Sign up to get updates from us
How can a small nonprofit's online presence become an effective fundraising strategy? What practical steps can be taken to raise awareness to the work that the organization is doing? What are the benefits and challenges in online fundraising?
On this encore episode (ep. 34), we are joined by Christina Edwards, Founder of Splendid Consulting and a marketing expert and coach who helps ambitious social impact businesses and nonprofits increase revenue, supporters, and engagement. Christina answers those questions and provides insight on how marketing and online fundraising go together.
You can find Christina at www.splendidatl.com or on Intragram at Splendidconsulting.
The Hosts of The Practice of NonProfit Leadership:
Tim Barnes serves as the Executive Vice President of International Association for Refugees (IAFR) and can be contacted at tim@iafr.org.
Nathan Ruby serves as the Executive Director of Friends of the Children of Haiti (FOTCOH) and can be contacted at nruby@fotcoh.org.
All opinions and views expressed by the hosts are their own and do not necessarily represent those of their respective organizations.
Welcome to the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership, a podcast specifically designed for executive directors of nonprofit organizations. Today's episode is an encore presentation of an earlier episode with Christina Edwards of Splendid Consulting. Our topic is fundraising online. And now here's Tim and Nathan.
Tim Barnes:Welcome to episode 34 of the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership. I'm Tim Barnes and I'm Nathan Ruby. Well, for the past few episodes, we've been discussing different fundraising strategies, a really important area to consider as a nonprofit executive. As you've heard, this is a sweet spot for Nathan and, if you are like me, you've learned a lot from what he shared on our episodes. Well, today we're going to talk about fundraising online. We have a special guest on the episode today that can help us walk through this area. So, nathan, why don't you introduce our guest?
Nathan Ruby:Well, we are really excited today to have a true expert in the world of online fundraising, and that is Christina Edwards. And Christina is the founder and head consultant of Splendid Consulting. So welcome, christina, hey thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here, yeah, so, before we get started on some of the questions that we've been asking it's part of the series on fundraising strategy we want to take just a quick second and define online fundraising. So I'm going to take a shot at it and I'm going to define it as I understand it to be, and then, christina, I'll turn it over to you and then you could give the real and accurate answer. So, to me, this is actually at FOTCO, with the Friends and Children of Haiti. This is one of the things that we've actually struggled with a little bit is how do we define online fundraising? Because, as a fundraising strategy, you want to be able to put strategy and then, of course, tactics behind that, and so, to me, online fundraising an obvious one would be like Giving Tuesday in November. I mean, that is a very specific strategy with tactics around it to drive people donors to give on an online platform. Where we struggle a little bit is if somebody does a Facebook fundraiser and we didn't know that they were going to do it and all of a sudden, it just you know, I forget who the they have a third party who manages that for them. Network for good, network for good. And so all of a sudden we get a check in the mail from Network for Good and I don't know anything about it. So does that actually constitute online fundraising? So anyway, I don't think I actually defined it because I don't know how to define it, so I'm turning it over to you, christina.
Christina Edwards:So I will say this is going to be my definition, because I think it's a conversation like defined marketing, where you're going to hear you know 100 different answers, depending on who you ask. For me, that Facebook fundraiser is 100% online fundraising. It would not exist if not for your organization being online and somebody making a donation online. Right Like that is a very clear yes. I think Tuesday is a perfect example of a container of a specific day, so a timeframe, a container of a goal you're trying to reach and that people are able to give digitally. I think the place where you're talking about it a lot of people might get in the weeds is. I hosted this online campaign to talk about this program or this new campaign that we're fundraising for. We're trying to raise 50K this month and then checks came in.
Announcer:Is that an online?
Christina Edwards:fundraiser, right where it's like you know it may be. The money didn't actually come in online and I'm going to say yes, because that's how your audience came to know about it, right through a friend of our friend, or maybe it was somebody already in your community. I think that counts. So, for all intents and purposes of this conversation, we are talking about showing up on using social media, using email marketing, using video, using photos, using really any online resource to fundraise. It might be peer to peer fundraiser, it might be a Facebook fundraiser, it might be a campaign that you, your organization, hosts all that counts.
