Redefining Nonprofit Marketing as Direct Mission Work

An organization can run the best mission in town and still get ignored simply because supporters are flooded with digital noise. The host sits down with Bradley Martin, VP of Sales and Marketing at Feathr, to get honest about what nonprofit marketing looks like when the average person is hit with thousands of impressions a day and organic reach keeps shrinking. If the word “marketing” still feels too salesy, this conversation reframes it in plain terms: fundraising, donor engagement, and staying present so people remember a cause when they are ready to act.

The episode digs into why traditional channels like email and direct mail aren’t dead, but face clear operational caps. The shift then moves to the real unlock: earning a donor’s share of mind through smarter cadence and segmentation instead of just increasing volume. Bradley breaks down the high ROI of running retargeting ads for anonymous website visitors who showed initial interest but never converted, navigating privacy parameters cleanly, and pairing digital ads with email workflows to boost response rates during critical seasonal campaigns.

Transcript

Sponsor Message From Feather

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If your nonprofit is trying to promote an event, grow donations, reach new supporters, or just stay top of mind, Feather Can Help. It's the marketing platform built for nonprofits and one we use here at Nonprofit Hub. Learn more at feather.co. That's featherf-e-a-t-h.co.

Welcome And Bradley’s Nonprofit Tech Path

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer, joined today by Bradley Martin, who's the VP of sales and marketing at Feather, which is a fantastic platform in the nonprofit space, one that we use here at Nonprofit Hubs. We'll give them a shout on that as well. Bradley, welcome in. Thanks for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Megan.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of your background in nonprofit that brought us to the conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah, actually, I uh so as you mentioned, I'm currently at Feather, which is a marketing platform for nonprofit organizations. But I found myself about 10 years ago kind of falling into the nonprofit tech space. Um I worked at Kimeful, which was a nonprofit CRM that then combined forces with Bloomerang, and found myself in a spot where um I've always been in the software space, but just love the idea of creating software and helping organizations find software that can actually help them make a bigger impact in the world. And so um I'm kind of an entrepreneurial kind of minded person, but again, kind of found myself in this uh technology for good kind of space that I just love being in. And through that, learned a whole bunch about how nonprofits operate and have had the good fortune of working with thousands of organizations. I'm oftentimes looking at kind of the big data picture of of organizations and trends. Yeah. So um, you know, have some kind of unique insights around all of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Well, those insights are definitely what

Reframing Marketing As Fundraising

SPEAKER_00 1:55

we're gonna dive into today. I think sometimes, so I think there's two unfortunate camps and one like, okay, good, I can get behind this camp when it comes to the word marketing in nonprofit, right? Because there is still a camp out there for whom marketing is some sort of dirty word. Yeah. We're like, oh we don't, we don't want to do that, it's too corporate, it's too salesy, we don't want to, we don't want to take on marketing. And then we also have a group that's like, nope, we embrace it, but we've been doing the same thing for years and we're just gonna keep chugging along, even though it's probably not doing the same result that we would have hoped for, but we're just kind of stuck in that path. And then there are folks who are like, nope, I get it. The world is changing, marketing is changing. There's a thousand different options available to me at this point. Here's our strategy and here's what we're gonna do. So let's kind of break down and address each of those.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Right? Let's start there. Let's start first to the naysayers.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah. Okay. Wow, we'll get right into it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I don't I don't mess around, man. Let's just like let's hit the issue head on and tell these people why it's okay to to be in marketing and to have nonprofit marketing.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah. So I think I think the if you are doing fundraising, then you are marketing, right? Like I think that's the thing that um really the two things, and and this is where like, you know, sales is marketing, marketing is sales. And so every interaction your organization has with a potential donor or current donor is marketing, right? Um, I think it it's to some degree, I think the kind of dirty word of marketing, I feel like for many organizations is marketing equates to overhead, right? Like um, and so it equates to a different expense, it equates to this new level of expense, and it's kind of this black box of things of does it actually turn into revenue or does it actually turn into donations or funding? And I think the thing I would consider people to think about is if you don't want to use the word marketing, fine, let's just call it fundraising. You know, let's just call it like better engagement with our donors and our potential donors and our members and our event attendees and all those things. That to me is what ultimately feather is here to do is to help organizations do that. And I think what if I when I sit down and talk to organizations and I just remove the word sometimes marketing and say, well, let's talk about your fundraising, let's talk about your major event you have coming up, your member acquisition and retention, then we get to a place to where it's all the same thing. It's just that maybe you don't want to hire or or put on your line items that you're buying another uh a marketing platform because again, it feels like this whole another level of things you have to do. That makes sense to me. But ultimately, what what I want people to think about when we have this conversation is how do I create better engagement with my constituents so that we can do more good in the world.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, that's great. Okay, so now that we've cleared that up and we all understand that marketing is a good thing and it's fine, yeah, there is, I think, still this just super pervasive. That's the way we've always done it. Nonprofits are very slow to change sometimes. Talk to me a little bit about what you see that is not working anymore. Right? What are the old standbys that we're maybe stuck in versus hey, here's something to consider instead?

