 We want to extend our deepest and sincerest appreciation for all of our sponsors. You can see the presenting sponsor logos right in front of you. So grateful to have their support. And to be honest, these companies, corporations, individuals, I always like to say, they really like us, but they love you. They love the missions that you're serving. They love the causes that you're providing solutions to in our community. So check out our presenting sponsors, give them a like, thumbs up, some follow, and just some overall love, because they're doing great things to support your great things. Julia Patrick, I'm so glad to be here with you for another episode of The Nonprofit Show. Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I get to serve alongside Julia. I'm the co-host, Jared Ransom, also known as her non-profit nerd, or your non-profit nerd, but really the non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And I'm also excited to share with you today's guest. And as I said, we have a wonderful lineup coming up this week. We've got Tony Bell, Tamara with Fundraising Academy. We have someone incoming, Sandra Madison is her name, to talk about project feasibility. And then we have PetSmart Charities about how to talk to funders. So I'm looking excited for that. But today, I am thrilled to have Frank Bass-Base Bassalisi. I practiced this, Frank. Poker face, poker face, poker face, non-reactive poker face. Yeah, Bassalisi. It's okay. I was like 20 before I could say it consistently. So you've got time. Let alone spelling it. I even wrote it out right here. I'm like, I've got it, Bassalisi. So Frank, Bassalisi. Thanks for joining us today, Frank. I am so excited to chat with you and to really, as I say, and nerd out over a really fun topic. So welcome and thanks for joining us. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. You know, Frank, we talk so much on the nonprofit show about 1.8 million nonprofits across this country doing amazing things. 11 million Americans employed by these nonprofits. And when it comes down to it, marketing, I think, is one of the keys of why some organizations resonate more with donors than others because they're able to tell their stories or able to communicate. So we wanted to get you in the hot seat to learn how visual materials and graphics could really help us move our nonprofits forward. And it's something that we don't spend enough time, money or talk about. I think we feel like a lot of times, oh, well, we have a great product and we have a great mission, so that should be enough. But it's not, is it? Well, it's the critical first step, of course. You know, is having a clear mission and the vision and the values to help make it happen. Absolutely. But what's always the case is people that are involved in nonprofit organizations are passionate, committed people who will do what it takes to get the job done. So that means if this person needs a website and that person needs a website and that person needs an email communication campaign, they just go off and do it. And what happens is we don't have consistency of messaging. We don't have consistency of logo treatment, of color of any of these things because these people are wanting to get stuff done to further their part of the broader mission. And I see it happen all the time and I applaud it because it's wonderful to have such passionate people but it would be more effective and more efficient if everybody was playing from the same rule book, if you will. And that rule book is key. I think and that's where I see many nonprofits have an opportunity for improvement to just put together like a really brief one page overview of mission, vision, values, color, logo, all of these things and just put it out there for their people to use and for their valued vendor partners to use. I love it. Okay, so pro tip number one, you use the word cloud. What does that mean? Well, this is an amazing time to be alive. It's an amazing time to be in business. And think about it, we have like instantaneous free worldwide communications that we can do from our desktop. I mean, this is like unheard of but one of the things that we also have is the cloud at our disposal. And most of us are working on, many of us I would say are working on a Microsoft platform and there's OneDrive which comes basically free with your Microsoft account Dropbox also has free offers where you can just basically use a hard drive that's not on your desktop, it's in the cloud and you could move files into that cloud as if it's a local hard drive. And then you could share that link with your internal folks and your external folks so that everybody is working from the same source materials. And that's what I was alluding to earlier about consistency of messaging, consistency of creative treatment. And I think if there's one takeaway that people get from our time spent here today it's to build a marketing section in a cloud somewhere and share it with a lacquerty with your people. It isn't a secret, it isn't something you have to worry about people stealing as people will help you do a better job communicating your message. So Frank, it's interesting that your first pro tip is cloud. Julie and I and in fact, our executive producer, Kevin we were talking recently about, the tools in our world that have really enabled us to do so much more and how the light bulb really was one of those key instruments to say, okay, now we can extend how we look at productivity throughout the day that it's not just based off of the sun, right? And so the cloud I was saying now we have our tools if you will accessible all the time. And so this marketing one sheet is a tool that we don't need to be in the