Tim Barnes:Christina, would you also include even how you're set up on your website for people to give you know? Is it easy, Is it good? Do they even know how to do it?
Christina Edwards:100% that magical donate button. Where does it take them? Right, and that's something I talk a lot about in my courses is how much friction was there between clicking the donate button and them actually getting to the thank you screen? Because, surprisingly, sometimes it's like you click, click, click, click, click until you finally you're going through like seven different screens, right? So, yes, those are the places we want to remove friction and we want to make online fundraising as easy as possible, right, okay?
Nathan Ruby:awesome. Well, that was a much better definition than mine, which is why you're the expert. All right, so we've got four questions today that we're going to go through, and the first one is how do I know if online fundraising is right for my organization?
Christina Edwards:Listen, you're asking a marketer and so I'm going to say it's right for every organization. Everyone should be doing it. Right, the barrier to entry is so low. Right, it's not a heavy lift as far as expenses. The expense it really costs you is time, and I think for a small to mid-sized organization, that is going to be the barrier to entry is. Can I take this on? A lot of times, something I might hear is all right, we raised $1,000 online, but if I go out there and try and tackle that major gift, I get 50, right, $50,000. So that's where you have to look at your organization and say do I have the time to do this? But really, the barrier to entry is so, so low that all you need to do is have focus on what it is you're trying to do, like kind of a who, what, when, where, why, and then you can go have an online fundraiser. So it's not necessarily about posting on social media every single day and that taking up your time, but more about being more focused and more deliberate about a fundraiser you want to host. But yes, I think everyone should do it.
Nathan Ruby:Are there some organizations that are better suited, based on what type of programming they have, or what size they are, or where they're located? Are there any yo? If you were going to draw out your perfect online fundraising candidate, is there a perfect?
Christina Edwards:I mean, the ideal candidate already has a Facebook and Instagram and an email list. They have those three things happening where their audience already gets information from them and stays up to date for them. Because if I host an online fundraiser tomorrow for an organization that doesn't have those, it's going to be a lot more of a bigger lift for people to hear about it, right. So I'm going to have to go and ask a lot of digital ambassadors to help spread the word, or something like that. So, ideally, they have a couple of social networks that are rocking and rolling, an email list and really just a donor base that's engaging with them, and it doesn't have to be the biggest donor base ever, it can just be a small but dedicated community that they're already engaging with on a regular basis.
Nathan Ruby:You just talked a little bit about, or mentioned, donor base size. No-transcript. You know, let's be facetious. You know, if you have 200,000 Facebook followers, that's probably better than 20 Facebook followers, as long as they're engaging at some level. But is there a? Is size important? I mean, is the bigger the? You just said it didn't, so I guess can you talk just a little bit more about that?
Christina Edwards:So I think about an organization. So Facebook, Instagram, those social platforms really have become pay to play. Those are digital advertising platforms. So if your audience, if your organization did have 200,000 followers or fans, still a very small portion of your audience sees your content, so that's less of a like oh, you're ready. What makes me excited is if you have champions, fierce advocates, volunteers who are ready to share your content and be digital ambassadors for you. Maybe you are working with social media influencer, something like that. That works really, really well. I had I watched an organization here locally raise $100,000 in 30 days for a brand new idea. It was like they wanted to create a movie and it was here for a comedy theater, which is a nonprofit. So they didn't really have any fans or followers yet, but what they did have was the people who were championing the movie and championing this fundraiser, spreading the word like crazy, spreading it on social, going live every day, really keeping momentum, and they had clearly engaged people ahead of time, saying this is happening. This is the kickoff date. This is where we're driving that donate button to go to Can you help? And can you help more than once? Like that is where we see a lot of organic growth.
Nathan Ruby:So it sounds like from that example, from that story, that while online fundraising is probably a strategy that every organization could benefit from, it really does take intentionality and it really does take tactics to make it pay off in the end.