Email And Direct Mail Still Matter

SPEAKER_01 5:33

So I think it's a really great question. And I'm gonna take like an approach that might actually be a little surprising, and that is that for so I before I was in the nonprofit space, I worked in the email marketing space. So I worked for a company in Nashville that offered email marketing services. And for years and years and years, this is 10 years ago, it was like every year, it's like email is dead, you know, like uh this big headline for for some reason. Um so is direct mail.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

I've been saying direct mail is dead for 30 years now.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

And so all these things, all these things are dead, right? Here's the thing I would argue is that they're not dead, right? They aren't. They are really good touch points. Direct mail still works for many organizations really well and has a very good positive ROI. Yeah. Um, email works for many organizations really well and has a very positive ROI, right? I think in both of those cases, though, they're very good examples, is that unfortunately they both kind of have these caps for email specifically, like you have to build that database and you have to have the database. For direct mail, there's like a real expense cap to sending direct mail. Like there you can only afford to hit so many households before you're gonna run out of, and you've got to be really selective with how how you do that. Um, but um, you know, one of the things that kind of makes people gasp sometimes, and I'll use my own life a little bit as I I it would be embarrassing for me to do it right now, but I could hold up a stack of unread mail off my desk right now and and and talk about all the stuff that's gonna just go into the trash and me not look at it. But then also, like in my inbox, my personal inbox, not my work inbox, but my personal inbox has sixty-seven thousand unread emails, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Which is sorry, sixty-seven thousand.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Sixty-seven thousand.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

I as somebody who cannot stand to have any little red flag notifications, yeah, that like makes my heart jump for you.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

I I know it well, you know, and I understand this. And so, you know, on my home screen of my phone, what there's uh one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, there's at least fifteen red dots with numbers on them. You know, like I'm I'm notoriously bad at but I think what it speaks to is for a long time in my life, I was a zero inbox person uh across all three of my things. But but one of the challenges is I I did I did a talk on this just a couple weeks ago, and I actually went into my inbox and I looked at how many times Target emailed me in one day, and it was four times. I got four emails from Target in one day. In one day, I got like three from Amazon, you know. Um, and so it's like the amount of noise in our inbox is really, really hard. And I think for most organizations, the thing that I hear that's the completely opposite. I support an organization here in Nashville called Both Hands, and they're fantastic. But I um I think I looked last year, they only sent me 24 emails, and I'm getting four a day from Target. They sent me 24. And so like so, like trying to cut through the noise is harder than ever. And I think um, and it, you know, you can apply some of this to organic social as well. There's so many pages I follow on my uh on my Facebook feed or Instagram feed that I never ever see their posts. And it's not because I'm not interested in it, it's just that the algorithm isn't serving organic posts, especially from business pages, like it used to. Unless and it's only really probably serving them to your top 10% of your most engaged users, the people who like every post you share. Outside of that, individuals have kind of trained the algorithm that they're more interested in the funny video or their their you know, sister's baby photos or whatever the thing might be. And so I I think the thing is is that we there's always been a conversation of share of wallet. I think what we have to get to is that to get the share of wallet, we have to get to the share of mind. Um and to get in the share of mind, you have to stay in front of people, and that is becoming increasingly difficult for most organizations. It's a a real challenge.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah. I think the latest numbers that I've seen when you talk about cutting through that noise was back in the 70s, we on average a person took in about 500 ads in a day. And that's billboards, print, direct mail, whatever, you know, signs in a window. We were taking in about 500. Um and the current count for an average American at this point in time is between nine and ten thousand a day.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah.

