Ep. 155: You Don’t Need a Celebrity: You Need a Social Street Team®
EPISODE 155
You Don’t Need a Celebrity: You Need a Social Street Team®
About the Episode:
Everyone’s chasing the wrong spotlight—and in this episode, I explain why. You think you need a Grammy winner to post your fundraiser, but what you actually need is a solid campaign and a Social Street Team® to spread it. I share real stories of big-name flops, what gets campaigns to convert (hint: it’s not fame), and how to build a movement of aligned, trusted messengers who drive results. If you’re tired of waiting for someone famous to save your fundraiser, it’s time to flip the script and start thinking like a strategist. Let’s talk about how to ditch the vanity metrics and lead with clarity, trust, and a campaign that scales.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why celebrity endorsements rarely translate into real impact
The myth of visibility = value
What makes a campaign “irresistible” and share-worthy
How to build and activate a high-impact Social Street Team®
Real examples of both failed celebrity posts and micro-influencer wins
Shifting from vanity metrics to sustainable fundraising strategy
How to align your board and leadership with modern donor behavior
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:
“Many organizations don't even have campaigns, meaning a clear start and stop date, a clear story, a clear reason to give to get active, to advocate.”
“You can't just slap a celebrity name on something and then expect donations to come in. You still have to do the work of creating an irresistible campaign that brings people in to donate, to support, to engage, to share.”
“Your Social Street Team® should be a network of influencers, creators, ambassadors, everyday people who care about your cause, and then we give them the toolkit and the campaign to elevate and activate for your cause.”
“What we want to see with our Social Street Team® is one human talking to another human and advocating - that's where we see the results.”
“People with micro audiences are your powerhouse fundraisers.”
“It's not if more people will see it, they'll automatically care. It's if your story isn't clear, your call to action isn't strong, your urgency is off, no amount of followers will fix that.”
“You don't need a celebrity, you need a campaign worth sharing and a Social Street Team® to spread it.”
“Won't celebrities boost our credibility? Sure, but only if your campaign is already solid, otherwise it just shines a light on the gaps.”
“Peer influence is so much higher converting than fame or just billboards and ads.”
“As a nonprofit and social good organization, you're identifying your influencers who have natural alignment with the work you do, who want to partner with you for free.”
“Visibility without a funnel, without a high-converting campaign, is just noise.”
“Donors are consumers, and consumers are donors. Habits have changed.”
“Stop thinking like a fan, and start thinking like a strategist.”
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Christina Edwards 0:19Okay, today we're digging in to the celebrity factor. So you may be thinking, if we could just have that famous person, that thought leader, that big celebrity post about our nonprofit on Instagram, share a Tiktok about us, get in front of their audience and showcase what we do. Everything would change. The truth is, your cousin and your best friend could actually bring in more donations than a Grammy winner you've been chasing. And if that makes you nervous, I get it, but we're actually going to dig into today what drives results in fundraising and advocacy and awareness and memberships and event ticket sales. And it's not always fame. It's trust. We're going to talk about what really scales today. All right, so let's level set here. Everyone's chasing the wrong spotlight when you're thinking, we just need a big name to post about this. We just need somebody to share our event, share about our gala, right? But there's a fantasy there, that if we had a celebrity, our fundraiser would blow up, and here's what it looks like. Here's like, what it looks like in practice. I literally just got off a call with a nonprofit leader who said they her in talks. They were in talks a while back with a Grammy winner, okay, major Grammy winner, a name, you know a name, I know a name that can't be avoided, like a superstar. And they wanted to have this superstar post about their nonprofit, about their organization. This person's talented, famous has millions of followers, more than I could even imagine and not relevant to the success of their campaign. Why we're going to take a step back? Because there's actually no campaign, just a hope that someone big will save it. So there's two truths that I want to go to go through here today, and the first truth is that many organizations don't even have campaigns, meaning a clear start and stop date, a clear story, a clear reason to give to get active, to advocate. Now, many of y'all just have in perpetuity, support my fundraiser, support my organization, right? So the hard truth here is that a mediocre campaign doesn't get better with a big name. If you slap a big name, a big celebrity name, it just flops in front of a bigger audience. So stay with me. A couple years ago, I met a executive director who actually has that big name. So this is a different example. So they had the backing and the name of a huge artist, okay, huge again, household name. And it didn't mean that millions and millions of people were just suddenly donating to this organization. You can't just slap a celebrity name on something and then expect donations to come in. You still have to do the work of creating an irresistible campaign that brings people in to donate, to support, to engage, to share.
