"The crazy idea that put our mission on the map...”

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hey everyone, welcome to the Nonprofit Diaries, where we share the stories that don't make the newsletter. I'm your host, Kimberly Bottom, and this week's guest is about to give you permission to try that one crazy campaign idea that you've had in the back of your mind for a long time now. Now, you might want to take her advice on this because she's built a pretty successful career by just going for it. Dana is the founder and CEO of Positive Equation and the literal queen of monthly giving. She has created the Monthly Giving Builder platform, authored the Monthly Giving Mastermind, hosts the Monthly Giving Summit that is global, and the Missions to Movements podcast. So Dana was also recently featured in Fortune after being named one of Zoom's top five solopreneur 50 honorees, selected from nearly 3,000 entrepreneurs nationwide for using AI and technology to grow positive equations impact. So even with a list of accolades longer than a CVS receipt, my favorite things about Dana are her warmth, her energy, her curiosity, and then just her eagerness to help the person next to her, which is why, despite a bonker's schedule, she's actually made time to join us and share a good story and some stage advice. Nonprofit Darius families, please welcome Dana Snyder.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

That is the best intro ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Well, you have a lot to brag about, girl. Oh my gosh. Uh I had to, you know, I had to pick and choose.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Uh your so that was so thoughtful. That was so lovely.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Well, I'm so glad you're here. Outside of being just, you know, a badass businesswoman. You're just a sweet person and a great friend. And I just appreciate you coming and making time. I know you're on the road right now. Okay, yeah. And you're still making time for us.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, girl. We're, I mean, listeners, I am back in New York City, which is where it's so interesting that we're gonna be going back in time in this conversation today, where I really was starting most of my career. This is I got my second job in New York City back in 2013. I moved here. Yeah. Um, so it's fun. It's always fun to come back and revisit the energy of the city and what it was like, you know?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yes. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

In my young 20s.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Oh my gosh, wasn't that long ago. But I uh you're right. Sometimes when you go back to that place where it all started, like it really does give you that sense of like invigoration. Yeah, this is why I do it, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, speaking of earlier in your career, when we chatted about this, I uh I loved the story that you brought to light because I feel like a lot of fundraisers have that imposter syndrome, right? When they're like, oh, wouldn't this be cool? And then they talk themselves out of it because it's like, oh, it's too hard logistically, or other people might not be as excited as I am. You ignored that voice in your head, right? And did something kind of creepy.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

I tend to do a lot of times, yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

I mean, it's workout for you. So maybe we should all take a page out of your book. So, first and foremost, tell us where you were and what this crazy idea was that you had.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yes. So my first job out of college was working at Take Stock and Children of Sarasota County. So this was in Sarasota, Florida. I was in a team of four. Uh, first job out of college, right? I'm 21, 22. And my whole role was all encompassing marketing. They didn't really have anyone who had ever focused on marketing before. And when I came in, I was like, what have we done to get the word out about our program? And I had been talking to our executive director, and this might sound very familiar to many of you, but she's like, We're the best kept secret, we're the best kept secret, says every nonprofit organization ever, still decades plus later, we were still saying the same thing. And so my job was really like, okay, well, how do I try and get us a little bit more known and outside of our like echo chambers that we were in with our existing community? And my idea was a flash mob.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Which sounds so fun, but also like a lot of logistics, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