Christina Edwards:Exactly. My favorite is when a student will say something like well, online fundraising doesn't work for us. We tried it. And I'm like tell me about how you tried it, walk me through what you did. And usually what it is is like somebody on their board said they should do something, so they did and they tried, and they had, you know, a couple of days lead time and then they petered out because they felt like it wasn't. There was just no real plan, right, and so, of course, it didn't work. So that is the distinction there, right?
Nathan Ruby:Well, yeah, and here at the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership podcast. We love board members, we love our board members, we love them.
Announcer:We love board members.
Nathan Ruby:But in my experience the board member peer pressure, board member pressure is the culprit of some of the most catastrophic fundraising attempts ever, because the board member sees the organization down the street across town. Wherever hit these big numbers on, whatever the strategy is, they come back to the executive director and say, oh, we've got to do this. Why aren't you doing this Right? It's either an event or grants or online or whatever, and you know it just you've got. No matter what fundraising strategy you do, you have got to be intentional about it or it's not gonna work.
Christina Edwards:You know, I'm thinking of this analogy of like if you've ever gone to the grocery store and just without a plan and you just buy, you're like buying some meat and buying some, and then you come home and you stick at your freezer and you don't make anything and the vegetables go bad because there was no plan in place, you just bought arbitrary things. And that's kind of what this is like, when you're like you've got this kind of rogue board member that you're trying to, you're trying to meet their. You know it seems like a fun idea and you're excited that they're excited. But you know, really taking a step back and going when does this work in our fundraising strategy, when does it fit in in the year, and also giving yourself the grace of time to plan for it right so that you don't bail on it half way through.
Tim Barnes:If I could just ask it seems like I'm thinking about, you know that executive director, it's pretty much them, maybe with a part-time assistant, and what I'm hearing from you is part of that plan is having some kind of online presence at the very beginning, you know, so that as opposed to just jumping in and trying to do everything, but what's maybe one or two steps for that, for that single executive director to say I'm gonna give 15 minutes a day or, you know, half hour a week to kind of begin to keep me get myself set up for them.
Christina Edwards:Great question. And then keeping the lights on. For me is two days a week of posting, just two posts a week on social media. So decide your platforms. If it's just one, okay. In a perfect world, facebook and Instagram would be the first two recommendations. And just talk about what you're working on and be specific. You know, I don't want your social posts to sound like it could come from any other organization in your sector. That's something that I see right. So that piece and then the other half of it, the other side of it, is really building your email list. So, of course, the donors are really important, making sure you're communicating with them. But also any supporters, right? Maybe they haven't made a donation, maybe it's a friend of a friend, but they've opted into your world. That is such a helpful piece, especially what we'll use Giving Tuesday as an example. That's how we get traction, because Giving Tuesday is, admittedly, a noisy day on social media, but if I can land in your inbox, I can kind of prime you ahead of time and get in front of you ahead of time and then at the back end, right? So email is really really important and, I think, often overlooked as a digital asset. So building that is really important and it's yours right. So it's not pay to play, right, it's not. You're not gonna have to boost a post for it to land in somebody's email box at least not yet.
Nathan Ruby:Right, and you also. You own that email list.
Announcer:You own it. It's yours Right.
Nathan Ruby:And the platform is yours. So well, I guess technically it's Apple's or Microsoft or whatever, but nobody's gonna take your email away. Your CSV file is yours.
Christina Edwards:Yeah, exactly.
Nathan Ruby:So all right, Okay. Well, let's go to question number two, and that question is what's in it for the organization beyond what we hope would be at least a break even, or what we really hope is a net positive fundraising return? But there's every fundraising strategy. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's other things that it will impact around the organization. So what are some of the things for online fundraising?
