 Okay, well, hello everybody. Thank you for joining us for this TechSoup hosted online discussion. I'm so excited because we rarely get to feature an executive director. And so today we're going to be talking with Abina Patel-Minhach and talk about how ituity cares rapidly launch and scale social impact. So I'm so excited. And also with Godin is here today with us. Listen, I'm getting too excited. I got to get into this and let you know what's going on. My name is Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here at TechSoup. Before we get started, I want to let you know if you're new here, welcome to TechSoup. For those of you who are new, you know that TechSoup or you may not know that TechSoup leveraged the power of smartphones and connectivity and training it and a lot more. If you've never been to our website, there's so much more we try to help communities to leverage the power of technology to serve their community to do better. Today's speaker is going to share her story of how she launched and scale social impact in her community. So before I get started with the webinar topic, I do want to do a little bit of housekeeping. Right now everybody's on mute. So in order to communicate with us, you can type in the Q&A, use the Q&A feature, type your questions or feel free to type your questions in the chat room and we'll do our best to answer all the questions. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to get to the questions. This is being recorded. So the recording will be available within 48 hours. So any little nuggets that you miss, you'll be able to see this over and over again. So before we move on, I do want to let you know that when you're engaging in a chat room, we've always tried to do our best to be courteous. So keep that in mind that we are committed to like to share and bring our best foot forward. So I would like to introduce our featured speakers today. We have Whit Godden. He is the Director of Strategic Marketing at TAP Network. After he spent time at Apple as a corporate trainer for the city of Los Angeles, he pursued a career as a community manager for the successful startup of exploding kittens. I told him I love that name. During his tenure, he helped grow the company from a $5 million domestic brand to get this, a 55 internationally published brand as the Branding and Marketing Director. So you need to know it, right? In 2019, he decided to return to his passion of working in the nonprofit sector. He's been managing TechSoup and TAP Network relationships ever since. This helps nonprofits leverage their impact and their storytelling to accelerate their growth and impact. Next, we have Beena Patel-Minhach. She is the Director of Vitality Cares. She's been with the Vitality Cares for over seven years. So I'm excited to hear all that she has to share. I'm sure she has many, many stories that she has to share. But in her role as Executive Director, she's leveraged solutions to create a multilayer interdisciplinary. And I told her this is doctoral language, but I love saying it anyways. Multi-tiered interdisciplinary approach to assisting addressing the social determinants of health and the impacts they have on marginalized community. She's a graduate of Public Health and, excuse me, let me start it over. She is a graduate of Health Policy and Mansmith Doctrine of Public Health Programs. You gotta get that right. Especially if you've done that much of education, you gotta say it right. You gotta give her her props there. From the University of California, she now resides in New York City. And Whit is gonna tell you more about her. So I'm gonna go ahead and turn this over to Whit. Welcome Whit and Beena. Thank you so much, Aretha. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Aretha. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today, guys. You know, this is a really exciting and unique webinar platform and sort of, I guess, model than we've had before. So some of you may have heard my voice over the last year on a few TechSoup webinars, maybe not my face necessarily. There was one day last year where I actually sang at a TechSoup webinar. So I'm very grateful to be able to have a friendly and more casual conversation with somebody that I really hold near and dear to my heart, Beena, who has not only become an incredibly wonderful client over here at TechSoup and TapNetwork, which has also become a really close friend of mine as well. And I'm just really grateful that she's taken the time out of her day to share her story of how she's been able to utilize TechSoup services to really amplify and grow the mission and the vision of ituity. But before we get started, for some of you who may not know what TapNetwork is, TapNetwork is TechSoup's marketing technology partner that strives to empower organizations for good. So essentially, your vision is our mission. So today, what we're gonna be talking through is sort of a success story of one of TechSoup's clients where we sort of stepped in and we partnered with Beena and the rest of our team to really help accelerate the growth of their organization. So before I get ahead of myself, again, my name is Whit Godden. I'm the strategic marketing director here at TapNetwork. I also manage our relationships specifically with TechSoup through designing and developing all of our service products and assessment tools. And I also manage many of our relationships with the clients that come through TechSoup directly into TapNetwork. And I wanted to kind of give Beena an opportunity to introduce herself and talk a little bit about her experience and her background at Vy2D Cares Foundation. Thanks, Whit, and thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. And like Whit said, I am the executive director of Vy2D Cares. Vy2D Cares is a new foundation started by Vy2D, which is our parent company and a large healthcare solutions company, a lot of physician staffing, telemedicine, kind of all those healthcare solutions under one umbrella. Vy2D Cares was a passion project that came out of Vy2D in the middle of last year. And it's really driven by our experience working in communities and seeing how the healthcare system really, really does not meet the needs of those who need it the most. So we are a group of healthcare professionals, doctors, PAs, MPs, and we're committed to creating a more equitable healthcare landscape. And that's exactly what Vy2D Cares aims to do. Awesome. Thanks so much, Beena. I really appreciate it, yeah. So they're an amazing organization. The second I saw their preliminary mission, I knew this was someone that I was very excited to work alongside. I'm very passionate about social determinants of health. I have a pretty big background, deep background in healthcare clients as well. So it was