Christina Edwards 3:43
Yeah. And the other part of this is the mistake, like the misnomer in thinking, okay, Christina, we got a juicy campaign. We've got an irresistible campaign. Now we just need that Grammy Award winning artist to post about it. Now we just need that, you know, household name actor to post about it. That's the misnomer, too. So if you have foundationally, what you say is a really great fundraising campaign, and you're looking for Tom Cruise to post about it, right? It's a misalignment. It's a misalignment. Listen, I love Beyonce. I love Taylor Swift, but the answer to your problems is not Beyonce or Taylor Swift just slapping up your fundraiser on their Instagram page. And in fact, we see time and time again better results when it's Beyonce, best friend, your cousin next door, your ambassador on your board, those people acting as your social street team, as your network of digital, digital ambassadors and influencers. That is how you double your next campaign. That is how you bring in another 100k of new funding with new donors, new supporters, the next generation of supporters. It's not just. Have this transactional I need a celebrity to post about my organization one time. That's not where we see ROI. I'm thinking of a third example now where a nonprofit, will say consultant, like somebody in our ecosystem, reach out to me, and they are on a board of an international organization, okay? And they actually, in looking at their organization, they actually have a lot of high profile people who have done some posting. I'm using, like air quotes posting on social media for them. And I could tell a very, very quick in auditing. Why it wasn't converting? It was very transactional. They are not a Social Street Team®. They are celebrities saying words in front of the camera in a very generic way. And it's not converting. It has no campaign attached. It has no heart attached. It has no personal point of view attached. And it's not really tapping into what those people do well. It's not tapping into what the Creator economy does well, what an actor does well, what a Grammy Award winning artist does well. And that's the nuance that we teach in my program, the purpose and profit club. That's the nuance of what we teach. Is your street team, your Social Street Team® should be a network of influencers, creators, ambassadors, everyday people who care about your cause, and then we give them the toolkit and the campaign to elevate and activate for your cause, whether it is an annual event, whether it is a membership drive, whether it is a summer fundraiser, whether it is giving Tuesday, Right, we mobilize them at key points throughout the year. And I mobilize does not mean Beyonce shared something on shared a static post on her feed, and you thought, Where is everybody? Where are all the donations that's not mobilized? So there's a nuance here that I think a lot of people are missing. I
Christina Edwards 7:10
Yeah, and that's why the way that I created, the social Street Team method, is really in the power of using influence and organic endorsements. One person to saying to another person, this organization rocks, one person advocating for this organization versus, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, like I am, now, suddenly there's commercials in the middle of my movie, right? Used to be as a prime subscriber, you got commercial free movies, right? So now I get like a mid commercial. I am tuning that commercial out so hard. The minute I hear like the commercial for whatever supplement it is, whatever new product it is, I'm hitting mute so hard, very, very like transactional versus what we want to see with our street team, where it is one human talking to another human and advocating that's where we see those results. So if you say to yourself, but or your board member says, Where do we get so and so to post about it, or if we just had so and so to be on our board, then all the money would flow in. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. So we're going to talk about what I see happen and what to do instead. Okay, so the nonprofit version of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping somebody rich walks by is this? Boards love it. It sounds ambitious. Yeah, we're in talks with that famous person, right? It's familiar. Big gala, celebrity hosts, big names you can slap on your invitation. Silent auctions with NBA jerseys, MLB jerseys, right? But this isn't 2003 this is the age of Amazon. This is the age of Tiktok and micro influence. Micro influence means people with micro audiences. Those people are your powerhouse fundraisers, people with 1000s of followers, not millions of followers. Those people have the most connected follower basis, and you're just sleeping on them because you're thinking, I don't know who they are. I've never heard of them. Where's that Beyonce money, where's that Taylor Swift money, where's that Grammy money, right? But what gets people to give is actual, actually relevance, trust and emotional pull, not fame. And I get that relevance, that trust, that emotional pull from people I could name right now that I enjoy following on the internet right that are influencers, that are digital creators that you've never heard of. These are interior designers. These are naturopaths. These are health and wellness advocates. These are just people doing funny things, right? Doing funny dances on Tiktok, right? Not you are mega, mega, mega watt celebrity. I hope you're starting to kind of see the nuance here, so you're solving the wrong problem with the Wrong solution. So we're going to identify again, two problems happening that we're going to get into today. Problem