A lot of logistics, yeah, and at the time. So if you think back to what uh what was this 2010, 11, flash mobs were very popular. This is when a lot of the videos at um actually in New York City, I think it was uh maybe a London train station, like there's a lot of very popular viral kind of YouTube videos that were of the moment. And so this was a very like topic that was popular in culture. And I thought, well, one, doing a flash mob usually raises awareness. And can we post a video that can gain traction and where could we do it? But also people were excited. Could people be excited? This was kind of like the hypothesis about being in a flash mob, and that would bring in new people to the organization too. So that that was like kind of setting the stage here.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah. Well, I love that from both sides, right? It creates that momentum online, it has a lot of reach, but then you've got like now this very loyal um like follower base that wants to be part of the actual movement. So like IRL and digital, like it's a win on both sides. Correct. But also like coordinating those people, herding cats, right? It's like you know, having to get all the people together, figuring out what to do. How do you promote it? Like, how do you get involved in your community? It it feels like a lot of moving parts. And a lot of people might have something like that where they have that idea and they go, okay, this might just be too much for me, for my small team to handle. So you had mentioned you kind of broke it into parts, right? Like logistics, partners, and like how did you approach a more complicated initiative like this?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah, I think some of it was um, I think being naive. However, I will say I was like, look, if we can get so I didn't know how to choreograph my flash mob, I basically went to my AD and I was like, look, I had this idea. There was an upcoming music festival at the Van Weazel, which was a big performing arts hall. It was an outdoor concert series. We knew there was gonna be hundreds of people there. So venue. Could we get the venue to um because we would have to let them know because they would have to play the soundtrack. Could we coordinate with them? Would they say yes? Step one, they said yes. Great. They're gonna cue it right after and during a break of the band. So everyone would literally just be sitting there, just like chilling, waiting for something to happen. Two, um, there was an Arthur Murray dance studio in town. And I was like, can I get this dance studio to give us free lessons, essentially a place to practice, and one of their choreographers to choreograph the dance? They said yes. Three, then I was like, okay, well, let me send out this kind of teaser email to our existing base, tease something on social, not really being clear about what it was, other than a flash mob was gonna happen. But we didn't want to obviously share the surprise about when it was gonna be, where it was gonna be. So unless you said you were interested, you would not receive the information. And we did, we had brand new people that had never been engaged, uh had never been a volunteer, had never been a donor, who were just really interested in this idea of doing a flash mob for good, basically. And I think we had, I want to say there's about 40 people that were part of this, and they had to agree. They had to agree to dance practices, and they came to Arthur Murray, which that was part of Arthur Murray, is they're bringing in new people, right, into their facilities. So that's um a brand partnership. Um, and hopefully they would they would be able to get lessons if they want, showing this interest in dancing. And so that was kind of could we have the venue? Could somebody teach us to dance? Would people be interested? And once we had all of those buckets, like yes, yes, yes, then it was green light.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah. So it sounds like the approach is nail down the one thing you can't do this without, and then move on to the next important, and then move on to the next, right? Before you start promoting or like, you know, ordering the t-shirts, like yeah, so that makes sense, and that feels sort of attainable and doable for somebody that that has an idea like this.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

And we got to bring down some of the kids too that were dancers, and so that was really cool. Like they actually ended up kicking off the flash mob, one of the students. Um, she was the first, you know, if I for those that don't know a flash mob, like one person starts dancing, then it's two, and then it's four, and then it's it builds until you have the whole group. So one of our students started it, and so that was really special too.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Oh my gosh, that's so great. What a great tie-in to the whole story and the mission. Um, so you had mentioned that you got these partnerships, right? The music festival, um, the dance studio, and this got bigger than you thought it might be. Tell us about the results of it.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, it was pretty cool. So we the other thing we did was we knew it was gonna be hot. This is Sarasota, Florida. This is the summer festival. So we printed like sweat towels that said T-S-I-C and it had our website on it. And we all at the end of the dance had them stretched out so people could read them, and then we flung them and we like threw them out into the group, and then we walked around with them. And I did not know one, the music festival director called me up on stage to talk about what had just happened, and that was not scripted. We didn't know that they were going to do that. We just literally thought we were gonna perform, it would raise awareness, and then we would kind of go away. Um, so one, they brought us up on stage. Two, we posted it on YouTube, and I can't remember because this is obviously circovac decade now, but plus, decade plus the Huffington Post reached out to me, and I remember thinking it was like weeks later, thinking it was a joke. Seriously, holy holy like that was a national publication, and I was like, Yeah, you're asking about and they were asking us about for flash mob and to provide quotes and to be in this national piece about a movement, and then the take stock and children's state office. So take stock and children is an organization that's in all 67 counties in the state of Florida, they saw that it picked up track traction um and what we had done, and they wanted to replicate it and do it as like a statewide thing. So then we presented on it at the statewide conference, so it turned into something, yeah, much bigger than just at our local festival and from an idea from like a what if, you know, as a 21, 22-year-old being like, I think we could do this really to a feature on Hub Post, like what yeah, oh my gosh, pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Wow, that's amazing. And so tell me about the the impact to the organization after that. What what kind of came out of all of it?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