almost perfect alignment when we were able to get together. But I just wanna sort of wrap the structure of our conversation today for the attendees here. So what we'll be discussing and we'll be talking through with Beena today is talking a little bit about how the services provided by TechSoup and Top Network were really able to support their initiatives, as we mentioned in the title, to really scale and grow this social impact. It's almost, it's just been under a year, right? Beena, since the organization started. So we'll be touching a little bit on our support with their virtual Gala, which took place last December. The overall strategy of their organization, both operationally to some degree and how that operational strategic plan gets implemented both on their website and their social media. And I'm really excited because we finally have been able to get through some of the muddy waters, I guess, as anybody who's started a nonprofit probably can experience. And we're finally getting to a place where we have a really strong foundation to drive some individual fundraising to sort of supplement the incredible work that Beena does day in and day out to find sort of the more corporate and partnership fundraising as well, which I'm sure a lot of you nonprofits out there are looking to understand and identify opportunities in ways that you can really leverage those individual relationships with your mission and your organization. But before I dive in too far, we have a very special video to share with you guys. So I'm gonna play this. This was developed for the first Gala, which was sort of our entree, the catalyst that brought Beena to TechSoup and her team to TechSoup and to TapNetwork. But I think this is a beautiful, sort of encapsulate all of the reasons why by two of the cares should exist today. So sit back and enjoy. What is the promise of America? Money, fame, votes, likes, retweets? If you ask me, the promise of America is fairness, but despite living in the wealthiest country in the world, our country still fails to provide for the families that deserve it the most. It shouldn't matter where you live, how much you earn or who you are, everyone should have equal access to healthcare. That's why most Americans aren't afraid of getting sick. They're afraid of not being able to pay the bill. So join us in this fight. We are committed to ending healthcare inequity, one heart, one mind and one life at a time. Healthcare is a human right. Let's not allow unfairness to continue on our watch. Let's build a future where everyone has equal access and equal opportunity. Together, we can change the world. Awesome. So yeah, so, Beena, I mean, what an amazing video. First of all, shall we spill the beans at the beginning of this webinar? You can spill the beans. Who is that very handsome man that was speaking at the beginning of the video there? He is my better half, he's my husband and he obviously owes me for many things but I was fortunate to have him do the video for us. And it was great because it wasn't like a big deal. This is the cause that we're both so passionate about. Our families work in healthcare, his mom is a doctor, his dad was a kind of a community scientist and we have seen how healthcare can work for some people and how it can really fail others and the discrepancy is really unfortunate and that's what we really want to do is bridge that divide. Awesome, yeah. He's a fantastic human being. I'm gonna stop sharing just while we have a little bit of a more fluid conversation here so we're not getting all distracted by the fancy visuals that I created for the presentation today but before we dive into the work that we did together and the work that we're still doing together, I would love to give a little bit more background in who Vituity is, how you guys do it. So I guess my first question kind of touched on this during your introduction but sort of what was the catalyst that truly prompted Vituity, right? This incredibly successful professional medical for-profit company, right? What prompted Vituity to launch a foundation like Vituity Cares? Yeah, so Vituity is started off as a staffing organization. We staff, it was started off as emergency departments and now we staff everything what we call under the Q care continuum across the country. Towards the middle of last year, it became increasingly evident that in the middle of the pandemic, in the middle of the Black Lives Matter kind of movement, it became clear that us as working healthcare professionals within these communities had a bigger role to play in addressing the fact that healthcare fails so many Americans and we see patients day in and day out in our departments and there was so much more that we could be doing for them but not something that we were able to do in traditional healthcare settings. The social determinants of health, access to food, access to a safe environment, access to legal services, all these things that we know clearly affects someone's health were not something that we could do within a 30 minute visit. And so our providers were always doing this type of work. They were working with community organizations, they were going to different countries to volunteer but Vituity needed a mechanism to do that and that's really why Vituity Cares was created. It's a passion project of our founder who is Dr. Tomlinson. He's also the CEO of Vituity but he always says that Vituity Cares is his main job and Vituity is just kind of secondary because he feels so committed to this cause as a black man physician, CEO of a multi-million dollar company, he overcame a lot of obstacles to get to where he is and he felt the obligation to help those from communities of color and who were disproportionately disadvantaged to the same opportunities that he had to give back to them. So we have a really great group of leaders. Our board is truly committed to growing this cause and the foundation and thankfully we have Vituity and the resources and all of the kind of benefits that come with Vituity as kind of supporting resources for us. Except for the financial part. Except for the financial part. We still have to do all the fun fundraising and all of the social media and messaging and I think we'll get to that, the challenge of Vituity versus Vituity Cares in a minute but yeah, it's like I commend you on your day-to-day work. When we have our meetings, I'm just always blown away by how much you're working and I'm grateful that we're able to sort of help amplify as much as we possibly can over here at TechSoup and TAP network. But I think it'd be really helpful for people who are attending today because you know, when it comes to digital communications, website presence, messaging strategy, fundraising, you know, they all have a similar