unknown 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Right. So to the to your point, that noise is like the volume of the noise, if you will, is increasing at a rate that like we have to keep up with if we want to even have any share of being noticed in it.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, and I and it's and it's a very overwhelming thing to think about, right? Because because I'm sure there might be someone listening to this going right now, going, Megan, that's great, right? Like, thanks for letting me know how hard it is. Like right. It's really hard out there, guys. Yeah, but but like, what do I do? Like, how do I say because it's and so yeah, so that's kind of what we can talk about a little bit more because I think there's some there's some really great strategies that work really, really well that organizations can start to think about implementing that they can do on their own. They don't necessarily have to have a feather tool to do, but like, um, but they can really start to move the needle in helping you stay in front of the people who are already showing the most interest in your organization.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about that because I I would assume that the majority of people who are listening are like, okay, well, I don't want to be emailing people four times a day. I don't want to be part of the target Amazon noise. Yeah. Right. If I get one more email from Panera, personally, that's the one that, like, oh my gosh, guys, I'm not gonna do this. But also, obviously, like two emails a month is not gonna cut through. So when we talk about that strategy, give me your your thoughts and opinions on that in terms of what a good

Share Of Mind In A Noisy World

SPEAKER_00 11:58

cadence looks like. Because we don't want to be annoying, right? I don't want anyone being like, oh, another email from nonprofit up, right? But also that's who what we're up against. So, what should that balance look like? And what is what are those strategies to figure that part out?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

So I think a couple things. So I think it's a really great question. One is I think um, you know, we we've had this idea for a long time that there's like this donor journey that's linear. And I think the thing I want people to understand is that like the donor journey isn't really linear, right? Like people, we want to kind of make it into

Known Versus Unknown Supporters

SPEAKER_01 12:34

like they're aware of us, they've given us their first donation, now they're a recurring giver, now they're a lifetime giver, you know, they've given us some of our inheritance, and but you know, we we kind of leave room that there's going to be some churn and things like that. What I would encourage people to think about is like there's people move up and down this spectrum all the time, right? Like you have someone who may have shown some very early interest that could be an exceptional recurring giver and things like that, but maybe they showed interest and maybe they were busy. You know, they saw you at a local event and they were like, man, that organization's great. And they came to your website and they looked around a little bit and they're like, I've got to come back, I've got to take a little bit of a mental note that I need to come back and explore this a little bit. This might be an organization I really want to support. And then the next day they get 19,000 impressions from um, you know, uh 2,000 other organizations or 2,000 other, you know, uh businesses and organizations, and they just get distracted. Right. And I think so, so I think part of what I would encourage people to think about is you've got two different databases or two different audiences that I think that organizations need to spend a little bit more time thinking about. You have your known audience. Those are the people who've given you their contact information. You have your you have uh the most basic way we think about that's email address, right? We have their email address, but in some cases it's phone number, address, you know, things like that. But we have our known audience of people who have either given to us in the past or they have um they volunteered for us, you know, they've come to an event, they've done something like this. This is our really engaged audience. Most organizations think marketing starts here. Like that's where they they think about marketing starting. And that's where the 90% of their marketing effort goes. Like they send emails, they get them to subscribe to their sorry, their their social media profiles. Yeah. This is who they send their direct mail to. This is, you know, this is the group, right? And and we're trying to build that group over time, but this is where we spend the majority of our time. What I would argue is if you look at most organizations, and it's the way that I do this a little bit, and sorry, this is kind of a long explanation, but if we look at web traffic, and so there's web traffic of known audience versus web traffic of what we would call unknown audience. And typically the unknown audience for most organizations is about 50% larger than their known audience in terms of web traffic visit per month. So organizations who have large amounts of web traffic, what or or even a decent amount of web traffic, a couple of few a few thousand visitors a month. If you look at their web traffic, the people that they know in their database, let's say that's 100 people, then for every hundred, they have about 150 people that come that they don't know, that's never been a subscriber and never, never volunteered, never anything. We do a terrible job in this space of staying in front of those people.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

But those people are the highest ROI conversion folks to stay in front of. It's the people who have shown interest, who have come to check out your organization. I like to always use the uh the Humane Society kind of example. That is like they're the people who've come and looked at the adoption resources, but haven't actually

Retargeting Ads That Drive Donations

SPEAKER_01 16:05

taken the action to fill out a request form or whatever, right? Yeah. Where we are today is that with retargeting ads, and you can do these obviously through Feather, but you could do these through Google, you can do these through Facebook, through Instagram, TikTok, all these different places, right? As you put a little code on your website that says, hey, we know Megan came to our site. They don't tell you who Megan is, like, because Megan hasn't given you their information yet. But but they know that Megan is attached to this device or this account or whatever, and they can serve ads to Megan. And if you're really good at it, you can say, Well, I just want to serve people the dog ads because they showed they came to the dog adoption page, or I want to serve people the cat ads because they came to the cat adoption page. But like, that's even a little bit more advanced than what you really need to be. The most basic thing is did someone come to the donation page? If they have, let's stay in front of them. Let's serve them ads, let's remind them. Because if they haven't given yet, you can't email them. You can't send them direct mail piece. You, the only thing you can really do is serve some ads to them to try to stay in front of them. And this, what we see across our customer base, for every dollar spent in this area, we see a four dollars given back in donations. Um, I mean, I also know this from the for-profit space. It is the most cost-effective place that you can serve ads, is to that group. And so if there's anything people walk away from today, it's that you should be doing retargeting ads and you should be thinking about how to stay in front of that audience who's come to your site but have not yet taken action.

