 and welcome back. I'm just going to assume you've all been here to the nonprofit show before, but if you haven't, we are so thrilled that you found your way to us. The nonprofit show has been going since March of 2020 and today we are thrilled to have with us Joey Goon. Joey is the president at Utopia Experience. Phenomenal story that he's going to share with us, but today the conversation that he's brought to us is the psychology of nonprofit events. And Joey, we talk a lot about events, but we don't often talk about the psychology. So I'm ready to nerd out with you on that. Julia Patrick, I have to say thank you for creating this beautiful, brilliant platform to allow us these high-level conversations. Julia's out today, but she's the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I am so very grateful to be the co-host. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. Day in and day out, we are so very honored to have the ongoing support, the investment, the trust, respect from these partners. So thank you to all of our friends at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, as well as Nonprofit Tech Talk. I'd like to remind all of you, myself included, to please check these companies out. They offer amazing services and I like to remind you that their mission is really your mission because they wanna help you do more good throughout your community. Hey, if you missed any of our previous episodes since March of 2020, that's okay friends, you are in luck because you can find them on all of these platforms, broadcast, podcast, latest and greatest as you can download that app on your smartphone. So check us out, binge watch, binge listen, however you like to consume that entertainment. There's a lot of wonderful information to share with you and Joey, thrilled to have you adding to this, I'm gonna say like plethora of content but Joey Goone, President at Utopia Experience, welcome. Thank you so much, it's great to be here. Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you. So yesterday we had Kevin Spikerman with Charity Buzz and we also have Barbara O'Reilly this week. So it's a little bit of a Nashville reunion because you and I met in Nashville for the RAISE conference and so glad to have met you there. I heard your origin story from your wife and your business partner would love for you to share a little bit about yourself Joey and a little bit about how Utopia Experience came about. Could you do that? I'd love to, yeah, so thank you again for that beautiful introduction and for providing us this platform today to have. What I hope is a very meaningful conversation for us and for those listening. So I am a husband, a father, we have a 10 month old baby, I'm a brother, I have a sibling that lives in California, my brother lives out there, my sister lives in Chicago and an entrepreneur, you had mentioned Utopia Experience. And so yes, this is our family business. We live in St. Louis, Missouri, our company's headquartered here, we have clients as far west as San Diego and as far east as New Jersey which is very exciting and everywhere in between which is super cool. And so Utopia was founded by my mom in 2001, she was a school teacher, a gym teacher at that and she realized that she wasn't the most athletic person in the world but she loved kids. So she moved from gym teaching to fourth grade and that's where she stayed but she saw this need in the community when she was planning and I don't know if anybody is familiar with Bar or Bat Mitzvahs but at the time she was planning my brother's Bar Mitzvah and did not have a very wonderful experience with the company that she hired to produce the event. And she was bringing them on to do the entertainment, the photography, the videography and she said, okay, I'm gonna... And so didn't have a wonderful experience with that company and so for my Bar Mitzvah which was two years later and if you're not familiar with Bar or Bat Mitzvahs it's like a Jewish coming of faith where you're stepping into adulthood, Jared, we talked about your son being 13. When you turn 13 in a Jewish tradition you were Bar or Bat Mitzvah and this is like a big celebration where the whole family comes to celebrate your path and your journey into adulthood. So I should have mentioned that for context. I'm so glad you did and I just wanna interject because last night my son just told me he received his first invitation to go to his friend's Bar Mitzvah. So first timing that all of this is weaving together. Yeah, so for my Bar Mitzvah, my mom brought in a company from Chicago and she's like, oh my God, this is incredible. We don't have anything like this in St. Louis. And so she decided to take a stab at entrepreneurship and I remember my mom said, you know what, we're gonna do this locally because there is no company that's doing this and there's a need, the Jewish community would really benefit from this. And so she started Utopia in 2001. She left her job as an educator and I just vividly recall as a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 year old watching my mom scale this company from our basement and the kitchen of our childhood home growing up and my dad had a corporate job, he worked nine to five and then from five to nine, he was my mom's employee. And I just remember we had this like 15 degree hill on the side of our house and I vividly remember my dad like carrying large PA systems and audio visual equipment, like lugging it over his back and using dollies and going up and down that hill, loading the trucks, going to produce events and then coming back home and on Sunday breaking the shows down and then going to work on Monday and, oh, bless them. And in 