"The plot twist I discovered moving from for-profit to nonprofit work...”

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 today's guest is a galvanizer of growth, and he's got a unique perspective from working in both for-profit and nonprofit industries and how they both treat investment and growth. So Ben's a good buddy from many years of attending nonprofit events, including uh the event that he and his team run, the Nonprofit Innovation Optimization Summit, or NEO, presented by Next After. Ben is the chief growth officer at Next After, where he leads growth across sales, marketing, events, and partnerships. But before joining Next After, he built his career in consumer intelligence, so analytics, digital marketing, and agency leadership. And thanks to NEO in Texas this year, I learned two new things about Ben. One, he's a killer saxophone player. And two, he two-steps like a champ. Ben Smithy, welcome to the Nonprofit Diaries.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

What an intro. What an intro. Um, yes, saxophone. I once was a saxophone player. That's how I worked my way through college.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

I would argue you still are because you were on stage in front of hundreds of people playing the saxophone a few weeks ago. So that is true. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

And then I'm equal parts, my friends say, I'm equal parts. You throw me on a ranch in Texas or in the middle of Manhattan, and I can survive either way. So you can't grow up in Texas without learning how to two-step.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Well, I'm I'm glad that you knew what you were doing, because for those who might have been at Neo at the after party and witnessed the tragedy that was me trying to two-step, please, nobody, nobody judge me for that. Um, I I get dizzy really easy. Ben was such a good teacher, but he had to go very slow.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

So I think you put a bunch of fundraisers in a room, and two-stepping might not. There's a lot of skills that fundraisers have, and two-stepping might be one of the last things on the list.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Well, it's the fun party trick. So I appreciate that you have that in your back pocket. And thank you for trying to teach someone with two left feet how to do it. But anyway, we are here to chat a little bit. First of all, right when we hopped on to kind of record, you shared a bit of a funny story that we'd love to just kind of like expand upon before we get to the meat of talking about investments for nonprofits versus for-profits. But so it was actually before you began a Next After, right? You had sort of a funny interaction at a Next After retreat, and it might have actually started your path towards working at the company. Tell us what happened.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Well, it definitely validated a lot of things for me. I think um we talk so much about our industry and relationships, right? Especially in the fundraising space, whether it's major donors, mid-level donors, all that type of stuff. Relationships are everything. Even in the for-profit, relationships are everything. How you treat others matters, right? And then people always use the same thing as like treat everybody like the CEO, or you never know when you're gonna interact with someone again. Um, and this was years before. So my first interaction with Next After was probably five years ago when I spoke at Neo Summit, right? Which we spoke about. Um, but we also do, they do at the time because I wasn't an employee, uh, some executive treats where they try to bring together um circles of nonprofit leaders and then also for-profit industry leaders. So people that are in the nonprofit space but work for agencies like Next After or Valora or any of those leaders together to have sort of a closed circle um discussion, you know, a closed-door discussion around what is new for the industry, where do we need to go, what are the challenges, and kind of have a phone a friend, right? Build these relationships. So the whole thing is about how do we build relationship? And I got invited to this thing, and I'm super excited. And I show up and like everything, um, the person that leads events today was the same person that leads events then. And this person, uh, I won't name names, but anybody that is in this space knows this person and knows that she is phenomenal and excellent in everything that she does.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Absolute rock star.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Over-the-top, excellent rock star, like the epitome of what you would want, right? I didn't know this at the time. I just knew of her, but I hadn't experienced the greatness yet, right? Um, but I was about to experience the kindness and the grace. Uh, and luckily it wasn't, it wasn't my own mistake. Uh, but I show up at this thing, I'm excited, right? Um, all these people come out to this event. We're in Mexico, and it's it's just like everything is pristine. Like the way it's set up, the the table tents, like the organization for where you're sitting at dinner, all this stuff. A lot of work of what work has clearly gone into making this thing very well run and organized. And we get there, and uh I meet the event organizer and and her and all the stuff, and we're catching up because we met at Neo and all these other things, and everything's great. And she's personally handing out the name tag so everybody can say who we are, where we're from, all that stuff. And it's not like the little sharpie on a sticky, hello, my name is like these are printed out, it has the agenda on the back. Everything is great, right? Um, not tacky at all. And as I'm speaking to her, someone else comes up and she's like, Oh, hi, so-and-so. Here's your name badge, all the stuff, and hands it to him. And the response, I mean, it's not a thank you, it's none of this, it's a handed back to her and said, Oh, I don't, I don't wear those. Um I was like, What is happening?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Um, I I was just love to see your face in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