skeletal structure to execution, right? But it's the application of that sort of skeleton into the construct and the infrastructure of your organization that's really gonna make or break those efforts. So my next question to you is I want to give the audience members here today a little bit of insight as to sort of how your foundation executes its impacts and vision. So like they can kind of understand operationally, how do you achieve these goals that you so eloquently stated just now? Did that come through or no? It did, you froze there for a second, but you might have to repeat the question. You froze right at the question. Can you explain how your foundation executes its mission and vision and impact? Yeah, so, you know, we started kind of with the, that spaghetti technique. We went hard in a lot of different areas. Mentorship for communities of colors and students who are interested in STEM and healthcare related kind of professions. We went really strong with unhoused communities and creating opportunities for unhoused communities to better access healthcare, pop up clinics within homeless encampments, that sort of thing. We also a big area that of focus because we really work in a lot of inner city communities is addressing gun violence and safety issues. And then the last big, I would say focus is that there was a really strong desire by our providers to give back to other countries who don't have the same resources as we do in the United States. So being able to do pop up clinics and mission trips and things like that overseas Tanzania, Honduras and Mexico have ever been our focuses right now. So those are some of our programs within each one of those. We have kind of a lot of sub programs, but what we wanted to do was try, try out a lot of different things where there were interest and then really figure out where we were having the most impact. And so I would say that the last couple of months we've really started to hone in on the two or three big areas that we feel like by 2D cares has the most impact and also the most resources to allocate towards those programs. Awesome, yeah. No, it's pretty amazing what you guys are doing. And I'm really, really feel very special to be a part of it. So I- Can I just mention one more thing? I don't know if I heard this, but I think we wanna encourage the audience to ask questions as they come up and Aretha will just kind of chime in when there's a question, right? Yes, correct. Okay. Yeah, please, yeah. If you guys could just ask questions along the way, we'll start to get into the nuts and bolts of sort of the work that we've done together, which may prompt some additional more strategic or logistic questions. But yes, please feel free. We'll answer them throughout the presentation today and Aretha will interrupt me as they come through. And yeah, perfect. Awesome. Thank you, B&F, for reminding us of that. I appreciate that. So I wanted to sort of as we, before we get started and starting to look at some of the projects that we worked on together, overall like how has, you know, this is not a self-serving question, but sort of a self-serving question. How has working with TAP really helped you and the by 2D cares board sort of develop a stronger message and vision and communicate that overall in general? I will be completely honest. When we first started out, there wasn't a clear message. If I were to ask every board member why by 2D cares exist or what does by 2D cares mean for, you know, what is our responsibility to underserved communities, et cetera, et cetera, everyone would say something differently. What TAP helped us do is really get organized. And it wasn't that the mission has to be the same for each person, because I think that it should be a personal kind of mission driven, you know, how we work with the foundation is different for every person. So I completely understand that, but we needed to move forward in a unified direction and TAP helped us put everything together in terms of figuring out who we are, what we want to be known for and how we want to move forward. I would say those were the three biggest questions that TAP kept reminding us, kept reminding us and kept prompting us to think about as we created a marketing and brand strategy. So really, I mean, I tell with this all the time I could not thank him more for getting us organized. Even, you know, it was, I came on as a executive director even after the foundation that started and the board, the board was not always the easiest kind of entity to work with to really kind of hone them in. Everyone was almost using the foundation for their own personal interests. And that's fine, but we weren't moving forward. We were just moving in different directions and kind of diluting who we were. And so I would say that what TAP did for us is help kind of concentrate our mission. And I think that was just so helpful at that point in our infancy. Yeah, I agree. I think it was a really great exercise. It was a good exercise for myself as well because, you know, I step into these relationships with our clients through TechSoup and constantly have to sort of learn about how an organization does what it does and help them amplify and sort of how do we codify that message? And, you know, the very first project we worked on and I think we can laugh to ourselves about this as well was your virtual gala, right? So we started working with you guys, I think back in mid-November was when our conversation started and you had this beautiful idea of this virtual gala auction to raise money for the foundation as it was brand new, like I guess at that point, maybe six months old. So kind of tell me a little bit about the process before TAP network and TechSoup resources sort of was able to step in and support you guys. Yeah, so the foundation was created in July of last year and right in the middle of the pandemic, we did not have the opportunity to really do any until that year. And so as kind of the season of giving came around, we realized that we needed to do some sort of last-ditch effort to raise some funds for the programs that we're launching this year. And so much like everyone else in the middle of the pandemic, we tried to put together a virtual gala. It was very last minute, very kind of scattered and not organized, but and our goals going into it were, hey, maybe we'll raise a few thousand dollars and then we were really helping banking on some corporate sponsorships and things like that. Luckily, the gala went so successful and I'm sure Whit will go through kind of some of the outcomes from that because due to the pandemic, a lot of the corporate sponsorships, health systems that we were banking on kind of donating some larger sums, they weren't able to do so. The healthcare industry