one is, the real issue is that the campaign won't convert, no matter how many celebs we slap on top of it. If foundationally, your campaign is not set up for success, it won't be successful, even when we have that big celeb, right, even when we have that really great MC that everybody can't wait to, right? You can't just keep slapping that on, waiting for it to convert. It will only get you so far. That's why, in my program, the club, we have the three phase launch system. This is where we set you up for campaign success, I created this after seeing so many nonprofits come to me like head in hands going I spent all this time with this fundraiser. What the heck like it's not we didn't even come close to our goal. This was a total disaster. I'm so tired. My team is so tired, I don't know what else to do. Meanwhile, I have more people than ever that I want to serve more impact. I have a wait list piling up. What's the problem? The problem is you don't have this three phase campaign system. You don't have a story that converts. You don't have a system that is set up for success so that in the beginning, before the campaign even launches. You're leaving bread combs for your donors. You're leaving bread crumbs for your donor prospects. That's how you set up a high converting campaign. So foundationally, there is this at play. Your campaign isn't set up to convert. So foundationally, that's like a core issue. That's what you bring to coaching. That's what we coach you on. That's what you get feedback on your messaging, on your story, on your fundraising page. That's why a lot of times you might hear me talk about my program as a growth accelerator, because we do a 360 degree view and give feedback on every single element. You want feedback on the emails. You want feedback on board engagement. You want feedback on your street team. We got you.
Christina Edwards 12:06
and here's the next mistake. Most organizations think visibility equals value. The more people that see it, the more they'll automatically care, right, wrong? That is like the billboard model. Okay, so I live in Atlanta. We've got a, like, a major interstate, 85 and that's like rampant as you're moving into, like, driving into downtown, it's always gridlock, always gridlock. And there's billboards, like tons of billboards. I always think of the SmartWater billboard. I don't know there's, but there's tons of them. There's like, the AC person, the law office person, right? I can't remember any of their names because I tune it out right? And that's the billboard model where you're like, I'm just gonna shout it at everyone and hope it sticks right. That's not what we're doing here. It's not if more people will see it, they'll automatically care. It's if your story isn't clear, your call to action isn't strong, your urgency is off. No amount of followers will fix that. No amount of eyeballs looking at your billboard will fix that. So that's the foundational piece. Then the next piece we layer on is right street teamer, right audience, right alignment with that partnership, right the right people advocating on your behalf. So you don't need a celebrity, you need a campaign worth sharing and a street team to spread it. That's the two steps you with me, campaign worth sharing, street team to spread it. Because the next disconnect that y'all come to me with is like a legit, good campaign. It looks good, it sounds good on paper, I am motivated to give. And guess what? I didn't see it. I didn't hear about it. I it was gone, right? And you're like, No, Christina, I sent emails and we sent that direct mail piece. Okay? I missed them. That's why you need a street team. Is the street team gets you out of solo fundraising mode, from being the ominous brand who is constantly like, donate, here, donate here, donate today. And instead, you have a street team, a digital army of ambassadors and influencers advocating for you right, powering your mission. And if we want to take a sidebar and you're asking, why would they want to do this, please go look at millennials. Please go look at Gen Z. Please go look at Gen Alpha. They want to see this world better. They want to help communities. They are advocates, fierce advocates for social good. They want to help. Will you let them help? Will you invite them to be a part of your street team? Okay, so a high converting campaign has a couple of things, a strong story, a clear audience, shareable assets, that urgency a reason to say yes, now then and only then, do we amplify it with a social street team? Okay? And you have picked those people. A social street team is not like warm bodies. These are advocates that you vetted that have that natural alignment, right? They are people who are your digital cheerleaders. And you can think about it this way, people don't respond to press releases. They respond to people they trust. That's what's happening online with a street team.
Christina Edwards 15:22
My favorite part about a street team is you can be successful. You can double your next fundraiser. You can bring in five figures of funding with an online campaign. You can bring in 20, 50, plus monthly givers with a street team and only have 10 people on your street team. This is such a quality over quantity piece, and it's so accessible. So if your organization is a small shop, you can do this. If your organization is large and established, you will thrive in this. You don't need 50 influencers to hit your goal. We like to teach it where you start with 10, and then you layer on. 10 becomes 2020. Becomes 50. and before you know it, you have this digital bank of rock star, influencers and ambassadors who are ready to mobilize when you need them.
