Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
7 Fundraising & Leadership Lessons Every Nonprofit Should Carry into 2026
In this special year-end recap episode, I’m revisiting seven of the most inspiring, quotable, “steal this idea” stories from 2025. You’ll hear the real numbers, tested strategies, and leadership insights you can carry straight into 2026.
Here’s who you’ll hear from:
- Courtney Johnson from Culinary Care, who generated $300,000 across 20 corporate events
- Chad Nelsen from Surfrider Foundation, who invested in recurring giving technology to reach 91% retention on auto-renew donors
- Liz Bohannon, a keynote speaker & author, who talks about “pluck ups” and how to reframe failure as courage-in-action
- Heather Sager, a speaking coach, who shares a powerful mindset shift to help you build confidence in public speaking
- Ashlyn Jones from Houston Food Bank, on growing their monthly giving program to 5,200 sustainers with human-centered storytelling
- Trovon C. Williams from NAACP, about why leading with solutions can create stronger donor empowerment
- Maddie Ward from End Overdose, about how they scaled from a single campus to 70+ cities nationwide
Resources & Links
Hear the full episodes with each of today’s featured guests:
How 20 Cook-Offs Raised $300k from Corporate Partnerships
How Surfrider Foundation’s CEO Amplifies Impact Through Thought Leadership
Celebrating Failures: A New Approach to “Pluck-Ups”
How to Craft a Signature Talk to Amplify Your Mission
How Houston Food Bank Grew 5,200 Monthly Donors - The Importance of a Sustainer Role
NAACP’s Bold Shift Toward Sustained Impact
From UCLA to 70+ Cities: End Overdose Sparked a College Campus Movement
LettrLabs is the proud presenter of Missions to Movements.
LettrLabs helps nonprofits build lasting donor relationships through real, handwritten mail that’s fully automated - turning moments of intent into meaningful connection. From thank-yous to impact updates, they help you cut through with mail donors actually open, remember, and trust.
Register now for the FREE Monthly Giving Summit on February 25-26th, the only virtual event where nonprofits unite to master monthly giving, attract committed believers, and fund the future with confidence.
The Mini Monthly Giving Mastermind: A high-touch Mini Mastermind + optional in-person retreat (May 6-8) for nonprofit leaders that have an existing monthly giving program and ready to take it to the next level with 1:1 and peer support. Apply now!
Let's Connect!
- Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show!
- My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to bu...
Happy New Year's Eve. I can't believe I'm saying that, but it is New Year's Eve 2025. Tomorrow we are sliding on in to 2026. And I wanted to welcome you to a special recap episode. Today I am doing a little highlight reel of seven conversations from this year. If you use Spotify or any other program that does like a rewind of highlights from the year, consider this, that. These are episodes, these are conversations that both you and I loved, not just because they were inspiring, but they were steal this idea, take notes in the car, send to your work bestie kind of good. Like just meaty, juicy, great information that I didn't want you to miss. So if you did miss these episodes throughout the year, I have pulled these like key moments from each one. And of course, you can listen to each of them in their totality. You can go back and listen to each episode, but little sneak peek. So you're gonna hear some of the most quotable moments on corporate partnerships that are really innovative, monthly giving, of course, that stabilizes your revenue and some ideas around that. Leadership that really empowers people, storytelling that moves donors from that's nice to I'm in, and some mindset shifts that I think should and will absolutely follow you into 2026. And my very quick New Year's Eve PSA before we jump in is today, literally today, December 31st, is the last day to snag$10 off the monthly Giving Summit VIP ticket. If you want access to all the recordings, if you want a private podcast of the recordings, that Early Bird VIP ticket is$39 today and it will go up to$49 tomorrow on January 1st. So if you've been meaning to grab it, do it right now, monthlygivingsummit.com. I promise a future you, aka tomorrow is you, will be very grateful. Do not miss the number one question I literally always get is will I have access to the recordings? So snag them now. And if you're ready, let's rewind the year together, starting all the way back from January. So on January 8th, this episode aired. It is a fun twist on corporate partnerships with Courtney Johnson from Culinary Care. And before this clip plays, I want you to, of course, listen closely, not just for the fundraising results, but for the thinking behind what she did. Courtney didn't set out to replicate just a traditional gala or sponsorship model. Instead, she built this truly aligned corporate partnership experience where she utilized her strengths, she invited companies into the mission in a really meaningful way, and turned team building into impact. So what