What this strategic planning doesn’t account for is the lasting impacts on event professionals from the pandemic. It can easily be seen as you peruse through LinkedIn.  The entire events ecosystem, including countless event management teams, have shrunk through natural attrition and furloughs during COVID. Frequently these professionals have moved on to other jobs or new industries completely.   

Organizations big and small continue to work with smaller staff. Unfortunately, this reduced staffing also exists with key constituents such as contacts at exhibitors and sponsors.  So, I hear from clients often, “how can I do more with less?”  

Technology  

I am sure it seems easier said from a guy who works for an event technology company but hear me out.    

Retail During COVID 

Look at the retail industry, for example. Retailers who pivoted to new technology and leveraged existing solutions faired the best. From apps, scan-and-go, online check-in/order pick-up, etc. Even the expansion of services such as DocuSign signaled those businesses could easily transact without paper. They met their customer where they needed them.  They were agile and adapted to maximize both the in-person and online experience (much like event organizers will need to do moving forward).  

If you want a glimpse of how the National Retail Federation managed events and trade shows during COVID to meet their industries’ needs, watch the on-demand interview with Susan Newman, Senior Vice President of Conference at the Events Revenue Summit.   

Meanwhile, the events industry attempted to use technology to recreate the same experience of an in-person event virtually (the plop and drop method). We all know how the early days of virtual events went. While the technology improved and event organizers began to design better experiences, there was no one-to-one equivalent.  The most successful were conference- heavy events.  Why? The technology has long been available and utilized for online learning, learners were still eager, and many were required for certification.  The least successful was capturing the serendipity of networking and the benefits of a trade show floor connecting buyers and suppliers. 

I shared in my Event Communities Blog Post, the reason the industry has been slow to adopt new(er) technology and services has been its success. The pandemic forced organizers to do things differently – for now.   

The New Events Normal  

What concerns me the most is how easily we can slip into old habits as we start this next phase of virtual or hybrid events. The problem this time, compared to previous event downturns, is we are coming back to new expectations of all our constituents.  As expectations change, so do processes that need to change.   

Even before all this impending change, it is not uncommon to see events still using a printed floor plan, updating it with sticky notes or white-out (who knew that still even existed). Some are printing and faxing paper contracts, emailing credit card numbers, and sharing personally identifiable information in blatant disregard to credit card security and compliance. Others are endlessly copying and pasting data, relying on a locked excel document to calculate years’ worth of priority points, or running daily reports manually and keeping printouts in folders and binders in an office. The list goes on.   

Events Industry Brain Drain  

This brain drain creates both challenges and opportunities for rebuilding. Many organizations relied on people to manage and maintain historical processes, data, and much more with a seasoned staff. Some of it happened on paper in folders, random files amassed on their hard drive, and others simply stored it way in their brain. Events often just happened, without question, year after year with the staff knowing the details. I often refer to these situations as it’s not an issue until it is an issue. COVID made it an issue.    

Without access to these files during the lockdown or team members who were suddenly gone, so was the information they held. Sure, some of it was recoverable from a hard drive, but sometimes it was not. And many of those files weren’t designed to be used other than the creator. So once again, the answer points back to – technology.  

Online Event Management Tools and Platforms  

Utilizing cloud-based platforms and solutions cannot prevent such a loss of information; they are designed to capture your event’s data so it can persist long after team members retire or leave the organization.   

Event management solutions and other platforms are designed to warehouse historical data, electronic contracts, historical purchases by companies, contacts, and much more. They have your end goal in mind.   

Even if you utilize some platforms, COVID has created the perfect opportunity to review your solutions and better build processes to streamline your efforts moving forward.  

Let the Tech-Tech  

As you explore options or even better maximize what you currently use, it is important to see how technology can help secure your data, speed cash flow, avoid costly mistakes, streamline your workflows, integrate systems, automate your reporting, all while doing it with less staff.  Working with your partners to architect the best solution is critical.   

