Unlocking Social Media Fundraising

Social media can feel like a dead end for nonprofits: you post, you hope, you celebrate likes, and somehow the donations still don’t show up. We sit down with Nick Black, CEO of Good United and founder of Stop Soldier Suicide, to get brutally honest about why “good work” isn’t a fundraising strategy and why donors can’t be treated like ATM machines. Nick shares how losing fellow soldiers to suicide pushed him to build a nonprofit from scratch and how that lived experience shaped his obsession with practical, repeatable relationship-building.

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Transcript

Sponsor Message From Firespring

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode is sponsored by Firespring. Firespring is a brand experience company that specializes in nonprofits, delivering integrated marketing and websites that do more than look good. From appeals and annual reports to seamless giving experiences, Firespring helps nonprofits turn clicks into real impact. Learn more today at firespring.com/slash nonprofit hub. Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer. Joined today by Nick Black, who is the CEO of Good United. And we are going to dig into Nick's story. I love when people see a problem and take action to solve the problem instead of just kind of going, eh, I guess that's the way the world is. And so I'm really excited for everyone to be inspired by Nick's story today. Can't wait for you to hear it. Nick, welcome in.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hey Megan, how are you? Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yeah, absolutely. So good to have you here. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself and kind of your background that brought us to the conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Sure. You want the long version or short version?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Let's take the short version and then we'll dig deeper.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Great. So uh my name is Nick Black. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Good United, and Good United is direct messaging solution for nonprofits. So, Megan, I never ever thought I'd be involved with nonprofits ever. So the catalyst for my life was actually my experience in the military. I was in Afghanistan, and unfortunately, I lost more of my soldiers to suicide than I did killed maxim. That led me to get out and start a nonprofit myself called Stop Soldier Suicide. I had no idea what I was doing, still really don't, uh, but hard-headed, stubborn. So we started this organization. I did every single job at Stop Soldier Suicide. Thankfully, I'm now squarely on the board. So we have an incredible team that does great work. But through that experience, I thought fundraising would be easy, and fundraising was not easy. I thought rich people are there to write checks, Megan. No one told me this.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

That would be so lovely if that was true. I mean, no one talked.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I mean, yeah, you're saying, hey, I'm trying to help veterans not take their own life. You have money, give me the money, and sure, that's a deal. That did not work like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

It's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

No, it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

It does not. No, that's not a strategy.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

No, it's not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. So I learned that also the hard way. And what I also realized was two things. One, we're having a very difficult time building relationships with the average person, the average supporter. And then two, when we did try to do that, they've really shifted where they are. So what I came to a hard realization was either I had to force them where I wanted them to be, or I had to go to where they spend time. And that was really the start to Good United is saying, how do we help organizations to be able to meet their supporters where they've shifted to? And whether we like good or not, and most people don't, they have shifted to social media. But it feels like a black box. And the way to unlock the black box is to just take this wild, massive, huge leap of faith, and that the powers that be that on these social networks care about their bottom line above all else. And if you believe that, then you might want to keep them in channel. So that's the whole story of how we got to Good United.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

So good. Okay. So there's oh man, there's so much to unpack. But I want to short version of people. So we're gonna dig in here. I want to call out one something that you said in that introduction, and that is I mean, it's this is a a two-time of like, I saw a problem, I'm gonna fix it. Which I really appreciate about you as a person. There's a problem with my men in the military. We gotta fix this. Here we go. Oh, there's a problem with fundraising, we gotta fix this. Here's good united. Um, but I think that attitude about fundraising is is true for almost everyone who gets into it.

unknown 3:45

Right?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

We start working for an organization, we know we're doing amazing work, and it is baffling sometimes how hard it is to get people to give to that.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Right.

