Marketing for Nonprofits
Episode 19
Tom and Curtis are joined by Lindsay Mullen from Prosper Strategies to discuss the unique challenges and strategies of working with nonprofits. They explore the diverse stakeholders in the nonprofit sector and the importance of shared power and change management. Lindsay shares insights on strength-based communication and the power of storytelling in nonprofits. They also discuss the budget challenges faced by nonprofits and the potential for grant funding.
- Nonprofits face unique challenges due to their diverse set of stakeholders and mission-driven objectives (purpose over profits).
- Shared power and change management are crucial in navigating the needs and voices of different stakeholders.
- Strength-based communication and storytelling are effective strategies for nonprofits to engage and connect with their audiences.
- Budget challenges can be addressed through pro bono work, grant funding, and strategic investments.
Prosper Strategies | https://www.prosper-strategies/
Tom Nixon (00:01.845)
Thank you once again for joining us on Bullhorns and Bullseyes. I am Tom Dixon, one of your co -hosts here with the other co -host, which I guess is just the other host, my co -host Curtis. How are you my friend?
Curtis Hays (00:11.75)
I’m doing great except today is the first day of spring and it’s snowing out. So I’m a little depressed about that. We had some 70 degree weather a week or so ago and I want that back. I think the groundhog lied to us. We were supposed to have an early spring.
Tom Nixon (00:17.589)
Yes, it is.
Tom Nixon (00:25.139)
Yeah.
Well, we did, but then we just had another winter. Yeah. So yeah, one weekend I was doing a spring cleaning and now this weekend I’ll be shoveling and blowing snow. So welcome to Michigan. For those of you outside the Midwest, you’re missing all the joys that is the four seasons here in the Midwest. So, um, we are taking a little bit of a, uh, turn here on the podcast this week. I believe this is the first time we’ve had anyone on to discuss the realm of nonprofits. Isn’t that right? Check my math.
Curtis Hays (00:29.474)
Yeah, it was like psych.
Curtis Hays (00:37.89)
Yeah.
Curtis Hays (00:56.194)
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, a little detour, but I think we’ll connect the dots and find a lot of relevant pieces here.
Tom Nixon (01:03.157)
Absolutely. So why don’t you invite our guest on today who is Lindsay Mullen.
Curtis Hays (01:08.224)
Yeah, Lindsay. So great to have you on the show, Lindsay. I met a long time ago, actually working with a nonprofit and it was Lindsay’s dad who started a nonprofit here in Detroit called Challenge Detroit, which now maybe, has it been 13 plus years is still, still marching along and doing positive things in the city of Detroit. And so I was invited to sit on the board when that nonprofit got started.
Lindsay, I believe was with a communications company at the time that was helping with communications and messaging. So Tom, a lot of the stuff that you do, value, vision, mission, all that stuff. And so got to know Lindsay and then fast forward a couple of years and she was leaving the agency she was at to start her own. And I was about to do the same. And I’ve mentioned before, there were a couple of people who I shared that I was going to leave the previous place that I was at. And Lindsay was one of them and hats off to Lindsay because.
Kaleidoscope would not exist if it weren’t for her. She helped me in the beginning, helped her with her business and she brought business my way and referred me to a bunch of different places. And so it’s just such a joy today to bring Lindsay on the show. So welcome Lindsay.
Lindsay Mullen (02:24.336)
Thank you, Curtis. What a kind introduction. I appreciate it.
Curtis Hays (02:28.162)
So how are things? What’s up with… So still have Prosper strategies. You and Alyssa is your partner at Prosper, correct?
Lindsay Mullen (02:32.654)
Yeah.
Lindsay Mullen (02:36.72)
That’s right. I mean, you’re going back in the history, right? That was about 10, 11 years ago now. Well, probably 13 years ago since I met you and then about 10 or 11 years ago since I founded the firm. And when I first started, we were not exclusive to the nonprofit sector as we are today. So we were doing a lot of marketing and analytics and Curtis, you are our go -to.
Curtis Hays (02:43.296)
Mm -hmm.