It definitely is one of those kind of like, oh, moments. Yeah, but it's one of those moments then where you get to see the true test of somebody's like character and response. Because how you respond to those moments says more, like the things that take you off guard says more about you know, character and class than what you do in your best moments. Um but what I experienced was a dignified response, very classy, very kind, like even throughout the rest of the event, wasn't treated any different, like all these other things. And I was like, oh, it just take note. This person really is who she says she is. This person really does represent uh the values of a company and organization that I had heard. Uh, and it was one of those things, there was a passing moment, like it was this fleeting moment, right? Of like, oh, when in doubt, when tested, person shows up as as described uh with excellence. Uh, and then you fast forward four years later, I'm doing my final interviews at Next After, uh, when I'm about to join the team, and who shows up as the head of events on my team, right? Uh, and so now this person is on my team, rolls up to our team, and it's it's like one of those things that like had she shown up differently in that moment, right? Yeah, wasn't she it could have been a very different interaction now, me having experienced that firsthand, but it proves the point that it does in fact matter how you treat people in your best and in your worst of times, because you know never know who you're gonna be working with, who you're working for, any of those different things.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

So uh, as we like to say, be above reproach because you never know uh who you're gonna work with later, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, exactly. And just what a you know, I I very much believe in Kismet, which is what it sounds like the situation was. I also very much believe in karma, which that person who handed the name that ch back probably got a bit of, hopefully, after that interaction.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Wish them the best though.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

I know, no, and that's just the thing is that um, you know, even with um the rudeness there, I hope that person realized, you know, how Yeah, and you never know.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Like there's grace, you never know. Worst day could have been going through stuff. You never know.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Correct, right, exactly. Well, that is a very um there, that's a very kind way to look at it, Ben. So you're you're less judgy than me in this moment because I'm just like, ew, that uh no, don't do that. But okay, that's fair. So now that you've been with Next After for almost two years, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Uh close to a year and a half, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

