocates for your organizations. These may be civilians, meaning they are not influencers with hundreds of follow, 1000s of followers or millions of followers. They may not be creators. They may not be YouTube streamers. They may be civilians, like the average Joe next door, who is a passionate volunteer, passionate recurring donor, passionate annual donor for your organization. They just care about your cause. It could be civilians, right? Or they may be so there could be the everyday people who take action with you. Sometimes they fundraise, sometimes they promote an event, help bring new people in your world. Or they can be the creators, the influencers, the thought leaders, who also have an affinity for the work you do. I actually like to put them together so they can be both, but we're gonna take this episode and we're gonna talk about the civilians, right, the everyday people who are not celebrities, who are not polished spokespeople, who are not used to being in front of the camera and being on podcasts and, you know, walking around with a selfie stick and a tripod and creating their own own content and going live on Twitch or YouTube or all of the streaming platforms. These are your best donors, volunteers, board members, alumni, advocates, people who already trust you and who are willing to invite others in. Why are they willing to invite others in? Because they care about your cause. I was just talking to an animal rescue, and she was talking about those people, those digital ambassadors, and they are also donors, so there's like that crossover, and you know, they have a fundraiser coming up, so we're talking about that fundraiser, and the perfect people who would be ideal for her ambassadors. They're already there. They're already in her ecosystem.
Christina Edwards 12:13
Here's the important part, and here's how it is, so time saving, so energy saving, and so efficient in helping your organization grow. It doesn't cost you $1 It doesn't cost you $1 to create a wildly profitable partnership like this, a partnership with digital ambassadors, a partnership with influencers. It doesn't cost extra. There's no ad costs behind it, right? And yet so many people aren't doing it. Let's talk about some realistic ways this could look in the wild. What does this look like in real in real life, this could be layering on peer to peer fundraising with your next campaign. Okay, so this could be with that identified group of people, those ambassadors we just talked about. So instead of hoping that they donate, you invite them to fundraise with you, helping guide them along. So it is so easy, and again, you're not and that get energy. It is like collaborative partnership. Energy. They own it. You support them. And think about the stickiness that creates the connection that that creates that involvement when they say yes, and they're part of your first peer fundraiser that hits its goal, and then your next one, and then your next one and your next one, right? So that's what it could look like. It could look like awareness. So we have clients who are using this for awareness. They often have programs that are under enrolled. You know you could work with the ambassadors to help you with this, right? So it could be content sharing. So for example, maybe you're an arts organization. So instead of blasting out a Donate now or an Enroll now from your main account, you could actually have artist ambassadors create their own content to lift up your program, to ask people to donate, to ask people to let people know when the next enrollment is for your classes, right? You have to give them the framework. You have to give them the tools to succeed so they are not staring at a blinking cursor. And we do both of this. We really focused on peer fundraising for newer organizations who are ready to figure out how to raise five figures every single time. That's what we do in the sprint method for organizations who are really ready to scale up to a million plus. That's what we do in the club. That's where we layer on the influencer marketing piece. Okay, but it's really important at no point from solo shop ed to staffed up $2 million organization. Should you abdicate fundraising responsibility just to one person or two people? Okay? If you do, it will always feel like you're trying to refill a leaky bucket, right? It's like, oh, all the. Energy to get donors in, and then you're also trying to nurture them, you're also trying to steward them, and you're also trying to do the awareness piece, and you're also trying to scale up, because it costs more to put on your programs versus where's my fundraising team, where's my fundraising army, where's my advocates and ambassadors who are like, Put me in coach. So let's take a moment. Let's talk about the social Street Team activation. So you could use your street teamers of creators and influencers to have a hyper local, specific result. So maybe you have a youth program, or your organization is at a local community center. So instead of another Gala, you bring in street teamers and ambassadors to attend the event to tell the story of what the organization does, to set personal fundraising goals, right small actions across multiple networks. That's how we create massive momentum. If you've ever been like noticed a really successful launch for a new restaurant, hot new restaurant in town, or a really cute boutique or something like that. What you may have seen was, wow. The buzz is everywhere. I saw it in on the local news. I saw somebody post about it on Instagram. I saw my neighbor share a picture of the outside in line. I saw people driving by. Suddenly, there's organic traffic. There's traffic in different ways. There's different medias. I read an article written about it in a local magazine that sort of like cross over buzz. That's what we love to see. Ambassadors can help you do that, and they can do you could do it for $0 when you bring them in,
now let's say your organization is working on event or program enrollment expansion, so you're trying to fill spots for a summer program or enroll participants in a new offering, instead of relying on the same channels, social media, Email, maybe ads. Your staff instead, you equip volunteers, alumni families to personally refer and invite people in via their networks. Okay, instead of blasting out your own content, hoping and praying that people just find you, somebody else said to me this a few days ago, we're getting our website redone, so that'll help donations. The donors will come, and I was like, Hold on hold on hold on the website will help conversions. The website will help ensure that when people get there, if it is a great user experience, and if it is optimized, if it has a strong story and all of those elements, you may see an increase in donations, but the website, just flicking the lights onto the website does not suddenly drop donors from the sky, right? And that's where layering on these digital ambassadors is so key. And so it's like, it immediately collapses those timelines. So if you're thinking, but we don't have a big enough audience, that is exactly it. If there's like, one thing you take away from it is this episode. It is this, the fact that you don't have a big enough audience. Whether this may be Christina, we're fundraising and we're asking our friends and our family again and again and again, and I feel like I'm tapping them out, or maybe it's we don't have a big enough audience. Because while we do have a strong donor base, I'm kind of fundraising to that strong donor base of a couple 100 again and again and again, and I'm tiring them out. That is like red flag a Wooga like symptoms that we have to bring in more leads. How do you bring in more leads? How do you bring in more prospects through this process? It is a natural result of this process. So your audience grows fastest through trust, not ads. Okay? That's why you need this strategy. That's why you need to layer on peer to peer fundraising with every event, with every campaign you have.