Curtis Hays (02:47.648)
Yeah.
Curtis Hays (02:56.578)
No you weren’t.
Lindsay Mullen (03:04.588)
SEO guru website guru.
Curtis Hays (03:07.778)
Yeah, I appreciate all of that. You helped me get my business started and it was a lot of fun working with your team. And then, so then you guys made a pivot and decided to focus solely on nonprofits, which you still do today, correct?
Lindsay Mullen (03:20.464)
That’s right. Everybody’s always asking me, how did you get into nonprofit work, Lindsay? And I always say, by mistake, like everything, right? When you look back on your career, you can connect the dots, but looking forward, it might seem a little bit fuzzy. So I met Alyssa, who you mentioned is the woman who is my business partner. She was really passionate about nonprofit and social impact. And we started to work.
Curtis Hays (03:26.034)
Thank you.
Lindsay Mullen (03:46.832)
with nonprofit organizations. And we’ll talk about this a bit today, but many of them, despite being different sizes, having different budgets, et cetera, they face really similar issues. And so we saw this opportunity to build some intellectual property around helping organizations solve their marketing challenges. And that’s evolved. So we still do a lot of brand positioning and marketing work.
but we also do strategic planning. We do fundraising consulting and really those major strategic challenges that nonprofits face. That’s what we’re here to really help them navigate through. And we’re gonna talk a bit about stakeholders today, but nonprofits have very diverse stakeholders. And so it’s really a process of change management that we work them through.
Curtis Hays (04:39.234)
How many people now are at Prosper? I think it was just maybe four or five or six when I first got started. Have you grown some since then?
Lindsay Mullen (04:44.09)
Yeah, so, yeah, so we got up to eight people. Interestingly, we are now back down to Alyssa and Lindsay. This is an interesting post pandemic shift. So we work with very diverse communities in the nonprofit sector. And our goal is really to build teams of people who are representative of the communities that our nonprofits exist to serve. So.
Curtis Hays (04:48.482)
Okay.
Curtis Hays (04:59.938)
Mm -hmm.
Curtis Hays (05:11.79)
Thank you.
Lindsay Mullen (05:14.)
We have a roster of consultant partners who will join us on projects. In fact, I just finished my first bilingual strategic planning retreat. So we are looking for nonprofit experts in their fields to join us on these projects. So we provide all the sort of frameworks and the leadership, and then we have consultants who really have that lived experience.
Curtis Hays (05:27.438)
Oh wow.
Curtis Hays (05:42.882)
this sounds like the TeamLance model that we’re operating in.
Tom Nixon (05:47.477)
say I went through a similar shift myself. I was at an agency, a boutique agency, and COVID happened and a lot of the change happened. And eventually I decided that I was not in the business of building an agency any longer. I wanted to build a practice around what it is that I do. And I shifted to content development storytelling, as Curtis has mentioned. It’s a great model because I can plug and play the experts. I myself am not an expert in working with nonprofits, but I know somebody who is now.
just like I know Curtis can do all the data analytics and all the stuff that my brain fails at. So this is a great conversation for us to have an interesting model. I’m curious. I’ve worked a little bit with nonprofits in the past, and I know they face challenges that are unique to nonprofits, some of which are budgetary, some of which are the diversity of stakeholders that you mentioned. Is there anything else that’s so unique about the nonprofit world?
that you and your partner skill set naturally, like you said, by mistake gravitated toward to the exclusion of I’m assuming to the exclusion of for profit businesses.
Lindsay Mullen (06:54.32)
That’s right, we work exclusively with the nonprofit sector and really big nonprofits and smaller local nonprofits. Here’s really the best way I would say to explain it is that every nonprofit has a board of directors. That board is often really different from the communities that an organization serves, which is different from corporate funders who are different from foundation funders.
who are different from policymakers or legislators, right? Who are different from the staff who actually run the day -to -day operations of an organization. But every single one of those groups has to be involved in mission driving change, right? They all have to have a voice. They all have to really be involved in strategic processes.
but in the right ways and at the right time. And that’s really what Prosper does, is think about who are your audiences, who has a voice, who has a vote, and how can we work together to develop a strategy that’s going to drive real actionable impact for the organization. So.