started as an idea became 20 corporate cook-offs with$300,000 raised. And it is a masterclass in designing partnerships that don't feel transactional. Take a listen. So I want to share, there's a two things that I really want, actually three that I really want to talk about with you. You kind of have like all things that I want to cover and regarding really smart corporate partnerships, your own personal branding, and then talk about the line a little bit, your monthly giving program. So let's start just because there's a relevant, recent growth to it, and that's the corporate cook-off, which I know started in 2015 in Chicago, and then you just in 2024 launched it in Dallas, right? Yep. Okay, cool. Can you explain what is the corporate cook-off? And I know it's created also a substantial fundraiser model for you. Can you explain to the listeners what it is and how it works?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. We created this event in 2015. And just, you know, sort of to back up on it before I get into the weeds of like what it is and how it all works, is we really wanted to do something as a fundraiser that was going to connect people to our mission, and that also used my skill sets, which was in PR and marketing. Like that was it, that's all I had. But it was also just a two-year career, maybe like a five-year career in that before really diving into culinary care. So it wasn't, I didn't have this huge background in a lot of things. I had just been learning the PR and marketing. So I had that, and we really wanted to connect people in a deeper way to and like a fun, interactive way to drive awareness for our mission and something that would be engaging, but also was just a little bit standout and different. I do remember like in those very, very early days, we kind of pictured ourselves as, you know, if we were gonna send out gala invitations, we kind of pictured, you know, these corporate executives, or we weren't really sure how it worked, but we just kind of pictured, okay, if you're getting all these invitations, we just pictured all of them at the table. Let's kind of distinguish them. We've no American Cancer Society, like they've got the brand on us. We can't even try to compete with a hundred-plus-year-old organization. You know, we've got, you know, these different organizations that were envisioning or sending these galas. How do we stand out? How do we do something that isn't even considered like in that camp necessarily? Using my background, that was just where our thought process was. The cook-off was our first ever fundraiser at all. We were not doing individual giving campaigns, we just were doubling down on this one event experience. And the premise of it was really we work with local restaurants, so we invite chefs to be part of this experience. And we, you know, work with these chefs because they can make meals that appeal to our patients' appetites, which are tricky because loss of appetite is a really common treatment side effect. So we kind of wanted to bring to life the different challenges that our patients face. Maybe they're on a low sodium diet or a low fiber diet or high protein, high calorie. What does this look like on a day-to-day basis? Chefs know how to prep these meals. They know how to do this work. So we invite corporate partners to really kind of get their hands into our mission in a way that isn't necessarily, they don't prep the meals for our patients, but we're still able to educate them and teach them how to do some things. So it ends up being just like a really fun team building experience.
SPEAKER_03:So walk me through an example. Like I signed my corporation up. Is there a limit to how many people from their team can be there?
SPEAKER_04:We do anywhere from 10 to 40.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Let's say I've got 32. 32 people are walking in. What are we about to do?
SPEAKER_04:Really, the experience is set up where you're going to right now, we do it as our like match the chef challenge. So the chef will demonstrate a dish, and then you and your team will break you into different teams, and you need to bring that dish to life. And it just ends up being this really fun team building experience, and it has hands-on sort of elements to it. And we have a whole tasting panel. And I mean, in Chicago and even in Dallas, it continues to grow and get bigger. So in Chicago, they're all competing for what we call the Impact Cup. So it was actually a trophy sponsored by our partners at Impact Networking. And so we made this huge Stanley Cup. So it's this beautiful trophy that they get to put in their office. So we just keep adding layers to this experience that makes it really fun and engaging. And we also get feedback from our corporate partners every single year. One of the things that really sort of shifted the dynamics of this is we were hosting this event from 2015. You know, we continue to host it through today. And last year was our biggest year ever. It happens like throughout the year. We call it like corporate cook-off season. So it runs last year, it ran from July through October, and it we continue to expand from there.