Relationship Fundraising At Scale

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Right? So I do want to call that out. Like, if you I'm sure that there are plenty of fundraisers listening to this right now who are like, oh yeah, I have been there, I get that for sure. Ugh, it's so hard.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

I I've gotten to meet with some pretty incredible people, and I met with a gentleman from an organization called Nova Ukraine, and he's a chief development officer there. And he came down to Charleston and we had dinner together, and he shared something really profound with me. And he goes, you know, I've helped raise over a billion dollars over 40 years. What I've learned is if you want to raise money, don't ask for money.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

And he build relationships. And then on one hand, yeah, of course, absolutely. On the other hand, what am I gonna do with the existing tools? And I just hammer people asking them, I can't get to know them. And I think that is the disconnect. But we're also living in a time and space, Megan, where there's more opportunity than ever to build relationships at scale. So I think there's a lot of hope around the corner. That's also one of the messages I try to bring. There's so much pessimism in philanthropy, right? Existing channels are going down, it's hard to find new supporters. And you know, you can make it as complicated as you want. I like simple things, maybe because my brain's not that big. I've had too many concussions, but we just got to go where they are. And if we're not meeting people on those channels, then you know it's gonna be tough sledding.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Well, it comes back to the idea, right? That at the end of the day, donors are humans.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Sometimes our life would be a lot easier if they weren't, if they didn't behave like with normal human behavior, but that's not the case, right? Donors are not ATM machines. They can't, we just can't keep throwing messages at them and assuming them that that's gonna work because there does have to be a relationship. So when we use the phrase we need to do that at scale, what does that look like to you?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

The mission of Good United that we that's kept me going is what would it be like if every American could have the same charitable experience that reserves is today reserved for the wealthy? Right? How can we democratize nonprofit sport experience? How can democratize the experience that today, Megan? I generally get a list every quarter from Stop Sort of Suicide of four to five people. Man, I get to know them, right? Right? They're generally white guys that are wealthy in the Northeast, and I talk to them about the Phillies or the Eagles or the Giants, and I talk to know them and I make this great relationship. And I never ask them for anything. But when I learn about what makes them tick, right, and then say, hey, how do you see yourself making an impact? How do you and your family want to make an impact with this cause? Because if you don't, I'm happy to connect you to whatever is of interest for you. How can we take that to scale? Right? So we're gonna have to have the ability to replicate conversations, we're gonna have to have the ability to be able to collect data and fall back up, and we're gonna have to be able to give nonprofits these solutions, the answer to the test to be able to do it where they can start building relationships. To me, right, the magical day at Goody Night is gonna be when we have somebody, Joe Schmoe from I don't know, somewhere in the middle of Iowa or Nebraska or wherever, right? And they reach out and say, I can't believe that you spent the time to get to know me, to ask me these questions. Right? Because we can unlock a whole new generation, a whole new wave of American philanthropy. We just unfortunately the behavior and expectations have shifted and we've got to catch up, right? And that to me is most exciting. The number one bullet that I share with people and saying, hey, why do we need to meet? And listen, I don't even like social media. I don't care, right? Sure. I just want to win. I do not care. So if we need to meet people on these channels, right? And it's saying, but Nick, it's the same people that would have been on their website. No, it's not, Megan, right? I don't know about you. I spend 0.0 minutes a day on nonprofit websites. No offense to the nonprofit website people. Sure. Right? And it's not a magic wand, it's not one channel to other, it's just where people are. And what we found is that over 90% of the people quiet and social, even for the big guys, are net new to their email list. Which means to me, right, if we all want to bitch about people shifting and spending two hours a day in social media, then what? Right? Okay, they're spending two hours there. That's where they are. So of course we're having a difficult time getting at these other places that they're not anymore.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah. Yeah. So okay, the it harkens back to something that I have been saying for my entire career, which is that the definition of social media is that it is in fact social.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Right? We as marketers, as fundraisers, we tend to look at it as a one-way communication channel where I am just gonna billboard out and blank it out and tell you my story and over and over and over and over and over again. But social is actually in the literal name of what we're talking about. And you would never walk into a cocktail party or a networking event and just start saying, Hi, my name's Megan. I'm with Nonprofit Hub and I blah blah blah blah blah. And I would never just talk at someone and assume that that was a successful interaction.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

You got it. Uh I had a wonderful market.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