Sponsor Break From Feather

SPEAKER_00 17:54

You wear a lot of hats. Getting the word out about your mission shouldn't have to be the hardest one. That's why this episode is sponsored by Feather, a nonprofit marketing platform that helps organizations reach the right people, promote campaigns and events, and understand what's working. We use Feather here at Nonprofit Hub too, because staying visible and connected matters when you're trying to grow your impact. To see how Feather can help make your marketing simpler and your impact bigger, visit feather.co. That's feather, f e a t-h.co.

When Retargeting Feels Creepy

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Okay, so when we talk about some of that retargeting, right? Because again, because we're seeing so many messages throughout the course of the day, it is you gotta be where people are. And a lot of where they are is on those social channels. Yeah, right. And so it I think there's still some discussion to be had around like okay, obviously our phones are listening to us and we start, you know, and it and how those algorithms get picked up. What's your thought to the folks who are like, that's just creepy. I don't uh does where do we cross the line into like, oh, I know you came to my website, so now I'm gonna start serving you ads. What is there an argument to be made for like, yeah, maybe it's weird, but that's just where we are as a society. What's your what's kind of your thought there?

SPEAKER_01 19:30

I always joke around about like we're not quite at the iRobot, you know, walking the mall and it scans your eyes and it certain says, Hey Bradley, you know, yeah, we've got a great shirt for you at the gaff kind of thing. Um we're not quite there yet. Yeah. Um, but we're real close, right? Like we're like basically our devices are now our eyes, right? Like, and and so the amount of data on these devices about who we are and what we're interested in and things like that is is really insane. It it actually goes beyond my capability of to understand sometimes, and this is what I do all day, every day. Um but I think um so what I would say is that like I would change the perspective a little bit. And what I would do is that there are some things in marketing that are really creepy, and I think that there are some limits that you might not want to extend. But I think especially for when we talk about retargeting, the thing about that is that like I want to create an inviting, good experience. And my job as a fundraiser, as a marketer, as a communications person is to really guide people back to my site, right? And I and so I think that there's a real good opportunity in this to really think about like what should those ads say, and like that can be such we maybe we're not guilting people to come back, but maybe we're showing, hey, the impact that the organization's making in whatever community we serve, and we're inviting people to come back and participate in that, to be involved in that. Because ultimately for donors, the thing they get in return is the good feeling for knowing that they're supporting and they're getting to, they get the endorphins of knowing they're giving some money to something that's going to go do something good. So let's, you know, I think the the um the opportunity, even just in the early relationship where you don't even know who these people are yet, is to say, hey, we would love to invite you to be a part of this. We'd love to invite you to come back and finish what you started, right? Like, or or hey, and but like this can be a little bit more direct if you're like got an event coming up, two days left, three days left, four days left, or if you've got a limited number of seats, you can kind of get like, hey, uh almost sold out, kind of thing. Like you can create some FOMO.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

But so I think like I I would say I'm sure everyone on the Call has been on Amazon or they've been on Target or they've been somewhere and they've shown some interest in like a pair of boots or a pair of shoes, and those shoes follow them all around the internet. Yeah. And at some point you go, oh well, I'm glad. In some cases, you might be like, I wish those shoes would stop showing up, like, because um I really want them, but I shouldn't buy them. Um but then then the other scenario is like, oh, I forgot about that. Like, yeah, I I was going to grab those. And you go back and buy them because you actually really wanted them, but you just got busy, distracted. I've got four kids. Someone walked in and asked for my phone or you know, whatever. And like, and sometimes I I don't complete an action, and it's actually really helpful to remind people that, hey, you were interested in this, maybe you should come check it out again. You know, and so like that's kind of the the perspective I would take, especially with retargeting. There is like affinity targeting that gets a little bit weirder because affinity targeting is a little bit more, and we can we feather we can do some of this, but um, it's a little bit more of like, hey, you're interested in cats, so we're gonna, you know, serve you ads about adopting cats, and it's it's hit or miss actually on how well it works. It has to be really targeted and the interests the interests have to be really well defined.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Okay, so that's actually a really good transition.

