What Nonprofits Get Wrong All The Time with Kivi Leroux Miller

Marketing is essential to change hearts and minds and to building an audience around your nonprofit mission and to get attention for the problem that you are solving. 

But so many nonprofits don't have a strategy or a plan to reach their marketing goals. Enter nonprofit marketing guru Kivi Leroux Miller, to teach us how to improve on what we tend to get wrong all the time. 

Kivi is the Founder and CEO of Nonprofit Marketing Guide, where she is the lead trainer for hundreds of nonprofit communicators and 32 participants in the Communications Director Mentoring Program each year. She is a popular and trusted keynote, workshop, and webinar presenter. Kivi is also an award-winning author of three books on nonprofit marketing and communications.

I have fan-girled over Kivi since I read her first book,  and because she is an outspoken feminist and nonprofit founder, having created Grow and Go Girls, a small bakery where all net profits go into a travel fund for a group of small-town girls to travel the big world, including one of her daughters. 

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

• How to create a culture at your nonprofit that embraces marketing 
• Tips to break down the silos between development staff and marketing staff
• How to bring in the program staff into your marketing campaigns 
• Ways to be CALM not BUSY (acronyms that we review in detail)

A Kivi Leroux Miller quotable: "Instead of just making assumptions based on job title, I encourage you to really figure out who's good at what, and to really figure out who should be doing what, based on the training and the skills that they have. And stop making assumptions about who's in control - and who's working for who."

Good news! Registration for the next session of the Communications Director Mentoring Program from January to June 2022 is open.

Connect with Kivi:
https://twitter.com/kivilm
https://twitter.com/npmktgd
https://www.instagram.com/kivilm/
https://www.instagram.com/npmktgd/

Kivi's books on Amazon

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About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for m

Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts

Transcript

Julia Campbell: 0:02

Hello, and welcome to nonprofit nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice. definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of nonprofit nation. so thrilled that you could be here today listening. This is your host, Julia Campbell. I have a very amazing guest today. One of my favorite people, one of my colleagues, could be Laurel Miller. She's the founder and CEO of nonprofit marketing guide. She's the lead trainer for hundreds of nonprofit communicators, and participants in the communications director mentoring program each year, and kivy just can't get enough of nonprofits and entrepreneurship for good. She co leads a Girl Scout troop. She's the president of the Lexington Farmers Market Association in Lexington, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and seven cats. And that's what you were talking about that you can't leave and go on vacation, six of whom walked into the yard and never left, we need to hear that story. She also co founded grow and go girls small bakery where all net profits go into a travel fund for a group of small town girls to travel the big world, including one of her daughters. I love that. Thanks so much for being here. Givi. Thank you, Julia. I'm so happy to sit and talk with you. Yeah. So I like to begin with your story. And I know we're not supposed to say what's your story. But I want to begin with, you know, maybe how you got into the realm of the nonprofit sector.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 2:28

So when I was thinking about going to college, I thought I wanted to be a journalist, but I also need to be a professional environmentalist. And I got into UC Berkeley, which was the place I really wanted to go. And they didn't have an undergraduate journalism. So they only had this sort of mass communications thing, which wasn't very attractive. So I went into the environmental field, I worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. And then when I decided to move from California to the east coast to be with my then boyfriend, now husband, I decided to start freelancing and kind of got back into the writing side of things and wrote for environmental nonprofits at first and it just sort of blew up from there. I started doing work for other kinds of nonprofits outside the environmental sector, started doing a lot more than writing basically ended up being what became the modern communications director for a number of nonprofits. This was about the same time that the internet became available to people. So that was a while ago.

Julia Campbell: 3:32

So when you started at nonprofits, you were a communications director.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 3:36

I was a consultant, mostly okay. But I acted as their communications director, because you know, pre internet like 25 years ago, the comms folks and nonprofits were basically PR people, or they were managing print. It was basically print and traditional media. And then at the same time that I started my consulting company, that's when people started realizing, oh, there's this thing called the web, and you need a website when you do email, and it all kind of just blew up from there. So I did a lot of that sort of first websites and first email programs for a number of nonprofits. And it just sort of, like I said, grew from there. Eventually, I got sick of having clients and sick of being a consultant, and sort of flip flop the business. So we do all training and coaching. I still have a few private clients each year, but it's a pretty small number. And you know, most of what we do is training and coaching.