When we kind of do the vanity metrics of we have 15,000 people that like our page. I okay, great. It's are you actually having a connection with them?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah, it's supposed to be a two-way conversation. Yes. That's a share with me, right? And then like I'll pick on myself. I used to send board meetings and the fundraising team were talking about revenue and saying, Oh, keep going. Oh, yeah, that's great. Oh, good job. We're doing, oh man, I love money. Then the marketing team will start talking about impressions, followers, and likes. And I'd say, I don't care. Unless I can pay you an impressions, followers, and likes, I don't know what to do with this. And it's not their fault, right? But now we have this opportunity to unlock these channels. And this is, I think, this massive new open world for nonprofits to be able to explore. Um, and I hope really being able to bring some some hope and and just and money and supporters and just the next. It's like sometimes I feel like I'm sitting there and and the value is being hidden behind this wall, right? And we're opening a door and saying, like, hey, we can do this, right? Other industries are doing it. Economic, like, we can do this. We just have to think a little bit differently, but it's hard, man. Nothing's easy. So I've always I tell people this not for profits are easy. You increase revenue, decrease expenses. Nonprofits are 10 times as hard because you have to increase revenue, decrease expenses, and this whole mission thing is like a helicopter where the blade starts going weird directions and everything can be thrown off. So, like, God bless some nonprofit people out there. So we can, you know, it's tough, but man, it's worth it more than ever.

Social Media As A Two-Way Channel

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, so good. Okay, so if somebody is listening to this and they're going, yeah, you know, that sounds really great, but I'm also in charge of 17 other things because it's nonprofit and we're short-staffed and don't have any resources. What's kind of the first step to get somebody to understand how to have a strategy around something like social media direct messaging?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Well, I think to your point, it's also about the capacity of the organization. Um there's a great, great quote by Warren Buffett that says diversifications for people that don't know what they're doing. So I've always taken that to heart. And that if you have fit in one channel, please make sure that you're doing that really well before you start to diverse the, you know, diversify and spread your time, right? Yeah. So I don't think everyone should do everything at the same time. I think it's always a question of what not to do. And what I would share with organizations is that maybe you should just stop doing social media if you're not going to turn on direct messaging. It's like having a website without email. If you take away email, what's the point? Traffic, traffic, what am I gonna do with traffic? Traffic, we're talking about traffic, right? So, like what email does to monetize your website is what direct messaging does for social. So if you are going to invest in the social and build community, just turn on the tools. They're free, they're in meta, right? Yeah. You could start to get a baseline. But I think exactly to your point, Megan, one of the hard questions that we need to ask ourselves as nonprofits is what we're not going to do. Because it's so easy for board members and loudmouse and people like me to come in and say, Have you thought about recurring giving? Well, yeah. Do you have any idea how hard recurring giving is today? I've yet to find one nonprofit that can tell me true recurring giving metrics, right? Business people love it because it's software as a service. The mass is out. Lifetime value, churn, upsell, all that stuff. It is so hard because you're talking about people at the bottom of the funnel. So what are we not going to do? That's the question that I like to talk with nonprofits about.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

And so within that, then, is there a channel where you see this work best? Right? Obviously, you can you can do it on Instagram, you can do it on Facebook, you could do it on LinkedIn. There's a whole there are as many platforms as you want to take on. Are there ones where you see this kind of back and forth work best?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Sure. So I view it as one-to-one versus one. Let me tell you another way. I view it as more one-to-one. Think about LinkedIn. So it is Nick Black talking to Megan Spear, and then it's organization to one, right? Which is Facebook, Instagram, uh, those others, where stop sorter suicides interacting with Megan Spear. In regards to the one-to-one, I think one of the most undervalued and underutilized resources is LinkedIn, especially LinkedIn Sales Navigator. So I got to serve in the United States military. I was in somewhat of an elite unit, and like the NSA and Department of Defense have nothing on the capabilities of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Nothing. Nothing. Or like I sit this and like my parlor trick with organizations like, tell me about your ideal donor. And like, well, what if you're a military organization? Okay, what if I could find people that used to be in the army that work at publicly traded companies that are in the C-suite that are in sales? That would be perfect. Awesome. Here's a list of 855 people that live in the Washington, D.C. area. So one, right, like LinkedIn Sales Navigator for every fundraiser out there, man, it is absolute fire. Every fundraiser should be using that channel. In regards to the organization, Facebook and Instagram start. Um, I haven't seen much coming out of the other channels, uh, but I think that's really the the two to areas to explore.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

