How you can help drive the future of our brand (and the sector!)
Tim Sarrantonio
Generosity Experience Design | Empowering nonprofits to build a community of generosity
New year, new you? I call BS.
People don't magically change overnight because we now must remember to update 2023 in our website footers (since we didn't use a dynamic merge tag).
Incremental changes are what add up to make transformative changes. Even radical behavioral shifts are ultimately the result of invisible tests and experiments happening over and over that finally hit a watershed moment.
Yet, these changes can seem chaotic unless folks put things in the larger context of the vision they have for their work. Flexibility in tactics is buoyed when strategy and vision are fixed and firm.
The keen eye sees not random growth but a carefully curated garden.
2023 will culminate over a decade of work learning and listening to the nonprofit sector. And this is a critical time to finally debut the "garden" that I've been working on around the mission, vision, and purpose of Neon One.
The reality is that while we did a great job on a visual and product naming rebrand, we still need to finish the job. We have a new strategy, leadership, vision, purpose, and focus - but the old messaging remains in many ways!
Who are we trying to help?
When we first did the visual rebrand, we executed the StoryBrand framework to help guide us, and it has served us well:
A large amount of technology marketing puts the software or solution in the middle of the problem, yet that has yet to be the reality of many nonprofits I've spoken to. I've heard over and over from clients using our software, as well as the broader market, that technology can be helpful but that they are still getting the foundational strategy in place.
We also did some internal market research and partnered with a well-known firm to interview a ton of organizations and confirmed that I've known for years - that many nonprofits use three to five different databases to manage their fundraising operations. Email, events, donor management, auctions, and finance are just a few things I can name that fall into this category.
And this fantastic episode between Julia Campbell and Jess Campbell on email management hits on another significant difference that our sector hasn't fully embraced - most technology is built for profit-driven businesses, and nonprofits need their own tech, not just a "vertical configuration" because the BEHAVIOR is different between buying and donating.
What all this has done for me is led me to develop three rules (laws?) around what I'm calling the generosity experience design framework:
From this, I feel that there's a planning approach that can apply to any type of revenue program that nonprofits want. There can be broad flexibility for the tactics, but the strategy and vision will be fixed and firm.
Why should they care?
Nonprofit technology marketing is boring. Part of this is by design - selling technology can be a slog for both sides, especially if things get very complicated. Feature comparisons, pricing breakdowns, contract terms - this isn't like buying a new TV or a fancy vacation.
But this investment can be transformative if the execution is done well. Yet, to properly serve our audience, we need to transform the way we even think about execution, and this brings me to what my vision for LinkedIn and the brand will be for this year.
领英推荐
I firmly believe that we need to begin working toward collaborative and open structures between technology companies and the clients that they serve, with the understanding that nonprofits, in this case, are the most critical audience.
I want to take this deeper into what the smaller organizations need. Not what they feel they can "afford" to pay for or what their donors are telling them they want, but what will get into the deepest fears that I believe they have. To get into that uncomfortable emotional world of nonprofit work that we keep being told doesn't matter.
People should care about the work I'm about to begin because:
So how will I be doing this in a way that people should care about the outcome no matter what nonprofit platform they end up investing in?
Free Consultations
I'm setting up calls and meetings with nonprofits to learn about their daily lives. My hope is that this will give us further insight into the needs, desires, and fears that practitioners have around their work going into 2023.
Community-Driven Projects
Conversations also immediately inform what types of trainings, webinars, and research that our company can fund or put together. We've been able to prioritize things like our donor data hub and an upcoming live-stream interview series by tying them to our Connected Fundraising Community.
Sector-Wide Change
I understand our brand's power in influencing change, which is why I want to ensure that folks have a direct influence on not just what we build but how we support it. The brand can influence this by taking stands like paying speakers to present at conferences and webinars that Neon One puts on and adopting a diversity-led planning framework for our content to ensure a wide variety of voices are represented.
What's Next?
Over the next six months, I will embark on an ambitious outreach program to help genuinely understand what our audience needs. I want to have answers for all the big questions that are keeping nonprofits up at night and to push for programs, investments, and technology to help address those.
This is how you can help:
Fundraising Copywriter & Designer - I help nonprofit development teams achieve the next level of revenue and impact with compelling print and digital donor communications, consulting, and training.
1 年You had me at "StoryBrand Framework." (Thanks for being a thoughtful and intentional leader in the sector, Tim!)