SPEAKER_03:This next segment is from Chad Nelson. This was Chad Nelson talking about thought leadership and monthly giving at the Surfrider Foundation. The original episode aired on January 15th, so just a week after. This is one of those segments where I remember thinking every nonprofit leader needs to hear this. I wish they could all hear this. Chad Nelson is the CEO of Surfrider Foundation, and he breaks down why recurring giving has been an absolutely game-changing for their organization from retention rates to revenue, predictability to donor behavior. But he also really talks about his personal role as a CEO and personal branding and thought leadership. We go into his TED talk. So this is a short clip, but I would highly recommend go back to the January 15th episode with Chad Nelson.
SPEAKER_01:So, you know, we're this grassroots membership-based organization. So small dollar donors, members, and volunteers is like the machine that runs this organization. So we really do care. We have had, I would argue, mediocre sort of technology and strategy around building membership. And it's been growing and stagnating and you know, vacillating over time. And in the last like maybe 18 months or two years, we've really invested in better technology and strategy around recurring donors and monthly donors. And the results are staggering.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. I know you use fundraiser.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we use fundraiser tool. That's been game-changing for us. A one-time donor at Surfrider, first-time donor, has like a 38% uh response rate, right? It's a recurring rate. So there's a 38% chance they'll re-up. Our sort of average membership is about 51%, which is higher than industry standard, which is like in the mid 40s. So you know a tiny majority renews every year, right? So we're just over half. But there's so much churn in that, right? You know, you get 100 owners, we keep 51, we lose 49. That's a lot. Our rate with automatic renewal, monthly or annual, is 91%.
SPEAKER_03:Amazing.
SPEAKER_01:So it like doubles. And so it's night and day. Yeah. The other thing that's really interesting, and I think this is true for a lot of organizations, is when we survey people and say, hey, why didn't you re-up with Surfrider? It's not something we did or that were uneffective. It's I simply forgot. Yeah. I believe it all gets buried as they all do, and they see it and they oh, I'll get to that next week. I don't want to do it right now, and then it's gone.
SPEAKER_03:Gone. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Despite sending people the you're about to expire, you're almost expired, you're expired, you're expired last week, all that stuff that we all get. People are just can't be bothered. So if we have monthly or recurring donations, they stick with us because most people like and support what we're up to. And so yeah, it has been absolutely game changing for us. I think the other thing, and we're not there yet because it's still a very small percentage of our total number of donors. It's growing every month. I don't know, it's still less than 10% is that it smooths out your uh revenue curve. So 40 to 50 percent of our donations come in in October, November, and December. So it's this hockey stick that makes your revenue planning and modeling really challenging. And if you can if we had all those people monthly, it would be perfectly smooth in theory. So it actually makes your cash flow and you're just running your finances month to month significantly smoother and predictable.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, you mentioned Scott Harrison earlier. He was quoted saying something, it might have been in a podcast. Somebody said, would you prefer a$50,000 flat donation grant? And he said, No, I would prefer it as$50,000 across our recurring donors to go up. Because then that is, if you have that$50,000 for one year, then you're off for the next year. And then you're not doing that. You can't do anything about that. I would rather have that in smaller increments, where to your point, you have this very high retention rate, low churn rate. And over the course of years, I've been, I talk about this all the time. I've been a monthly donor for Dressember. They're an anti-human trafficking organization for four going on five years.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:And I have consistently given, never questioned, love getting the emails from them, never questioned stopping my gift because I know my$24 and some odd change, compounded by hundreds of other people, is able to do a whole lot more than if I gave$100 as a one-off gift. And to your point, I have a 20-month-old, my life is really busy. It is going to be hard to get my attention again. It just is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, it is. And you know, if we do something wrong or we take a stance on an issue that somebody doesn't like, they can go cancel it. But at least their number one reason won't be, I just didn't get around to it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, that's the worst thing that you want to hear. Ooh, this conversation coming up next with Liz Bohannan stopped me in my tracks, celebrating pluck-ups with Liz Bohannan. If you were there for the 2025 Monthly Giving Summit, Liz Bohannan was our keynote speaker and she blew everyone away. And in this clip, she's going to talk about instead of treating failure as something to hide or rush past, she introduces this idea of pluck-ups. It's these moments where courage showed up, even if the outcome didn't go as planned. So this little clip is about agency, storytelling, community, the stories we tell ourselves after something doesn't work can either isolate us or set us free to try again. So if you are leading people, if you are building things, if you are taking risks, this one, it's good. Take a listen.