2013, we lost my mom to cancer and so she left this beautiful legacy behind. I get to ride on the shoulders of her legacy every day and my dad and I were sort of climbing the corporate ladder, if you will and we had a decision to make. Do we sell mom's company or do we dive in and do this thing and scale it as our family business and take it to new heights? And so ultimately that's what we decided to do and for the 10 years that I've been involved, we shifted a little bit. The entertainment part of our business is still makes up a small segment of our business but we're much more in the event planning, event production side and since the last 10 years we've helped 300 nonprofits raise more than $50 million for their charities and it's been a gift. It's been an absolute gift. Fantastic, thank you for that. I loved hearing your origin story. I love that you're carrying your mom's legacy and I believe really the psychology of events really does go to that neuroscience of your brain. So your mom had to just be an amazing person to understand the importance of this and for you to carry this on, talk to us, Joey, about neuroscience of your brain. Why does this matter? I mean, why are we even talking about this right now? Because the nerve, thank you for bringing this up. Neuroscience, we nerd out on neuroscience at our company because if you don't understand the neuroscience behind what's happening in the brain when you walk into a space then nothing else really matters. And we could bring the best technology in the room, the best audio visual stuff in the room, the best cameras and tell the best fun to need, mission, whatever you call it, fun to need, mission, moment, spotlight, appeal, video. We can tell all of those things, all those things align perfectly, right? But if you're not activating your community and you don't understand how the brain works, then none of that stuff matters. And so we always start when a new client brings us on, whether that's the corporate side or the nonprofit side, we always start by helping them understand the fundamentals behind neuroscience. And so the brain is divided into three parts and we can just kind of briefly go through this because I know we have a limited time today, but I just want people to sort of understand the concept here and we can unpack it a little bit. And so the front of your brain, and this is based on the triune model of the brain. And so there's a lot of approaches and models to help sort of make sense of the brain. This was first delivered by scientists in the 1970s and it's just one of many ways to make sense of how the brain's divided into different systems. So the triune model of your brain basically says this, your brain's divided into three different systems and we need to activate those systems to fully make your community, to make the brain come online. And so right here is your prefrontal cortex. And this is the area of the brain that is, when this part of the brain is online, you get into a flow state. Complex thinking happens. A whole bunch of learning that we think about, like this part of the brain needs to be online for that learning to happen. And then there's the middle part of your brain, which is the social and emotional part of your brain or the limbic system. And then you have the amygdala, which is the back part of the brain, the lizard brain, the monkey brain, the amygdala, the fire flight response brain. And this part of the brain is concerned with am I safe and do I belong? And so put yourself in a situation, especially us right now, right Jared? Like we're thinking, is this landing? Like when we're having this conversation, we're on stage and we're thinking, is this landing? Will people accept us? Can we be ourselves up here on stage and still fit in with this group of people? Is this resonating? And so now put yourself in a position where you're walking into a space with 300, 500, 1000 strangers. And so that part of the brain is activated. And the other two areas where deep learning, emotion, empathy, complex thinking, love, belonging, community are, those two areas have to be online for those emotions to happen. Those areas are deactivated because you're thinking, I'm with a group of 500, 1000 strangers and I don't feel psychologically safe. And so what we've learned as an event production and event planning company is we have to help our communities get these other two areas. First, we have to help people feel psychologically safe in a large space. And then these other two areas have the right conditions where they can come fully online. And then and only then do we go into a program. Wow. Yeah. There's so much in that, Joey. And again, we talk about events here on the show a lot. We talk about fundraising a lot, but we haven't really dove and unpacked the neuroscience of the brain. So I love how Utopia Experience brings this into the sector and into raising for the events. Talk to us about the 3C model gathering and community because I'm sure all of this has that baseline of the neuroscience practice at its core. Yeah. So we kind of borrow this approach from our friends over at the exchange approach and their facilitators, they bring in a bunch of neuroscientists, doctors, practitioners, event engineers, if you will, scientists, and they came up with this approach. And so we've sort of taken that and made it our own. And we believe there are three reasons that people come to events. And we really say that there's two reasons people come and one reason that people come back. And so the first C is what we call content or intellectual capital. And that's when people come to your event, they want you to teach them something and make them better. And