0:02  
Hey everyone, welcome to the exchange stage a generosity exchange. I am here with two of my favorite people in the nonprofit sector. I got my jack the skeleton shirt on.

0:15  
 You have The Nightmare Before Christmas going on.

0:17  
I do, I should get paid by Roosevelts. So at this point, we are going to spend about 15 minutes or so learning about Jonathan and Becky of We Are For Good. Welcome to Generosity Xchange, folks. This is a pre recorded interview. And we're just going to be chatting about kind of their story, because it's been inspirational and actually very influential on what we've been doing here at Neon One. And we're also proud supporters of the We Are For Good. Welcome, folks. Yes. For those of you who don't know, we are for good. Why don't we do like a little introduction? Let's, let's hear kind of the too long didn't read of who you folks are and what you're doing.

1:00  
Oh, my gosh, thank you, Tim. I mean, this is huge honor to be part of this incredible Xchange summit that you put together. Hi, I'm John. And this is Becky, she, we found each other like, what 20 years ago, I was an intern walking in looking for a job and kind of never left Becky's side. She hired me that day. And we've been starry eyed dreamers loving the philanthropy space, and what wandered our way through higher ed, and then healthcare, and just have always wanted kind of seeing the world a little bit differently. You know, we experienced big philanthropy, but we really got excited about community baked philanthropy of people how transformative it is in our own personal life. And we just want to like put those kinds of frameworks on steroids. And that's really kind of the epicenter of what We Are For Good is it looks like a podcast and a lot of different ways we show up online today. But yeah, like it's kind of guided by these principles that we found along the way. 

1:50  
Yeah, I mean, I'll jump in here and just say we're marketers disguised as fundraisers, I think we have held every single position and nonprofit except for the ED role at some point. And we just decided one day, like, we don't like the structure of the way that the sector is moving in some ways. What if we absolutely turned it on its head? What if we flipped that donor pyramid, and we really focused on the base. And we're seeing such a movement right now, not just digitally, but just everywhere in the world, where community and the everyday philanthropist and the every man and every woman is rising, and to be a philanthropist to be a thought leader, to be a community leader. And we just see the future as a creators market. And we see it baked in community. And so yeah, we just started this thing weren't sure if anybody would get it. And luckily for us, more than our mothers are listening now. So

2:49  
I mean talk about the talk about the growth of the podcast. And I do want to touch on because you've inspired me with your even like your big list, right? Like your list. Yeah, so talk about that kind of like, why a podcast, and what was the landscape like when you launched it, because we start to see a bunch of different podcasts come out in the nonprofit space in the last few years. But you folks, it really kind of like, changed. And I think it in my opinion influenced how people are approaching it now. But why there? Why start there?

3:26  
I mean, thanks for saying that. I think we yeah, we have been kind of blown away by the reception of it, for sure. But sorry, I gotta clear my throat. You know, Becky, and I love creating a place of safety and openness. And I think we really wanted to create a table that felt like anybody could come up to it. You know, we're kind of coming from the guard of going to conferences and feeling like the odd man out or feeling like you don't have somebody to talk to. So we always came to this place to say let's create a table that's really open in podcasting. interested me because I love that you could be in conversations that would be really hard to get to, you know, get the people around the table that would be hard to get to. So I was sitting entrepreneur ship, like ideas and knew we wanted to do something in the space. We didn't know what we wanted to do. And I was really struck by this podcast called entrepreneurs on fire. And there's this guy who was not a podcaster. He was a commercial real estate guy. And he was like, I wish there was like inspiration on the daily of people who just went for it, you know, and he dropped a seven day a week podcast, talking to people. And so I literally come to back into like, hey, we could do this. We can stories, how we love talking to people. We want to share all these cool ideas. Let's do a seven day a week podcast, the nonprofit sector. And Becky was like, hard, no. Which was good because we do you know, we landed on three days a week because we wanted to have an insane pace. Just because we wanted a place that you wouldn't feel alone. You'd always have a place to turn to in a conversation that keep you inspired. But I mean, I don't know Becky jokes that we used to launch to our moms. That's really who we thought would listen at the beginning and I want to say the first month you know we've have you crossed 1000 downloads and it was like, so exciting. And for the first, you know, launch weekend, all this energy, but we just crossed 250,000 downloads in the last month. And now it's already over 270,000. I mean, the pace at which people are finding us and sharing us is the story of community because we didn't have a network outside of Oklahoma, I mean, some people but the person texting it to a friend or sharing a podcast. So you're saying that more have entered this space to us is really exciting, because the markets huge and hugely underserved. And so the more people that listen to podcasts are going to discover more podcasts. And so it's just a great medium to hop into right now.

5:36  
In the marketing world. There's the term dark social actually that is used to describe that process, which I think that nonprofit fundraisers, especially those who practice things like peer to peer fundraising, they might get the concept a little bit more but but I don't, it's really hard to identify concepts because it's like, marketers get driven nuts by not being able to attribute. Yeah, and something like a podcast is very hard to sit there and go if you're doing it right. To say, look, it's just an awareness thing. It's okay to just like, no one's gonna sit there and walk me walking down the street or like how I last last listened to one of your episodes was in the car. And I'm driving somewhere and I like yell at my Toyota Sienna, Android Auto. Last episode, right. And that's what pops up. And and so when I hear like, a sponsorship thing, people are like, Oh, that's nice. But nobody's sitting there going, alright, I can't wait to go to the page and fill out the form perfect stuff. It's like that's not how people live. And I think a lot of nonprofit profit marketers and fundraisers get frustrated in a similar way to be like, Well, where did this cheque come from? Where did this online gaming donation come from? And GivingTuesday actually found that 40% And this is also buoyed by some of the data in The Donor Report by data axle that about 40% of people are going to go to a website give in an unattributed way. They were inspired in a different way. And I feel like that's where understanding community at its core comes in. It's like, you have to let go. You have to be okay with not knowing everything. So how, though? Did you realize you had something special here? Like, like, what was the moment that clicked, where you're like, Oh, this is different.

