 Welcome, thank you for joining us today. We are so thrilled that you have chosen to dial in and pull up today's episode again the only national broadcast in the nonprofit sector. So we have spent the last two years every weekday dedicating at least 30 minutes to thought leaders across the nation and topics that continue to change in and around our sector. Today we are so thrilled to have back with us Jill Krumbacher and Jill serves as the senior VP of marketing and development. So that's a couple of hats right there with the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption and we are excited to have more conversation with you because a couple of weeks ago you came on and we actually had a full week dedicated to the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption and part way through that week both Julie and I were like we need more time with you. Talk about this marketing and development concept as they you have found a way to have the two of these entities partner and work in tangent with one another. So, Julie and I are thrilled to have you back if you haven't met us yet. Julia is the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett ransom CEO of the Raven group, but finally known as the nonprofit nerd. And again, for two years 30 minutes every weekday, we continue to have the support from the sponsors you can see on the screen. We are extremely grateful to have their continued investment and support in these conversations, and little do you know we've got a lot of our sleeves for next year and many of these companies are sticking around to help us do more and reach more throughout the nation as we all continue to navigate forward. So thank you to our sponsors and again, Jill. Thank you. Thank you it's good to be here again. We were so intrigued by many, many things that we heard about through our week with the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. So many interesting things we covered policy covered fundraising we covered marketing. We covered board work leadership all these things, and tucked there in the middle was this day where we talked with both you and your CEO about this really interesting structure that you have done and that's what we wanted to bring you back on, because you have you actually lead both the marketing and the development team. That's correct. I mean you have to repeat that because I'm just like so taken aback. Yes, absolutely. Both teams report to me and we really think about ourselves as one big department. So happy family, if you will. Wow, amazing. So we started chatting, you know, in the sector that we were going to have you on and, and what an interesting opportunity and unique position. This is, and we've had, we've been witnessing so many people start this conversation about wait a minute what can this work and how does it work and so that's what we wanted to dig in. And so, let's start off by having you explain to us. What's your day look like I mean how many people do you lead. You mentioned in the chitty chat chat that you at you have your own portfolio. Talk to us about that. Sure. Well, my day is probably evenly split between marketing and development. My role is to oversee both clearly. But I've got some strong, you know, director level and VP level that lead up some of the teams in support of me and so that I think is really key to what I do. So my day typically looks like meeting with the leaders of my teams, our vice president of marketing communications and then we have to senior directors that lead up a couple different channels and our fundraising team. And regularly meeting with them talking about their goals, talking about what's happening in their particular units, how their metrics are looking. And, you know, problem solving, helping be their champion that's really my role, helping them think of things solve problems. But in addition, yes, I do have a portfolio it's not the size of the others on my team that what they carry, but I do have a portfolio that tends to focus on our higher end donors and and what they need. And it also in support of Rita as our CEO so I spend time supporting Rita and bringing donors to her that she may need to talk with and helping her helping her plan for those as well so I do have a portfolio. But usually I'm spending a lot of time on a daily basis meeting with my team leads and talking at level at a deep level about what's going on in their organizations and just helping them vision cast and problem solve and and do the great work that they do. So, Jill, you mentioned that the foundation has been on a steady hiring string now for about three years. Yes, individuals are we talking that make up this marketing and development team. Right. So in our entire organization we're at about 54 right now on the marketing and development team we are hiring our 20th right now. So we are a team of 20 at this moment. That is amazing and how does how do these 20 individuals work together you said you know they both report to you but it's really one big team one big happy family. How might we as an organization as we move into next year start to consider what this combined effort or combined team setup and make up might look like what should we consider. You know I think for us there's a couple of reasons why this makes sense and why we we decided to go this way with our organization. First of all would probably be my background. So when I came into the organization. I had my depth was in marketing and it for profit marketing and probably every every focus you could have in marketing I had had in the for profit world. But also towards the later years of my career I was also managing sales teams. And so that was my background I came in with both marketing and sales experience. I