surprisingly got hit really hard by the pandemic because volumes across the country were down. You kept hearing about ICU rates being out of control, but everyone else was really suffering. Emergency department had like all-time low volumes, primary care, everything was really down. And so we weren't able to get the donations that we had banked on. So you can go through kind of the success that this last-ditch effort had and how TAP really was able to come in and within three weeks, create a brand new market for us. I think I talked so much about the support that Vy2D gives us, but in terms of marketing support and support for kind of financial support, we don't really get much. Yeah, we don't really get much outreach. Vy2D is a physician group of over 3,500 doctors, but I'm sure a lot of you guys who are subsidiaries of larger organizations know that Vy2D cares could not access even the email addresses of those people because we are a different entity. So, but TAP had to come in and be like, that's okay. We can still, there's still a way of marketing this without banking on kind of that built-in community. Yeah, I think, thank you so much. It was such a great experience. And one of the things that when you and I were talking about this again, that I thought was really valuable was not only did we, were we able to sort of work together with you guys and identify sort of what tools do you have and what tools do you think you had, but you couldn't use and then positioning and giving, implementing tools that I think you really needed, right? And identifying those. And I think kind of pulling the veil, like pulling the veil behind or kind of opening the door to like the possibilities of virtual engagement. So for those viewing here, like, there was very minimal social media presence whatsoever for Vy2D when we first started. So we really stepped in and we had to accelerate a whole entire, essentially an entire event marketing plan within as more, being a said 30 days. And we were really fortunate enough to see some pretty exponential growth across those different platforms just within that month of working with them. And we were able to also like see an incredible, you know, fundraising goal. I think it was around $350,000 just in that one 24 hour period through the silent auction, the live auction and just the general donations of the attendees of the gala. So it was a really interesting exercise. And I think it put both of us through a personal and professional experience where we had a steep goal. And I think we worked really, really hard to figure out what that looks like. And I think part of this whole entire process leading into that gala, you know, I mentioned before we were gonna touch on a couple of different components of Vy2D care strategy and digital communications platforms. The second piece that was part of this initial relationship was really driving the website development, right? We had your old website and we were trying to get something new out there because we were seeking donations and trying to showcase the work that you guys were doing in an appropriate and an efficient way to sort of seek those partnerships, sponsorships and individual donations. So as we kind of move from the gala experience which I think was our very first great success, you know, capitalizing on the digital communications and the digital platforms. I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about your website and sort of like putting on our strategic brains, you know, how did you feel about the website before we started having our conversations in mid-November as we were preparing for the gala? Well, Beena, before you answer that question. Oh yeah. I wanted to, I was gonna try to jump in there, I was trying to jump in because Dr. Elizabeth King wanted to know, wait, do you work with small nonprofits? Some people might see that number of 350,000 and I was like, oh, I can never raise that. So they wanna know if you work with small nonprofits. That's a great question. And yes, we do. We work with nonprofits of all sizes. So, you know, I think Vitality Cares is a unique situation. Granted, you know, I won't lie. Like Vitality Cares is a fantastic client. They are actually what I would consider in our actual Rolodex, sort of a mid-sized nonprofit from an operations perspective. But yes, we definitely manage and work, that was their fundraising goals, right? But the work and the effort that we put into here, the contracts I would say, and the work that we worked alongside them is, you know, medium to small nonprofit size marketing strategy. So, you know, this is not something we're not looking at some crazy, you know, marketing retainer over here. We're really seeing an opportunity to work with an organization that has what, how many people do you have on staff? Like three, two? You know. Wait, I'm a one-woman show over here. Exactly. So, while the, you know, that was, I think that's why we felt the fundraiser was such a success, right? We kind of, we were able to capitalize on a really important topic and we were able to reach people who felt incredibly passionate about it. However, you know, Vitality Cares itself is not a massive foundation. It's not a giant nonprofit. And so, like, this is along the lines of, you know, you're, I would say something along the lines of, like, your local library or maybe your local, you know, mental health or health equity nonprofit that's helping support inner city youth or social determinants of health within your local communities. So, yes, we definitely work with smaller nonprofits. And if you have any questions, you can always reach out to us. I have our email at the end of the presentation. And, Beena, there's a couple of questions here for you. First of all, you're getting lots of invitations to come and speak, to work. Dr. Elizabeth King, she already asked a question, but Paulette wants to know if you would come to African countries. April wants to invite you to Niguagra and Honduras to work with trafficking victims. And heavy on the, I just, I'm sure this is gynological, of course. Also, Deborah wanted to know when you did your foundation fundraiser, what was the foundation's total financial investment? When we did the fundraiser, what was the financial investment? I think in order to put on the virtual Gala, you know, secure the auction prizes, all of that kind of stuff, the entertainment, all in we spent close to, I would say $20,000 for the Gala. That's not bad for your return. We were really, really fortunate to be able to during the pandemic again. In some ways, we were fortunate because, you know, we were doing it at a time where a lot of people were, you know, a lot of celebrities were able to do virtual things for a lot cheaper than they would be doing in person. We were able to leverage just the fact that people were at home. So the attendance was a lot larger than we probably could have had in other years. And so in some ways, the pandemic situation kind of helped us do this at a lower budget. Yeah, that's great. And Deborah wanted to know who got your auction items? So we worked with a group called R&R Fundraising that secures, they do, and they were wonderful to work with. They were able to put together trip packages for us, Costa Rica, Mexico, Hawaii, and they offer it to us obviously at a very, very, very discounted rate, and we're able to auction them off and still make a pretty good amount of money off of them. So the trips were a huge hit for the auction. No, they weren't. The trips were a huge hit for the auction. Nice, nice. And she also wants to know, how do you access celebrities who are willing to participate? You know, from experience, obviously being married to my husband who's a comedian, I will say that oftentimes it's just about asking. You know, a lot of these celebrities would be more than happy to put themselves on video or to send an autographed item and oftentimes the only reason that they don't do it is because they don't get asked or people assume that they would want thousands and thousands of dollars to do it. I can just say from personal experience, my husband does this all the time, it's just about asking, you know, going to their website, figuring out who is their manager, their agent or their assistant and putting in just a very compelling ask and most of them I would say would be happy to do something. It may not be, hey, I'll show up to your next gala, that sort of thing, that may require some funds, but the fact that we can do so much prerecorded these days, if it's like a quick shout out on social media or something like that, I think there are a lot of celebrities who'd be inclined to do that, to really kind of support the good work that's being done. Great, and I know you were trying to think of the information with R&R, but they're asking for their information, you know, for the trips. If you could find that. Yeah, and Trevor wants to know, oh, good, Whit is answering, possible to meet 101, Whit is answering that question. Great, so yeah, that's it. So the questions are coming in now that other people ask and they own trading LLC, wanted to talk via audio. So Whit will put the information in the chat room after this. Perfect, absolutely. Awesome, well, yeah, thank you guys for those questions, that's really awesome. I think, you know, these are some really unique, amazing things that we were able to pull off with that gala. And so, you know, as I was mentioning before, our sort of our second big project, being that we worked on together was the website, right? It was a little bit of a rough patch. So what I was asking you just before we answered a couple of those questions was sort of like, before we stepped in, and before we started looking at your web presence, how did you guys feel, how did you personally feel about your website? I did not feel good about it. I don't think that it was a good representation of who we were. And I felt that when I looked at the website, it was like vituity light and that was not what we wanted to be known for. When you looked at it, it looked like we were a healthcare kind of company. It didn't resonate with the communities that we're trying to really impact. And it was just really dry. I felt like it was saying the same thing, but in a hundred different ways. I think you guys have all seen websites like that. You're staying the same thing on every single webpage or every single page. And it really bothered me to send people who I was asking for money from to the website and they'd come back to me and be like, but what do you really do? And that bothered me because I wouldn't want to give money to someone if I really didn't know what they did. And so yeah, I didn't feel good about it. Yeah. And I think that was really helpful when we were talking a little bit about the strategy as well. Like part of the process, right? For us to work together was really identifying what your core pillars were, right? So we went through this exercise. We kind of had most of them kind of already articulated. And then we sort of took these pillars and we essentially, for those of you who are tuning in, this is what a general like sort of a very simple site map would look like. So Bean and I worked hand in hand into identifying a new site structure for the different components and messages that live across the website. And we aligned those with sort of the key goals of sort of what the organization is committing to do. So this is what the new website site map looked like after Bean and I started to really work together from a messaging perspective. And you know, one of the things, Beena that you and I have talked about as well is like part of your mission is to take action, right? It's very action oriented. It's this is a problem we need to solve today. And your old website, which you know, you guys had built before we started talking together sort of lacked that ability to take those actions, right? There were very few places where you could fill out a form, sign up for a volunteer position, make a donation. And I think what we really were working to do was making this website, not only really showcase the work that you do, which was also something very important that was lacking, but also how can we get people involved, right? Cause you know, vitality, I think it knows, vitality cares knows this isn't a one man mission. This is a, this is a social, sort of a social movement, right? That we're all working towards. And so I just wanted to give the audience members, oh, do we have a kid joining you back there? A husband, I think, I don't know. But I just wanted to give everybody a little bit of an insight as to sort of what Beena and I were able to work on as far as like building up the strategic site map and mapping out the content so that we can properly sort of hit on those individual mission pieces and those overall goals. And so this is just a very basic, and this is Beena where I'm gonna ask you a little bit about the design process. I think this is a big question that a lot of nonprofits have when we start talking to them about their website. What does the design process look like? How collaborative is it? Is it really about like your designers or what you guys want? How does that, how did that process come about? Cause you kind of see where this is the old site over here, and then this is the site that we were able to redesign and relaunch for you guys. So would love to hear from your first hand experience about like sort of that branding, base lift and overall web design process. Yeah, so I think