But what’s the most significant advantage of leveraging technology?   

You can focus on relationships.   

Now more than ever, it is essential to spend time talking and listening to all your constituents, especially your exhibitors and sponsors. Even companies who have long exhibited or sponsored at your show often face similar challenges trying to learn the new events normal. They may have smaller budgets, reduced staff, and changes in marketing spend that will require more time with them. The last thing you will want to do is slow the sale up by needing to fax a contract you had to write up or wait until a sponsorship prospectus is updated. They will expect to conduct business much like the retail world has adapted this past year.   

Ready to find out how technology can help your organization?  Join Rich Vallaster, Director of Marketing and the Tradeshow Wonk at Personify, as he shares how #eventtech can help solve the new events normal.  

In this session, you’ll learn: 

• How to leverage new and existing solutions to improve efficiency and streamline operations 
• Best practices to increase exhibitor and sponsor satisfaction  
• Key areas of consideration for building an affordable event tech stack  
• Cost saving and revenue-generating ideas to cover your software costs 
• And much, much more

WATCH THE WEBINAR ON-DEMAND 

The post Maximizing the New Events Normal with Tech Tools appeared first on Personify.

After a stressful year, our team is looking towards 2021 with an optimistic outlook—hope for a vaccine that is distributed effectively, a decrease in COVID-19 cases, a stronger economic outlook and an eventual return to the in-person activities and gatherings that we all have missed. While this year has seen its fair share of chaos and challenges, there are some trends and takeaways that I think we will take into 2021, even after the vaccine has arrived.

Our Trends and Predictions for 2021

Appreciation and Understanding

It’s been a challenging year, and I know that I have developed a stronger appreciation for the effort and strategy that goes into everything we do these days, and this can be taken from both a personal and professional standpoint. I am incredibly grateful for the grocery store staff delivering my groceries, the pharmacists filling my prescriptions and the restaurant staff bringing takeout to my car. And, I have a new level of appreciation for the amount of work that goes into pulling off a virtual event and spinning up digital programs to support people and address the many challenges that we now face.

I think that we appreciate more of what we had and what went into many of our jobs and our personal lives. As we head into the new year, these challenges will still exist, at least in the first half of the year. But, I would hope that we bring this appreciation and empathy into a post-Covid world.

The Power of the Association

In a recent webinar I hosted with three association professionals, we reflected on what we’ve learned from living through the pandemic and I was struck by a comment that one panelist made about how he learned that he’s not alone in all of this. Despite the challenges that we have faced this year, there are people who are going through the same things that you are in your association.

Many associations feared that the pandemic would result in decreased membership but what I’ve heard from many association members is that they now better appreciate the power of their association in providing education, creating a community, advocating on behalf on the industry, and more. One of my predictions for 2021 is that associations will increasingly demonstrate their ability to leverage these connections, be a true partner to the members and achieve goals for the profession and industry that would be impossible to do on an individual level.

Remote Workforce

For many organizations, the need to shift to a remote workforce back in March created complexity and questions around how to ensure that staff had access to their tools and technologies and how to support remote teams and bring people together virtually. While 51% of people reported “always working remotely” in April of this year, that number decreased to 33% in September with a larger percent reporting that they “sometimes worked remotely.”

The shifts that we’ve seen have required organizations to think about what organizational culture looks like when everything is conducted via Zoom or Microsoft Teams in addition to difficult decisions about whether to cancel events or pivot to virtual or hybrid options. While remote work has been a growing trend for several years, the pandemic immediately created a new normal for organizations. Will this continue in 2021? And, what has it taught us?

Uncertainty is the New Certainty

For many of us, 2020 provided a good lesson in not getting too attached to your short- and long-term plans and this applies to our personal and professional endeavors. From a professional standpoint, many of us had to do contingency planning for our contingency plans. If you had global pandemic in your crisis communications playbook, you were far ahead of the rest of us.