Tom Nixon (08:12.085)
Could you talk more a little bit about the diversity of because you use the word audience there, which may be slightly different than stakeholder. But for nonprofits, there’s this added layer of you’re serving an audience or you’re serving a cause in a market. So there’s the end user of the nonprofit services. But then you have the donor community. Right. And then you have just the broader community at large. Right. Because you’re sometimes looking for support outside of your donor network. There’s a lot going on, isn’t there? And how do you get?
buy -in from everyone and get them all connected. And like you said, you know, moving in the same direction.
Lindsay Mullen (08:49.296)
Yeah, it’s a great question. So we’ve developed a philosophy. It’s called the shared power strategy. So for many years, nonprofits, unlike for -profit businesses who would say, what do our customers want? Nonprofits didn’t do that.
as much as maybe they should have been. And there’s been a real shift, I would say, in the sector. Organizations are recognizing the need to involve the individuals and the communities that they serve. So we’ve built this shared power strategy, which centers the individuals, the communities that organizations serve, but that also builds a strategic process around when and where you engage the board.
when and where you engage funders, et cetera, et cetera, right? And that process inherently has change management at the center. Historically was that, you know, you’d bring folks in at the beginning of a process, right? You see this in for -profit marketing as well. Let’s do a survey or let’s interview some stakeholders. And then we’ll go off and we’ll develop,
you know, our marketing plan or whatever it is that we’re working on. That doesn’t work when it comes to change management, right? You have to keep people involved sort of throughout the process. So you need to hear from them at the onset. You need to get their inputs. But what we’ve learned is that we also want to touch base when an organization adopts new messaging or a new vision or mission statement.
We want to hear from stakeholders. Is this resonant? What does this mean to you? Do these words represent you in ways that feel true and authentic? And we don’t want to finalize those things until we’ve had multiple checkpoints, you know, multiple opportunities to hear from these various audiences. And we find that when we keep people involved in the process that way,
Lindsay Mullen (11:02.608)
They’re much more supportive, they’re much more involved and engaged, and let’s take messaging as an example. They understand what the messaging is, why it’s important, and how to use it for themselves.
Tom Nixon (11:17.693)
Great. Curtis, you just mentioned that you guys met through a nonprofit. So how much experience do you have either pro bono or as clients working in the nonprofit sector? What have you seen?
Curtis Hays (11:29.55)
Yeah, not nearly as much experience as Lindsay has. I’ve tried to always live under this motto that like I pick one nonprofit to support pro bono. So while most of my clients, if not virtually all, are in the for -profit space, I do work with nonprofits and am currently working with one that I’ve been working with for the last five or so years.
In a pro bono space and, and it makes perfect sense, uh, what Lindsay’s explaining because, you know, oftentimes I think when something is so much more mission driven than profit driven, there is the opportunity for maybe confusion confusion around what are we doing here? Or if something does change, why did it change? Um, we’ve talked about emotion before that gets involved in marketing time and I, you know,
in the nonprofit space, you are so connected to whatever that causes potentially that I could definitely see like emotion working its way into the process quite frequently from lots of different stakeholders. You’re putting money forward or you’re the one that might be benefiting from the cause. And so it’s a totally different dynamic. Is it not Lindsay?
Lindsay Mullen (13:00.688)
but require different things of your mission and your organization. And so you have to be mindful of those different needs, right? And think about how those needs impact your strategy, impact your marketing.
Curtis Hays (13:19.458)
Yeah, like volunteers was always a big one, right? So what’s the need of the volunteer who’s a big involvement and actually supporting? So like you have to have specific messaging and specific strategies just to the volunteers, but then involving them, it sounds like in the process too, so that they have buy -in, yeah. And they’re oftentimes the lifeblood of the nonprofit. Like the nonprofit doesn’t exist in most cases without the volunteers, right?
Lindsay Mullen (13:39.088)
Yeah.