did not come in with nonprofit experience. And you would all know working in at a nonprofit fundraising is not sales, but there are a lot of tactics there are a lot of practices practices that are similar. And so I think my background, and having run organizations under me before that we're both marketing and sales together. It seems to make sense when I joined that the organization under Rita Sornin to really lead these efforts. And I think there's a couple of things that make sense as to why this works for us. And I think one of them is the fact of where we are in our organizations, our organizations growth. We come from a history of strong support from the Wendy's company, we still have strong support from the Wendy's company and it's growing, each and every year, they continue to up and increase what they're doing for us. But as our work really grows and expands at a dramatic level, we really want everyone to be able to join us in this work, and we know that a lot of people have a passion for this work and we want them to join our mission. And as we're aggressively growing, we find ourselves in a vast donor acquisition stage at the foundation that is the stage that we are the heaviest in. Yes, we have donors up that donor journey that are major gift donors that you know have us in their their wills in a state that give it the leadership annual giving level yes we have those donors, but we are really focused on donor acquisition and at the lower levels of giving and I think that's one of the reasons why this works for our organization. Because a lot of the tools that a national nonprofit is going to use, who's not a university with alumni as your list of, of, you know, potential donors right, we've got to go find potential donors and a lot of the tools you're going to use to do that are digital ad tools. And so we are going to get those donors through digital media through digital ads through email campaigns through direct mail. So, a lot of those are the expertise that the marketing team has through social media right and so for us. I think it. It makes total sense for us to be combined because we are focused on that stage of our work we are looking for rapid growth and the numbers of donors that we're attracting annually every year. So in this journey to doing that I mean it's riveting what you said and and I love the strategic focus and one of those things that Rita touched on when you were with us for the week, the nonprofit power week was that you know you are so blessed to have the tie into the Wendy's Corporation and to your founder, but it is incorrect to believe that you are funded by them that you still have to go out and market and raise and, you know, fundraise and everything so I see where you're going with this, but now I've got to ask the big question chicken or egg chicken or egg. Does marketing drive development or does development drive marketing. I would answer this by saying, it is 100% the development goals that drive marketing. So, our development are fundraising goals, the dollars that we need to sustain this organization and keep our moving, keep our organization moving forward, we've charted those out year over year we know what they look like. That's five years out 10 years out, we think right, everyone has to revisit those, but we know how aggressively we need to grow. And so, for us, those development goals are driving our marketing department, you know our marketing team. So, one of the reasons why why they're so involved number one is is is donor acquisition like I said but also brand awareness, our market department is in charge of brand awareness. And if people don't know who you are you're not going to fundraise. So, even that their brand awareness goals are supporting development, truly. I have perhaps a curve ball question. Okay. So, I have a, I have a son he's 11 he's always on YouTube right and so I have now started going on to YouTube to say well you know what is he looking at and oh I can I can find all of these videos here. I was shocked, shocked shocked to see a nonprofit advertisement on YouTube. And that to me, like, whoa, of course of course this is now, you know one of the go to channels. Have you ventured your marketing efforts into YouTube and how long have you been there and how is that, how is that working for you. Yes, yeah. Yeah, we have a digital agency that helps advise us so in addition to our 20 employees we do have two external agencies, one that helps us with our digital fundraising and digital awareness and one that helps us with our direct mail and with the last couple of years, because that digital space is growing so quickly. I do not know anyone who could keep a portfolio try to do all that work and keep up with that that that changing work I think that's a challenge so we are blessed to have a digital agency who keeps their eye on this kind of thing and is able to tell us hey we should try this we should try that so YouTube yes just within I would say the last six months, we have been on YouTube and what we've been trying to discover is. Can we fund raise on YouTube or can we just build awareness on on YouTube, and we all know awareness will then often lead to fundraising so it's a, is it an immediate thing or or is it just an awareness thing right now for us it's primarily an awareness tool. But it's growing and we're continuing to really test within that area and watch it to try different things and see how it works but yes we you would see ads from from on YouTube for the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption for sure. Fascinating to me because when I saw it I thought, whoa, this is bizarre and then I thought well of course because as you said technology continues to advance and the platform in which