office to pull up on a hard drive or even like a three ring binder anymore. It is accessible everywhere. And it- Absolutely, absolutely. And it isn't, I would suggest this one page overview document should be one of the primary inclusions in your directory on the cloud but you should also have like the one true version of your logo horizontal, maybe one more vertical but the one version save it as a PNG on a transparent background and then anybody could use it anywhere and it's the same everywhere. What we need, you know, repetition builds reputation. I say that all the time. And then another that I say is consistency builds confidence. So you're a professional organization and people expect to see the same treatment from you the same logo from you. And when they see different versions and different typefaces and different colors of it doesn't create confidence. And then if people are not confident they're not gonna necessarily be willing to participate with your organization either financially or as a volunteer or something because you haven't created that sense of goodwill that sense of permanence that people want to be a part of. So maybe we've jumped ahead because your point pro tip number two is theme and is that what you're talking about? Actually the theme that I mentioned here is something different than that. And it's, all right, let's call it what it is. It's a crutch. For me, it makes our communications easier for us and for the people that are doing the communication. And what I like to do is I like to come up with a theme either for a campaign or an annual theme for the organization that they could use internally and externally to keep this year new and different and fresh from last year and then we get people excited about next year. And some of these themes are like, you know, set the pace. So what does that mean? Shape your world. One year I did shape your world with ASU and we had a big, we used that theme for the entire year and at the event we gave each attendee silly putty. And it was amazing to see a room of 500 C level business execs playing with silly putty. And it was just, it was amazing how it got it. For the set the pace, we had drummers and we had drums at different places and we had drummers in the intermissions and stuff. So this annual theme could be very, very helpful because it gives us sort of a copy flow, you know, right away, it's like, okay, if it's going to be, you are the key. It's like, oh, okay. I can see where that goes visually. I can see where that goes from a copy standpoint. I can see some specialty advertising items, key fobs, key chains, you know, USB drives on key, all those kinds of things. So I think an annual theme or a campaign theme helps to give us a framework for our playground. Otherwise we go off and crazy with all different directions, but- And it's mattering with everything. I was going to ask, so this theme, Frank, is your prototype really for, I heard you say two things, the year as well as a, you know, like a campaign. Would it be too much if we themed every quarter? Is that too confusing and we're going to lose clarity? You know, the world is turning faster and faster all of the time. So if people get bored with a theme over a whole entire year, then maybe we do consider doing it quarterly, you know, and maybe it has different dimensions of the same overarching thematic concept, you know? So if it is something like, you know, teamwork makes the dream work or something like that, you know, you could do sports teams, you could do musical, like a musical group. One song, both right? You could maybe leverage that theme differently through the year, but maybe quarterly is kind of the newer way to go. I remember we used to do annual plans a long time ago and it's like, well, we can't react fast enough if it's an annual plan, but it's up to the organization, of course. But the external and the internal dimension is what I think can be very, very cool here because it gives consistency for your team. You know, if you have quarterly team meetings or annual shareholder meetings or board meetings or all of that, this theme ties the entire year together. And the announcement of the theme for the next year is a kind of an exciting thing that people look forward to. Right, people are anxious to hear, ooh, I wonder what next year is gonna be or the next, you know, campaign theme. That's interesting. So now, pro tip number three, copy. I know, big topic. Big topic. Books are written about that. I mean, you know, you could get a degree in just this alone, you know? So what I wanted to do is just in part two pointers that I have with regard to copy, okay? Just because it's such an enormous thing that I wanted to make this actionable and meaningful for people that are watching. So the first point that I'd like to make for copy is the flow of how we introduce it. And I'm a big fan of this rubric and it is tell me what you're gonna tell me, tell me and then remind me what you just told me. If you think about your high school composition class it's exactly the same thing. The introductory paragraph, the three supporting paragraphs, the clothing paragraph. It's the same thing, but we got away from it and people like to feel comfortable. Like, I know what's coming, okay, here's the map. I'm on the map, here's one, two, three. We're at the end of the map, here's the summation and we're gonna review what we all just discussed together. Tell me what you're going to tell me, tell me and then tell me what you just told me, is that right? Exactly right, exactly right. And I just keep that in the back of my head. So tell me, remind me what you just told me. Let's try it all together. And then tell me