Julia Campbell: 4:28

Yeah. Tell me about that training and coaching. It's the nonprofit, the communications director mentoring program.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 4:34

Yeah, so we do like one off webinars to where people can just sort of pop in and get the training that they want on any particular topic that we cover. But our kind of flagship program is the communications director mentoring program. And so it's a six month program that we run twice a year, and we get 16 people in each cohort, and they get to bond with each other and help each other it's it's sort of a mutual aid kind of situation where People are really giving and getting. And then I'm also there to provide some additional training and perspective. And it's just a wonderful way for people to realize they're not alone in the work. That's one of the things I've really found is that most communications directors think they are alone struggling with their problems and their nonprofit. And they're the only ones that have this, and they think everybody else must have it figured out. And of course, that's just totally wrong. Nobody's got to figure it out. Everybody feels alone.

Julia Campbell: 5:27

What are some of the most common problems that you see in the mentoring program that people say, you know,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 5:33

it's a lot of just really unrealistic expectations that are put on people and that people put on themselves, you know, I find that most of the people that do the work we do, they're overachievers, it's a lot of perfectionism, they want to be able to say yes to everything, they want to be a team player, they really want to make a difference. And so they take on way more than they really should. And then that turns into this sort of self perpetuating thing, where people in their organization think they can do all of this work without additional support and help and, you know, it just leads to a lot of burnout and people feeling terrible about themselves and about their organizations and the work. And it's, I'm always just sort of like pulling people back from the edge and helping them get more realistic. So that's,

Julia Campbell: 6:21

that's a lot of what I do in the mentoring program, really. And I work with a lot of nonprofit marketers, and fundraising directors or people that are both, right. They're both things wearing many, many hats, what advice you give them to talk to their directors to talk to their higher ups, in terms of if they're feeling really overwhelmed and burned out?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 6:46

You know, I always start with like, do you know how to say no, you know, there's like, 20 different ways to say no. So do you ever say no? And you'd be surprised how many people just have a really hard time saying no, like that

Julia Campbell: 6:58

people pleasers. Yeah.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 7:00

And we also just kind of get in this mindset that every idea is a good idea. And you know, and in the communications world, yeah, maybe a good idea doesn't mean it's possible, doesn't mean you should actually do it, or you should do it now. And so it's a lot of encouraging people to really slow down the idea machines, and to try to be more strategic and really prioritize and learn how to say, not yet.

Julia Campbell: 7:28

Maybe not, maybe it's just not right for us. It's not right now. Right?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 7:31

Exactly, exactly. instead of the default, which for a lot of folks is saying, Okay, let me see if I can make that work. And it ends up just piling on all the work. And you know, when you spread yourself that then you don't really get anything amazing to happen. Because you're just spread too thin. You're doing too many things. So you

Julia Campbell: 7:51

you just updated your pretty much seminal publication, the nonprofit marketing guide, when was that originally published? It was 10 years ago.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 8:00

Oh, yeah. So it was 10 years ago when I started writing it. So I guess it's probably 11 years ago, when it first came out at this point. So the second edition just came out this spring, and I rewrote, I'd say, 70% of it. There are a few chapters, I didn't touch much, but there's definitely a lot of new material. Lots of new examples, you know, really updated a lot of changes in the last 10 years.

Julia Campbell: 8:23

And what do you think? What are some of the biggest changes you've seen?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 8:27

Well, I think there's more sophistication right now about sort of strategy. So that was good, I was able to add a lot more of the strategic thinking into the book instead of just all the tactical how to do the things. And then of course, you know, social media is completely different than it was 10 years ago. So that was fun to kind of go through and see Oh, I was talking about that, then that thing doesn't even exist anymore. Which is one of the reasons why the book had to be updated. I tried to be a little more more careful about it this time not to include anything that I thought might potentially disappeared three years. But yeah, I think it's got more it's I think it's a better balance now about the strategy and the tactics than it might have been 10 years ago.