Christina Edwards 16:32
What that looks like is, instead of, again, that tension around, how are we gonna we're heading into the summer slump. I don't even know what we're gonna do. Or I think we've stressed out our donor base, or I think we've tapped them out too much, or I can't make another call. I don't know who else to call, right? That that sort of feeling, or are we going to even hit our goal instead of going with going from that energy into your next campaign? Suddenly you feel supported, suddenly you feel held, guided, suddenly you feel like I think we're starting a movement. I think we're starting something here, right? You feel that ripple effect, because you helped spearhead that, you helped create that. And then there's that like momentum and camaraderie around it, right?
Christina Edwards 17:24
and that's why it's not necessarily about, oh, well, how big is that celebrity's audience? And instead, how engaged is that audience and how aligned is that audience with ours? Let's look at Taylor Swift. For example. Taylor Swift's followers are across the world. She is a global superstar. If your organization is a food bank in Omaha, you're going to have to land the plane as to why that would be an aligned audience, maybe, maybe a one off. Maybe we could do it one time. But what would be so much more powerful is for you to tap into the influencer network in your town, in your community. And it works so much better than just slapping a big name, a big celebrity on one invitation, one fundraiser, and expecting like the donations to pour in. And it's so much easier. There's no handlers, there's no managers, and there's no publicists in the way. So now is the time to think about. One, What's stopping me from creating a straight team now? Right two, where do I need to right side, either my thinking or my leadership's thinking on why we need a celebrity and instead, why we need a street team. So if you're thinking, okay, but won't celebrities actually boost our credibility? Sure, but only if your campaign is already solid, otherwise it just shines a light on the gaps. And I have seen this in the wild where some somebody, some thought leader, some celebrity, does post about an organization, and you go to their website, you go to make a donation, and it looks like it's from 1995 so at best, you're going to see some some donations come in in that instance, right? But at worst, you're gonna see a lot of people go. Is this? Is this a legitimate organization? Is this organization really? Some, some, an organization I trust and support. Do they know what they're doing? Why does it look like this? Right? If you've ever wanted to buy a something, let's say you wanted to buy a purse. This is true story, right? So you wanted to buy a purse, it's sold out. This actually is a true story for Mother's Day. I was shopping for a purse for my mom, and it was sold out at like Nordstrom. It was sold out where I would normally get it. And so I was, like, hitting the shopping tab on Google, looking for that. And I was making decisions based on websites and makers or brands I knew, I knew and liked and trusted, versus ones I didn't right. And so even if that purse was available. From some at a website, from a brand that looked like the website was from 1995 or the user experience was weird, or a brand that just seemed very ominous and like, Is this legit? I'm not going to shop there, and neither are your donors, right? And so it's really important that you don't just chase that vanity, thinking that that is going to fix everything right, and that just one celebrity posting that at one time is going to fix everything. So you have to have that solid campaign, that solid donation tool, that solid follow up experience for this to help your organization actually grow and not be a one off thing. Maybe you're thinking, Okay, I'm with you, but our board says we need somebody high profile, right? So let's educate. Let's teach your board how digital behavior actually works. Now, peer influence is greater than fame. How do we know this? How do we know this? Okay, about 10 years ago, a huge shift started happening, maybe even 15 now, where brands like, let me pick a brand,
Christina Edwards 21:14
brands like Sephora, brands like Sephora, used to pay for print ads, Pay for digital ads. You know, the little ads that you would like land on a website and there'd be like little Sephora ad or Facebook or wherever digital ads. Right now, they still do those, but they started taking chunks of that money and putting it into influencer partnerships. And so instead of just saying, we're just gonna get that billboard, they said, What if we spend this money and we actually give it to a bunch of influencers to talk about our product, right? To talk about whatever this new line coming out, and that changed everything. It converted so much higher that they started to pull more money away from print ads, more money away from digital ads, right? And went over here, where there's so many more endorsements, Tiktok has one of it's it's probably the most robust place I can think of, where there are everyday influencers and micro influencers who are doing makeup tutorials and skincare tutorials, and the amount of brands that partner with them, pay them for their content is more than I can imagine, because it converts so well, okay, and the same here is true for you. Peer influence is so much higher converting than fame or than just billboards and ads. Okay. The nuance here is we do not teach this method, the social Street Team method, to be a paid partnership. So in my example, with Sephora, that was a paid partnership, where Sephora would partner with a makeup