again, right? Exactly, and that also brings me to the next point. And this again, kind of a little mini one, but it is when you're gonna be writing copy, especially direct marketing copy, either appeal letters or that kind of thing, that rule of three also comes into play again. And I think it is vitally important to do the call to action three times, three different ways. Somewhere in the body copy, in the closing paragraph of the long copy deck. And the most important place to do the repeat of the call to action is in a PS. And nowadays I'm seeing lots of letters that I'm getting from non-profit organizations. They don't have a PS. I'm like, that is the most important thing. Some people only read the PS because they know this is the entire crux of this. Well, in statistics show, from what I remember, Frank, and feel free to correct me, is that most people actually read the PS first if, and as you said, if they even read the entire letter, but they will read the PS first. And so missing a PS is really missing so many opportunity. Absolutely. And so people, it's the same way people read magazines, suskim and read, you know, there's that, that old kind of rule of thumb, but the PS and then they'll look through and just see the headline. So that's another point just from maybe a cross or a bridge from copy to our next point, which is designed. And that is people should be able to read a Johnson box at the top. The headlines pulled out centered bold and get the story. It's like, here's what we're gonna cover. One, two, three, here's the call to action PS out the door. Then if they're interested in what you said from a headline standpoint, maybe they'll invest the time to actually read the copy. And hopefully we as marketers make the copy compelling enough that people wanna read it and stay engaged to the end. But again, people have very short attention spans these days. Oh, something's happening, no, no, no. Girl, now I have a question. Are we talking print? Are we talking digital? Are we talking all the multi-channel? I think anytime we could make these communications consistent across platforms, we serve ourselves because we multiply the effect of our messaging. So it's kind of wonky to see a PS in a tweet. It's not gonna happen. It's kind of wonky to even see- You don't have characters, right? In a Facebook post or a LinkedIn post, but when we're doing longer copies, certainly letters, maybe even emails, it should be visually compelling, but there should be that rule of three and there should definitely be a clear, easily executable call to action. And it's almost easier in electronic communications because what's easier than just hitting a button? I mean, come on. I know. Another question. A part of this now, you take these concepts and you have to make it look good. You have to understand design. For me, that goes back to what you said is you have to understand what your primary elements are so that you are using the guide star of your colors, your fonts, your logo, all of that. But in the same point, you want it to be a little unique and if you throw in this concept of theming for a year, talk to us about that. Well, again, I said it's kind of a crutch, but it's a really good one. Maybe crutch is bad because it has a negative connotation, but it's a tool. It gives us a path that we could follow. Again, depending upon what that theme is, many times the design elements will shake out directly from the theme, be the light. I mean, for goodness sake, it's obvious. The different visuals that you do. And again, we don't want to be hackneyed or tried. We should be creative with our themes, but for the purposes of our discussion, I think it's, again, the theme lends itself to the design. I think it's important to use design thinking as well when we're approaching the creative development of the campaign. And one of the important things is how is the person that I'm hoping to inspire to take action wanting to see and receive this message? So who is our intended audience and how do they like to receive information and how can we make it as easy as possible for them to act on this information? The other piece of this is really designing with the end in mind. So if it's going to be a direct marketing package and you're going out and say a six by nine envelope to be a little different with some teaser copy, knowing what those specs are, are key, and also actually getting folded and folding dummies. And I know it's kind of silly because we think, oh, of course we know how to use envelopes, but here's a little pointer. A number nine response envelope does not conveniently fit into a six by nine outgoing envelope. It's a little too tight. So if you had a folding dummy along the way, you know this is going to not really work. You need a different response envelope for that. But mailing requirements, certainly the capabilities if you have a trusted printer that you've worked with for a long, long time, knowing what their press capabilities are and what works best for them is great. And of course, being really good friends with your local printer is good because sometimes they have unspoken for press space. They'll lay out three, eight and a half by 11s. And oh, look, there's nothing happening down here. Maybe we could run a little something, something for you for not a lot of money. I wanna go back. We have a viewer that asked a question in regard to the theme. And I'm noticing the theme really plays a big piece in the design element as you just shared with the spring. So the question asked, how do you feel about us crowdsourcing our staff to come up with the theme? So how much does the staff play a part in, I don't wanna say designing the theme