Julia Campbell: 9:05

Okay. What are some of the biggest mistakes that nonprofits make? When they're embarking on a marketing? endeavor or a program?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 9:15

Yeah, you know, I think it's a lot of mindset. errors, like, it's not so much like, Oh, they like, you know, made the thing the wrong color or whatever. Like, I don't know, I think people get really think get hung up on that they get really hung up on that staff. And it's just so irrelevant to the success of their work long term. So, you know, I really try to encourage people to think, Okay, what is it that you're really trying to achieve? And this is one of the things we're talking about a lot more in the mentoring program, and also in our all access pass with our training materials is really thinking through the objectives of your work and what does success look like? Instead of just doing all The stuff and hoping something magically good happens. Yeah. But you know, that requires some really big conversations then about what's most important. And it's a lot of conversations, frankly, that a lot of executive directors and program staff are not willing to have. So that makes it really tough for communicators. Well,

Julia Campbell: 10:19

how do you recommend they start having these conversations? If you're a marketing director? I think that's primarily, definitely primarily my audience. Yeah. And a lot of people in your audience, I'm sure you talk a lot about creating a culture that embraces marketing, how can they How can they best start

Kivi Leroux Miller: 10:36

to start is just to start I mean, honestly like to be the one to raise the conversation. There are so many organizations that don't even have organizational strategic plans. So when you talk about communications strategy, it's like, well, what are you trying to achieve in your mission? And you won't, you probably wouldn't be surprised, Julia. But a lot of people are surprised that, like the program staff don't have goals. Okay. Well, then how are we supposed to use communications and marketing to help the program achieve their goals? If there aren't any goals? Yeah. And then, you know, we also get into a lot of hand to hand combat sometimes, with our development, Callie absolutely love that term and

Julia Campbell: 11:17

damn combat, I think it is exactly what a lot of people go through. Yeah. And,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 11:22

you know, like you said, there are a lot of folks that we both coach that are doing both development and communications. But the reality is that a lot of communications directors are not responsible for fundraising. And so there's often this debate about, you know, what does that look like? And who's working for who, which is really just, it's all about power and control. And so sort of helping people navigate those conversations, and to get back to why the organization exists, and the mission work you're trying to do? You know, every time a fundraiser says, Well, your job wouldn't exist without my job is just to strangle people. It's like, Can we get back to the mission, please. And talking about how we can all work together to do our part to achieve the goals of the organization.

Julia Campbell: 12:06

I think that's what's so interesting about your business and the books that you write. And for people that don't know kivy, and her publishing company, bold and bright media published my second book, all around social media. And when we had the conversation, I thought that it was really interesting, because you wanted me and I completely agreed to focus on marketing, and how social media can be used to build a community of the engaged and not just used as an ATM or a transactional tool or sort of, you know, people see it as like, you just turn it on, and the money is going to kind of rain down. So how did you choose to focus on marketing, specifically, as the thing that you wanted to teach nonprofits,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 12:56

because I think it's good for everything nonprofits are trying to do marketing will help you raise money, yes. But it will also help you find people to use your programs and services, it will also help you change hearts and minds. So if you're doing advocacy work, you know, you have to market that policy change or that cultural change that you're looking to bring it out. So everything that nonprofits are doing, can be made better by good marketing? Hmm. You know, we coach fundraisers all the time, I'm not trying to bash development staff. I'm more trying to bash development consultants, maybe. Ah, but I think there's so much you can do with good communications. Exactly.

Julia Campbell: 13:37

I feel like most of my clients are definitely marketing people. But I have been hired by development departments to help them understand more how development and marketing can work together. Yeah, so how can we just based on your expertise, while I have you here? How can we break down these silos? What are some tips that you can give to either the development or the marketing departments to break down the silos?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 13:59

So I think you want to look at the people you have. I mean, this is where you just have to get really honest, right? Like, who's on staff right now? And who has what skills? So lots of times, we'll hear complaints from development staff, well, you know, those communications people won't let go of the donor communications, and they don't really know what they're doing. And you know, that can be true. But it can also be true that your development staff or major donor fundraisers or event planners who can't write their way out of a paper bag. And so you do need the communication staff who are usually more skilled writers to do that work. So instead of just making assumptions based on job title, I encourage you to really figure out who's good at what and to really figure out then who should be doing what based on the skills and training that they have, and stop making assumptions about again, who should be in control and who's working for whom,

Julia Campbell: 14:51

exactly. So it should be more of a partnership rather than as my purview?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 14:57

Absolutely. And I mean, that goes for bringing in the programmatic staff to because you know, if you're doing really good successful marketing, it means that there's a really good program, or a really good fundraising campaign, there is something that you're trying to market. And so if you have good partnerships, where everyone is talking at the beginning and all the way through these campaigns, you just end up with far superior results. And people end up enjoying their work and wanting to stay in the sector. And that's also something I spent a lot of time on in the communications director mentoring program, you know, we end up I would say, in an average cohort of 16 people, there's usually one or two that end up changing jobs during the program. That's either because they realize by talking to the other people in the program, that they have a terrible job or being treated horribly, and the grass is greener somewhere else. And so they go find another job, or they leave the sector and go to corporate America, which just, I just hate when that happens. So I'm really all about trying to keep people happy in the work too. So that's one of the things we really focus on a lot is not just training you how to do your job, but how to do it in a way that you really love it and want to stay in the sector.