Christina Edwards:So the way that I work with my students, I think about our goals as twofold. The first thing is revenue. Like we're trying to increase revenue right, that makes sense, we're trying to reach that fundraising goal. But the other piece is equally as important and that is the visibility, awareness piece. So a lot of organizations that are at or under that half a million dollar mark, awareness is huge. They're saying people don't know about our organization, our programs aren't full, my neighbor doesn't even know that we exist. Like that feeling of like we are here in the community making an impact and not enough people know. So awareness is huge and when you host an online fundraiser, it's a huge way to get a lot more eyeballs of what it is your organization does. And then those people. I consider them almost like warm leads, right, maybe they didn't give today, but now they're in your world. Maybe they opted into your email list or they followed you on Instagram. Now they're engaged and they went from having never heard of your organization to being in you know your funnel if I'm going to use marketing speak but in your world, and that is immensely valuable. That also is you know how you might get picked up by the media and get a new story written about you things like that. So it's equally as important. There are I could probably think of a dozen organizations that I've supported in the last year or two years that were me going through that awareness phase. Oh my gosh, I had no idea that this was going on, but you know, a friend of a friend posted about it. I'm in, it's interesting and you know that's how you get into the world. So it's a great way to do that organically.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, I think every organization that I've worked for and I've worked for a few that were, you know, 20 million plus, but most of my career has been in small to medium sized organizations and I think every single one that I've worked for, including my current one, some board member or volunteer someone has said you know, x, y, z, we're the best kept secret in town. And it's like, oh well, that's not very good, that doesn't feel good. Right, that's not the goal we should be going for and it is, I think, marketing in general, marketing online, fundraising that awareness is a lot of nonprofit leaders, especially executive directors, who maybe came up on the program side of the equation. Just they're not marketing people and marketing. Marketing and fundraising are two different, very distinct mindsets, their left brain, right brain type things. But online fundraising can help. Marketing and marketing is incredibly important on smaller organizations to get your message out so people can give to you in the future.
Christina Edwards:The other piece that I love about this, especially for a small organization, is social proof. So if you're thinking about a peer to peer fundraiser, you know we're trying to raise 50 K for your organization. I get to your fundraising landing page and I can scroll and scroll and scroll and see all the people who have either donated to that fundraiser or who are fundraising on your behalf. I'm like, oh my God, this I'm in. What is you have that FOMO right that I'm missing out. Right and that social proof that all these people, usually their friends you landed there for a reason. They're not strangers. You're seeing that buy in right and that proof of what you're doing works and it's that third party validation. That's, that's amazing.
Tim Barnes:Do you think the focus on online is is better for a specific project or event as opposed to Evergreen? Yeah, I help people keep going on it.
Christina Edwards:I mean, you can use it evergreen for something like monthly giving or just, you know, having that donate button go to an evergreen page. But, yes, a campaign is going to work better in a container, so container would be time bound, whether it's like a day a month, right, using that, that movie example, right, so time bound, and for a specific thing. Now, it doesn't mean you have to, you know, restrict funds, but it's just like this is, this is the time bound. You know cause, specific or timely relevant thing that we're fundraising for. And you can even do that around a social media holiday like Giving Tuesday or National Volunteer Week. You could do one on a leap year because you thought you wanted to and that would be fun. You know you can be as creative and easy and you know weave them into your marketing plan. You know more than that one day in November or December out of the year, but yes, All right, let's.
Nathan Ruby:Let's move to our next question, and this is a short question what are, what are the barriers to being really good at online fundraising?
Christina Edwards:So I think the first one we already touch on a bit, which is that staffing, slash time, slash budget issue. However, you want to kind of shake it out. A lot of times I see organizations under the half million dollar mark, or even under the million dollar mark, sometimes half person, whose role is development, slash marketing, slash communications. This can work. Yeah, I'm seeing a thumbs down. Yeah, this can work if usually that person excels at one Right. So let's say they're awesome at development. Then they actually end up going through my program and using what they know. They know about fundraising and adapting that for online. So it can work. So staffing can be an issue, but before that, really, I think the biggest challenge online, going back to that visibility piece, is like how do we get more followers? How do we get more people to follow? Slash, know about us is usually what I see is organizations don't have a really unique, cultivated and decided on brand. So who are we? What do we stand for, what are our buzzwords, what are our brand values? Really figuring out what their voice and persona is online. And the reason why you need to do that is you need to attract people. You need to repel some people to attract some people. So it usually looks like I can kind of see OK, you don't have a brand voice. When your content is really, really generic, it's not really branded to your style. It really could. Let's say, your organization serves food insecure households. It could be any food insecure household ever right or in your state. So when you have a specific brand voice, you're going to peak some ears. People will click, follow because what you're saying is you know, leaning into thought leadership, expertise is new and different, something right to get people in.