that the process was really seamless in the sense that you had a good understanding of what needed to be done. Half the battle was making us understand that there were big gaps in kind of our, in kind of our, there were big gaps in the building blocks of who we were. And so we literally had to go from the beginning. Again, who are we? What do we want to be known for? What do we want to be known for? Who aren't we, right? Like we can't do everything. And how do we want to move forward? And so having WIT guide us through that process was invaluable. And having that slowly be reflected in this new design was really, kind of mind opening, eye opening for me because it came together slowly. And we were able to, as we built the website, I feel like we built our foundation. And it was just a really kind of, a good clearing process for all of us. I mean, the first webinar that you kind of, or the first kind of presentation that you walked us through where we did that exercise, I think you might be showing it next about kind of who we are and who, yes, yes. This was really, this was kind of, I think that pivotal point for me and for the entire board to be like, what is it that we do and how do we best reflect that on our website? Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things, my favorite part of working for TAP and working with TechSoup and working within the nonprofit sector is our strategy is collaboration, right? And I'm sure being that you can probably test to that point as well. We don't stand in the corner and direct our clients, or direct the nonprofits we're working with and collaborating with and say, this is how you have to do what you do. No one does what you do better than you, right? But it's a matter of identifying the how and the who and the what and articulating that in a very confident, authentic and consistent way, right? And sometimes you're particularly within the nonprofit sector and particularly with the mission you guys have, there's a lot of passion behind it, right? So there's a lot of, there's already a lot of energy and synergy around your statements, the way you use the terminology around your mission and the impact and the changes that you hope to see. But I think it was really great exercise for us to work together on really sort of distilling all of that into a sort of core functional strategic org chart. And I'm about to get to that in a second, which is sort of I think the aha moment that all of us, including the board had when we were looking at how do we identify and outline your website presence, your social media presence. So the first thing that we did, right, was we identified who are we and who are we not? This is really helping us identify sort of what's the tone of voice, what's the overall messaging and how are we functioning within the conversations that we're having as vitality cares, right? And I think this came, this is that the, this is the separation between vitality and vitality cares if I can be, is that appropriate to say, that we're not being a, right? Absolutely. Yeah, so we had this sort of more button up medical professional versus this really social activist, slightly irreverent type of messaging. And then really building, I mean, this goes all the way to the strategic operations of the nonprofit of your foundation. And you know, working through your digital marketing, your Gala and your website presence would not have necessary, we would not have gotten this, had we not gone through those steps, right? And I think this was a really valuable piece to bring to the board some clarity and some more certainty around who you guys are and what you guys do. I don't know if you wanna add anything to that. No, yeah, no, this was a turning point. And I feel like it just takes one or two pieces of collateral that makes sense to people to really give them the confidence to go out and fundraise with it. This was what our board needed to be able to speak confidently to who we were and what we do and they were able to take this to their health systems, their clients, their partners and really brainstorm around this kind of piece of collateral and speak to this in a way that people were bought into our cause and wanted to partner with us on these activities. Absolutely, and I see Deborah asked how long this process took. So I'll answer that question. And I would say we probably got to this point, Deborah, in about, you know, the whole project with Vituity Care is spanning all the way back to mid-November for us to sort of put our heads together and figure out exactly where we were. I would say this project here, like to get this roadmap finalized is probably about three months. Would you say that's about right? It's about mid-February that we landed on this that really accelerated the website development and our social media strategy. I think so it's about a three month project to get this sort of on paper. Now also remember Deborah, Vituity started just under a year ago. So like if you have an organization and you want to put something like this together there's probably components already existing it just needs a little bit of duct tape and some super glue and some experts to take a look and sort of help build out an org chart like this that can help accelerate and provide more value to your overall digital footprint. Whether or not that's website, your website or social media strategy or email marketing strategy on sort of all of the above. So awesome. Well, I think like one of the things that I wanted to touch on, I know we're getting close to the end and I want to leave it open for questions which we're grabbing throughout the process here was one of my favorite pieces about working for tap is we get to collaborate with you guys. And as I was mentioning before, when it came to the website and working on the strategic oversight it was a really strong collaborative effort but I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about our social media approach and sort of the relationship that we have and how we kind of execute on that. I'm actually gonna stop sharing for the moment so we can kind of just have more of a conversation here. So Beena, tell me a little bit about like we have a whole team, right? We have a whole team here that's helping come up with storylines and building your social media assets, pivoting and constantly looking at how can we optimize and improve your social media strategy? So I'd love for you to kind of give your firsthand experience of working with TechSoup and TapNetwork on executing the month to month strategy around your social media. Yeah, so I would say that before we brought you guys on it was very willy-nilly in terms of how we were posting what we were posting. And there was no really consideration on who is