SPEAKER_02:So obviously, we're working a little bit on a play on words here for what a pluck up is. You know, in case anybody's driving the minivan, proud minivan driver right here, I will refrain from spelling it out, what we are insinuating here. But the word pluck actually means spirited and determined courage. I think it's one of the best words in English language. It kind of fell out of fashion in like the 1930s, but I'm really on a mission to try to bring it back. So plucking up or a pluck up, this whole concept is a way of reframing our perceived failures and really coming back to this idea of like, actually, I believe that failure isn't held in like what happened in the story. It's the story we have about the story. And we actually have so much agency with how we engage, with what happens to us or the things that we participate in that don't go, the way that we thought that they were gonna go. And if we don't believe that we have agency over that story, we very quickly come up with one story. And oftentimes that story leads us to shame, it leads us to feeling incompetent, it can lead us to imposter syndrome, and most damagingly, it tends to lead us into isolation. And when I say isolation, I don't mean like you become an old cat lady who doesn't leave her house. I do just mean though that like when we experience shame, our way of protecting ourselves is kind of being like, no one can know. I need to clean this up, I need to move through this really quick, I need to pretend like it's not impacting me, or I just need this is the one that breaks my heart the most. That was too painful, it was too embarrassing, it was too stressful, it was too shameful. I just need to play it safer. That's how I'm gonna avoid these feelings in the future is I'm just gonna build a life where I only do the things I know I'll get yeses to, I know I can do. Like no one is afraid of doing something easy, right? Like whatever comes naturally or easy to you, and that's very different for each of us. And I don't make assumptions about what comes easy to each of us. But whatever comes easy to us, we have a tendency to kind of be like, not afraid of it, obviously. I'm confident that I can do that. I wake up every morning and I do that. And so we start to subtly build this life where we're like, if I don't ever want to feel those experiences of shame, embarrassment, failure, I need to just play it safer in the future. And of course, what we know happens is if every day your days lead to weeks and your weeks lead to months and your months lead to years, and we've built this life where our gifts are not activated, where we don't have purpose, where we're not making an impact. And that's like in the attempt to avoid a micro failure, a failure of a specific initiative, experience, project, outreach, whatever it is, we've now actually contributed to kind of a life of failure to activate, failure to try, like failure to fly. And so by kind of coining and branding pluck-ups, my hope is just to completely reframe the conversation that like pluck-ups, one, you have agency, not necessarily all the time about what happened to you, because sometimes stuff does happen to us that's out of our control. You may not even have agency of what happened to you, but you have complete agency over the story you tell yourself. So I have a podcast called Plucking Up, and literally the entire topic, the entire like premise of the show, and I won't invite people onto the show. I don't want you to come on and tell me about your highlights and tell me about your wins and tell me about the magical things that just seemed to happen and worked and then worked again and then got bigger. And like, that's great. Fine. You can talk about that on somebody else's podcast. And like, by all means, I'm rooting for you. Great. But this is the space. Like, I want to know the behind the scenes. Like, tell me about when it didn't work. Like, tell me about when you really went for it and you fell on your face. Like, tell me about when you went for the dream and you thought you had it, and then the rug got pulled out from underneath you. And then take us back to that moment. And then I want to be in that. Like, what did it feel like? What did it look like? What was that shame story you told yourself? And then obviously, you're here on the show and you're doing these things. You moved through it. Help us understand how. How long did you sit in that? Who did you call first? How did you reframe that story, or what did you learn from it? And the entire conversation is about that. And my hope is that we're just creating this library, this like bank of pluck-ups and from people who are doing really incredible things in the world. And my reason for wanting to do that is like the next time you pluck up, instead of telling yourself the shame story