7:48  
I, there's so many stories, Tim that pop up. I mean, even you just sharing that story right there. I mean, I got a DM from somebody on Friday in our community, I never met her. She's been listening for over a year. And she tells me that she walks to work. And she keeps finding herself walking to work crying, and she thinks that everybody's judging her because she says, I just I'm not expecting what's coming. But she listens, because it's very centering for her, as she's about to go in and do her mission work. And I just think about our intention early on, was so basic and so disruptive. And I always love to share it. And we do every time we talk because it was a two fold goal in year one. And it was to put out a crazy amount of content, really good content, and to to make as many friends as possible and not ask anybody for anything. You know, we weren't going to we weren't going to charge anybody for anything. We were just like, we need to democratize this. And our disruptor was kindness. Which we just felt like what if we show up generously in everything that we do? What if we have an open hand every time we turn on the mic every time someone slides into our DMS anytime somebody comes in, says I want to sponsor How do we show up very generously and say, Oh, we don't want your sponsorship. We like when storytel what you do because we think it's important and it moves the needle. And I don't know what the shift was for me. I think crossing Maybe 100,000 was was a pretty big oh my gosh, like what's happening but we've just seen a crazy pace unfold like probably since this summer, where we think the swell has just hit and and it's it's not just the downloads because you're right. There's not enough podcasting information to know where the downloads are other than where they are geographically. And in for us, it's okay, because we're validated and affirmed in community all the time by people who say, I was I just walked in, I use this framework and I advocate hate it on behalf of my pay him, I got it. And they're euphoric. Or I just went for a job that I didn't, I would have never felt confident to go for. But I've been binging this. And it made me believe. And I took my notes in there. And I nailed it. Or we just had somebody in our community nail a massive partnership with a major sports league, based on something that he heard unpacked in an episode. And it's like watching people step into their power, and being shocked, pleasantly shocked by it never, ever gets old. And when those people kind of come out of the shadows and tell us who they are, and we see their faces, and we see their missions, it's like, oh, my gosh, that is all the fuel in our tank that we need to like, keep powering through this. 

10:43  
And I think the power of podcasting, it's like, even your story, we get to hang out in the Toyota Sienna, it's like, what an intimate kind of conversation you get to have, like, we're over your speakers, or washing dishes, I get to wash dishes with people that are listening, you know, to when we're podcasting. But it's like, that relationship does feel like, you know each other because, I mean, we've met now people at conferences, and people feel like they know us, and we feel like we know them because the community is so like, you know, kind and surrounds this thing. And we're in my communities, everything t shirt, because we believe it like it's it's really in the bones of of who we are in what we do.

11:19  
I mean, we I think we just nailed the title for this. You know, the, you know, the power of the power of podcasting, you know, community is everything. Right? Like, love that. Love that? Well, I we only folks, we're doing a quick hit here. So we're, you know, one, where are you going in 2023? What can people get excited about? And where can they learn more about it, we have show notes that just like you will be, actually everything's going to have a transcript. Everything has, you know, live captions actually happening here too. But if they want to get more information, where can they go? And and we'll kind of ended on that about that.

12:03  
I mean, thank you for that. I mean, we're We Are For Good. So if you don't know where your podcast player is, because we've heard from people that don't know, you probably have one on your phone, go search for we're for good and subscribe.

12:13  
Kind of droids like.

12:17  
But check out our website, weareforgood.com. And you know, we have a weekly email that we round that because there's a lot happening and we lift a lot that's happening in our community. But we love this space, you're gonna see more surround from us in this space. We've launched studios this year, and some of the partnerships that are coming out of that and stories to be told and just ways to kind of meet you where you're at, I think is going to be really inspirational. I know, it's booing us. And so yeah, lots on the horizon for that.

12:43  
Yeah, we're having some really evolved conversations come on over, we're in the middle of an impactful series Friday series called The habits of an impactful fundraiser and we break down annual giving habits of, you know, an innovator habits of an annual gift officer habits of events, habits of donor relations. And I think, you know, come over to our community if you don't know what digital community is, go to we're for good community.com Come in, it's completely free. We wanted to have a place that was not behind an association paywall where people could just get unstuck share resources, we uplift there and wrap our kindness at our digital mom arms around people. And we just try to help them like Yeah, and

that works. Maybe I'm more first bump.

I'm a hugger, I probably need to have some like a conversation around my social ills about just grabbing people and hugging them. But yeah, we're a community. We're a safe space. And we just want to know where the pain points are, and how we can evolve and re architect this sector for good.

13:50  
Love it. Love it. Thank you, Becky. Jonathan, always a pleasure. We're so proud to have you part of this event as well as the larger vision that we have together around community. Folks, thank you for coming to Generosity Xchange, and we got a lot more come in here too. But we'll see. You know, later.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai