 Welcome to all of you that have joined us today. We have Bryn Brazington with us. Bryn serves as the senior nonprofit growth specialist with one of our partners and sponsors here, Generate Impact. And Bryn, we're excited to have you to talk to us today about hosting community walks and runs and what that might look like. So before we dive into the conversation, we of course want to make sure that you know who we are if we haven't quite met yet. Julia Patrick, thank you so much for coming up with this gold medal episode. We are thrilled to have you to this creation. Julia of course is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm probably like a silver or a bronze stage, but I'm Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And if you can't tell in our Chitty Chat Chat, if you missed it, we talked about the Olympics and how that might play a role into today's conversation. I mentioned Generate Impact and we are so thrilled to have their continued support as well as all of their fellow peer sponsors that you can see right here in front of you. We are so grateful to have the continued investment in these episodes and the sector at large because these companies exist in or around throughout your communities. Please do check them out because they are here to help you move your mission-driven goals forward. So please do check those out. But before you check them out, we wanna make sure that you dedicate and focus your time today with our guest, Bryn Brazington, again, talking to us about these very large or major community walks and runs that you might be considering for your community. And Bryn has experience leading these and really being the champion of these efforts. Welcome, Bryn and thanks so much for joining us. Thank you both so much for having me. I'm really excited to be a part of this just from the nonprofit perspective and also now being a part of the Generate Impact team, speaking from a technology people process side of things. So thank you so much. You know, Bryn, it's really interesting because you actually, and I don't think I'm spilling any secrets here, but you moved from a very large nonprofit where you were engaged in some big public events to generate impact. And I'm wondering, before we start drilling you with questions, if you could kind of share with our viewers and ourselves that background because it's really fascinating. Sure, absolutely. So my background is in nonprofit and most recently for the past four years I worked as senior development manager for the American Cancer Society. I had the honor of working on the largest making strides against breast cancer fundraising walk in the country and that is right here in Orlando, Florida. Very, very passionate about that cause. I'm sure I'm not alone on the attendees today to say that cancer is something that touched me personally, my family and then breast cancer specifically. So I was really impassioned about the work I was doing there and just really excited to watch something grow and become hopefully a lucrative event to solve some of those problems we have. Love it. Now you work now with our friends at Generate Impact which is really cool because I can see you navigating so much of this experience into the sector as we move forward with more digital mindfulness maybe is the word and linking together some of these tools that we might not have been really using to our best abilities. But I wanted to talk to you about this concept of the walk and I guess if you would say public events, shoot, so much has changed because of COVID and I just, okay, is this even a viable concept? Let's just like get laid out on the table, sister. Yeah, right. No, it's such an important question to ask and every nonprofit is asking it. So let's have the conversation publicly. I think that yes, first and foremost, they are viable and we see that people do want them. People want to come together as a community. We are people who need a tribe, we need a community to work with and we need our people to see why this cause is so important to us. So our friends, our supporters, I think it's still important that we're willing to come together even in a time where there are a lot of question marks in the future. Now, keeping in mind that we want to give alternate options for those who may not be comfortable and getting back out there in a full scale event at this time. The event I spoke on earlier making Shrines Against Breast Cancer Rolando had about 80,000 participants per year. It's a little big, a little big of an event. So as you can understand, you need to listen to the demographics of the audience you're working with. What are your constituents saying? Are they wanting to get back out there? Do they want alternate options to join virtually? And then coming back to, I love what you said about being digitally mindful. So important. We all have a little bit of Zoom fatigue at this point. So how are we really engaging each other? But yes, I do believe walks and runs are viable at this time. Wow. I remember participating in some of these walks and I've done the breast cancer three day walk. I did it with my mom and there's a generational gap there. But one of the things that I really love about these walks, Brynn, is the attraction to multi-generation and multi-ability. So there's so many opportunities for almost anyone to play a part and to participate. And I think that might maybe increase the viability. Oh, absolutely. I think that if you're willing to be flexible and fluid in the way that you're engaging your donors, you're going to increase your sustainability because if you're only gonna make it a transactional relationship, you're not meeting them where they're at. Do you know what I mean? You know, that's a great comment. So what I hear, when I hear you say that, it makes me think of two things. Are we putting on events for people, let's say, that like to walk or run and they're gonna go to anything because that's just what they wanna do in a community sense. Or are we putting on an event that's really gonna pull our family of supporters together? And when I frame it that way, I can see exactly what Jared's saying. How do we include children, pets, grandparents? I mean, people of all abilities, ages, what does that look like? Yeah, I think it's bringing it back to the people behind the cause, the people behind the mission, right? So we want to make sure this process is fun. We wanna make sure it's fun for all ages. We wanna make sure it's engaging for all ages and it's innovative. It has to be constantly changing, you know? If it's, if you don't grow, you're not changing, you're not sustainable, you're not becoming, you're not connecting to your audience. So we wanna show that our donors and our supporters that we're willing to meet them where they're at. One of the things I know is that there are so many opportunities and I'm going to speak, you know, very personally, but my son just finished Cross Country and now he is eager to find these community walks and opportunities to continue for him, you know, the fun and the physical aspect. But I'm curious as we look at these at all different sizes, Brynn, should we approach these opportunities as a fundraising opportunity? So are we really looking to bring in the donors? Are we looking at this to raise that community awareness and impact by way of, you know, attracting some more friends? How have you gone about that with the variety of events that you've been a part of? Yes, I love both of those fundraising versus friends. Friend raising, it sounds like it'll be a trick question and the answer is always friend raising, right? Let's make everyone our friend. But ultimately you need to invite the community in even if it's not a directly important cause to them. You need to show them why it's important. You need to show them why this is worth investing in because people need us and speak to them just transparently about that. But I think from a friend raising perspective, of course you have peer-to-peer fundraising where individuals are reaching out to those closest to them explaining why they're fundraising for this cause, inviting them to be a part of this journey with them. So from an organization perspective, you can create templates, you can create a lot of fun ways to get the message out there. So you're not having your supporters reinvent the wheel. You empower them to, you know, have their own events, have their own conversations, making sure that they're informed. But ultimately, yeah, speaking to them just like human beings, I can't say that enough, right? We stop the fluff. People don't want to see any more fluff in their email boxes. They are oversubscribed. I think that people just want to see that, you know, there are causes that are working for the same mission that we are all working towards and we just have to join together in order to find that sustainable change. You know, Bryn, let me ask you, I love what you said here and it seems to me like some of your answer might have been formed by the work that you've done. You didn't just like jump out of bed and say, let's put on a walk and get 80,000 people. Can you share with us some of that story or that trajectory, like how it started and how it moved through? Because to have a community walk such as that, it involves the community. It involves community assets just to manage it outside of your own organization. Can you share it with us about that? Absolutely. There's so many different components to the community that's involved, right? You have your volunteers at the American Cancer Society. I worked with about 30 members of our committee. And so those would be individuals that wanted to help with our newsletter, the marketing side of things, you know, or those who want to help out with the logistics of event day really lead the operations side. And then we have of course our income side, our revenue drivers, those who are reaching out to our corporate sponsors, organizing some online fundraising challenges, really unique ideas to bring in new donors and new supporters. So really leveraging our volunteers is a huge aspect of getting the community involved. And then also look at the businesses in our backyard. That can be the little mom and pop diner down the street where you can ask the clients to, would you like to match? You know, you just spent $10 on your breakfast. Would you like to donate an additional $10 to help feed someone who needs it? You know, if your cause is about feeding people or match that amount to cover school supplies for an individual who may not be able to afford the backpack this year. Or finally, get the resources, the medical, the personal wellbeing that patients and caregivers need. So there are a lot of things that your mom and pop shops down the street can do or your large corporations who are getting their workforce involved with a cause that is important to them. A lot of the big corporate sponsors or corporate partners that I worked with really wanted to understand how to get their team involved and boost that morale and keep them engaged. And a lot of the time, the only thing they need to do is listen. You know, a little brief survey. Your staff wants you to know what's important to them. They're willing to talk about it. So if the cause is breast cancer, if the cause is school supplies, if the cause is animals, listen to them and get involved. You can form fundraising teams. You can provide matching gifts based on the support that your staff is willing to do. And yeah, just meet them where they're at. Show them that you're their friend, right? You wanna help boost their friend raising and their fundraising. But there's just so many ways for a community to get behind an event in their area. How long did it take you to get to that number? Like what was the trajectory of time from when that walk was started to getting that astounding number of people? So the event that I, when I first joined in, it was already an established event. That event specifically had been going on for about 20 years when I came on in. Having said that, so many details evolved with the city or a global pandemic, all that fun stuff. So it's going to be changing. The numbers are going to be evolving, but I think, yes, there's an essential aspect of building on what's already there, but you always have to keep innovating. You cannot remain sustainable if you're not willing to innovate. So that means make sure you're listening to your people. What do your people want? Cause they're going to be your drivers. You know, listen to what your clients want. What do they want to see from you? All of those aspects will kind of help you kind of pursue a sustainable goal. Bryn, when you talk about the innovation, one of the things I know that we've all seen over these last couple of years is a spike in innovation from our leaders. And I feel like we've seen more of these events being done instead of in one large group, you know, advocated to say, run, walk, hike, participate anywhere in the world, wherever you might be. And they've used, they've maintained this peer-to-peer spirit. They've maintained this digital fundraising atmosphere of posting images using hashtags. And I'm curious if you could talk to us about that virtual component and how that might play a role in all of what we're talking about, the viability as well as the fundraising fundraising aspect. The virtual component is so important because it's unavoidable this day and age. There's just so many components to an event that need to be accessible. So if we are only making this event an in-person event, we're not gonna be able to reach everyone that we want to connect with. So that's going to be hurting our donor retention, our supporter retention. If we're not willing to continue innovating, we won't change the structure of our event to meet the goals and the needs of the individuals who are being affected by this cause and by the mission. So innovation is just so important in making sure that large-scale events can continue to be viable and that our supporters will remain engaged. Now in the marketplace, there are organizations that do large-scale events. Did you ever contract with an organization like that or was this managed all internally? This was all internally. Right, so when I came on board, and I gotta say the volunteers are the key. Volunteer-led, I know we hear this a lot in the nonprofit world, but our volunteers really are the heart of the mission. And there's a reason they got involved and they want to serve and they have skills to do so. So use them, utilize your passionate supporters. So yeah. Okay, so then the part two question to that would be, you're talking about innovation and trying new things, where did those ideas come from? Did they come from your volunteers or did your leadership move forward? The reason why I asked that question is that I know with Jared and I, since we started the nonprofit show, the number of innovative products that have come into the marketplace, it's astonishing. Every day we're getting pitched and people are coming to us with their new ideas that are digital. It's hard to keep up with. So how did you manage to do that? I really think it comes back to your specific supporters. If you listen to all these great ideas of what worked all over the world or what worked in that community, one, it's not taking into consideration the needs of your supporters, but also from a pandemic perspective, you're gonna have a lot of different trends and limitations and parameters around what you're allowed to do, not only for your large-scale event, but for the ways that you would traditionally engage with supporters. So all of that comes into play. The ideas for innovation really come from partnering with employees, I'm sorry, volunteers, partnering with those volunteers, the lifeblood of the organization, those who have been around since the beginning. I think it's no secret that there is turnover in nonprofit organizations. So when a new staff member comes in that they are first and foremost willing to listen, what's been done, what works well, what doesn't work well, where are our opportunities for growth, strengths, weaknesses, what's internal, what can we control, what's out of our control. I mean, you really need to stop focusing on it so much and just have fun. So there's so many different opportunities to listen for innovation from the supporters who are directly involved now, including those top fundraisers, those top stakeholders, right? I'm sure there's some type of category within your organization that has your top fundraisers at the American Cancer Society called them pace setters that are setting the pace. So they are often the individuals who have been involved for a number of years, 10 plus years, they've seen things come and go and they want to be heard, they have an opinion. There's a reason they've been involved for so long and stuck it out. So I would just really encourage to take a step back, be humble and listen to those who are willing to speak up. And then from coming back into networking with the nonprofit world, just because they live in a different side of the country doesn't mean that you can't adopt their idea. A lot of things to be gleaned and grown from an idea out in California that can be used here in Florida. Yes, there are a lot of differences from a state perspective, but we can still work together and reach our audiences in a way, especially with virtual, touching base with people virtually. It can be all the same, regardless of where you're located. All of your information expertise is so top notch and I love hearing, I mean, 80,000, both Julie and I, our jaws dropped and our hair, as she says, was set on fire. I can only imagine, Bren, that there is so much institutional knowledge and transference of the people and processes and that is something so strong behind generate impact. I'm curious how you, if you could talk to us about both of those, the planning, the process and how, for the people and how all of this goes into the timeline and how we need to think about the trajectory for, maybe we start with a community walk and there's a hundred people, but one day we too would like to have 50,000, 80,000. So walk us through these planning phases. Right, so you touched on quite a few, a couple of things there. I know the people process technology is such an important aspect. So I know we'll get back to that and I am super passionate about that, but the amount of time needed, I think definitely depends on the portfolio we're looking at. One, are you planning one event, two events at a time, four events at a time? Take all that into consideration, but from me personally, the event I was over did take all year long. Even