of like, I plucked up because I'm an idiot, I can't be trusted, I always do this, I never can do that, whatever that story is. So I should just go play it safe. So I should just stop, so I should just give up. You're like, wait a second, this sounds a lot like a story this person I really admire shared. And like maybe I'm not experiencing pluck ups because I'm a pluck up. Maybe I'm plucking up because I'm actually trying to move the needle and to do something interesting in the world. And actually, pluck ups are kind of a requisite. Like, you cannot build. A life of purpose, passion, and impact without pluck-ups along the way. In fact, I think the bigger the life, the bigger the impact, the bigger the mission, the more you're gonna be fucking up. So, like, let's actually celebrate the pluck-ups. I have a thing, I call it a failure funeral. Like, I have literally buried a pair of shoes in my backyard, like physically buried a physical manifestation of a huge pluck-up. And I did like a eulogy and I laid it to rest and like talk about it. Because if we don't have the freedom to talk about it and believe that we have agency over the eulogy, the story, then it has agency and control over us. And I want to build a world where leaders and creators aren't just avoiding mistakes, but where they are operating in complete freedom to become who they were created to be and to create the impact that they were made to create in the world, and who know that like a pluck-up or nine or nine hundred along the way is actually a sign that you're probably on the right track.
SPEAKER_03:This next segment aired March 5th, crafting a signature talk with my speaking coach Heather Sager. So if the idea of pitching yourself or stepping on a stage or speaking in rooms where decisions are made, make sure your stomach do a little flip-flap. This next one is for you. Heather Sager doesn't just do the traditional, like, just be confident pep talk about speaking. She walks through very practical, mindset-shifting reframe that moves fear out of the center and puts service and audience impact where it belongs. This clip changed how I think about visibility, not as self-promotion, but as responsibility. And how could that not be more on point for everyone that's probably listening to this right now? Let's check out this segment from Heather.
SPEAKER_05:I think the fear thing, I don't know. There's this, I think myth that somehow the fear goes away if you're scared of speaking. I now just have different fears. Except for different nerves. So I always think about okay, let's break it down this way. Have you ever heard that expression? Nerves are the same as excitement. Just channel your excitement. Yes. Yeah, right. I am always frustrated by that because I'm like, right, I'm still terrified. Like that, like pretending that I'm excited is not actually working for me. So let's actually talk about how I reframe fear and how I teach my clients to, that I think is a lot more practical and I think very applicable to this specific audience. And it's all around changing our perspective. If you think about it, if you're ever scared to pitch a stage, if you're ever scared to raise your hand and speak up in a meeting, if you're ever scared to, I don't know, even just give a presentation or make an ask in a big room, if you think about that fear, think for a moment, what's going through your head that's paired with this fear? And chances are the thoughts going through your head are what if I mess up? What if I sound like an idiot? What if they reject me? What if I stumble on my words? All these like thoughts that we have, essentially thinking that we're gonna land on our face or people are gonna judge us. But if you think about the through line in all of those thoughts, it's all about you, right? You put yourself in the center. And I mean, I understand why we all do this. We all put ourselves in the center of all of our thoughts. But if you want to get over your fear and be more successful in speaking, you got to body check those thoughts and say, hold on, I'm focused on the wrong thing here. What if I start asking better questions and redirect my thoughts in this moment and say, how might they be showing up? What might they be worried about? What might be causing them a lot of stress and a lot of heartache or whatever?
SPEAKER_03:And the fact that, which I think about now that you're saying this, which I've never thought about before, most of the time they have paid and decided to be there. Like you're not forcing them to sit in that seat. Like they have walked into the room, they saw your name on the agenda, they're there. They saw your name on a podcast, they are clicking play. Like that's such an interesting like reframe. And even like from the very beginning, it's like they have chosen to participate in some way.