My hope is that some good can come of the uncertainty that 2020 created. Resiliency planning has become critical. How can you plan for this? Where can you break the rules? If we look at the commercial market, Enterprise lowered the age to rent a car below 25 to help get college kids home and many airlines have dropped their change fees. Similarly, many associations have provided waivers and paused renewal fees to support their members during this uncertain time.

Mental Health Comes First

Uncertainty can certainly lead to anxiety and a “fear of the unknown.” Mental health has become an increasingly important concern for many organizations. In a global study of employees in March and April, nearly 42% of respondents said that their mental health had declined since the outbreak began. Many organizations have developed training, educational support and increased services for mental health treatment in the wake of the pandemic. At Personify, we launched a 30-Days of Mental Health and Well-Being program with daily emails for staff on mental health topics, resources to get help and engaged in activities to help us feel connected to one another while physically separated.

Mental health has long been a neglected area of health and 2020 showed us that it’s crucial to think about our physical, emotional and mental health to be able to bring our full selves to work each day. Our predictions for 2021 include organizations increasingly considering mental health as an essential part of their healthcare offerings and will prioritize ways to support and empower their staff.

Health Expectations and Data Collection

As the vaccine becomes more widely available and lockdowns subside, more will venture out to exercise, meet-up and attend in-person events and experiences. Clean and safe environments and interactions and will not only be standard, it will be an expectation of COVID-fatigued audiences.

The challenge will be balancing the need to showcase these capabilities while also not distracting from the experience and creating doubt (or fear) for some audiences. Contactless check-in, technology, health data confirmation, reduced group size, frictionless transactions, and other practices will help solve some of these challenges. With organizations and events now potentially collecting health data, increased consideration will be placed on this new information’s privacy and security. Organizations may also want to consider partnerships with health organizations and medical professionals to better solve these challenges, much like the Orlando County Convention Center did by partnering with Orlando Health to provide medical concierge services to conventions and Ticketmaster partnered with Clear to check for vaccine status.

A Shift in Event Timelines and Marketing

For those of us who are event professionals, we’ve seen a rapid shift this year in terms of event timelines for speakers, sponsors, registration and more. The traditional approach to call for papers nine months out from the event was thrown out the window when the pandemic arrived. The world could be an entirely different place nine months from now. And, without the need to secure airfare and lodging, attendees are increasingly registering for events a few days out from when the event begins.

This is evidence of a larger trend in marketing overall, which I’m calling a “just-in-time” strategy. Given the reduced timelines, marketers must retool their Call for Papers, their event registration process and leverage an omnichannel approach to reach people in a world with more distractions and more requests.

The Community Ecosystem

With the loss of in-person events, associations and event professionals have increasingly spun up virtual communities and virtual conferences to provide support and education for their members, attendees and sponsors. In 2021, it is crucial to consider your member or event community as part of a larger ecosystem for engagement. How are you using your community to connect people in ways that are unique from your social media channels and website? And, how will you continue to foster collaboration and connections when we can return to in-person events?

Optionality

2020 can be defined as the year of the pivot. The pandemic forced organizations to switch directions, not because they didn’t have emergency response policies or strategic plans but because they lacked optionality. Optionality, by definition, is being available to be chosen but not obligatory.

Another one of my predictions for 2021 includes preparing for what could come or what may not come. Aligning resources, considering investment options and creating plans that keep options open for various scenarios and acting upon those as they occur in real-time versus merely reacting.

While this may seem overly aggressive, even with the vaccine’s announcement, many have already suggested “back to normal” is near. Unfortunately, any number of scenarios with the vaccine (or the virus) alone could continue to change the course.

New Year, New Audiences

With the halt of in-person experiences and the rise of virtual fundraisers, galas, online tradeshows and conferences, event professionals have been able to reach an entirely new set of contacts. With the lack of traditional barriers including travel, time and expenses these new and often untapped audiences have grown as much as 80% because of virtual events.