as the event is taking place or being planned for 2020 or 2021, you're going to be considering ideas for the future. So it's almost like those two or three years are being planned simultaneously. You're measuring if this venue is working, if you need to move to a new location, where the road closure is good. If not, make a little note for next year, we're going to need additional, we're going to need less. You're making all of those decisions in real time. So making sure you're organized or one of your volunteers are keeping track of those areas of improvement. That's going to be huge, but starting early is always key. Starting from day one is always key. You'll never find, you'll never kick yourself and say, shoot, I started too early again. You'll say, oh shoot, we're one month out and I really wish I had started planning and connecting with my, you know, that constituents sooner. So don't live with those regrets, start forming those relationships. Remember that these are just, these are human beings. They want to talk with you as a human being who cares about a cause. So at the end of the day, I can't push enough that from the moment that you touch base with your supporters, even if it's day one, if it's one month out from the event, let them know, remind them why they're here, why they got involved, very specifically, give them measurable impact and make sure that's consistent from day one to the day right before your event and to when you're wrapping up the year on December 31st. So let me ask about that, because communications is, and we don't have much time, but I got to get this question in. Did you have some sort of a formalized communication, like say a newsletter or a weekly email that went out or how did you maintain a consistent communication path to so many people? Right, so first and foremost, yes, a newsletter. Newsletters are great. You can keep them changing, keep them interesting, make sure that the information is always relevant, but we definitely did do a monthly newsletter. And in addition to that, I mentioned earlier online fundraising challenges. Those are some really exciting ways to give a little bit of incentive to people who already want to give you their money. Sometimes it just might be a little nicer to get a little something in return, that one little trinket, that the opportunity, the entry to win X. So one example of something you can do during the pandemic, a lot of people are wanting to start a business for the first time or maybe looking into, launching their own career. And so getting a professional in your community to kind of donate an hour of their time, two hours of the time that you can then maybe auction off during one of those challenges for consultative or even a photographer that can then do portraits, professional headshots, family photos as you emerge from the lockdown, you can get your new set of photos for you. So those are all things that you don't have to knock on too many doors to get the donated product that then you can send out to your constituents and let them know there is an incentive available for your giving. I have really seen, I met this couple on a plane, she shared with me her own personal health journey and since then I've really been following her on social media and I've been so amazed because she for sure is a pace setter in whatever they call their leadership gifts and donations for the organization that she's been a part of and to see her digital footprint and impact in this manner. I mean, she has people supporting in so many ways and she'll set her goal for 20,000 and she'll blow it out of the water almost immediately. How do we get more of those amazing people that really are driven to help raise the dollars? Maybe they're motivated by the incentives or maybe they're not but how do we attract more of those individuals? I think understanding that asking for money doesn't need to be daunting because it's not, hi, can I please have cash? It's telling your story. It's telling your story. It's letting people know why there's a need and how they can help, right? It's meeting people where they're at. There's always that common theme. So reaching out to them, letting them know that there's a very easy, tangible way that they can be giving now is just so important right now. I love it. Wow, Bryn, this has been really great. I love that you have been a part of something so much larger than yourself in terms of this major community event. I mean, really, I would say a national event and then to see you moving into the team that generate impact, really super cool. I think it's gonna be a marvelous thing to witness and for everyone to be a part of. Here's Bryn's information, generateimpact.com, check them out. They've got a lot of really exciting things going on and we've been thrilled to have them on our team working away. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, been joined with my intrepid co-host, Jarrett Ransom, the nonprofit nerd. We wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors. They allow us each and every day to have this conversation with the only national daily show dedicated to the nonprofit sector. It's pretty amazing even to say that. And so we really would not be here without their support. So we wanna say thank you. Hey, Jarrett, this is really cool. I loved this conversation today. Me too. And I have seen more of these opportunities over the last two years, really looking at how might we incorporate this opportunity instead of that sit-down dinner that we had to pull out for the last two years from our calendar. So, Bryn, we are so honored to have your time and talent with us today. Thank you for sharing all of your valuable expertise. I know that our viewers will take this and run with it. No pun intended. And I know. Ta-da. And again, I really think there's many other organizations considering this and maybe looking at this for a viable scalable opportunity. So again, thank you. It's been great to have you. Thank you both so much for having me, welcoming me. It's been great to be here. So thank you both. Hey everybody, as we end this episode, of the nonprofit show, we want to remind everyone, as we do every day, stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.