SPEAKER_05:They have, and they're sitting there with their own questions about things, their own stressors, their own problems. And what I love, and this is what I like about who I work with, and your audience will love this too. If you're listening to this, chances are you have information and stories and compassion that helps other people. That's right. So the moment, like, think about this click. The moment that you start thinking, who's in the room? What might they be struggling with? What might have happened to them recently related to my topic or whatever else, you can't help but go, well crap, I can help them with that. And your confidence goes up like 10 floors because you start thinking about, oh my gosh, my heart is to help others. And now you're pointing your thinking to where the people in the room need help. So this is how you make that shift from, oh my gosh, I'm nervous to oh my gosh, I'm excited. Because yes, as we said before, those energies are the same in our bodies. But if we don't track and redirect our thinking, we're just faking it, right? We're just faking it, pretending we're excited versus actually holding steady, going, oh, I know I have something to help them. I know I can help them navigate through this. I know I have something great to share.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, we're on to number five: how the Houston Food Bank grew 5,200 monthly donors. This episode originally aired May 14th, and it is one of the most powerful reminders that stories matter and how we tell them matters even more. In this clip, Ashlyn Jones shares a moment from the field that completely reshaped how Houston Food Bank communicated with their monthly donors. You'll hear how real, human-centered storytelling didn't just inspire donors, it led them to increase their gifts and stay engaged long term. If you're also considering bringing on somebody to support your sustainer efforts, definitely take a listen to Ashlyn. So if you're building or if you're growing a monthly giving program, this is a must-listen.
SPEAKER_06:I went out to a mobile distribution and there was a mom there who was shopping with her kids. I asked her if she would be willing to share her story, and she said yes. And so I got to talk to her for a little bit, and she was sharing how her son had just been diagnosed with autism and he was struggling in school. She had talked with the school counselors and tried to see if she could get him some extra support. And they helped her as much as they could, but she just felt like she needed to do more. And so her and her husband had talked and decided to she decided that they would go down to one income. And so she left her job and she pulled out the rest of her kids from school and she decided she would homeschool full time. And so by doing that, of course, she obviously now needed a little bit more support since they were on one income, but they did sell their home and they did a lot to make sure that her son was supported. And so she never thought that she would need the food bank services, but now she found herself turning to us for help. And so she was just sharing how much the food that she received at the mobile distribution made an impact that, you know, it helped her and her family stretch their budgets further. And so whenever I got back to my desk that day, I thought about how can I share this story with faithful friends that they see just like what they're making possible for people. You know, like I think there's this idea that the people that come to the food bank are, you know, they don't work or maybe they're dealing with homelessness, and that's really all that they're dealing with, you know, that's it. Those are the two kind of people. Yeah. Yeah, like the stereotype. But whenever I'm able to share with faithful friends just like the different kinds of stories that they're touching all throughout our community, I find that that really makes a difference. So I came back and I wrote her story in a way that would not only show faithful friends their impact, but also honor her and her family. I just put a lot of thought into it. And then once we sent it out, there was Faithful Friends writing back saying, Hey, can you upgrade my monthly gift amount? And, you know, and just thank so much for sharing this story. And so that's how I knew, oh, this really does make a difference. Like when you really take the time to really write a story in a meaningful way, it really makes an impact. And so ever since then, I make sure that when I go out and gather different stories that I'm highlighting the neighbor in a way that honors them so that that resonates with our donors.
SPEAKER_03:Incredible. Are you primarily sharing the stories via email or are they on blogs, or do you guys do text messaging?
SPEAKER_06:We mostly do email updates. We just started incorporating text messaging into our strategy, but right now we're really only using it during like match campaigns. And so it's just highlighting, hey, we have a match and there's an opportunity to give. But during this next fiscal year, we're definitely going to start incorporating text messaging more.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I wasn't saying, oh my gosh, you should totally do that because it just, I don't know what email open rates are, but I would definitely consider testing it also with just sending like the stewardship retention type of text messages too. That's amazing. How did you think about crafting it? I think we talk about storytelling a lot in the sector. How did you, I'm trying to think of the right way to like word this, translate it or draft it in a way that was, yes, absolutely honoring the mom and her family, but also making it in a meaningful way where it felt like person to person, like you're sharing like a true human story. I think sometimes we can just like glaze over things.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Were there anything different that you did in crafting that one as an example?