Tom Nixon (13:47.061)
you
Lindsay Mullen (13:47.312)
Right, well, and yeah, there’s this healthy tension, right, between staff, volunteers, board members, donors, right? But at the end of the day, we are all here to serve the mission, and that mission typically serves students or seniors or community partners. And so involving those voices too is so important.
Curtis Hays (13:48.61)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.
Tom Nixon (14:12.949)
I wanted to ask you both a question about metrics. So you brought up your own personal situation, Curtis, which made me think of mine. And I don’t do pro bono work for this charity, but it’s one that I’m passionately involved in. They don’t even know it because so I have a rescue dog that I found out after the fact that had been rescued from Puerto Rico, which has 500 ,000 feral dogs on the island. And most of them are.
Lindsay Mullen (14:23.312)
you
Tom Nixon (14:40.947)
hunted for sport or just killed out of convenience. So, when I found all that out, I was like, oh my gosh, I looked at my little puppy and I’m like, there’s 500 ,000 more of you over there. Now, I’m not a large donor. I have supported them financially. I’m not in the position to get another dog now and hopefully this one lives to be 10, 12, 14, 16 years old. So, there’s gonna be a long period of time between the time that they ever hear from me again and
Lindsay Mullen (14:51.056)
Thank you.
Lindsay Mullen (15:08.656)
Thank you.
Tom Nixon (15:09.141)
I don’t know how to support this organization other than periodic donations or the easiest thing to do is I follow them on social media and I amplify their message and I do things like that. So I’m curious how you both can report metrics to a nonprofit when some of the actual effect you’re having is invisible when if you’re looking at the data.
Curtis Hays (15:29.706)
Yeah, let me start, Lindsay, and then I think you’ll add a lot to this. So what I see the organization I’m currently working with do is an annual report to keep everybody informed. So there is an update that I do to the website, there’s a PDF download, and it’s how many people did we serve this last year? What was the impact we made on the community? How much?
How much in funding did we raise and then along with that is what are the goals for the upcoming year? So how many more people do we want to make an impact with how many more dollars are we trying to raise? How many more volunteers do we need? so there’s like so much more of a need and Transparency I think is the word that I’m thinking of this need for transparency to all
the stakeholders so that they understand where the organization is going and what is needed in order to get them to where they’re trying to go, which isn’t done in that way in the for -profit space.
Lindsay Mullen (16:38.948)
Yeah, I mean you describe it very well, Curtis. So that’s what we call in the nonprofit sector, it’s called stewardship, right? So it’s this whole next layer of communications, which is, you know, we know in the for -profit world,
sort of this awareness, consideration, decision model, right? Like how do we make people aware of what we do? How do we become one of the options they might consider? And then can we drive them to make a purchase? Well, translating that to the nonprofit sector, you’re doing the same thing, right? That purchase is either send a letter to your legislator or make a donation or sign up to volunteer, right? Once you take that,
step now we want to continue that relationship with you right and and Tom for you it’s gonna be over a series of years potentially but if that nonprofits thinking through different ways to engage you getting a dog is just one of the many ways right that you might be involved making a
is just one of the many ways, right, that you might be involved. Making a twice annual donation is another thing, but if they’re really strategically thinking about it, they want to say, how do we elevate you as a supporter? How can we maybe encourage you to become a monthly donor or potentially talk…
Curtis Hays (18:06.818)
you
Lindsay Mullen (18:13.778)
your podcast or to your social networks, right? And so they use tools like Curtis is talking about, like an annual report. There’s also regular email campaigns. They’ll do not just an annual report, but sometimes even quarterly reporting. They’ll build something called a case for support, which talks about, you know, who we are, what we do, why it matters, and what we need.
Tom Nixon (18:16.789)
. . .
Lindsay Mullen (18:44.178)
looks like when we bring donors together to…
Lindsay Mullen (18:52.69)
sort of keeping in touch and staying engaged. And I would say it existed sort of long before social media, where those things.
were.
Tom Nixon (19:10.057)
I probably should talk about them on the podcast because I said that’s what I could do, right? So it’s called the Sato project. Sato is a Spanish slang word for mutt. So Sato look up the Sato project, throw him a bone. See what I did there? So.