This episode is sponsored by Firespring, a brand experience company trusted by thousands of nonprofits to amplify their message, strengthen supporter connections, and grow their mission. Firespring delivers nonprofit websites and marketing that do more than look good. From appeals and direct mail to annual reports and seamless online giving, everything is built to tell your story, engage supporters, and make giving easy. The result? Real, measurable impact for your organization. Learn more today at firespring.com/slash nonprofit hub. I like the distinction though between the person and the organization.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah. Yeah, it's a YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Because I've seen a lot of organizations that try to say, you know, maybe they've had some success on Facebook and Instagram in terms of building the brand, and they take that same philosophy and assume that it's going to work if they build a company page on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

But those platforms function so differently just in and of themselves, right? The same strategy is not going to work one versus the other. But it would be weird if all of a sudden your CEO started friend requesting everybody on Facebook and wanted to talk to them directly, right? 100%. So I really appreciate that call out.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah. And Goody Night does not do LinkedIn. And I would tell you that if you're a smaller organization, if you're under a million, I would start there. Yeah. I would not even turn on my Facebook or Instagram page. I would get really, really good at LinkedIn. I would get myself, if I was the exec director or founder, I would get my fundraiser, get them some training on Sales Navigator, come up with some target personas, especially if you're locally focused. I talked with a wonderful woman out of Wisconsin uh last Friday, and she runs a food pantry. And she, I'm not going to pronounce the name of the town because they're Native American names and I it, I mean, it's lots of vows. And she's trying to figure out to get people involved. Saying, great, you can search by county. Here's a list of 4,000 people. Break them down by what schools they went to. I don't know anything about Wisconsin, other than like the football team is a big deal, University of Wisconsin Madison. So come up with like break your these people down and reach out to them that level. So I think that that's a wonderful channel for a lot of organizations that they're not using.

Which Platforms Work Best

SPEAKER_01 16:24

So good. So okay, so let's talk specific to the organization side, right? So if we're talking meta product in general, right? Be that Facebook, be it Instagram, be it threads, whatever it is. I think the fear that tends to be true for nonprofits, right? Is that we're really I understand I'm painting with a very broad brush. Sure. Right. But there can tend to be a fear of I don't want to open us up to criticism. I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't wanna, you know, I don't want I don't want to open the comments or the floodgates and the messages, and then all of a sudden we can't keep up. Or I I think people get tend to be a little overwhelmed because the public can say whatever they want, right? And so it's always a little bit hard to control. So if that's somebody's situation and they're kind of fighting, especially, I feel like the fear a lot of times is not necessarily in the marketing team or in the fundraising team themselves. It's coming from higher-up kind of risk management voices that are maybe a little trepidatious about that. What would you say to somebody who's trying to fight against that fear within their organization to move something like this forward?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

I think first aligned on the outcome, what you want to achieve. So if you want to be able to drive revenue from individual supporters, then need to meet them in that channel and need to understand you got to play ball. Or don't, right? But you can't set up your marketing team and put handcuffs on them. So many organizations that we work with, especially in Cause and Cure, they have massive followings and put the most unengaging content in the world out there. No one's gonna interact with it, right? Yeah, so like take a look and draw inspiration from whatever advocacy causes resonate with you, whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, pick a side and watch what they do. The amount of engagement, the amount of conversations, how they are leveraging these channels to rally their group, right, is absolutely night and day to the vast majority of nonprofits that spend a ton of time talking about themselves. You know what advocacy organizations talk about? The problem they're solving for and why people should care.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

They don't even talk about themselves.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yes, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:37

So, like, there's a whole disconnect here, right? And I get it, but then don't do social. Why? Why? Like, just don't do it. If you're not getting from it and you're not willing to play the game, then just turn it off.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Okay, so let's back up a couple steps. And I'd love to hear when you first realize that this was a problem. Yeah, you're at your nonprofit, you realize fundraising is maybe not as easy as you thought it was gonna be. When you first realize this is a problem, what are some early successes that made you realize this was a better plan? And maybe some early, like, oof, I wish I would have not done that part of it. I wish I made some mistakes over here. Where could we learn from both sides on that one?