so what we're learning about information is that it's ubiquitous. Think about like we stopped watching live TV 20 years ago. Right, Jared? We get our TV now from Netflix or Hulu or YouTube or wherever. And so, and we stopped getting our information just the same from Encyclopedia's 10, 15, 20 years ago because the internet became a thing. And so now we get our information from TikTok. So people can get learning on demand anywhere. And so the way people learn or the way people are learning is changing. And so we need to be changing too. So that's the first C is people want to learn something from your event experiences, but we need to be thoughtful about what we teach them and how we deliver that information. Okay. The second C is connection. And so this quite simply is just social connection. You want to connect with other people and network and create rapport with people like yourself. And then typically intentional, purposeful and thoughtful event organizers and executive directors, CEOs, they stop there. And they do those two things well. And they're like, if we teach something from the stage and we give a program and we tell some really great video stories, people are going to be connected to the mission and they're going to want to come back and they're going to want to give. And we think that that is, there's something there that's being missed. And that's the third C, which is community. And so this is the transcendent purpose. This is why are we here tonight? What does this really mean for our community? And that's the C that's often missed. And so we do such a great job of connecting people to the mission, but in terms of psychological safety, what we know about it in neuroscience is if we don't connect people to each other, the full community at your events will never come online. So content, connection, community. Those are the three narrow downs. Those are the three. I love that. I think you're right, Joey. I really see the first two Cs take effect and flight. And then I don't always see the community aspect, but what I do know to be true and also for myself, so much of us, we crave community, right? We really want to be a part of community, however we define that, right? And it could be an online community, it could be an in-person community that geographic space, but community is changing. However, we're still looking for that connection within a community, I'm gonna say that resonates with us. Is that accurate? 100%, 100%. And I'm seeing that more since the pandemic. I mean, I hate to ask that question, but I feel like the blanket answer is yes, but is that just because we're saying it is? Hmm, that's a fair question. I think now, unfortunately, traditional media kind of thrives on fear. And so people are feeling, you turn the TV on, the world is ending. There's a bunch of chaos going on right now all over the world. And so people are feeling isolated, they're feeling disconnected, they're feeling helpless. And so now, more than ever, people are like, I'm gonna cling on to my neighbors. I'm gonna cling on to my family. I'm gonna do what matters most to me and spend time with those that I love most. And so that element of community is rooted into our core, into our DNA structure, because even as primal human beings, thousands of years ago, we thrived in tribes. And so that element hasn't gone away. I think it's only sort of getting exacerbated if you will over time that, you know, we need to be in community with one another to feel connected to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. And solidarity is beautiful. Well, thank you for that. And I don't know, there's just so much going on everywhere. Let's move into data. We talk about data also, but, you know, being in the room or capturing data during an event, what does that look like? And again, I'm thinking like all of this ties back to neuroscience. So, nerd out with us about capturing data, being in the room, what does all of this mean? Yes, oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack here. Okay, so we are a production company, right? So what we like to do is most of our nonprofits or corporations, before they work with us, they're working with the AV company that sort of comes with a hotel and they don't think they have another option. Well, we're like, okay, cool. You could do that and that's fantastic. Or like, we wanna help you truly understand the difference between AV, audio visual and true event partnership, true event production. And so we take all of the technology in the room and make it work for you. And so one of the ways that we do that, so think about this, because the production in the room is a cost if it's not serving you, right? So we wanna make it an investment. So people come into your event, imagine like repurposing the red carpet. And so we just did this recently for a private school and we went to the admissions team and said, what's the most pertinent information that we can gather from your families and your donors as they walk into the event? And they said, well, we can't contact all of the family members at our school, but since they're all coming in through that beautiful step and repeat red carpet entrance, can you ask them how many family members they have and how old those family members are? So we know when we can start prospecting them to bring more of their family members into our school. So we have this red carpet with a video camera and a light and that's like paparazzi and who's interviewing them, the kid's favorite teachers. And so the parents are walking in and they're like, oh my God, Mrs. Smith, Mr. So-and-so, we love you. Our kids love you and they're like, well, what do they love? And they