Curtis Hays (19:15.17)
Yeah.
Curtis Hays (19:27.618)
I’m
Lindsay Mullen (19:28.552)
you
Tom Nixon (19:31.093)
I wanted to shift over to a topic near and dear to my heart, which is storytelling. And I feel like because nonprofits are mission -based, they typically have this great story to tell, often tugging at one’s heartstrings as the Sato project does to me, right? But in working with nonprofits, I find that they struggle with this. Do you experience that? And how do you get over that hump? Because I think it’s difficult.
Lindsay Mullen (19:55.058)
That’s a great question. Storytelling, right, is at the crux of good mission understanding.
Tom Nixon (19:58.101)
for a business to talk about themselves, but they like to brag. Nonprofits are different animal. What are the obstacles and how do you help them overcome it from a storytelling standpoint?
Lindsay Mullen (20:18.098)
right, and fundraising. It’s so important for people to be able to humanize and relate to a mission. And I think storytelling is really the best way to do that. But there is, right, this sort of natural pull in the nonprofit sector because we also don’t want to exploit people or their experiences, right? So there has to be some sort of level of sensitivity around that, prosper.
has actually developed what we call strength -based communication. And it’s about highlighting the strengths and the opportunities of individuals and communities rather than really focusing on needs and weaknesses. And storytelling really allows us to do that because when you view someone and their experience more fully, you know, you think of them as a full person, it brings understanding to why…
Do folks find themselves in challenging situations and how can we support each other? We all are in challenging situations from time to time, right? And we wanna be able to come together. And so we really focus on those more opportunistic aspects of storytelling. But I’ll also share that sometimes folks…
are hesitant to share their stories because it is traumatic for them, right? They don’t wanna relive a situation that’s been difficult for them to go through. Oftentimes, the folks involved are youth or children, right? So it can be more difficult to hear from folks who are minors.
And also, I think some folks are just transient or busy, right, and don’t have the time to lend their voice. So there are definitely strategies and ways to overcome that, but I would say that that’s a challenge that’s pretty universal in the nonprofit sector, but not in surmounted.
Tom Nixon (22:38.357)
And the only thing I would add, Curtis, is a principle that I get. I try to get my for -profit clients to understand. Um, it works well in the nonprofit sector is that the show me, don’t tell me. Right. So companies always want to list all their features right at the top of the webpage or here’s what we sell. Big flashing letters. Nobody cares about that until they understand why you do it and how you do it. And I think the best way to do that is through storytelling.
Curtis Hays (23:04.038)
Yes. So if we’re, we’re going to plug our favorite, uh, nonprofits here, I’ll go ahead and plug mine. Um, so the, the company that I work with in a pro bono space is called the Joseph project. Joseph, if you’re familiar with the Bible, uh, was sold into slavery and what the Joseph project does is help, uh, trafficking victims from a legal perspective when they get out of a situation. So oftentimes people who are trafficked, um, they have a hard time getting
into society because they have a legal, you know, a record, a police record, they’ve got maybe custody issues and a number of other things and they don’t have the finances to get through those. So this is essentially a team of attorneys who work pro bono to help these victims put their lives together.
from a legal perspective. And so exactly what Lindsay was just speaking about, it’s a difficult situation for somebody to speak about because very difficult to do storytelling. But they do have people who they’ve brought out of situations who have great stories, who have been willing to share, and they do that through video. And so it’s very impactful. And what goes along with this yearly report usually is three or four.
storytelling videos of previous victims who have come out of their situations and have something to share that doesn’t just highlight the Joseph Project, but just highlights how they were impacted and where their life is today. And I think that touches everybody who’s involved from the volunteers to the board, to the people who are giving, to…
people who have this need and need to reach out. So I definitely think video is one of the most impactful ways to do it.