You know what's so interesting is I'd have to wonder, looking back, what that resulted in, but I know the people that were in the flash mob, yeah, had a stronger connection to the organization. Yeah. I don't know, and again, this is hindsight being 2020, what I would recommend to my like 20-year-old self was better reporting in the festival group. Like, did we see, and also it just wasn't the same back then, right? We weren't so, or I wasn't at that age hyper aware of did our email list get a bump, right? Did we like what were the specific KPIs? I think it was more of a did we see a website traffic burst? Like, I don't think we weren't paying attention to those things then, right? Honestly, which is kind of wild to think about. Um, how much, how much I've learned. Um it was overall an increase of awareness and being putting ourselves in a bigger conversation.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Which you did. I mean, clearly, without even monitoring those metrics, you're getting hit up by national publications. So something worked.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Like there's something worked.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

There's no doubt for sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

They came and visited our county, like there was lots of ripple effects outside of just did we get new donors to donate? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Right. And meanwhile, the venue donated. I mean, already there. The choreography, the dance studio donated. Even if all you got was 40 more really enthusiastic people interested in what you did, like it seems like it was worth the investment. And you got so much more than that.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yes, totally. It didn't. Um, looking back when I think about biggest things, like if somebody was curious, I don't remember other than us buying the towels, I don't think we monetarily bought anything else. It was just time. It was time. Um, like I remember being at the dance studio and recording the dance and sending the video so people could practice at home. It's so funny thinking about these things. The video I tell me that video somewhere, Dana. Come on. The youth the splash mob video exists. Okay. Definitely exists.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

If you can find that, or if you have the link to that video, please send it my way so I can include it in the podcast description. I feel like people are gonna want to see this. No, I do. Nobody judged.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

I am yeah, I'm wearing cowboy boots, a like light tank top or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Okay, well, this might be your new profile picture on my phone when you call me, but besides that, I'm really excited to see that. Um, okay, so it sounds like lean into the crazy idea sometimes, break it down into chunks, right? Monitor impact, metrics are important. Anything else you'd want a fundraiser who says, I don't know if this idea is a good idea to know when they're going into something like this.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

I guess I'd be like, best case scenario, worst case scenario, right? Like what if? Like, and what's the time, the energy, the money investment? Is it worth like taking a shot and trying something new? You never know what's gonna happen and play out. The other thing, too, I remember from that time is it kind of re-energized. I remember my Ed saying this. She's like, we needed this, like internally. It like lifted the spirits of the whole team if you've heard of something like this. And that's something that you can't really put a metric on necessarily, but just the joy that it created amongst us internally was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Exactly. For you, for the people involved, for the, you know, the the audience out there in the world, like everybody, it sounds like needed it. So yeah, all right. So go forth and conquer, Dana says so. I love that. Well, thank you so much. I'm really excited to see this video now and young Dana's fashion choices. I will put the link for this video in the description so everybody else can enjoy it as well. And thank you again so much for taking time and coming on, sharing your story, sharing your advice. I really appreciate you, friend.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Thanks, Kimberly.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Thanks. All right, everybody, you know this is the time. It is your weekly reminder to hydrate and practice self care. And that might look like a f a flash mob or a dance lesson, or, you know, go dance out in the sunshine if it makes you feel better and uh take that next crazy idea and give it a chance because it worked out pretty well for Dana. So thank you everyone so much for watching. We will see you next week.

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