this really targeting, right? Like is this just for other healthcare professionals? Is this just gonna go out into like the internet universe and kind of just like get dissolved in some way? But what you and Lacey and the team helped us do is think about again, what is our online persona and who really are our targets on social media? As much as we're trying to address issues within communities of color and those who have been disproportionately affected by healthcare inequities, that's not the purpose for our social media presence, right? We weren't directly, that wasn't an intervention where we were directly able to give them kind of what they needed. It was, we very quickly realized that we needed to use our social media presence to raise awareness, to fundraise, to make other healthcare professions and other foundations and other communities, community partners aware of what we're doing and how they could tap into us as a resource and how we could tap into them as a resource. And so we started really tailoring our posts and to really to that market. And so I think that was a really, really kind of good exercise. Just because of the celebrity entertainment that we had from the Gala, we very quickly got a good number of followers and we became increasingly important that in order to retain those followers, we had to put out things that were relevant and that were engaging. And the celebrity appeal was very quickly going to go away. And I'm proud to say that from the Gala until now, we've retained all of our followers. Like I was really afraid that after the Gala and after people kind of forgot about about the celebrity aspect, we'd kind of go down. And we've been able to retain the followers and that's really just exciting. And to me as a testament to the fact that we're putting things out there that people are interested in seeing. I think now we're pivoting to another kind of crucial kind of step is now that we have them engaged, how can we get them to be more actionable? How can we get them to donate? How can we get them to become mentors for our programs? How can we get them to partner with us? That's the step that we're working on right now. But I feel like that engagement is finally there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I still see messages come through Facebook and Instagram and especially through the website of people reaching out like, I wanna participate. I wanna volunteer. And we now have these mechanisms and we're publishing the content out there that I think is really impactful. And I'll share this with everybody. Bina and I had our regular meeting yesterday that we reviewed this, but normally we would be reviewing our quarterly analytics and it was really exciting what she'll see now tomorrow, Bina. She hasn't seen it yet. So you are all finding out right now that, since the Gala and through the Q2, just the content that we've been able to put together really has grown the engagement and grown the audiences as a whole. So it's pretty exciting. And it's all a testament again, back to that collaboration piece, right? I think it's really important that you work with somebody who's passionate about what you're doing. And I instantly clicked with you as a friend and as a colleague and as a professional relationship. And I think that collaboration, not just like openness and genuine, sort of energetic and inter-interchange really makes what we do really work well. And the rest of my team over here I know is really passionate about what is happening over at Bituity Cares, which kind of leads me to our next big project that's sort of in the works right now. And sort of now that we've got, we have the really successful Gala. We had this brand new website relaunched, I think just really gives a whole new look and feel and understanding as to what Bituity Cares does. We really were able to kind of peel back the layers of your internal organizational structure and strategy and integrate that into a really powerful and sort of impactful social media presence. We're now looking finally at some, more individual donors at fundraising initiatives. And so I wanted to just share with the folks here on our call about sort of what we're looking at doing, which is the day of giving, right? So, Bina, I don't know if you wanna share a little bit of background to sort of like what this project looks like and sort of how we're gonna be going about it. And I can add in anything else as well. Yeah, so, you know, I would say since from the Gala until now we haven't done any big fundraising pushes only because maybe this was in security of mind, but I really wanted to spend the first six months of the year launching all of the programs that we had promised that we were going to launch. And I am proud to finally be able to say that they have all been launched and now we can go back to our donors and say your funds are being used and they're being impactful. We have some data to show about how well the programs are going, the impact that they're having on the communities and we are gearing up to figure out what the next life cycle of these programs will play. And in order to do that, we need to kind of start that second round of fundraising. And so, you know, Witt and I and Lacey decided that we should do, you know, there's always the giving Tuesday, which is later on the year, but we wanna do a day of giving around the programs that we're actively working on. We are putting on public clinics for homeless and campments. We're putting on health fairs for inner city high schools and they have gone so well. These pilot projects have gone so well that there is this desire to scale them across other communities. And we now are able to concretely say that for X amount of money, we're able to do this. And so we want to kind of put out that call to action. Can you help us put together 10 more public clinics? Can you help us put together 20 more community health fairs? And we're hoping that we can engage people through our social media and some email marketing in order to really kind of raise the money for the next six months, I would say. Yeah, I think it's gonna be really great. You know, we're putting together to like a whole media kit for your staff and donors and boards and influences as well. But I think it's gonna be, I'm really excited about this project and I think it's gonna lead into some really fun stuff for the fall and the winter as we kind of head toward the next scale as well. But I did just want to touch on Terry Miller asked a question about how often are we posting for vitality cares and where have you found the most traction for social social FR? I'm not sure what you mean by social fundraising. That makes sense, okay. So there we go. So for posting schedules, that's a really good question. There's actually a digital marketing benchmark report that we released earlier this year. I will make sure that Aretha sends the link out to everybody to that download. And it talks a little bit about the data that tapped. So with TechSoup and TAP, myself, our agency, we put together a big giant survey. We surveyed a bunch of nonprofits. One of the discussion points we talked on is how often should you post on your social media? How often are other nonprofits posting? So we sort of are able to glean into what the nonprofits responded to. