Missions to Movements
This isn't just another nonprofit podcast - it's your weekly invitation to think bigger, take bold risks, and create lasting change in an ever-evolving social impact landscape. Meet Dana Snyder, your guide through the evolving landscape of nonprofit innovation. She's on a mission to help change-makers like you push the boundaries of what's possible in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Each week, Missions to Movements serves as your personal mastermind session, delivering actionable insights and bold strategies that challenge traditional nonprofit thinking. Dive into revolutionary approaches to digital fundraising, discover how to build magnetic monthly giving programs that create lasting donor relationships, and learn to amplify your voice as a thought leader in the social good space. Whether you're reimagining your organization's impact or forging game-changing partnerships, you'll find the ideas, insights, and inspiration to take your mission further than you've ever imagined. Ready to turn your mission into a movement?
Missions to Movements
How the Canada Post Strike Inspired Hope Centre Ministries to Rethink Direct Mail Delivery
The Canada Post strike began on November 15th, and Shellie Power, the Executive Director of Hope Centre Ministries, is here to shine a light on the fascinating creative strategies she’s crafted to maintain crucial donor communications. (Hint: it’s pretty heartwarming!)
We talk about the strike's ripple effect that has been felt across sectors and how it’s challenging nonprofits to find innovative ways to keep fundraising efforts afloat.
Shellie turned these postal delays into a chance for personal connection with donors. By hand-delivering not just mail, but also cookies, they transformed a setback into a joyful engagement opportunity.
We dig into the logistics of their approach and how it led to increased donations and stronger relationships. This episode is a testament to the resilience and innovation that nonprofits bring to bear during crises, fostering community and connection even amidst adversity.
Resources & Links
Connect with Shellie on the Hope Centre Ministries website, on LinkedIn, or via email at shellie@hopecentreministries.org.
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Let's Connect!
We didn't really change our thinking too much on November 15. But as you started receiving more information from the union around Canada Post and from Canada Post themselves, you realized wait a minute, this is way bigger than what is going to be over in a week or two. So my first gut response is oh no, we're spending all this money on print and we're not going to even recoup our cost, and so not only could this affect the donations, but with the additional expense, it just makes it a bigger loss. So we started, honestly, just a discussion on how are we going to cut our losses. What are we going to say? Yes to print, no to print. We didn't want it just to hit late for everybody. So that's where we landed was just in that spot of okay, we don't like our options right now.
Speaker 2:I'm Dana Snyder, your host of the Missions to Movements podcast, and my path to philanthropy has been anything but traditional. This show is your weekly mastermind, designed to give you the ideas, insights and support you need to push the boundaries of what's been done before in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Whether you're looking to build a magnetic monthly giving program, elevate your personal brand or create partnerships that amplify your impact, this space is for you. I'll bring you solo episodes and conversations with industry leaders offering actionable strategies and fresh perspectives that will move you and your mission forward. Let's turn your mission into a movement. Hi, friends, Today on Missions to Movements, we're going to be talking about something extremely relevant that is happening right now.
Speaker 2:If you're listening to this podcast, live in December of 2024. And that is about there is a big Canada post-strike, but there's an organization that I met through a LinkedIn post of a friend of mine that is taking a very creative approach to how their donors are receiving direct mail door-to-door. So today with us, Shelly Power. She's Executive Director of Hope Center Ministries. Thank you, Shelly, so much for being here. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Dana.
Speaker 1:This is a treat Of course, of course. Okay, so just for starters, thank you so much for having me, Dana. This is a treat Of course, of course.
Speaker 2:Okay. So just for starters, can you share a little bit about your background I know you've been with the organization for quite some time and then also about the mission of what you do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I have a background in special education and I joined the team at Hope Center Ministries in 2008. We are a very small nonprofit organization in Winnipeg, manitoba, and we provide spiritual care and belonging for individuals with disabilities. So primarily our clientele or our members are adults living with disabilities and we try to facilitate connection with community, with each other, with their faith and with the bigger picture, with purpose and meaning, and my passion definitely is on inclusion.
Speaker 2:I love that Very important this time of the year as well, during the holidays, which you are creating through what you didn't expect to be doing.
Speaker 1:That's very true.