Julia Campbell: 16:13

Well, I love that your your book, the nonprofit marketing guide, almost led into one of your other books, is it your second book, calm?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 16:24

That's the third book, third book. So nonprofit marketing guide is kind of like the 101. starter back then I wrote content marketing for nonprofits, yeah, more like the kind of advanced book on how to do the work, and then come up busy is really the third book, which is about how to manage the communications work within your organization. And it's really more that mindset book about how to approach the work so that you're really effective and that you like doing it and want to stay in it.

Julia Campbell: 16:54

Well, I want to talk to you about this. So calm means or at least in the book stands for collaborative, agile, logical and methodical, and busy. I love this stands for bogus, unrealistic, sidestepping, and yoked. Can you talk about calm versus busy? Yes.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 17:14

So you know, I've been doing this for however many years, 1015 years, and I was really thinking, Okay, what does success look like? We also do the annual nonprofit communications trends report every January. And so we've been doing a lot of research on what success looks like there too. And, you know, I found out it's not really like, how much do you know about best practices with email or social media or whatever, it's not really about that. It's really, truly that more kind of management mindset about the function of communications and marketing within an organization. And so when I really sort of dove into all of our research, and, you know, really examined all of the hundreds of 1000s of conversations I've had, it came down to these factors of being collaborative, being agile, being logical, being methodical. And then I thought, and I thought, Well, okay, what is getting in the way of these things? And that's where busy came up. And unfortunately, I think a lot of nonprofits end up being busy by default, right? It's the easier thing to do. Oh, yeah. And so to get away from the busy, you really have to work your way into the calm, work away into the calm,

Julia Campbell: 18:21

what are some ways we can do that?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 18:23

Well, I think you want you know, you can do you can look at each letter. So collaborative is like insisting on forcing these conversations, like we were talking about, you know, a lot of folks just don't even want to like ask a hard question of their co workers. It's okay to ask hard questions at work. You may not get an answer right away. But you can start the conversation, ask why you're doing things the way you're doing. I mean, it seems so simple. But it's so hard for so many people to confront the just sort of legacy within their organizations. So being agile is really about building trust, basically, so that you can make decisions quickly. You know, in our work, like things come up all the time. There's all kinds of opportunities for people to capitalize on what's happening in the news. But if it takes three weeks to get an approved response, like the new cycles, like turned over 20 times by then, so that's agile, being logical, again, goes back to some of the being more strategic, like we talked about really knowing why you're doing the things what you're really trying to accomplish, where communications is most essential to the work to the success of the nonprofit. And then methodical is really more about the process, and putting all of those different steps in place. So that a communications director can take a vacation or can go on leave to have a baby or take care of their family member and not have the entire thing collapse in a heap right or so that you can grow your team and know exactly where you need to go. allocate. So it's really more about this sort of process side of the work. And if you can do all these things, if you can be collaborative, agile, logical and methodical, you are much more likely to be both successful in terms of the actual results of your work, but to also enjoy the work, and to feel good about the work that you're doing and to want to stay in it. Hey, there,

Julia Campbell: 20:21

I'm interrupted this episode to share an absolutely free training that I created that getting nonprofits of all sizes, big results. Sure, you've been spending hours on social media, but what can you actually show for it? With all this posting, and instagramming and tick talking doesn't really translate into action. In my free training, I'll show you exactly how to take people from passive fans to passionate supporters. And I'll give you specific steps to create social media content that actually converts head on over to nonprofits, that convert.com. Again, that's nonprofits that convert calm, and start building a thriving social media community, for your nonprofit right now, without a big team, lots of tech overwhelm, or getting stuck on the question, What do I do next? Let me show you how it's done. I can't wait to see what you create. How did you coach your clients in 2020? So I'm, we're just going to laugh and crawl under a blanket because I know that for me, especially, a lot of my clients are pretty small. They are very risk averse. They do not want to discuss anything, quote unquote, controversial, although literally everything is controversial. Like you say, I like trees. That's controversial. Yeah. How do you coach your nonprofit clients on marketing in such a divisive, politically charged, completely almost up ended climate?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 22:07