If you're saying we tried peer repair before you tried it the way that so many people dip their toe, think about cold plunging. Okay. You probably yourself have tried a cold plunge where you're like, sitting in the bathtub, you know, you have to sit there for three minutes and you're like, that shit sucked. I'm not doing that again. And maybe what turned into what turned into what was supposed to be three minutes ended up being 30 seconds, and then you got the heck out of there, and you never did it again, right? Technically, it's true, you tried it, right? But did you actually set yourself up for success? No, did you create a habit out of it? No, did you optimize it? No, did you evaluate what went wrong? No. You just said, I ain't doing that again, right? That's the difference. That's the difference is so many people say, but I've tried that, whether it's this or some other strategy, and likely, you didn't have the guidance of in support to succeed, and that's not your fault, right? It just means I didn't figure it out yet, right? It's like putting your shoes on the wrong feet. It's not that you you can't figure out. The left shoe goes on the left foot. The right shoe goes on the right foot. You just didn't figure out the first time. You just weren't well practiced. You just didn't have the right framework, right and that's this piece. So do not sleep on ambassadors. Do not tell yourself no one will be our ambassador. Or ambassadors don't work for us. They absolutely do. I'm yet to find, I'm yet to find a cause area where it won't work for now, when I was speaking recently, somebody raised their hand, and they were like, what about this cause? And it was like, you know, something that's a little taboo, something that people don't necessarily want to talk about. And I was like, go on Tiktok right now. I want you to search that hashtag. Welcome. You found your people. Here they are. That's more wide, right? And then it's like, go into your CRM. Go into the people who are already in your world. There are your people. Don't tell yourself the lie. There's no one, if you're thinking, but I'm already overwhelmed. Our team's already overwhelmed. This is how you survive as a solo or small team. You're overwhelmed because you're putting band aids on this growth problem. Feel me. You're just clogging the leaky bucket here. And one clock when you clog one and another leak starts right? You need to layer this on for true significant growth.
So the sprint method teaches you how to activate that first wave of ambassadors in the first 30 days. That's what we do in the sprint method. So waiting until you have more time or the perfect plan just means you're going to miss the wave, right? It just means you're going to cobble something together at the end of the year. Why? Why would you do that to yourself? The organizations that build digital Ambassador programs now, networks now will dominate in the next three to five years. The rest will be in the cobbling together, scrambling so you don't need to get get more donors. You need to equip your people, your believers, who carry your mission forward. So stop thinking it as it's your job to push harder. The shift is to start thinking about it as it's your job to make it easy to proudly belong. That would be such a good prompt to ask yourself, How can I make it easier for people to feel like they belong today, to feel seen and heard? You?
Now we've helped nonprofits double, even triple, their fundraising results, not by ads, events, galas, more expensive things, but by building small but mighty Ambassador teams that grew trust and reach exponentially. That's the work we do inside the purpose and profit Club, where we scale organizations who are growing half a million to a million plus, and they're building out their street teaming, turning five voices into 50, with a steady stream of visibility, a steady stream of revenue growth. And here's the thing, it's not a trend. It's not going away. This isn't something that's like here and then gone. This is the future of sustainable fundraising growth. So if you're interested in your first digital Ambassador sprint, you're not really sure where to start. You're a part time or small solo shop Executive Director doing it all yourself. I want you to check out the sprint method. This is made for you. We will link to the show notes, where you can check out both programs. You can always book a call with me to learn more and say, Hey, I'm not sure. Then right next step for our organization, just book a call with me.
Or if you're ready to tap into the 120 $7 billion creator economy, leveraging those high profile influencer and creator relationships, doubling your next fundraiser, the purpose and profit club growth accelerator program is for you.
We will link in the show notes so you can learn more about both programs. But remember, remember you're not supposed to fundraise alone anymore, whether solo shop or whether you're staffed up, you are supposed to lead a team of believers and change makers, especially that young generation. They're just waiting. They're just waiting for you. So don't make them wait. And. Any longer, all right, I'll see you in the next one you.