Speaker 2:I want to bring everybody into kind of the state of what's happening. So for many US listeners, or even those listening outside of the country, you might not be aware that on November 15th about 55,000 Canada Post workers went on strike. So I did some research because I wanted to be thoughtful about the massive impact of how this actually creates this ripple effect into lots of different things when we think about in the US. If you can just imagine not receiving the postal service right now during the holidays, it impacts lots of things with nonprofits and outside. So about 10 million packages still need to be delivered. On December 2nd the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that the strike had cost small and medium-sized businesses $765 million. I'm assuming that's December 2nd, so we're probably over a million or a billion. Sorry at this point.
Speaker 2:On November 29th the Canada Post asked the mail services of all other countries to stop accepting or sending mail to Canada. That's huge. The Service Canada announced it would delay the distribution of 85,000 passports and at this point we are a month in right. As we're recording this, it's December 16th, so when this comes out in a couple of days it's over a month. Something else that I was reading that I don't really think about is your version of like social security checks. So a lot of people have direct deposits set up, but some don't, and so some literally aren't receiving the funds that they rely on every month. So big issue of what's happening, and in the nonprofit sector, I've seen article and article about what's happening with organizations and their giving being down year over year because of not having this direct mail ask. So I'd love to hear from you, like on a typical year when there is not a postal strike, what does a direct mail year end strategy look like for your team?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so year end is also Christmas and happy new year time and connecting with donors, and we try to plan that out in such a way. So we definitely have a letter pack that is to be delivered and that has, you know, a standard appeal and a year-end appeal. We also have a gift that we mail out. It gets used a little bit like a lift note or a lift of response, but it is a calendar that our members the individuals with disabilities have made for all of our donors. So that goes to print and gets put in mail queue as well, as we have another segment of just all of the other agencies and all of the well wishes. We kind of all put that together so we start planning. I think our stuff was ready for print by November 12th.
Speaker 1:It was sent to printer and you know you definitely try to hit some strategic dates about when the appeal is going to hit the mailbox and then when the calendar is going to come in, and all in hopes of lifting response for a year-end that is strong. About 30% of our private donations we count on for our year-end appeal.
Speaker 1:So also typically a Christmas appeal costs us more than the other ones because we put a little bit more in there. We might do color where we would have done black and white. We might include a Christmas card where it would have just been a letter. Again, it's the time of year and leading into also just really wanting to wish our donors the Merry Christmas. So it's a more expensive appeal than a Q1 or Q2, but usually we can count on that.
Speaker 2:How many do you normally send out?
Speaker 1:So we are a very small organization. We have a direct mail list of about 800. So it's a very small donor list. We have about 480 of those are pretty local to us. The rest are across Canada and the US.
Speaker 2:Okay, got it, so 480. There's a reason why I'm asking this number and I think you know why I'm going to ask you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so 30% usually comes in from individual donations this time of the year, from direct mail and thanks to a wonderful mutual friend of ours, mike Dirksen. He's the CEO of Build Good. I saw the twist that your team took on when this strike happened. So take me back. It's November 15th. What are you thinking?
Speaker 1:I'm thinking honestly on November 15, that it's going to be a hiccup at that point, that it's going to be a couple of days of threatening of strike and then we're going to be back to normal. So we didn't really change our thinking too much on November 15. But as you started receiving more information from the union around Canada Post and from Canada Post themselves, you realized wait a minute, this is way bigger than what is going to be over in a week or two. So my first gut response is oh no, we're spending all this money on print and we're not going to even recoup our cost, and so not only could this affect the donations, but with the additional expense, it just makes it a bigger loss. So we started, honestly, just a discussion on how are we going to cut our losses. What are we going to say? Yes to print, no to print?
Speaker 1:We had an immediate conversation with our printer to see what was up with them and what the cues look like and asked them to just hit pause for us and give us a couple of days and we'd get back to them. And honestly, it was just a lot of deliberating back and forth like is this worth it? Do we print everything as is and let it sit in queue and the donors just receive it late? Do we take that chance? Do we not print? Because there were other organizations who were just saying, no, we're going to cancel our year end and neither one of those felt like the acceptable response to us. We had already put in all of this work on what our year end campaign was going to be. We didn't want it just to hit late for everybody. So that's where we landed was just in that spot of okay, we don't like our options right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what it turned into is this fabulous Okay. So, team, this is where I lead into the LinkedIn post that I saw they have been, and I want to walk through the strategy of this hand. Delivering the direct mail envelopes with it reminds me of like Carol Orr's coming to your door and just like here you go, and who doesn't want a nice like cookie treat and getting to actually meet an individual and with the organization, which doesn't happen probably a lot of times. How did you land on doing that? And then walk me through the actual logistics of doing this.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, welcome to chaos, because that's what it did, but it was creative chaos, it was exciting chaos all at the same time. So what you need to know is that our direct mail appeal already had been designed with two recipes that we were sharing from two different individuals who find care and belonging at Hope Center Ministries. So there's recipe cards inside and we knew that people were going to get it late. We wanted to still celebrate the story. So we thought well, what if we made a version of one of the recipes?