Well, I think the divisive politically charged in the pandemic are actually two different things in a way

Julia Campbell: 22:13

that's like a coin. Yeah,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 22:15

I mean, the good thing about the pandemic was that everything had to go online. Right, right. And so it also

Julia Campbell: 22:22

was exposed a lot of the holes, so we Yeah, and so but no organizations

Kivi Leroux Miller: 22:25

that had been, you know, for years, like, Oh, we don't have the money to update the website, that's, you know, hasn't been updated in 10 years, you know, all that kind of went went flying out the door, because people realize that in order to do the work online, they had to get their online presence functional. And so, you know, we saw a lot of investment in doing things like getting your website straightened out, and upgrading your social media and your email tools and all of that. So that was, I think that was a positive silver lining to all of that. We saw a lot more collaboration. So you know, a number of our clients were like, before, they were never able to get their program staff to do like a Facebook Live just impossible. No, no, no. All of a sudden, because they're working at home, and they're getting used to using zoom, and they're getting used to seeing their mug on camera through zoom for work all day, every day. Now, these people are suddenly willing to do Facebook Lives for their communication staff. Wow. So that's been great. Like that's a you know, that's a side benefit, I guess, the pandemic on the other, more divisive political climate. I think, you know, a lot of people want to be thought leaders, right, we get this request all the time I took it a director wants to be a thought

Julia Campbell: 23:41

leader. They don't want to say anything controversial, right? Exactly.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 23:44

So my whole thing is like, Look, you know, if you want to be a thought leader, it's all about beingopinionated, essentially, either have new information, or you have to have an opinion, like you just can't have a thought leader without new data or opinions. And I what I tell people is like every nonprofit has values doesn't mean they're necessarily political. But you wouldn't exist as an organization if there weren't values, right. There's no reason to create a nonprofit unless there was something wrong. That needs to be fixed. Yeah. And every time you say there is something wrong, and something is right, those are value Laden, you know, statements. Yes. So yeah, nonprofit has values. The question is, how hard you're willing to lean into them? Yes. And if you have the spine to stand up to the feedback that you'll get. So I mean, those are the questions, right? It's not whether you have opinions or values, it's whether it's whether you want to get in the fight or not. And I think that's that's a legitimate strategic question that everyone has to answer. So nonprofits don't want to get into the fight and they shouldn't, they can absolutely achieve their mission without having to deal with any controversy. You know, and of course, there's others that are the complete end of the other spectrum. So it's a You just have to figure out where you want to be. But don't say you're going to be a thought leader and then say, Oh, I'm not going to do anything political or controversial. Like, I just I don't see how that's possible.

Julia Campbell: 25:09

Exactly. If you're not offending someone, you're not. No one's paying attention,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 25:15

right. And you're not challenging the status quo. And again, if you're not challenging the status quo, why are you a nonprofit? Like I know, right? Like, you don't deserve your 501 c three.

Julia Campbell: 25:24

Exactly. And I know you and I, and a lot of people I talked to, on the podcast, we're obviously pretty outspoken, very confident in our beliefs, confident who we are confident and what we stand for. And I understand that some nonprofit leaders and maybe even marketing directors don't directors, they don't have that confidence, because they're afraid of losing their job. They're afraid of losing funding. But I love what you said, I think, I've never heard anything make more sense, it's you are writing a wrong. And if you're not willing to stand up for that, and say this is wrong, which means there is a Converse statement to that, that this that some things are right, and people are not going to agree with you. Because it really I just think of, you know, the little Community Arts theater in my town that, you know, first of all, Facebook groups completely horrible, don't, not the community, the community ones, they were trying to raise money, or they were trying to, you know, raise awareness around the arts and the importance of art for youth, which I strongly believe in, oh, there's a lot of people that don't believe in it. And they're going to be very vocal around it. So everything, everything has that opposite side to it, you're going if you're doing something important, you're going to get pushed back. And if you're standing up for something, if you putting yourself out there, if you're on social media, if you're sending emails, if you're doing Facebook Lives, you're probably going to get pushback, but it might be one out of 20,000 people. So I think we need to just put that in perspective.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 27:03