pass the microphone over and they let the families give them the space to tell the admissions and the advancement team everything about what they love about the school, how many kids they have. And so it gives, of course, on Monday we turn all of this video footage over to the nonprofit to the school and it provides them information and a data bank, not, oh my gosh, it's anecdotal data, right? Instead of strict spreadsheet data. And so you're watching those videos back and you're like, now you have more thoughtful ways to follow up with people based on the information that they just shared with you. And that's just the entrance of the event. We haven't even gotten to the meat and potatoes yet. Oh, but what I love about that, Joey, first of all, that is super clever, right? Because you stationed people there that they already know like and trust, right? They're familiar. They're having a conversation that is real life, real time, genuine, right? And not asking them to, hey, could you fill out this piece of paper or let's send you a survey and just hope that these people submit it. Like there's some interaction there with people that they already have a relationship with. Absolutely. And when we talk about like the neuroscience and nerding out in the three C's, when they come into the event, typically we're just inviting them to go to a cocktail hour. You've got 500 strangers standing awkwardly in a room. When you're greeted by people that you know and like and trust, immediately you feel seen, you feel heard, the amygdala is like, we're safe in this environment. And you've set people up to really thrive and sort of activating the other two parts of the brain, the emotional brain, the prefrontal cortex. You've created those conditions for those two parts of the brain to come online. Yeah. What a wonderful opportunity. Okay, you said that's just the beginning. So we haven't even talked about the event itself and the ending. And I know we have one additional key talking point, but could you share another tip of what you did, maybe in the ballroom itself during the event, post event, you know, what did that look like? Okay. I know we're, we only have like 10-ish minutes, right? So I'm going to share these very quickly. Two things during the cocktail hour, instead of doing a traditional cocktail hour, we recently worked with an event, on an event with a nonprofit organization where we color coded people's bid paddles. And we called them in group, in their groups. So like the blue group gathered by the ballroom and we took them through a reveal of the ballroom in groups of 20 intimate donors. Instead of bringing everybody in simultaneously, we put them in groups, right? And we had volunteers walk them through these exhibit stations that we set up. And at these different stations, there were prerecorded videos that our team helped produce and they're on LED walls and there's statistics on the sides of the screen. And people go to these different stations as groups of 20, 25 donors. And they're hearing from the families about how the donations impact them in incredible ways. And so at one station, it was one program, so on and there were four different stations highlighting four different programs for this particular organization. And you're connecting, you're resonating because these stories are being told by families whose lives are being enhanced by the services the nonprofit provides. Now, what's also happening while they're listening to those videos, they're laughing, they're crying, they're turning to each other and they're like, oh my God, this person's crying. No, you're crying. No, wait a second, you're crying, right? So they're all connecting to this very shared experience. Connection and creating community, right? So they're already creating community in that space. Yeah. Okay, keep going. Sorry, I just couldn't help to interject. So after that, they get through those four stations, they're making dinner plans. They're like, I don't know you, but I love you. Let's get dinner together after that. Let's keep our relationship alive. We've created the conditions where people could connect on an intimate level and get emotional together so that they're like, wow, we're really here for this thing to help more families like this together. And now they're bonded with those 2025 people that they went through that experience with. So that's one way. And it was modeled off the Van Gogh Museum if you're familiar with that. Oh, that's fantastic. No, I'm not. Okay, you're gonna have to save the other way because I wanted to, but those two that you just shared truly were amazing. I have never in my 20 plus years of being in the sector, Joey heard of that strategy, right? Like having different bid colors kind of shepherding them through the ballroom before the event even starts. Now let's talk about leveraging and utilizing technology because this is a big piece. And as you mentioned, it could either be a cost or it can be an investment. So how do we leverage and utilize technology to really benefit the mission? Yeah, I think what we just talked about is a fantastic starting point is think about your technology, not as just something in the room that's there because you feel like you have sort of an obligatory program and a video that you're gonna show, but how can you capture information with technology on your most important relationships? So one way you might consider doing this, we just did this at a gala last weekend. I put a QR code up on the screen, we had people scan it, we asked them how long have you been a donor for this nonprofit and we showed the results in real time as the data was coming in. Then we asked the people who