SPEAKER_00 19:24

The one thing anyone listening to this, I have no idea what to do, but I have a PhD of what not to do. So I will tell you what does not work because I've done it. Uh, and to your point earlier, in my life is just essentially things piss me off, and I attack the next thing. Doesn't mean that I was soft for it, but I'll attack it. So for us at Stop Sort of Suicide, how the door opened was we started getting revenue from birthday fundraisers on Facebook. Okay, and it started coming in at like a couple grand, and like this was back in the day where we're getting maybe ten thousand dollars through our website, and then it was like from one month, three grand, then eight, then eighteen, then thirty-five. I thought it was a mistake, right? I thought that I was like, but don't tell Meta, right? Zuckerberg has enough money, we'll keep it. It's gotta be glitch glitch. So we just kept getting more and more money. I think we got to a point we were getting$100,000 a month all from birthday fundraisers.

unknown 20:15

Wow.

Managing Risk And Fear On Social

SPEAKER_00 20:16

And we were suffering to launch peer-to-peer on our website, right? And so we started to ask ourselves, well, what's the difference? Well, we start building this massive community on social, and then we have to pay you to send them outside the channel to go through our website in 15 different clicks, or can we ask them with two clicks of a button to stay where they're at and fundraiser on our behalf? So that was a big aha moment. And then when I looked around and I asked the SSS team, so hopefully they don't mind me saying this, guess how many people last month signed up for our email newsletter on our website?

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Uh sticks. Slightly more than a handful.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

What are we gonna do with that? You know? So it's like, okay, yes, we need to have our website. Yes, it is awesome. Yes, we love it, right? And we want to get people to that. Email and website go hand in hand. But if we're gonna spend all this time and effort into this other channel, why ask them to leave? Right. That was the aha, right? And saying, like, well, there's gotta be something about this. And that really started the quest of, okay, if social is a black box, and that's how I view it today, right? And I could talk about why there's a massive new meta functionality coming out that every organization, I hope in 18 months is gonna be the biggest thing people talk about. But if we're if it's a black box, but we're continuing to invest into it, how do we unlock that black box? Right. And that became just quest that we had uh with our team, and you know, that's what we've been working on.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Now, there are, I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a moment. Excellent. Because there are uh a handful of folks out there right now in the industry across the board who are really preaching a message of don't build your house on rented land.

unknown 21:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Sure. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Build your house on the on land that you own.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

100% because

SPEAKER_01 22:00

social can be so fickle and you can lose your page and you can if you are investing all this time and resource on Facebook that is rented land. Right? So what's the balance look like for you there?

The Facebook Birthday Fundraiser Breakthrough

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Excellent. Yes. So Facebook is rented land. It is your community. Right? So it's one to many. You have no idea who your Facebook followers are. Right. It's a black box. It's a black box of likes, hearts, whatever. Who cares? I don't care. I don't care. I I'm with them. I don't care. It's however when you can convert someone into a direct passion subscriber, you own it. It's your land. Ha ha. It's yours. So right, take it to the man. You're absolutely right. Turn off social media. Don't do it. Don't do it. Right? If you're gonna it's like again having a website without email, you're right. Who cares? I mean I can't I can't get anything from this. Right. So this is the opportunity Megan, right? And Meta, the big awakening that's happening is Meta is coming to compete head to head with text messenger. As such, they're unlocking the value of a page so that any of your followers that interact whatsoever with any of your content or ads that you can now send a DM to in channel. And any follower will be given the opportunity to subscribe to be a DM. Why? Because they want you to use DMs versus text messages. We can use this as an industry to be able to start to finally unlock the black box of social media where eight months ago most organizations I would say the juice isn't worth the squeeze to invest in the DMs because you don't have enough engagement and you don't have enough revenue from the channel. Now if you have a hundred followers or a hundred thousand right it's just the opportunity cost of why do this without getting the value from it. Why do it from the rented land owned? Make it owned stop renting.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

So I'm 100% with them that's so interesting. And you're right that is going to be a game changer.