Nathan Ruby:Well, I think. I think, christina, I could solve the staffing issue for you as a barrier, because really all you have to do is find some college intern or some college student to volunteer, and you know they all love social media. So that's that. That didn't cost anything.
Christina Edwards:Yeah. So and then arm them with the toolkit so that it doesn't sound like the random college student you got and gave them access to your organization just went rogue right. So they need. They need. If you want to use a volunteer, you want to use somebody who's naturally socially savvy. That makes a lot of sense. Yes, give them a brand voice, give them what I would call guardrails right, but then also give them a place where they can say, hey, like I think this would be new and different, or I want to create this video, like they need to have the. It's interesting, it's like the balance between guardrails of your organization and also freedom to think outside the box.
Nathan Ruby:So and it is interesting and I probably should have disclosed this at the beginning of the podcast. But Christine and I do work together. We have a contractual relationship and the amount of time that you have invested in FATCO and learning who we are, what we do, what our values are, and understanding our voice, understanding that so that you can actually, when you respond online or when you're responding on behalf of FATCO, it's as if I'm responding.
Christina Edwards:It is impossible to write a narrative, to write anything, a piece of content and email, an appeal, anything, without effectively or well or in an interesting way, without knowing like a brand's voice. And you know that's true of my own brand, as I've really honed in my own voice. Writing is not quite effortless, but it's really close to that and it never used to be that way. And when I owned a social media agency, sometimes it would be hard to step into a particular brand's voice and it was because they hadn't really identified it. It was like a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it was kind of vague. And you know I used to joke that if I can tell, oh, mary wrote that post, then we're doing it wrong, right?
Tim Barnes:We want to make sure that it's the whole brand's voice, right yeah. And even you talking about that, Christina. That's one of the things that can help us get through the barrier is to consider hiring an outside group or a person to come in, as long as they can kind of pick up on what's going on. But do you find sometimes people are resistant to that?
Christina Edwards:So I this is kind of how I kick off things with my one on one clients. We start with a brand voice, but what I say to them is only like executive level leaders can come to this brainstorm session, because this is not a board meeting or committee meeting. I need just the top few because we're going to have a lot of opinions. Oh, I think we should do this. So I think what you know and so we need just the key decision makers and then going through and saying you know, using that as this jumping off point is is perfect. And then saying this is our now approved brand voice and it's, it's really, really similar to a brand style guide. So the logos, the fonts, the colors, this is that right. So whoever would come to that meeting to make the decision, that's who's coming to this meeting of, like our, our, you know, we've got our digital aesthetic visually. And then the voice.
Nathan Ruby:So let's head on to our fourth question, and actually this is the one I've been looking forward to the most. So what? You've been doing this for a while and what mistakes do you see the most when it comes to clients or potential clients and as they're trying to get their online fundraising and get it moving in the right direction?