had been a donor longer than five years to stand, we acknowledged them, applauded them, we had them sit. And we said, how many donors here tonight for the first time? Wow, look at that. We've got a hundred people here tonight for the first time, can we have you stand? Then what we did is we said, first time donors stay standing. If you've been a donor, the 175 of you that have been a donor for more than five years, go put your arms around someone who's here for the first time tonight. Tell them you love them, they're awesome, high five them. We want them to be you. We want them to come back next year and for the next five years, 10 years, 15, we want them to feel part of this community. So we used our LED walls and projectors in the room to throw up that QR code, do an in-person survey, get information about how long people have been donors. We asked them their preferred method of communication also. So it was a two-question survey. So the director of development knew how to contact those people after the event. And then we connected them to each other and then we went into the live auction. Wow. And there's so much neuroscience in that as well, right? The connection, the community building, the positive reinforcement, there's so much that goes into that. Have you seen this at other events or is this something that like, I don't know, Utopia created? Where is this coming from? I think it's just we're learning a lot from being a part of all these different experiences. And we want to take what we call 1.0 events to 2.0 or 3.0 events because we feel like events have been transactional and that we can make them transformational. And I don't mean to throw a cliche thing out there. I genuinely think that there is a huge opportunity here. And here's the thing. Our executive directors, their best friends of mine and ours at Utopia, our directors of development, they have a lot to do. Yeah. It's hard running a nonprofit. You're running your programs, you're managing your staff and your volunteers, you're, there's a ton going on, right? And so sometimes the event is something that it's like at the 11th hour, we're like, oh my God, we forgot we have an event coming up in three months. Let's just do what we did last year. And that's no fault of their own. It's just how it shakes out. And so we're here to sort of say, let us do that part for you so that we can graduate that organization from an event where we're just giving a four hour passive program to one where the community feels like this is somewhere where I really want to be for the rest of my life. That is fantastic. We also talk often or I do about how there's so much that goes into this event, whether you're rinsing and repeating what you did last year or the year before that, because you're like, oh no, it's three months away and we haven't gotten far on this event. But once you have that event, the follow up post event is critical to the success of building that community, right? So again, your three C's, the content, the connection, the community and how do we continue to foster that post an event to create that space where, you know, we do want to foster connections over and over and over and not just a one night thing. Is that right? That's absolutely right. Wow, well, I feel like we're in event season, right? We're in Q4 right now as we're recording this, but you can truly have an event at any time. It doesn't have to be at the end of, you know, the final quarter, October, November and December of the year. So really looking at how are you building neuroscience into your events leveraging and utilizing that technology? Joey, you have been fantastic. Such an honor to have met you in Nashville. Again, thank you to our friends of One Cause, the RAISE conference because Joey Goon, you and your team, my friend, you were up to some big business and I absolutely love it because again, not many times do we hear or even talk about neuroscience in nonprofits, especially as it talks to the psychology of events. So thank you for bringing this to the topic. I really appreciate that. Thank you for having me. I greatly appreciate you. Yeah. Well, again, scratching the surface because in 30 minutes there's only so much we can get in. It's a very truncated conversation, but Joey Goon, president at Utopia Experience, please do check Joey out. The team there, utopiaexperience.com. As you hear, they're up to big things. They're implementing some really big, you know, differences in our community. And I just love the examples that you shared already in this amount of time. So I can only imagine what you bring to the community and really just so appreciative to have your time here. Hey, for all of you that have joined us, thank you. Julia Patrick and I, Jared Ransom, we are so glad that you join us day in and day out. This week, we celebrated 900 episodes and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for our amazing guests like Joey and of course all of you that are watching and listening, but we would be remiss if we didn't extend a huge shout out of gratitude to our partners, which include Bloomerang, American nonprofit academy, fundraising academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. These companies are here to support you in your mission and all that you do around the community. And Joey, we have been ending every single episode and today is 902, episode 902 with this same mantra. And we wanna use it again today because every day we believe that it changes just slightly even though the mantra stays the same. So I hope that you all will join us again, but until then, we ask you to stay well so you can all continue to do well. Thank you, Joey, it's been a pleasure.