SPEAKER_06:I was trying to share it in a way where, you know, we're all not we're all moms, but there's so many donors who give who are mothers, fathers, and they have children. And so they understand a parent's love, you know, and and the links that they would go to to help make sure that their child was supported. So I tried to show them how this mom was in this situation where she just was putting her son first, doing whatever she could to make sure that her son had what he needed. I kind of try to share, like now she's in this predicament where she does need our services.
SPEAKER_03:That's so powerful in itself, is like giving context. Yeah. And speaking to like something that would be relative to the person on the receiving side of the email, which I think is huge. Do you so obviously if a majority of the growth happened during these difficult times, COVID being one of them, that's five years ago at this point when it first started, right? So that's an incredible retention. How often are you communicating specifically with the Faithful Friends group in telling these stories?
SPEAKER_06:We send uh an update to them every single month, twice a month. We we have an autoresponder every month where they're, you know, it just says thank you for your gift. But what we do is we go in there and we update that content every single month so that in addition to their receipt, they also get an impactful update. And then we work with RKD to create their monthly update so they get two. And so we try to communicate with faithful friends often so that they can continue to remember, hey, I'm making an impact. And I think that's been very successful because, like I said, in 2017, when we had a an emergency, that's when we started to receive a lot of new monthly donors, and a lot of them are still with us. And so when you think about, yeah, just like 80, 90 gifts since then, and they've continued to give. It's so impactful. So we try to make sure that they remember, hey, I'm making a difference that they don't decide that, oh, I don't, I don't need to give anymore. I've already helped. You know, they see that they're still in need and they're still making an impact in our community.
SPEAKER_03:And we're on to number six. This episode originally aired July 23rd, the NAACP's bold shift towards sustained impact with Trevon Williams. This one is a lesson in leadership, especially when you're advocating for change inside a large, established organization. Travon talks about what happens when you lead with solutions, empower supporters first, invite them into the journey instead of overwhelming them with the problem. It's also a reminder to slow down, reread our messages, think about does this feel like an invitation, does this feel like a transaction? I had this conversation in person with Trevon earlier this year at Sub Summit, and I love every time I get to sit down and talk with him. He's a wealth of information. So take a listen.
SPEAKER_00:Leading with what you're helping to solve is something that we have found or what the data has found to be a rewarding opportunity for subscription model in many cases. So not beating people over the head with the problem, leading with what it is that you're gonna help us solve first, empowers you, and then now that I've empowered you, I can say, well, Danny, guess what? This is what we're contending with. Well, now that I've empowered you, now you're helping me to be a part of it, so I can now take you on the journey with me. It just takes on a different level of investment. And what we found within um some of our donor base itself is that if we lead with that, lead with what you're helping us to solve, versus saying, This is egregious, this is terrible, do you see what's happening? I've made you, I've made you feel more powerful. And not only do I make you feel more powerful in that moment, now I'm telling you, well, Dana might say, Well, I want to, what else could I do right now that I feel more empowered, right? So it's it's uh a little bit switch. We're leading with the solution first, and then letting you know as a result of you being a part of the solution, now you're helping us to solve a problem, and we found that that sort of measurable has helped us uh have the direct impact that we're looking for.