Christina Edwards:So there's a bunch, but I'm going to start with that friction point we talked about in the beginning. So imagine you've got an amazing person handling your social, handling all your emails, all your marketing campaigns. We are still driving people to one place to take action right. So clicking that donate button, going to that one place, if that one place is just full of friction, then we've lost them. It's kind of like taking people to your website and your website is just impossible to read or has a 404. So friction might look like it's not mobile friendly. I'm doing the pinch to zoom in. Friction might look like, when I get there, you're asking for so much information that maybe a millennial Gen Z or Gen X or is like no, I don't want to give all that information. Friction might look like you're not accepting different payment methods, you're not connected to you know digital wallet, things like that, or that. It just doesn't look intuitive or branded right. So that's really important is choosing like the place. I call it like a landing page. Choosing the landing page where you're taking people and making sure that that tells your story in a way. Nathan, I think both of us are skimmers. I'm a skimmer, I'm going to land at that page and I'm going to go yeah, this is what I thought it was, I'm in, I'm filling it out Now. Other people are full readers, so they're going to land on that page. They're going to see the headline, the sub headline, they're going to read the paragraph about your story, they're going to do a little more and then they're going to make the donate button. I want it to appeal to both and for sure, size for mobile. So using something other than like a PayPal page or just something super generic to take you to that place, that's really, really important. Planning Planning is a big one, and I know that that can be an obstacle for a lot of organizations because they're like I don't have time to plan this out, but it tends to be something that you do once and then you replicate it. So we can use giving Tuesday as an example. If you give yourself, you know, four weeks of lead time one time a year, you create templates, you create the container of the fundraising landing page, you can create the story. You're almost clicking copy in Canva and replicating that year after year after year. So if you're doing a couple of fundraisers online throughout the year, the first time you do it is going to require the most upfront, but then it gets easier and easier because you have a process in place for it. So planning giving up too soon, this is a big one. So whether you're a nonprofit, a for-profit, anything. There is a part of a marketing campaign that I call the messy middle where you're like this isn't working, this isn't working, no one's seeing this, this isn't working, I'm over it, right, it's like this mental kind of heavy. This happens and to plan ahead of time for expecting that and then building in what I call momentum booster. So is that, when you release a new match, do you decide that ahead of time? Ah, all right, on day seven we always see a lag. We're going to plan in a match or you know some other way to boost momentum. Or maybe it's like that final stretch, that last day or those things. What are you going to do to keep momentum up? And then the last kind of big thing is all about your dream team. So who are you bringing in on your dream team for these online fundraisers to help boost your visibility, boost your attraction, your awareness? Because if your organization is just emailing and posting on Facebook and Instagram, that's not enough. It will feel like it's not working and it will on purpose, because people aren't sharing your content, they're not creating content on your behalf, like that's what we want to see. You know, I want to log into my LinkedIn and see three different people post about your organization right that day or you know, that week or whatever. So that's what we want to do. We want to do that in a really easy way so that they have kind of a done for you toolkit and they can post about it. So these are that. That's that digital ambassador piece that we talked about a little bit. Wow, I know that's a lot, that's a lot.
Tim Barnes:Good, really good.
Nathan Ruby:Well, I mean it's basically in those four mistakes, basically kind of outlines what to do Success. Yeah, and you know, I think one that stood out to me was the giving up too soon. And I think people, when it comes to fundraising strategies, they tend to overestimate what could be done in a short amount of time, but they underestimate what could be done over an extended period of time. So you stick to the strategy. You know. Maybe two, three, four years and I know that sounds like a long time when you know you're trying to close the budget this year but that that incremental improvement over an extended period of time you can, you could build some of these fundraising strategies and online is the same way into some mammoth fundraising.
Christina Edwards:I mean with the digital ambassadors I teach us inside my program. I'm like, yes, I'd love for you to have 100, but if you start with three, three ambassadors to talk about your organization, and they do it a couple of times a year and then you just keep adding to it next, next time you have seven, next time you have 15, it becomes like a stock where it compounds. Before you know it you have a full ambassador program. That's rocket and rolling. And then the other piece that is kind of the end to that yang that we talked about of like the messy middle and feeling like it's not working. The other piece that I see is we met our goal. Oh, we met our goal, we're done. You know, you're like I'm picturing, like laying on the floor and you're done. Okay, I want to tell you I loved this example, which was again that that theater company that was creating this movie they did it in 30 days 100k. They did it in less than 30 days and they built in a stretch goal and they were like, alright, guys, if we can do 15k more, we can hire this extra role. And here's why it's really important and I loved that. It was like they didn't. They weren't like, oh, thank God, that's over, we're done. They were like let's dream even bigger, because this is working and clearly people want to support us. And what would be the next layer of that? So it's almost like, if it is working, plan, that it is working and what's that stretch goal?