How Feather Segments And Automates Outreach

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Let's talk about feather for a second.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Um shout out again, we use it here at Nonprofit Home. Talk to us a little bit about the platform itself. How's it work? How who's it a good fit for? How would folks learn more about it?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Yeah, so I think like a lot of what I've already talked about is what Feather does. So we work with organizations, we put um a little bit of tracking code on your um on your website, and we integrate with typically your fundraising tool or your CRM or both. And what we're able to do is really help you create really robust and detailed segmentation of both those known audiences and unknown audiences, which is kind of the unique thing. Because like in most CRMs, I can create some segmentation around my previous donors, my LiveBunt reports, my Cybunt reports, all those things. But for Feather, it's a little bit more of like, hey, let's talk about like your digital engagement and how are people interacting with your site. And then based on how they've interacted with your site and then probably their past giving history, what do we want to go say to them out in the world? So we have email tools, so you can combine email and ad campaigns where they're getting hit with both at the same time. And so it's kind of a there's a lot of data that shows that if you serve ads and send emails, you'll get a significantly higher response on your emails. And so, but but really kind of that's that's what we do. We try to help organizations better engage with their audience and really be the organization that helps like um you serve the right message in front of the right person at the right time. And that's everyone always says like that's good marketing. It's really hard to do, you know, like it's and it's really hard to do at scale. And so we do our best to try to make it easy and try to put it in a spot where organizations can come in and they can kind of set some of the stuff. It's not a total set it and forget it, but it is more of like having clear segmentation and saying, well, we're coming up on our Giving Tuesday uh, you know, campaign. We're going to who's all the people we gave to last year, let's serve some specific ads to them versus the people who we who didn't give last year, but we want to give this year or whatever. And so there's um, but I think from a fit standpoint, you know, we're we are typically working with organizations, organizations who especially have memberships, ticket sales, events, things like that we work really, really well for, or organizations who already have a pretty large uh digital footprint, but are looking for an opportunity to engage their audience better, that are still relying primarily on email or organic social or even some social ads. We can really get them out there on uh not just social advertising, but on uh websites like USA Today, the Weather Channel, in mobile app ads, stuff like that. So we we really are able to expand the footprint and place you in places where your potential or current donors are spending their time online.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

That's great. Uh, I love it. As a side note, and I don't normally make this call out, but we actually just launched a brand new online giving page with Feather. Oh great.org. Obviously, happy to have the support, but that brand new giving page is with Feather as well. Okay, Bradley, as we move to close here, because we're almost out of time.

Book Picks And Closing Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 26:36

2026 here on the podcast is the year of learning, is what we've dubbed it. So I'm curious, what's a book that you would recommend everyone put on their to read list?

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Oh, that's a great question. There's two that come to mind off the top of my mind, and one of them is very nonprofit focused, but one of them is just kind of more of a business-focused book. But there's a uh book called Findable and Fundable by Kevin Brown. Kevin is a great thought leader in the um from fundraising space. But um, it's a great book to read, and it's he's very deliberate about the title. You have to be findable before you can be fundable. And so um, a lot of the concepts of around like the challenge with marketing and the terminology and the overhead and all those things, he really dives deep into how to think about how to make your organization more findable. And when your organization is more findable, you'll ultimately be more fundable. And so that's a great book. The other one um is a little bit more like enterprise business-y, but it's just got some great concepts in it. It's called the Founder's Mentality. And it's the idea of like how do really successful organizations that are growing really fast, this is primarily in the for-profit space, but are growing really fast, how they maintain their growth. It's got some really great things about thinking about, you know, um, you know, how do you keep an insurgent mindset? How do you uh what is the thing that's unique to your organization? They call it spikiness, but like what is the thing that's really unique and how you hang on to that because we have this bad habit as humans of like wanting to smooth out our spikiness and like become something to everyone. And there's this idea of like stay true to yourself, stay spiky, do so, you know, stay into something that um people can really resonate with and that feels special. And so it's a it's a great book. Like I said, it's a little bit more enterprise business uh the way you read it, but it I think it's got some great concepts.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

So good. I like both of those recommendations. Bradley, thank you so much. I really I I think this has been a good conversation for everyone to understand where we are here in 2026 and the importance of adjusting your strategy accordingly. So thanks so much for sharing all that wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Yeah, it's my pleasure. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer, along with Bradley Martin, who's the VP of sales and marketing at Feather. Go ahead and check them out at feather.co. That's feather without an e at the end. So F-E-A-T-H-R.co. Again, this has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Podcast. We'll see you next time.