Speaker 2:What if we just did that? My goodness.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is getting even better. And so full disclosure we actually needed to use Costco cookie dough in order to pull this off, so it wasn't the exact recipe, but it was a chocolate chip cookie, because inside the mail pack was a chocolate chip cookie recipe. And of course we started by saying well, first we're going to call donors and let them know that we're sorry their mail is late, but we're very aware that this is a financial ask. They're aware that we're telling them our financial ask is late. Didn't feel right just making that phone call.
Speaker 1:Our whole appeal was on how year end was an opportunity for our donors to support the recipe of belonging, and so one of the things that we do around here is we do look at barriers. People with individuals face barriers all the time and we love trying to skirt around barriers, and so we decided to just hit pause on all of the logistical thing and say let's go around these barriers and can we just bring it to the donors, the ones who are getting the calendar. What if we just put it all together as a packet and instead of calling it our Christmas appeal, which we do in-house, our Christmas mailing, our holiday mail, is being delayed, but we don't want belonging to be delayed.
Speaker 1:And so that kind of became the thing. Belonging should never be delayed. Let's do whatever we can to ensure that belonging won't be delayed. Whatever we can to ensure that belonging won't be delayed.
Speaker 2:Oh, shelly, it's so good, it's just so beautiful, like in the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Well, and so then it was just about identifying the pieces, because it was can we pull a list of Winnipeg only? Yes, we can, we can do that from our CRM. We did call that list a little bit because honestly, it doesn't sound like a lot to make 480 deliveries, but when you start, that does sound like a lot, actually, when you start mapping it out, you just realize this is insane and I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, this was a gift of being small. There are a lot of times where we feel like the smaller have-nots in some of the networks that we belong to, but this was definitely a benefit to being just small and in-house and homegrown really. So I first approached our staff team because this was going to hijack all other work for a week, maybe even more. They were all so excited.
Speaker 2:It gets me excited. I wish I could be up there delivering cookies for you.
Speaker 1:They, honestly, every single one of them, went yeah, we're in, that'll be fun, let's do it. And I have one staff who loves to bake, and so she committed to 14 hours of cookie baking.
Speaker 2:Oh my, you know what's interesting this Saturday my friend and I bake Christmas cookies and we go and we deliver them to friends and neighbors and I want to say we do a batch of probably around 200.
Speaker 1:720 cookies. 720 cookies, 720 cookies.
Speaker 2:I hope she had her Christmas jams on. She recruited some friends. It takes us probably about four hours, so yeah, that is a beast of an effort.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So she was baking for an entire long day. The next day we had staff around tables and we donned gloves and hairnets and we had to package them for delivery. So we just decided let's just embrace the silliness of it, let's take some time, let's laugh together, let's do this joyfully and just see that. I mean, when else do you just sit around a staff table for hours smelling chocolate chip cookies together and laughing about how this next step could go and how big is the team?
Speaker 2:for context, so we had eight people.
Speaker 1:Eight people. We had eight people, one baker. And then, yeah, we had eight people, eight people, one baker. And then, yeah, we had eight people. One of our team is very techie and he was so excited to lean into the technical side, so he was all about there's got to be an app for this and An app for the deliveries.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so he wanted to upload everything and be able to come up with driver routes and optimization, and in the end we discovered those things are very, very expensive. So we went with a free trial, which had its limitations, but it was kind of good enough. I put out a call for volunteers, so our board, our staff, was signing up in teams of two. Our board members each took a route and then we were really blessed. We had someone who is a big champion of Hope Center Ministries, recently retired. His wife had heard we were doing this and he called and he says you know what this just sounds like. This would be the best week of my life. Could I please just do as many as you need? So honestly, he did probably 200 deliveries and the rest of us did the rest.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, yes, that's incredible.