Tim Barnes:I appreciate what you're what you're saying. We were just talking before we actually started recording. You know, we live in an Amazon world. We expect everything to happen right away, and how much we just need to keep taking those little steps and keep keep pushing through. And I just there may be some people who are sitting here going I just can't do it. I, you know too much.
Christina Edwards:I was in a program that really was super helpful for my business, my clients and the way that my mentor taught it was. You know, we think growth should be just straight up, so I'm, if you're listening to this, just like a straight up, but really think of it like a hockey stick. It's like growth plateau. Growth plateau and that's the hockey stick is also where you're getting your systems and processes in place, and it also might even be peak, tiny valley, peak, tiny valley. And it's those tiny valleys where we're like that's it, I'm done, and you just missed the next peak because you bailed on it, and we definitely see that a lot with marketing, because marketing is super fun to cut from the budget right where you're like.
Announcer:No, it's easy.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, exactly that didn't work right, but really you were right about to be at your next peak, so yeah is, I don't know, I think maybe the most important piece of simple advice that we could give to listeners that are you know they're a brand new executive director or you know they've been executive director of a, of a, of a organization under 500,000 give or take, and they've been thinking about online fundraising. They know that they need to do it. They just they don't know what to do, they don't know how to do it, they don't have a plan. Is it fair to say that a good first step is to just do something?
Christina Edwards:Yes, yes, just start. Yes, start posting on Facebook, start posting on Instagram, start an email list. And, yeah, just go and decide on a platform you know for your fundraising online. Decide on what you're going to use and don't research to death. It's like picking out a pair of jeans Like there's everyone's going to have a different brand they like. Just decide on one and just go, and there's a lot of you know ones out there now that are free to start. You know they're going to charge a small processing fee. Don't get lost in the small processing fee. Just go.
Nathan Ruby:Yeah, so all right, christina, how do if, if one of our listeners wants to get ahold of you and talk to you about helping them do all of these amazing things, how do they get ahold of you?
Christina Edwards:So hang out with me on Instagram at Splendid Consulting. You can go to my website, which is splendidatlcom, and then really a lot of what I've talked about today is in a free masterclass. So if you feel like you need visuals to go along with that, go to splendidcoursescomcom, slash masterclass and you can see what I'm talking about.
Nathan Ruby:Well, that's awesome. And, christina, thanks for hanging with us today and every time I talk to you one, I learned something. Two, I have fun, and three, I just get all excited about this stuff all over again. So, thank you, thanks for being with us today.
Christina Edwards:I think that the reason why we get along so well, nathan, is you and I are both just like we're going to figure it out. We're just going to figure it out and we're going to go, and so we both have that energy and that attitude, and I think that is the type of organization that starts off lean and scrappy and just totally makes it shine. So thanks for having me.
Tim Barnes:Well, thanks for being here, Christina, and I hope, if you have an interest in this, that you'll reach out to Christina, that you'll go to her website, that you'll look at some of those opportunities and maybe you'll hire her as well, which would be, which would be great. Yeah, we appreciate the input and we'll make sure all that information is in the show notes. So thanks for listening today. Hey, we're curious what issues are you struggling with in your nonprofit? How can we help? Is there a topic we could address? That would be would be helpful to you. Well, you can go to nonprofitleaderonline that's nonprofitleaderonline and leave us a message, or our emails are always in the show notes and you can email us directly. We'd love to get in touch with you and there's anything we could do. We'd love to help out. And also one last favor. I know you hear us ask this all the time, but would you leave a review on our podcast on the platform on which you listen to? That helps put our podcast out there and catch the eye of other nonprofit leaders who might benefit from the podcast. So that's it for today. Thanks for joining us, until next time.