we seek information and entertainment. We cannot be in these spaces so that's, that's really interesting so you said, unequivocally, the development goals, goals, really is what drives the marketing efforts and initiatives. Yes, it drives both the development goals drive the development team and the marketing team in our organization. Yes. So now you're, you're so I can tell by your approach, you're probably super super organized about tracking and measuring and evaluating. I got to ask this quest question. Can one of these departments do better than another or you're measuring both how are you measuring them together me. What does that look like because it's really an interesting conundrum. If one parts falling down and the others coming up or I mean, I would imagine there are these these pieces of that. Yeah, that's a great question and we just went through this exercise about our measurements and tracking our data. Just this past year so we, we meet and present with the marketing committee of our board on a quarterly basis, and we show to them, we have a marketing scorecard, full of data that we present to them, and we have a development fundraising scorecard that we present to them. And what you might expect is it's challenging just challenging to separate the two types of data for us, which again is a reason why we're one department because it's so hard to separate and when you try to separate them on two different scorecards you see just how interconnected they are. But basically on our fundraising scorecard we're watching clearly dollars in the door we're watching numbers of new donors we're watching returning donors. We are watching particular channels that are doing really well for us. We're watching growth year over year. It's very heavy on dollar metrics or numbers of donors on the marketing side. We also include some fundraising metrics. The top of the top of the marketing metrics you know to the development metrics I'm sorry, because again marketing is supporting fundraising you need to keep your eye on the on that ball, but also on the marketing scorecard would be things like the brand awareness, or we survey every five years American attitudes about adoption across the country and in Canada, that survey data is on there. We're watching on social media growth on social media list growth is on there. So not just donors, how many people are donating to us that would be on the fundraising scorecard but how many people are following along, right, that may then become a donor and so that audience is sort of separately watched on the marketing scorecard so we are very data driven in everything that we do and have separate metrics as much as possible to try to keep our eye on on both of those things. And you mentioned something very interesting and that is is that you're actually reporting quarterly to a marketing committee with that serves the board. I'm wondering, I'm assuming that these are predominantly franchisee franchise holders that are on that committee. Our board is made up of franchise, partly a franchisee the Wendy system, these corporate senior executives supplied the Wendy system but then we also have external partners external expertise on our board as well so we have. We have a reporter who serves on our our market committee, we've got people who work in child welfare on the board so, but there are franchisees of course yes who would serve on our marketing and fundraising committees. So I'm curious, do they ever come back at you and challenge you on what you're reporting out, or are they, I mean, how engaged are they on this because this is a heavy ask to get somebody that's serving on a national board then to drill down and I'm wondering what that looks like does that help you does that suck up energy I mean I know you have to walk a line here but you know that reality. You know, our board committees are extremely engaged. And yes they're serving on a nonprofit board it's volunteer right, but particularly on our marketing committee, we've got people who work in marketing at the Wendy's company on a corporate level, and they're very engaged, and how are how those committee meetings feel like is. Here's how the data. Here's the best that we know how to do here's what we're doing with our budgets this year and we agree upon our goals with those committees at the beginning of the year we say, here's the goals we're setting for ourselves, and here's why. We're not as much hired as them last year you know here's what we think it's going to take to get here and they bless those goals, and then every quarter, we report back to them on how it's going. And so sometimes we say, Oh, it's out of the park, and they just share, and sometimes we say okay this one this one's looking a little different than we thought it would. And they'll bring their expertise, you know, many of them don't work in the nonprofit space but they do work in the for profit space and they'll say hey that's really interesting. We struggled with this over here or we learned this over here, does this help you might this help you. So they, it is a very much on all hands on deck all brains on deck. During that hour. Here's our success rate. Here's what's really working here's what we're struggling with. And it's an all in. Have you thought about this, have you tried this, or maybe we could do this, you know, that is how the, how the committees work together so it's it's a great use of an hour. I think you mentioned in the power we some ab testing how do you get with your goals. Um, you know, I don't know if our goals that experimental we set our goals based on number one last year's last year's numbers last year's growth, we're always going to try to increase that year over year, and our long term objectives