Rented Land Versus Owned Subscribers

SPEAKER_00 24:01

I think so yeah I mean it's I mean I I mean it's just again it's all about numbers right at the end of the day. So I love MR benchmarks the agency I DC uh I love their annual report and it's just a lot of truth in those numbers. So right what's the cost of acquisition to different channels but if we can keep people in social in Facebook and start to grow our follower size and very easily see the conversion of 10 followers increase we had four people subscribe show me we can get better than that. And now we can engage them in the hyper channel and like let's assume that the world's smartest engineers on the planet are building the most powerful engagement algorithms on the planet. Are we gonna lean into it or fight it? I don't want to lean into it. So man, what an opportunity for organizations to to start to to capitalize on this so good. And you can also ask them for their phone number or email then put them into whatever channel that they want. Right there's no there's no like people I talk to people like listen I don't have the answer there's no silver bullet there's no magic right there's no magic wand for this. Sure. Here's the thought that most markers I think would agree with meet people on their preferred channel.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yes. That's it. Yeah that's great. And it's interesting I am glad that we're talking about this now because I do think nonprofits can tend to be a little slow to adopt technology features.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Right? I'm just still talking to folks who are considering maybe dipping their toe into text messaging right when I'm like yes but but internet retail and and political has been doing this successfully for a while now. Right. And so hopefully this gives folks a chance to wrap their head around what's coming and create a strategy so they're ready to hit the ground running when it does.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah there's some free tools they can turn on in meta um it's rolling out gradually so we have beta access and some of our partners have it uh but there's some free tools again turn off social if you don't have it on it's like website without email and then you can you know once you start learning that then there's obviously solutions like good united that can take to the next level. But it's I think it's really exciting days.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

That's great. So as we're almost out of time but tell me a little bit or tell the audience a little bit more about Good United itself and the the tool that you guys have there and how folks can connect with you to learn more.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yeah so cycling back up people shifted to social but we view social as a black box. The way to unlock the black box is direct messaging you know what email does to unlock the value of your website is what direct message does to unlock the value of social media. There's lots of different software tools out there in self-service we built a solution so we work with each organization to co-create an annual plan to find the outcomes and we will actually build the direct messaging campaigns and content do all the data aggregation and give you the answer to the test. So we view ourselves as a partner that we can 10x 100x existing values today but what we're not going to do is just throw software over the fence and good luck. Have fun here's more work to do nonprofits don't need more hats to wear they need less and so we view ourselves as you know the answer for social media that works really well with agencies uh works well with social media people right like it's just it's a it's a way to to unlock the value that that we've all been building for so long and man it'd be so great organizations just see this rush of new supporters donors dollars and data.

Good United’s Approach And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 27:28

So good um okay as we wrap up our time together I here on the podcast we have a closing question for every episode and this year we're looking at kind of the year of learning for 2026. So I'd love to know what should your recommend what is your recommendation for our book list to this year. What needs to go on our to be read pile what's a book that has really impacted you could be personal could be professional entirely up to you but that you would recommend for people to check out sure since people listen is probably think what's with this guy I'll just keep leaning into it I like source documents I like source thinking uh I would recommend the Art of War by Sun Tzu.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

So uh I had the opportunity to go to grad school to get an MBA after the military and I've been in the for-profit nonprofit world for I think 12 13 years now I've yet to see any business strategy methodology that's not grounded in basic military tactics. So if you take a look at Sun Tzu it's bolded it is the basis for business strategy, military strategy. It can teach you a lot about life and a lot about how people and organizations and you're going right to the source. So I think it's one of the most important books that a lot of people don't know about or don't read. And if you start there uh you're not gonna be wrong.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah. Interesting. Ugh well Nick I appreciate the conversation I have read the Art of War and that is but it's been a long time so I may have to revisit it. Yeah to revisit it.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

You'll love it I say the quotes at least like four times a day. I have like two that I say and repeat so you're love it.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Fantastic well again I really appreciate the conversation Nick I I really appreciate your perspective of here's a problem I'm going to solve it. Oh that made me learn a new problem so I'm gonna go ahead and solve that one too.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Right.

Book Pick And Closing

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Well thank you so much for the opportunity and all that you do for nonprofits uh uh we're really appreciative yeah it's my pleasure thanks for joining me appreciate having you here uh and hopefully folks will go check out good united give us that website one more time uh goodunited io perfect all right guys this has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio podcast I'm your host Megan Spear and we'll see you next time