Yeah. And you don't have to engage like I think you should expect pushback, right? It's like you said even something as simple as you know, the arts for kids. Like, really, there's going to be some

Julia Campbell: 27:13

why aren't we better as a fair? Yeah, some

Kivi Leroux Miller: 27:16

will be some jerk somewhere, right, like, and I think our political climate has made it easier for every jerk to come out of the woodwork. So yes, everything, we will get all kinds of nasty comments about this conversation like that. But the thing is, you don't have to engage. And I still see people struggling with that a lot. Like, you know, the early days of social media, we would talk about, you know, oh, there's this thing called trolls? And how do you manage the trolls, and you still have to deal with that. But I think there's a more of a level of sophistication now about, like, some of them, you don't really have to deal with, just delete them and move on with your life. Like, they really don't deserve a response.

Julia Campbell: 27:56

Exactly.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 27:57

And I would say people arguing that, you know, with arts programming for kids in that category, it's like, I'm not gonna sit here and argue with you know, about for you, you know, you're now you're Yeah, it's like, move on, and go spend your energy on the people who can actually help you change the world.

Julia Campbell: 28:14

So what marketing channels do you find most effective? And I know, that's a loaded question. Because it depends. It does, it

Kivi Leroux Miller: 28:22

depends. You know, I am really still focusing a lot with folks on email. I guess her because I just I do think it's still really effective. But there are so many kind of hidden traps, right? It's not like the spam filter like thing, like it's, it's so much more sophisticated. Now, with the same kind of algorithms that you we normally talk about with social media, that same kind of stuff is going on with email. So you know, Google and Microsoft, all the impacts providers, like when you send out an email, Julie, or when we set out on from a nonprofit marketing guide, they're watching the open rate of those early deliveries there,

Julia Campbell: 29:00

and the clicks, engagement,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 29:03

you know, and if like a lot of people were just start clicking spam for the emails, we send out those other emails at the end of that send will go directly to spam. I mean, that's kind of an oversimplified version of what's happening. But people don't even understand that. That's being monitored and the same that like, they understand the idea of the newsfeed in social media. Now, they don't understand that their inboxes are kind of being regulated in the same sort of way. I mean, it's documented, it's oversimplified. It works differently. But all of that's being watched. Yep. You know how many times you open email from a certain sender is being watched?

Julia Campbell: 29:40

Mm hmm. Absolutely. We had this discussion in person the last time I saw you in person, which was a really long time ago. Yeah, we talked about the segmentation that it Yeah, they still don't get it and how that is the next level of nonprofit email marketing is that segmentation sending to the people that always open for So that Gmail and outlook and they can get that signal, and then the second tier and the third tier and the fourth tier. So I think what you're saying is like for my audience is just marketing, as we've normally done it throwing up a bunch of spaghetti on the wall, not that that really ever worked. But it doesn't work in 2021. It's not going to work in 2022. Yeah.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 30:24

And I also think I mean, maybe that's just another symptom of everything that happened last year, another result of everything is, I really think people are getting more sophisticated in some ways about the content they're consuming. Now, I know, like people would say, Yeah, but there's all this fake news and misinformation, and people are gobbling that up. So how can you call it sophisticated? But, and yeah, I think that's definitely happening. But at the same time, I think people are looking for things that are relevant to them. And so doing things like segmenting, and really understanding who your people are, and giving your people what they want from you. This is how

Julia Campbell: 31:03

I see nonprofits as the antithesis to fake news, because they're looking for sources they can trust. So if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to be that person, that's the go to resource, then continually give your audience trusted content stories, and how tos and education, things that they want to consume. Because I don't have time to go out. I mean, I know the issues that I'm carrying, that I care about, I don't have time to go out and sift through all of the stuff online, I want to follow a trusted resource. So I follow you know, Planned Parenthood, or I follow narrow or I follow, I follow certain organizations that I know and I trust. And I hope that nonprofits can kind of fill that void, and gain that trust back.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 31:52

And I would encourage even smaller local, regional nonprofits, to really take that exact mindset. Because lots of times I think people think, well, we're not the national organization with all the data and the research. But yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of research that shows that local organizations have more trust than big national groups. So, you know, go to your national organization, get their data, but as a local organization, feel free to share that out and use that to build the trust with your community. Because as your neighbors are more likely to trust you as a local nonprofit.