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to the data that you guys are able to collect from the platforms in which you're posting onto. So we use a program called Agora Pulse that we use for publishing all of the content for our clients. And those involve and include some really robust analytics tools that show us what time of day is the most engaged time of day. So we can properly identify when and how often we should be posting based on the metrics that we're receiving back, right? The data that we're getting back from those posts. So traditionally three to four posts a week is a pretty strong place to start, but you need to commit to that, right? Commit to those regular and consistent postings. Another big important piece, it's not all about quantity, it's also about quality of posts, right? So I use this with my clients all the time, I'll give you guys part of my secret sauce as a strategist is this term content fatigue. If you're posting the same kind of content over and over and over again, your followers will stop paying attention as you show up on their news feed. Cause they're just gonna go, oh, Vy2ity Cares is asking for more money again. Oh, Vy2ity Cares is asking for more money again. Like they'll adjust automatically, their brain will just zone out if it's the same type of content and the same call to action. So in order to ensure some sense of diversity and diversification in your content types goes back to what Ben and I were just discussing as collaborating on that content calendar on a monthly perspective and working together to say, how can we keep this as engaged as possible? And we're still getting the end results we're looking for without asking the same question 15 times in four weeks, right? So I hope that's helpful. That was a really good wit. So we have about four minutes and I just wanna do some quick fire questions. I noticed there's some in here that being that probably can type some answers to, people like, you know, thing use orange, you like the orange the best, you know, some, you can answer those questions. I'm gonna scroll in here. Eric from Orlando wants to know, how do you get assistance for funding for his nonprofit? Is that something you can help with? Good, I'm glad you put your information in. Please take a screenshot of that. Tap, I'm TechSoup at Tap Network. Please take a screenshot of that. So can you answer that question for Eric? How does he get assistance for funding for his nonprofits? How can you get assistance for, well, let's do this. If you could reach out to us at this email, I'd love to get a little bit more information. It's a pretty specific question. So I would love to kind of follow up in a one-on-one conversation, if that makes sense, Eric. Bosman wanna know about celebrities. Do they respond to cold calling? I would say that getting to their representative is usually the best way to get in touch with them. Obviously if you are really active on social media, you can try, but it oftentimes doesn't get them and oftentimes their social media accounts are managed by someone else. So I would say going to their website, figuring out who their representative is and usually there's a link to getting in touch with them, that's generally the best way. Okay, Dr. Elizabeth want to know how do you feel about Hootsuite? Hootsuite's fine too. I think it's just a matter of what you have a personal preference for. Hootsuite's great. I know some other people use Sprout. We've just found that Agorapulse has a really great listening tool that we're able to implement as well. So it's not only scheduling everything out, but we can actually ask Agorapulse to listen for certain phrases and listen for certain hashtags that may not be directly tagged into, for instance, by Tuiti Cares. So one of the hashtags that we use for by Tuiti Cares is hashtag healthcare heroes, right? So we're able to listen to that hashtag and if other people are using it and there's a relevant conversation for by Tuiti to engage in conversation, we can go ahead and tap into that conversation even though by Tuiti Cares wasn't directly tagged in it, if that makes sense. So I would take a look at the different capabilities. Yep, sorry. Last question, the seed of life. When is it true that social media is a very tricky aspect of marketing? Well, actually I think she was agreeing that it is true, but yes, she is right. Oh, okay. No, no. I know, but you are absolutely right. Yep, it is a very, it's tricky, but I think at the same time, it's the art part of marketing. We always say marketing is an art and a science, right? And I think that social media can be just as much the art part and like really coming up with creative and impactful storylines and content pieces and strategies is really important. But before I sign off, Aretha, and before we wrap up and say our thank yous to everybody for joining us, I did just wanna call this back out again. You know, we provide some really amazing services as well as educational content, blogs, webinars. We have a course on our 300 level course for website management that's gonna be launching in August next week, next month. So be sure to check that out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out directly to us at TechSoup at tapnetwork.com. And Bina, I apologize, I was gonna actually have them get your email because I'm sure some folks are gonna find some of the stuff that you do incredibly valuable for your- Yeah, absolutely. The easiest way is probably just going to our website by 2dcares.org and sending me a message through there. Sorry, I'm trying to answer some of these questions without working. But yeah, just email me. In terms of our staff, when asked what our staff side is, I'm the only employee of the foundation. We have several volunteers, but right now we are very dependent on volunteers and I'm hoping as we grow, we will be able to kind of grow our paid staff as well. Wow. Well, this was amazing. I learned a lot. I'm sure there were lots of comments before saying this is great. Whit and Bina, thank you so much for being here today. I love stories. So thank you for coming to share yours, Bina. Thanks, Marisa. Thanks for having us. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you.