and where we know that sometimes we're setting a goal that's higher than what the industry would tell you you need to do we we're known to do that. Because we've got a goal dog on it and we need to serve this many children across the United States and we're going to do everything we can to get there. So, so our goals aren't necessarily experimental but the ways we try to meet those goals are. Again, sometimes that comes into play with our, with our partners, who would see one thing about having an agency at your disposal, if you can afford the investment is that they are seeing the results of organizations, 20 other organizations, sometimes. And that is a Trevor trove of information. And what we've learned and what they're able to tell us is, you know, in a direct mail piece or in a digital ad, these colors or these types of messages work well in healthcare organization, these work well in animal welfare, these work well on advocacy or political endeavors. And so coming in we didn't know what we were. We didn't fit well within one of these that says you do it this way or that way or this way. So we had to test things to figure out which one we would act the most like if that makes sense. Because they had that knowledge of tend to work in nonprofit, but we were a unique little unicorn in nonprofit space of foster care adoption we weren't sure where we would fit so that's where we would take some of their knowledge well some organizations do it well if you do it this way and some do it well if you do it this way. So we would have to test and try to figure out and do both and put it out there, split the list, and see which one had a higher rate. That's why we do those things because we didn't know which one that might work best for donors who are attracted to our issue. You said your background was really in sales and also in marketing. So many of the individuals on your committee as you said may not be working again a nonprofit but can still bring those best practices to say, might we try this because this is what the industry is seeing elsewhere. I'm huge on benchmarking right generic what's working. Why is it working how might that relate to us and our mission. So I love hearing that because, you know, I don't think that our nonprofit sector is eager to take risk, often enough. And when it comes to a B testing, you know, it's more of this whole approach this buckshot approach of we're just going to send the same message the same colors the same image the same every every one and clearly that's not always the right method, especially when you're in marketing brand awareness development fundraising and how those two play with one another so I just love hearing this Jill it's very refreshing and inspiring honestly. Part of that comes from when you're doing that type of testing you have to understand you're making an investment, and that particular fundraising piece may not set the world on fire and the fundraising results because you split the list and you're doing it two different ways, and you're doing that as an investment to learn which way is best so that your next one does hit it out of the park. And so being able and having permission to make an investment is a blessing that I have at this organization, and that our board supports, and I understand that everyone has that they're under the pressure of I you know I've got to I've got to make it big this year I can't make an investment to test, but if you don't make the investment to test and understand it is an expense that you have to do so that your future is much more profitable has a lot more revenue, then you're never going to know if you're really doing things if you're really hitting things out of the park like you could be so that that is the why understanding I'm making an investment in this. And that's okay, because I'm going to learn, and then that is going to catapult me forward in my fundraising in the future but maybe not this month. You know, I love that you use the word investment because that's one of those things that we don't use that word in the nonprofit sector. And it seems like such a for profit word but I think that's a great mindset to take a look at how and why you're going to be doing some of these things that ultimately come back and serve your organization so I really love that you helped frame it up this way for so many of our viewers that need to go back to their teams and try and sell them on how to do something different. This has been magical as our time with you has been magical it's been great. I mean Jared and I were again so impressed with your team and the things that you said and we just found you and your organization and so it's been really fun. Here's Jill's information. We're going to have this discussion more and more I think throughout our sectors we look at how we navigate these two divergent yet similar paths within our organizations. Thank you. It's my pleasure it was really great to be with you and to all of you marketing and development folks out there doing the hard work after day after day, keep going you are funding missions across this country and across this world that we need you needs you and so keep going. Thank you. Thank you that's powerful and Jared and I echo that sentiment it definitely really powerful we're so delighted that again once again we could have another wonderful episode thank you to all of our sponsors have stepped up that allows to have these amazing dialogues that I don't know where you would find them anywhere Thank you for your transparency and sharing with us the amazing journey of your organization. Hey everybody as we would like to remind everyone as we end this day. Stay well, so you can do without. We'll see you back here tomorrow everyone. Bye.