Julia Campbell: 32:26

I love that. All right. Well, at the time that we are recording this, I believe the mentorship is closing for the next six months. Yeah. Hopefully, when we release that should be open again. So where can people go to apply to the it's a call the communications director mentoring program?

Kivi Leroux Miller: 32:48

Yes. So it runs January to June and July to December and over a year. We've been doing it that way for the last 10 years and our 10th year, and we'll continue to do it that

Julia Campbell: 32:59

way. And you always have a waitlist. So yeah, early

Kivi Leroux Miller: 33:02

have a waitlist so much. Like you don't get first dibs or anything when we open but we let people know. You know, we open up the January session in mid October, we open up for the one that starts in July in mid April. And you know, the day we open up there's always three or four people who register immediately. Yeah, they've been waiting. They've been waiting. So yeah, watch for that for sure. If you're interested in it's a six month program, 16 nonprofit communications directors from around the world, really, I mean, it's primarily North America, but we occasionally get some international participants as well. And you know, it will be 15 other people who totally get what you do for a living, which in itself is priceless.

Julia Campbell: 33:43

All right, where do they go? What's the website,

Kivi Leroux Miller: 33:45

nonprofit marketing, guide.com. Perfect. And you'll find it all there as well. All of our other stuff. We have so many free resources, too. We have a new learning center. We do a lot of free webinars, downloads, there's

Julia Campbell: 33:58

all kinds of great stuff on the site. Well, now you have to tell me about your seven cats. That's been wrapped up. It's in your bio, you got to tell me about it. What are their names are they named? Or

Kivi Leroux Miller: 34:09

they're all they all have celestial names, so that Luna and Cassie were the first two but then a mama cat showed up with four kittens, three of whom survived. And we were going to just foster them. But that didn't happen. And we adopted them. So that brought us up to six. And then this year, we had another walk on who showed up and we had pretty much decided we were going to adopt him anyway. And then somebody shot him. Oh, and he came back to our patio. And I found him and took him to the vet and he had to have his leg amputated. So I have a deaf cat. I have a cat with no tail because it got injured and now I have a tripod and I got four other like normal cats. You know, no injuries, no illnesses. Seven yeah seven cats, including one three legged one. He's got his own instance. So

Julia Campbell: 35:05

he has his Instagram what is the Instagram we all want to follow it

Kivi Leroux Miller: 35:08

sucks the tripod. And the way you spell tripod on Instagram is t ri p a WD so as Sox SOC Ks the tripod with the W in there. Okay, yeah. So yeah, that's my, my daughter and I do it. It's kind of fun we make him he's kind of snarky, because it's sweet, though, but not a lot. But he cusses a little bit and isn't.

Julia Campbell: 35:36

I love that you created an Instagram account

Kivi Leroux Miller: 35:39

on Facebook all the time that people were like, Oh, he needs his own Instagram. And so as a joke, like I went and looked, and I'm like, there's this huge community of three legged pet people on Instagram. I would bet So yeah, I mean, there's a there's a community I literally every day, that's the lesson. Yes, you can find your people. No matter how different weird niche you think you are. There's a community for you. There's a community for you. Yeah, so like, yeah, so there's like there's this whole thing called the tripod cat squad. On It's

Julia Campbell: 36:15

okay, so we're all going to follow nonprofit marketing guide. I know kivy on Twitter is at k i vi lm. And

Kivi Leroux Miller: 36:25

same thing on Instagram. They've got a good follow the company if you don't want to see all my kid and cat stuff, you can just follow our company has two handles. But you could follow me too if you don't mind the kitten tripod cat stuff as well.

Julia Campbell: 36:37

I love that. Well, thanks so much for being here.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 36:40

Thank you, Dan.

Julia Campbell: 36:41

I know you're busy. Just starting a new cohort.

Kivi Leroux Miller: 36:43

Great talking with you. We need to talk more often.

Julia Campbell: 36:46

I know we definitely need to talk more often. So it was really fantastic. Thanks so much. kibby. I appreciate it. And yeah, follow kivy on everything on Instagram. We'll post it all in the show notes and connect definitely connect with her cat on Instagram. He won't follow you back. She won't leave that he only other tripods. So deal. See? Amazing. I love it so much. All right, well, Thanksgiving. Hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning in to my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app. And you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven, seven. keep changing the world you nonprofit unicorn