Lindsay Mullen (25:02.418)
Yeah, and I think the most forward thinking organizations, they’re thinking about video, they’re actually doing their annual reports in more of an interactive format. We’re seeing nonprofits on TikTok, right? So it is, I think, easier to capture stories and share them that way. And I would say most nonprofits who put forward a concerted effort to have some of their beneficiaries tell their stories, they will be.
Tom Nixon (25:02.933)
dip.
Lindsay Mullen (25:32.13)
successful, right? There are folks who are truly touched by the work and they want to support the mission in the way that they can, right? Which is by sharing their story and like you said.
Tom Nixon (25:42.421)
Yeah, and a good story goes such a long way to not only it is going to tell the viewer what you do, by the way. So, if you’re worried about that, it comes across in the story, right? But it also speaks to why you do it, how you do it, and then the impact of what you’ve done. And, you know, you can claim all those things in a paragraph of copy or you can just show me instead. So, I wanted to wrap by asking you both a question because you said that you’ll work with small nonprofits as well. Lindsay and Curtis, you work pro bono at times with nonprofits.
Curtis Hays (25:49.578)
Heheheheh
Tom Nixon (26:12.501)
And that’s budget. That’s a question because of the very nature of the industry that you’re serving could be an issue. And I’m wondering, you know, I’ve heard a lot of times companies say to us, you know, they’ll help and say, we don’t have any money. We’re a nonprofit. So how do you work with clients a in that situation and then navigate them to a place where maybe they do have a budget?
Curtis Hays (26:35.136)
Lindsay, do you want to? Yeah, I’ll call this one.
Lindsay Mullen (26:35.346)
So yeah, I can take that. I can take that. So I would say, first of all, I always tell people most businesses don’t have money either. Right? They run the game, but some of our clients are billions in assets. Right? So it’s called a for -profit because they’re not using profits, right? Or they’re not trying to build profits, right? They have a mission impact, but…
Curtis Hays (26:45.762)
Hehehehehe
Tom Nixon (26:46.265)
True.
Lindsay Mullen (27:05.582)
Most more established nonprofits have budgets and it’s a matter of where should they be investing those budgets. And so you have to be of a certain size, right, to be able to invest in marketing the same way a for -profit organization does, right? Smaller businesses don’t often invest in marketing the way that Apple or Intel.
Right, it does. And so nonprofits are the same. I think nonprofits have the benefit that they can get pro bono work. But what I would say is for people offering pro bono, two things. One, if you’re gonna do it, pick a mission that’s near and dear to your heart and stick with it so you can actually make an impact for that organization.
I think a lot of companies try to do too much actually, and they end up, you know, maybe putting less experienced folks on the job or, you know, kind of downgrading it on their client list, kind of getting to it when they can. And that’s less beneficial, I would say, for a nonprofit. So really thinking about where do I want to spend my time and how can I actually impact.
in organization I think is really important.
Tom Nixon (28:36.815)
Yeah. Curtis, anything to add to that?
Curtis Hays (28:38.402)
Yeah, I would add to that. I think from my perspective, being somebody who’s helping, uh, the discipline, because people are going to ask and you’re going to want to say yes, if you’re a helpful person. And I think most people are. Um, and so it’s the discipline to say no, and it’s okay to say no, because you can end up in those situations where, yeah, you just, you don’t have time to do all this pro bono work. And so it is, you are going to.
Okay, I know I have a bunch of clients. I said yes to this stuff, but now I’m really busy and now they’re asking for something. And I’ve got to put this other stuff aside to do it, or I put them off because it’s free and then they’re suffering. So I think it’s great to pick one and the satisfaction, I think from doing that one and you don’t expect anything from it other than doing it in kind. Like that’s the point. And that’s why they call it doing it in kind.