SPEAKER_03:Incredible. I love that, and I think pause, rewind, listen back, figure out to the listeners how you can do this in your own organizations, and literally have that be something. I think that's something really powerful to think about every time we're going through communication. Is sometimes we're working so fast on our website and our emails that, like, stop, pause. Yep. Let me read this through from the perspective of somebody, not me, who's reading it, and does it express to your point what you just said? Is it giving them that what feeling do I want it to evoke?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like I mean, if we're checking the box's communicators, we're doing this wrong. We can't just say, okay, I send the email out. We we've got a discount, we gotta get the word out around the discount. Great. What do you want someone's feelings to be as they receive it, right? Um, if you're giving a discount on, you know, internet access or something like that, telling someone about the benefit of increased internet access and letting people know that, you know, more people are spending more time on their internet. You want to make sure that you have maximum. I have to leave with what this problem solves first before I leave. That sort of engagement makes it more of a dialogue versus a transaction of here's 25% off. Please, please, please, please, please take advantage of this because I really need the numbers. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Last but certainly not least, number seven from UCLA to 70 plus cities building a youth-led movement with end overdose. This episode aired on October 15th, and we are closing with a conversation that gives me so much hope for the new year. This clip from End Overdose highlights what's possible when young leaders are trusted, supported, and given real ownership. It's about delegation, mentorship, and building partnerships rooted in shared values, not control. So if you care, and I know you do, about the future of leadership, movements, and sustainable growth, this one is an incredible way to end the year.
SPEAKER_07:What has allowed me to grow so much as a leader and what I've seen be so helpful for all of our chapter team members is really promoting like empowerment of others. Like with our chapter teams, it's so big for me to be able to like delegate tasks to them and trust them to be able to grow their organization on their campus and really kind of giving the reins to them to do that and giving them the space to do that. Because I think a lot of the times, like people aren't able to experience that level of growth, they're not able to become true leaders because they're never given the opportunity to do so. So, especially for the young people that we work with, giving them the tools to be able to make the right decisions, but allowing them to make those decisions for themselves is something that's so important to me. And I've seen so many of our chapter team members like grow so much in their leadership skills and their ability to delegate tasks to other people, their ability to organize events. And I'm so happy to be part of an organization that really gives young people the space to do that. Cause I I do think that that's a very rare thing, but a very important thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, agreed. Real quick, I just want to say to that, I remember we had CMNH now, Children's Marathon Work Hospitals, had like somebody who, because the dance marathon programs were growing so rapidly, had somebody from the national office that came out to visit our school. And I remember we felt so seen and like as college students, and we felt like we were taken seriously. Like, oh, they're sending somebody from the national office because they're seeing what we're doing and it matters. And I think that's huge. Anytime that there can be that touch point, and one, you're giving the autonomy for the chapter to succeed and really be leaders on their own, but then to have the mutual respect of being like, hey, I'm just I'm here to see what you guys are doing. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to support you, give you resources if you need it, brainstorm if you need it, but not being like coming to watch over. We were always so psyched when we knew that somebody was coming.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, and I definitely think that recognition piece is so big too. And we try to highlight different chapters each week and mention specific things they're doing. Also for our chapter orientation each year, we'll ask chapters from the previous year who maybe did a really good job fundraising to speak with the other teams about successes that they had or challenges that they faced or successes they had in media campaigns. And I think really opening the door and being like, hey, like these are other people your same age, like doing incredible things, like you could do this too, and and showing them that like we do recognize when you guys accomplish amazing things like this is definitely a huge thing. In terms of the yeah, the partnership insight, I think what I always think about when we're either approached by a new partner, looking at another organization or business to partner with, is definitely identifying like our shared values and then also finding ways for it to be mutually beneficial for both of your organizations. And the benefits might look different for different partners. Like when we are doing work with Insomnia at Golden Voice, we're really looking to like increase our media reach numbers through social media campaigns. Also, our training and distribution numbers are really bolstered by a lot of those events. And on their side of things, it's really increasing attendee awareness and participation in the event outside of just attending these music sets. I'm also reducing those their overall risk and liability in terms of safety at those events. But I think the most sustainable partnerships really do come from those impacts being seen by both partners on both sides and them really feeling that the partnership is worthwhile.
SPEAKER_03:And that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed those seven episodes. I sure did. It's been such a fun year putting together all of these episodes for you on missions to movements. If you have enjoyed these episodes, please drop a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. Send me a note, let me know which episode, which segment. Really resonated with you this year. We have so many exciting things planned for 2026 that I am thrilled to have you here. So if you're not already a subscriber, please subscribe, please drop that review. And I will see you in February, I hope, at the monthly Giving Summit. Until then, Happy New Year's Eve and Happy New Year. 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.