because design and theme were two different things, but really in creating, what is the theme of the campaign or the year? Well, that is a great question. And I like the way you asked it too, Jared, because what you really have pointed out is how all of these things really just kind of flow together and support each other. And that's really what you want. And my opinion is the broader the field of view you have, the better the solutions are gonna be that you get. So the more cohorts you can involve in the development of your theme and the more buy-in you can get on your theme development, the better you're gonna be at executing your theme because it's gonna resonate with more people. I mean, this is what we want is to inspire participation by more people. So if you get staff involved, either internal staff, payroll staff, people that are like, nobody shows up in an office every day, I know, but back in the olden days when people all were in the same place at the same time, it was sort of like 18 months ago, right? Like eight months ago, right? But crowdsourcing it, doing it online, doing it with stakeholders, doing it with key donors, doing it with members of your board and members of your advisory committees and members of your trade association groups and even discussion groups of nonprofit organizations, we all help each other. We're all good co-competition. We're all competitive and we're all cooperative. And so we'll help each other, it's what we do, you know? But I think it's a great question. So the answer is, yes, get as many people to participate in your theme development as possible. Then when you get to the near the end or the beginning, you tell everybody, everybody's ideas are important and they're certainly all valuable and they will be considered, but they won't necessarily be acted upon. So when we get to the end of the journey there, we need to have somebody make a decision, say, here's what it's gonna be and then that's what we do. And then maybe you have three or four built-in for next year to consider, which is great. That's great advice, I love that. Cause I was thinking too, you know, our question came to us by way of, do we crowdsource our staff? And I also was thinking further, frankly, and other stakeholders, you know, that gives us a really great point of view of what is it that they're looking for and how might we address, you know, maybe the theme that comes from that. So your pro tip number five, we can see on the screen here is proof. What is proof? Well, this one again is something that's so often overlooked because we're all in such a hurry, we just take shortcuts, you know? And so proofing, there's a couple of different steps here. One of them I think that's really important and this kind of follows along with the crowdsourcing is to get another opinion. So you get near the end of the road, you've developed this thing that you think is an amazing package, if you will, and you have worked on it diligently and for months and maybe even one or two people on your team have helped. Then you get time to turn the printing press on and make it happen. Before you get to that point, run the entire package by a trusted individual or individuals. We all have advocates that we know and love that we can turn to and trust and ask them, will you please take five minutes, look through this thing? And then when we get to the end of it, I wanna ask you a couple of questions. How did this make you feel? Did this inspire you to take the desired action? You'll be amazed at, it can be a tiny little tweak. It could be like, I didn't like this word here. This made me feel a little unclear. It always gets better. And this goes, again, back. The more diverse input that we get in the development of our ideas, the better our ideas become. And so getting lots of feedback, I think is really, really key. The other piece of this is you yourself should actually go through the steps of the call to action. So if it's fill out a response device, if it's fill out this form online, if it, whatever it is, physically do it. And if it's gonna be ink on paper, you do it at something that's printed out at 100% size. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to get your email address in a line that's that big. It just hurts. And it doesn't make any of us look overly genius, right? So don't do it. The other piece of it though, is if say it's an online response mechanism, how is the backend working? Is the automatically generated email going out? Does it look like you expect it to go? Is the data capture mechanism feeding the correct databases at the end so that you could take follow-up actions and have these people feel the connection with your organization over the longer term? Can spam opt in, definitely key. So make sure that we're meeting with all the requirements for that. But the actual doing this of the call to action is key because so many times we get to the end of the process, we've worked really, really hard to generate these leads and then nothing happens with them. It's like, well, what happened here? I was really looking forward to hearing more from your organization and I haven't heard another thing from you. That doesn't feel very good. You know, it's interesting. I just did an audit for a nonprofit on this very thing. And we took a credit card donation, a cash donation, a social media donation, and then something that was from a printed call to action. We did them all with three different, or four different addresses, did them all on the same day and then waited to see what happened. And when we went back to the organization to say, look, this is what the experience was, it was shocking to them because all the things that