influencer, right? But you as the nonprofit, as the social good organization, you're identifying your influencers who have natural alignment with the work you do, who want to partner with you for free? Think of this more as an accolade, a membership, some a designation similar to board work or an advisory board work, although not nearly at that level. I bring that up because that's an unpaid right. But why do people serve boards because they want to see your mission grow? Why do they want to see your mission grow? Because they care about the people or communities you serve. They're doing it for the social good, the impact. Same, same process here, same kind of backbone here. And if you're thinking, okay, but we need visibility, and that celeb is going to get us some visibility. Christina, okay, what you actually need is traction. Visibility without a funnel, without a high converting campaign, is just noise. It's that billboard again. It's a visibility for for visibility sake. It doesn't convert into anything. And when visibility doesn't convert into anything, that is a waste of time, money and people power. So we are not just doing this so you can get that celeb again to slap your content out there once or twice. We're doing this to create a two way conversation or relationship between your influencer, between your street teamer and your organization. I'm going to do a sidebar here, which is, celebrities aren't bad if you have a celebrity who wants to be a street teamer, who would be a perfect fit street teamer, beautiful. But again, there's a nuance to that relationship. It needs to feel more like that makeup influencer talking about a makeup product they love than a I'm selling this product. You should buy it. Very transactional, very sterile. So how do we do this in the club? We don't actually Chase vanity. We don't care about the vanity metrics of followers, okay? We care about alignment. We build magnetic campaigns and scalable systems. That's the difference. We build the campaign first, so you can nail your story. You can nail your timeline. You can nail your donor funnel, their their journey, crafting that clear call to action, adding the urgency, adding the energy, adding that momentum, that movement. Then we activate your street team.
Christina Edwards 25:30
we support you to identify your first 10 street teamers. You get scripts. You get a complete dashboard to track your workflow. We bake it into your campaign timeline, and that way, you have your own system that your organization can grow with, and you're not dependent on gatekeepers or publicists or fame to be the silver bullet. It's not about hype, it's not results. You'll know how to fundraise like a powerhouse marketer and leader and building a movement like a true movement maker, versus raising funds with fingers crossed, following the style we did in 2015 it doesn't work anymore. Donors are consumers and consumers are donors. Habits have changed, and this is how you rise with those times. Okay, so the best fundraisers, the best non profit, non profits doing this work, are at celebrity chasers. They're campaign architects. They're movement starters. They're willing to trade those vanity metrics for real growth, for real partnerships, for real alignment. So stop thinking like a fan, and start thinking like a strategist. This does take a leap. It takes a leap. We're going to try something different, but come into the club, get the support to do it. Because straight teamers don't just show up. They show up again and again and again. We want to teach you the process so that you can create your first straight team and then your second, and your third and your fourth. And if you do this now, and your first street team, you pile it out, and your first campaign happens in summer, think about what's possible for year end, because all it will mean is that suddenly, for year end, is it a hoping and preying on a couple of donors to come through and an online fundraiser to go viral, just because you'll actually have a plan to hit or exceed your goal, this is how you unlock another 50k in funding, another 100k in funding, instead of going, I don't know what else we're gonna do, but I hope funding just falls from the sky. I hope that grant, somebody said to me just the other day, well, we applied for three grants, so I think I think we're gonna be good. And I was like, okay, come on in, lean in. Grants are not dependable. Grant funding is right now going through a lot of turmoil. You've got to diversify. You've got to diversify. And applying for free grants is not your silver bullet at all at all.
Christina Edwards 28:09
So if you want help crafting a campaign that doesn't need to be rescued by a big name, that doesn't require your fingers crossed, right, I would love to support you in the club. together, you'll work with me to double your next campaign, using our method, using our systems and using our templates, so that you can save time. When you join, you get three seats. Okay, so one price, three seats. What that usually means is we have the executive director join, we have the marketer join and the fundraiser join, and we can put you through different tracks to support you in your group, your whole goal of fundraising growth, of awareness growth, of membership growth, whatever your goal is, okay, so if you want support in helping that, I highly recommend joining and booking a decision call while we have the calendar open. So we will link to that here at the time that this is recording we are open for enrollment, so I don't want you to miss it. You
Christina Edwards 29:40
You can go to splendid courses.com, forward slash join for details, and I will see you soon