Tom Nixon (29:24.967)
you
Curtis Hays (29:37.122)
Um, it’s do it. If, if, if you get gratitude from it, great. If you get referrals from it, great, but that can’t be an expectation. Do it because you, like you said, Lindsay, you believe in the cause. Um, you know, it’s something that you might be passionate about. Um, and it’s something that you feel like you can actually provide an impact. You know, if there’s value that you can provide to it, you know, great. Don’t have it be something that you’re going to learn on.
because it’s free work. So you’re not benefiting the organization at that point. I think from the budget side, that totally makes sense. I mean, these organizations, no matter their size, have to figure out what the right number is to support the goals that the organization has. And making sure that that number is realistic. And then the key is,
Is to measure, which I think you guys are really good at Lindsay from my experience. Um, you guys are very pro like CRM. If I remember right, your HubSpot, you’re a lot of your nonprofits use. And so tracking the efforts you mentioned, whether they’re, uh, donations or whether they’re volunteer signups that we have to track and measure all of these activities that we’re doing. So we know what to invest in what.
where our investments are working, where our investments are not working, and that it just can inform then future budgets. So just a key piece that whether you’re a non -profit or a for -profit, there are conversions, there is a funnel. I love the engage. We talked about the race methodology which I use, which is reach, act, convert, and engage. And oftentimes in a…
for -profit model, um, the E is forgotten about. Hey, we got that customer. Now they moved to service and service is taking care of them, but sales and marketing forgets what it took and how they could leverage that new customer they just got. And so how do you engage those customers? I think is so key and nonprofits probably do that a lot better because those people are their lifeblood.
Curtis Hays (32:00.066)
And I think the for -profits could learn a lot from what you guys do on the nonprofit side.
Tom Nixon (32:06.453)
Yeah, well said. The only other thing I would add just from personal experience that something that is available to nonprofits that is not available to for profits and I’m thinking of the newer and maybe the less sophisticated, less mature nonprofits because certainly the older ones are aware of this, but I was explore what grant money is out there. Grant, there’s grant money is literally already there. They’re trying to find a home for it. So do some research, meet with these folks, maybe try to find some influential people that
do align with your cause. You’ll find all the stuff out on social media and their websites and stuff and see what grant money exists. If you could tap into that budget now is less of an issue. So let’s see. I’m assuming that’s something that you will help nonprofits with as well.
Lindsay Mullen (32:50.706)
Yes, absolutely. That’s part of what we do in fundraising strategies is identify grants. So.
Tom Nixon (32:56.053)
Yeah. Good. Well, where do we go to learn more about Prosper strategies and anything else on the horizon that’s new and exciting in your world?
Lindsay Mullen (33:04.474)
Oh my gosh, well you can always go to our website. It is Prosper -strategies .com. We regularly write about topics impacting nonprofits and the sector at large. So if anything that I said today piques your interest, certainly you can find more on our website. And we are…
this year looking at doing some more trainings and sort of small group format offerings to expand our audiences, right? Beyond those who maybe can’t pay for one of our larger engagements to still benefit from our thinking and our consulting.
Curtis Hays (33:51.554)
Sounds like a great idea. Yeah.
Tom Nixon (33:51.829)
I love that. Yeah. So, don’t forget the dash Prosper Dash Strategies .com. Speaking of dash, we have to dash. See what I did there, Curtis. I am a professional. Please don’t try this at home. Curtis, you’re at home. Any famous final words before we let Lindsay get back to doing good?
Curtis Hays (34:01.888)
You’re so crafty.
Curtis Hays (34:11.938)
No, I just so appreciate you, Lindsay, and thanks for joining us today. Yep.
Lindsay Mullen (34:16.144)
You too, thanks so much.
Tom Nixon (34:17.749)
Alright, everyone go out and do good in the world. We’ll talk to you next time on Bullhorns and Bullseyes.
Additional episodes:
Episode 12: What is Marketing Attribution?
Tom & Curtis discuss the topic of marketing attribution, the methodology of attributing a purchase or lead to its source in a marketing campaign.
Episode 5: Aligning Sales and Marketing
Fractional CMO, author and frequent podcast interviewee Aimee Schuster joins our pod to break down her view of what ails many sales and marketing departments in organizations today.
Episode 4: Going Meta on Bullhorns and Bullseyes
In a very "meta" episode, Curtis and Tom discuss the meaning behind "Bullhorns and Bullseyes." What are some examples of "bullhorn" tactics, and what are some examples of "bullseye" methodologies?