A year and a half, okay, gotcha. Um, now you've got some real lived experiences working previously in your for-profit role, now with nonprofits, right? And you shared that you saw a pretty interesting delta between how those two types of organizations approach investment and growth and those types of things. So tell me a bit about what you've realized now that you've been in your seat for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, there's so when you come into the nonprofit space, uh, or if you are in the nonprofit space and you have a perspective of how for-profits um think about growth, one would likely assume that in the for-profit space, um investment is seen as a cost of doing business, the table stakes to growth. Like we understand investment equals this, right? And then in the for in the nonprofit space, you would maybe, if you're in the for-profit space, think that oh, nonprofits probably see investment as a cost center and they don't see it as growth or X, Y, and Z, right? Because it's nonprofits versus for-profits. But what I've actually experienced is the opposite. Um, you know, in the for-profit space, we've had clients and we work with SMBs, right? Small, medium-sized businesses, you know, look like we've worked with big enterprises, but also the 50 million, 10 million, you know, or smaller businesses. And when you look at the solopreneurs and the individual business owners, which most of for-profit businesses are, right? Or the, you know, still uh entrepreneurial owned, founder-run businesses, um, investment comes out of their bottom line, right? So I've had stories where we talk about, hey, growth is up and to the right, here we go, here's the cost, here's where you should be investing, trying to grow their business and grow their profit. And there's clear lines to it, but heard a response like word for word, you know, we could do this, or that could be a new lake house. And it's like okay, investment. Yeah, investment is, and it's not cheap, I get it, but investment is seen as a cost center in a lot of those businesses because it's a cost to the profit, right? To the business owner. That said, in the for profit in the nonprofit space, I think we have a great understanding of if we can invest this, we can grow the mission, we can grow our impact, we can grow those things. And it's it's just kind of refreshing in the sense of like when you're working, if you are an agency or something working in the nonprofit space, they understand and they have a mission that's greater than themselves and greater than transaction, right? So we have a big saying that we talk about is that like um donations and generosity, right, transcend transaction. And and that's truly what it is. It's like, okay, you can put a price, a dollar price tag on um that picture frame behind you. And if I say it's $599, right, you are willing to pay $5.99 for it. But if it's $5.99, are you gonna pay $6.99? Are you gonna pay $7.99? No, you're gonna pay $5.99 because that's what the price is, right? However, on a donation and generosity, like there is no price tag on it, right? There may be a suggested uh offering, or there could be a price for a premium, like gift or something like that. But we try to get out of the way of people that want to give as much as they want to or be as generous as they want to. Um, so we understand the investment, and I just think the unit economics um are a little bit reversed in how most people would perceive it if a for-profit person comes into the nonprofit space or if a nonprofit perceives the for-profit space. So it's just been interesting in that same vein. You know, we use a lot of for-profit metrics, and I think you and I both talked about some of this stuff in our in our Neo talks. Like we use these things like customer acquisition costs or lifetime value or the metrics that we borrow from for-profit, but they don't necessarily tell the full picture in the nonprofit space. Right. Right. In a for-profit, we're probably not waiting three years for lifetime value for someone to spend $20 on a t-shirt. Right. Right. We're trying to get transaction now, closed deals. In the nonprofit space, we understand, right? The latest study we launched showed it's like two and a half years for some time when you acquire an email address before they give the first gift. And it's a human aspect of it. Um, there is some scale to it, but the the human aspect is one of those things is like we have to, it's it's not just like the brand awareness of of transactional for-profit marketing, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Beating somebody over the head with an ad enough times till they buy it.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, can you get them to experience the the vision and mission of your organization, right? We call it value prop, right? Can you experience get them to experience the value prop that your organization has uh enough to get them to sit there and answer the question of why should I give to your organization versus some other one, or not at all. And so in that space, like yes, it will take time. The data shows it takes time, but the only way that you can be successful over that time is getting people close in proximity and to experience the brand and experience the mission. So any ways that you can get people to experience that mission, right? Whether it's digitally or in person or whatever it may be, the greater chances you do have of capturing that. And we also see that like when we did our latest email, lifetime value of an email study, 80% of those people never give. And so that's okay. Like if you're frustrated by the long tail, you're gonna be frustrated even more that in that long tail, the majority of those people are never gonna give to the org, right? So just reset your standards, level set, and sit there. Hey, we're in a long game here. If you want your organization to exist, right, 10 years from now, what's wrong with planting the seed today? Right? The old adage of like the greatest day to plant a tree was yesterday, but the next best day is today. Yes. So plant trees, plant seeds. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

And also I feel like an important point is that not every interaction or donor who doesn't give is not worth your time, right? You don't know the ripple effect, the butterfly effect, but behind the scenes, the person they told that is now a donor, the volunteer that they recruited, you know, like there's more to or who's watching your actions in Mexico at a party and how you treat it.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Exactly. Like who is paying attention when you're maybe not, you know, trying uh to put on a face. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I really feel um I feel that it is a long game in nonprofits for sure. And again, you you have to remember that there are unquantifiable metrics going on behind the scenes in terms of how you interact with your supporters and your audience and how that affects eventually the donors, the revenue, the things that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

And it's rarely like just a straight line journey.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wouldn't it be nice if it was?

SPEAKER_01 14:04

It would make our jobs as marketers a lot easier.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

And you just have to lean into the human element of it. So I appreciate you, as someone who knows, you know, the other side of the table, to come and say, hey, yeah, that's how you should be approaching this, this whole uh this whole thing in nonprofit work. So thank you for revalidating the the folks out there who are doing that hard long work um that they're doing the right thing. Appreciate that. It's meaningful and it's worth it. It is, it is a hundred percent. Well, for everybody out there listening, thank you for coming this week. And this is your weekly reminder to hydrate and practice self care because we're all doing the best we can, and it is a long game, as Ben has just shared with us. So we're in it together. We're glad that you're here, and we can't wait to see you next week. Ben, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Thanks, Kimberly.

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