Speaker 1:It was incredible. So, and everybody that we talked to in-house, like even our volunteers and board, they were just excited to be doing something and not to be doing nothing. And I think that was a really big takeaway is just nobody had expectations that this was going to 100% recoup a year-end loss. Nobody had expectations that this was going to be easy. We all knew that, yeah, there's some logistics here that I mean, and it's so dynamic. You have to be problem solving in the moment. So I love that everybody just showed up with that perspective and were willing to jump in to that. And it took us five days five days to deliver. And well, I have so many favorite moments from this. But when I went out with my coworker, I chose to ring doorbells. I mean, there are so many of our donors that I kind of know their names from the list, but I would not be able to pick them out of a crowd. I haven't seen them. Some of them I don't know how they got on our list.
Speaker 2:And so I thought.
Speaker 1:You know what? I am going to ring the doorbell, I'm going to introduce myself and I'm just going to say, hey, you know what? Canada Post was unable to deliver our Christmas mailing.
Speaker 2:So everyone must be like aware, right, they're not receiving mail clearly, right, they are Okay. So Canada as a culture is very aware that this is happening. So, yeah, yes, Canada as a culture is very aware that this is happening.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yes, okay, you see it everywhere. There's picketers in every city and it's causing a lot of frustration, so they right away identify with you and had so many wonderful at-the-door conversations, locked myself in the backyard of a donor's house, had a really good laugh with them, couldn't get out the gate. I mean, in the end I just said, hey, this is about making memories of the Cope Center Ministries. I'm so glad that you're on our list and I had the opportunity to share this laugh with you today. We were not knowing how the donors would respond. Like I at home don't really answer my door. We have ring cameras and if we don't really answer my door.
Speaker 1:We have ring cameras and if we don't know the person maybe we just won't open that door. But it was so well received and the smiles, the conversations, the thank yous and in fact I was with my husband in the mall on a Saturday and I'm just walking and someone across said hey, I got my cookies today. Now, winnipeg is not giant, so this can happen. It took me a minute and my husband's like who is that?
Speaker 1:And I said I don't really know, but I'm going to pretend that I do in this moment. And she had gotten them on Saturday Her mom is also on our list had gotten them on. Or she had gotten them on Friday. Her mom had gotten them on Saturday Her mom is also on our list had gotten them on. Or she had gotten them on Friday. Her mom had gotten them on the Tuesday or the Wednesday, she's like. I thought I wasn't going to make the cut. My mom called me and told me she got cookies from Hope Center Ministries and I kind of went where's mine and so that it happened a couple of days later.
Speaker 1:I love that she was anticipating it, I love that she kind of thought she wasn't going to get it and I love that we could surprise her and give it to her anyways.
Speaker 2:I love that. Now in my monthly giving Slack group, the Sustainers, there are more than 100 nonprofits that share tips and tools to scale their recurring giving programs and, as you might believe, the CRM and fundraising tool conversation comes up a lot, and one that always comes up in conversation is Bloomerang. So if you're in the market to be looking at a complete donor, volunteer and fundraising management solution, head to bloomerangco. They have a very intuitive platform that tracks engagement, provides powerful insights so that you can really focus on driving your mission forward. So join thousands of small and medium-sized nonprofits that are already thriving with Bloomerang and again you can visit bloomerangco to elevate your fundraising today. Drum roll, please. In case you missed the announcement no FOMO allowed here.
Speaker 2:The Virtual Monthly Giving Summit is back February 26th and 27th, bringing together nonprofit leaders, experts and change makers from around the world to help you create subscriptions for good. This past September, every speaker was compensated and that was made possible by our partners At the Growth Level Neon One I Donate, Give Butter and Donor Perfect, and our sustainers, Community Boost and Letter Labs. If you are in year-end research mode of some new tools, from CRMs to donation platforms, direct mail tools, please do me a favor, click the links in the show notes below to learn more about these amazing partners and if you are interested in presenting a case study at the next Monthly Giving Summit, please apply, so you can see all of these links down below in the show notes or head to monthlygivingsummitcom to learn more and apply to speak. Oh my gosh, what an incredible story, I mean, and so creative. Oh my gosh, what an incredible story, I mean, and so creative. And from the time that so obviously you went ahead with the printing, Did you change anything of the print? Or on the envelope?
Speaker 1:Nope, we changed the outer envelope of the ones that were going to be hand-delivered. So we just had added special delivery Belonging should never be delayed and so that they knew that this was coming to their door. If later, if they didn't open it immediately or wanted it to twig, that we had brought it to the door. In the copy of the letter we did make reference Again. We didn't know how long the strike was going to last.