they had put into place, it wasn't really working. And it was devastating to them because they were like, oh my gosh, you know, all the things that we've done that we thought were gonna be moving us forward, you know, we've missed a big chunk. And so I think there are a lot of things that now, you know, they're reevaluating and moving forward to make corrections. But to your point, I love that you said, print everything out and actually work it, actually work it and see how something can be done. I always have the Judy Patrick rule. My mom, who's fabulous, I always say, if my mom, who's 80 years old and incredibly bright can get through this from her demographic, from her age, then we're golden. Right, exactly. So often we do these things and then we never test them. So yeah, okay, now this has been amazing because you're speaking my love language, as they said. I have to ask you this last pro tip. I've been so, I've been thinking about this so much, wondering what in the heck you were gonna say, what is a bonus? All right, this one is key because I have seen this happen a thousand times. And in fact, I have a file folder in my cabinet that I keep, that I populate sometimes too frequently. But the bonus here is when you're writing copy or when you're like deep in the throes of writing copy and you're having flow and it's going really great and you're just missing a detail. And it's like, get this dollar amount from Bob and then you keep on writing and then you're writing a writing, you're doing really, really great and you get to the end and you hit the send button or you hit the collect for output button, you send it to the printer and then you get 500,000 copies of this letter and it says in the middle of it, get this detail from Bob, it's not so good. So rather than interrupt your flow or rather than stop writing and I'm so glad that you put this background in Magenta because this is my bonus tip number six. Anytime you have unknown copy points, put them in Magenta, this bright pink color and as you're reading through as you're proofing even as your printer gets it and they're gonna put it on presser, they're gonna be like, hey, what's this Magenta stuff going on in here? This doesn't really make sense. It's like, oh, I forgot to get that detail from Bob and you drop it in, you change it to black and off you go. Works for emails, it works for online content, it works for web content, it works for ink on paper content. It's a savior and it's like big Magenta, you can't miss it. You don't wanna make it like disturb the layout but you want it to be enough different that you're not gonna proceed to the next step without filling in that detail. Well, I think that goes back to Frank. I love that and I love it for multiple reasons but there have been so many times that many of us have been working on a project and as you said, we see it every day, we see it so often that it becomes like the back of our hand. We know it, oh yeah, no big deal. But if we have this big bold, I don't know why I'm wearing this big Magenta jacket today. See, there you go. Bonus, it's like, oh yeah, I need to check with Bob because that is what this Magenta color is telling me. And don't just set it in something that you think, oh, this is so obvious, like, all right, I don't know what this phone number is but I'm gonna make it one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and we'll pick it up when we get to the end. Well, guess what? That looks like a phone number and you get to the end and it doesn't look any different and off you go and that's not a very good phone number. You're not gonna get a lot of calls for that one. Well, Frank, this has been amazing and our time is up. It's really, it's done by so fast. So fast. So fast. I love the things that you've brought to us in our nonprofit sector. Shoot, we need this information so much and here is Frank's information. Really cool things that you've shared with us today. Again, I'm Julia Patrick. I've been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom. We wanna remind everyone, we're really excited. We have the Fundraising Academy coming back tomorrow for another lecture or series, I should say, in our cause marketing. I have been so transfixed and transformed by this series. So I really invite you to join us because it's great, great information. Again, we wanna thank our presenting sponsors without you. We would not be here with the likes of somebody like Frank who's just like opened up the world to me. And now I wanna get back into my office and start cranking out some product because it's really great advice. On the cloud though, right? On the cloud, on the cloud. And you know, if you have enjoyed this as much as we have, go ahead. And if you feel like you need to go back, you can always access our archive through Roku, through Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, through our site. I mean, we went through a lot of things, but those six tips are great. And so make sure you check those out. Again, wow, a great week, Jared, a great day to start off our week, don't you think? Amazing, Frank. I know I'm gonna go back and watch it and I'm gonna pause. And you said so many things that I'm like, wait, I wish I had written that down, right? But thank you so much for being a guest. We have another amazing guest joining us this week as you learn Tony Bell with Fundrails Academy. Pet Smart Charities is coming on this week as well. And you don't wanna miss what they're talking about. Awesome. And you know as we like to end every show, we wanna remind everyone to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thanks, Frank. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, guys.