Speaker 1:We didn't know if this was going to be a little glitch, and so I wrote it as and on top of everything, I am concerned with the ripples of this postal strike and what it might mean for belonging at Hope Center Ministries, and then added the line belonging should never be delayed, to the copy inside as well. But everything else we kept exactly as is, because we didn't really have the luxury of time to completely redesign.
Speaker 2:This is all very quick. What week did this all happen? Did the deliveries happen?
Speaker 1:Not last week, but the week before we were finished.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was like a two-week turnaround pretty much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it had been two weeks on strike, and then I think week three was our delivery week.
Speaker 2:I love how it was just all hands on deck. It kind of was yeah, and we're going to do this and these stories, and I'm sure that just created in a time of the year where I know it's there's so much going on, lots of busyness, right, it brought probably the team and the culture of the organization together, right? Oh?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah, we had a lot of fun, just as team building, collaboration, problem solving all the things you pay for at a good team huddle kind of day. Yeah, it was figuring it out, working together. Who can quick organize the spreadsheet? Who can package these up and keep everything in the right order?
Speaker 2:It was wonderful to work together on that. I love it and, like you just said, somebody is a great baker, great, you run and handle that.
Speaker 2:Hey, I love technology, let me figure this out. Great, letting people also have their moment to shine as the experts that they are in their craft, outside of just their normal job description, I think also just brings a light to people, which I think is the other part of this story. And I don't know if it's too early to ask have you seen any results yet, specifically from the 480 that went out?
Speaker 1:Yes. So not all the results have been financial. So, like I said, there's so many wonderful conversations, so we also, right after I finished my delivery, we started our email campaign and the first one was just to our whole list, basically acknowledging that some people were getting this to their door and the people who lived out of province were so sorry. I wish I could bring you cookies, kind of thing that night, and this is atypical for us, but my inbox was filled with responses to that email. Got my cookies. Thank you so much. What a special treat.
Speaker 1:Noticed it in my mailbox. I can't remember a mailing that I've actually gotten responses to. From the email follow-up that goes to it. Nobody says oh yeah, got my letter today, shanna, thank you so much for sending it to me. So there's that I was contacted by someone.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of elderly people on our list as well. Checks are their only way of giving. They aren't going to be the demographic that switches over to online giving. Many are, but there's a certain number that won't and got some emails from them, got some phone calls from them, and one lady and this really touched me deeply she says I really appreciate that what you guys do for your members. You do for across all sectors. For your members, you do for across all sectors. And I hadn't actually thought about the missional connection where it's just about going around barriers. So there was that. So our open rates on our emails are way higher, and just the friendly response and the banter and then the donor communication. Financially we are at about 47 percent of where we had hoped to be at a typical year end, but you know what that's going to cover the costs of the mailings, so we also won't be looking at that as a loss.
Speaker 2:There you go. Yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:And I do think we do have a large number sitting in queue and so that will go out as well. So I'm hoping that we'll end this year at about 55%, which is more than half. So we didn't completely tank year end and we've made lots of memories. And so for the community aspect inviting donors into our community there's that win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wonder sometimes if it's maybe not right now, it's going to be soon, and to see the reflection of that happening and in the coming weeks, and maybe a surprise, is there going to be specific follow up that is segmented just to those 480 people on email, that they get something separate?
Speaker 1:Yes, so we've already done that. So we are sending out our appeal digitally and we have segmented to our segment is cookies delivered and no cookies for you?
Speaker 2:Have to have some internal chuckle in your naming conventions.
Speaker 1:You kind of do because, like you have to kind of keep it straight. But yes, so all of the ones who have received cookies have already gotten. They got the initial we were at your door and then we're sending them the recipes and a digital version of the appeal, and then we've tweaked the other messaging to be like oh man, I really wish we could have gotten to your door. This is the closest we can get.
Speaker 2:Oh, I have an idea. I don't know if you've thought about this. Do you put videos in your emails Sometimes, yes. What if you pretend that it's like somebody opening, like you film it where somebody's opening a door and like delivering, it's like we really wanted you to have this as close of an experience as possible and you can literally have like film saying like thank you so much for opening the door, like here's the recipe in the email below and I wonder if there's.
Speaker 2:This is like taking it to the next level. But I wonder if there's a company you taking it to the next level. But I wonder if there's a company you could partner with that does like I don't know, here in Atlanta there's like cookie delivery places, like crumbs, I don't know. I'm gonna make it up now, but if there's something like a partner that would do like an in-kind donation and be able to like deliver them, that would be really exciting.
Speaker 1:It's the difficulty becomes like how it's not in one city.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has to be somebody that has, like a, a national, or somebody who can ship nationally cookies. That definitely exists, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know, it might be really cool because everyone.
Speaker 2:This would be an amazing opportunity for a company that wants, like, understands what's happening in Canada right now with the post and wants to do something and just needs somebody to like be the person on the other end that sparks the idea. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe yeah, no, that would be a fascinating thing to look for. So if that person's listening, hey, give me a call.
Speaker 2:I know I want to literally be looking, listening. Hey, give me a call. I know I want to literally be looking up, like Canada, cookie delivery companies. Mrs Fields, do they deliver in? Or Sugar Wish there might be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have no idea, but you know what You're. Giving me an idea for some of the city centers where some key donors live. It might be easier to just pick and choose a couple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looks like Mrs Fields. This is my like super quick Google searching that Mrs Fields delivers to it obviously wouldn't be the recipe of the specific one that you had baked, but it would be close. Yeah, there's a couple of them on here. Regardless of the actual cookie delivery, I think a video showcasing that moment of a door being opened would give you that same effect of people replying to the email and just being like. This is so thoughtful and understanding of the situation we're in.
Speaker 1:It's so nice to like meet the faces of deliveries. We did a lot on socials, like our stories were constantly scrolling with just some of the hilarity the piles of cookies, our staff at doors.
Speaker 2:I love that. Yeah, yeah, I think you're doing a video or maybe even having some of the photos to showcase the experience of bringing people into the fold that maybe are outside of your local area but can still feel that like personalized touch through digital.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. One other thing that we are noticing is that almost all of the gifts that have come in are larger than their typical gifts that would have come in. So, even though we're only at the 47%, when I am checking in the CRM and just looking and I'll see like this donor, yes, did give last year, but we're at $25 more than they did. One gave twice as much, and so those amounts add up over time too.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're choosing to look at it all as a win.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it is. You should. That's an incredible team effort. It's completely pivoting and having a blast internally and creating really special moments. I think this is something that is going to continue to just come back to you anytime that you do ask. Moving forward, these donors in the local area are going to have a completely more personalized and deep impact with your organization moving forward. So thank you so much for coming on the show and being open to sharing this, as it's all kind of like evolving and happening on your end, and I am going to pray that the strike ends soon, just because it is as I said at the very beginning, there's a huge economic impact on what this is happening for individuals and businesses and families, and so thank you for doing what you do and I love that, like you're not going to let the barriers affect it and you're going to create the belonging Shelley. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Oh well, thank you so much, dana, and for cheering us on from where you're sitting. That means so much, of course. Of course you so much, dana, and for cheering us on from where you're sitting.
Speaker 2:That means so much, of course, of course, and I hope. Is there anything that you can tell to people that are listening? Is there ways that they can help you? Is there ways that they can help organizations in Canada? Anything you'd recommend?
Speaker 1:than how they can particularly help me. Right now. I think all of us, as nonprofits, are trying to lean into the online and the digital and reminding ourselves that we're an important part of the community as a whole, like what we have to offer, and so being present in these moments, I think whether it's in a well-executed plan or a chaotic locked in the back yard kind of way, I think being present wherever you are and in whatever you are doing is super important, and barriers, I think, are actually just permission to try something that you've never tried before, because what do you actually have to lose?
Speaker 2:So well said, so well said.
Speaker 1:So just I don't know. I would encourage anybody listening to if you're feeling stuck or you're feeling like there is a barrier to what you wished could have happened, what's something that you think won't work and you've always wanted to try and give yourself permission to give it a go. And numbers I mean. I'm often self-conscious about our small numbers, but these small numbers feel really big and so it was also another way to see our small numbers. So yeah, just different ways to look at what you're doing during these times and be present.
Speaker 2:So good, shelley, you're incredible. If there are people that want to reach out to you, contact you. What's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 1:Best way is through our website. You can contact us through hopecenterministriesorg. Just remember that the center is R-E, as is all of the Canadian centers. Canadian. Yes, I see all the emails that come through the website. My name is spelled S-H-E-L-L-I-E, so you can also contact me directly, shelly, at HopeCenterMinistriesorg. You can find me on LinkedIn, hope Centers on socials, so usually that's a good way too.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Thank you so much for being here, merry Christmas, and I can't wait to hear, like, the fast forward story of all of this in the months to come. So thank you so much again for being here. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review. Wherever you're listening, your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too, so you'll never miss an episode. And until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