2021 will be key in both leveraging and maintaining the database and outreach but also sustaining interest and engagement. Will you be able to convert these contacts to members and attendees or exhibitors and sponsors? Will you need to maintain complementary virtual events to preserve this audience? Our predictions for 2021 include successful organizations surveying this audience to build programs and content that also serve this audience and provide ancillary revenue.

Get Out And Travel (GOAT)

Wall Street has already begun rewarding the GOAT stocks such as airlines, hotels and others who will directly benefit from the vaccine. The question will be how to motivate audiences from a stay-at-home mentality in yoga pants and gym shorts to a desire to travel once again, not just for vacation but to conduct business and meet in-person. In addition to motivational apathy, many companies still have restrictions or dramatically reduced travel budgets, preventing those with the desire to do so in company compliance.

Whether it is a conference or chapter meet-up, organizations (and their marketing teams) will need to clearly articulate the return on investment (ROI) for the time, travel and expense to either the attendee or the employers’ company. Virtual technology and Zoom have proven that many traditional in-person gatherings can easily be conducted online without additional resources. Defining your value proposition of in-person versus online will be critical as travel resumes.

Making Lemonade

According to a McKinsey & Co. study, more than 90% of surveyed executives said they expect the fallout from COVID-19 to fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years. Many of these executives also reported that the pandemic would have a lasting impact on their customer’s needs and three-quarters said the crisis would create new growth opportunities.

The most visible shift and example of taking lemons and squeezing them for lemonade are in the retail and restaurant sectors. The pandemic moved these businesses to fundamentally transact in new ways with curbside pick-ups, delivery, and direct consumer options. The ecosystem around these businesses also thrived by supporting the supply chain, delivery vehicles, shipping services, etc. What was likely to happen over the next five years occurred in less than five months’ time, many in less than five weeks’ time.

The outcome was most beneficial for the consumer in most cases. It also has fundamentally changed the way consumers will shop and eat in the future. Organizations that can continue to remain agile and pave the road to recovery with innovation and evolution will ultimately succeed.

Want to Hear More About our Predictions for 2021?

We cover these trends and more in a recent webinar that I hosted with Rich Vallaster, Director of Client Relations at Personify and the Tradeshow Wonk. In this session, we share the lessons that we have learned this year and our predictions for 2021.

Watch Now

The post Predictions for 2021 for Associations, Nonprofits and Events appeared first on Personify.

A 2019 Global NGO Technology Report found that 48% of nonprofits in the U.S. increased technology spending in 2019. Similarly, a recent report by NTEN found that 56% of respondents from nonprofit organizations implement a new cloud service in just the last year.

If you’re adding new technology or migrating a current system to the cloud, your team may have a number of questions and potential concerns about the process. How long will it take to implement? How much will it cost? When will my organization reap the benefits, whether that’s a growth in membership, increased donations, or a less cumbersome process for staff?

Buying new technology for nonprofits and associations can be an overwhelming process, whether you’re adding a tool to your existing technology stack or replacing core systems that serve as your organization’s source of truth. But it doesn’t have to be.

Here are 5 steps to make the buying process more streamlined, efficient and enjoyable:

1. Align on your Strategy Upfront

Have you ever gathered your team for a product demo or meeting with a vendor only to learn that you have wildly different ideas about the scope of the product and problems that it will solve within your organization? If so, the vendor meeting was likely far less productive than you intended.

Before you meet with any vendors, take time to connect with departmental stakeholders beyond the buying committee. Outline the teams and departments that will be using the technology. This can and should include staff that are creating new member and donor profiles and signing up people for programs, executive members who are leveraging the data to develop insights and drive forward the organization, and event staff who are planning your annual conference. Are these individuals represented in the committee that is compiling your needs and goals for the new system or tool?

When gathering this information, evaluate the business processes that are needed to effectively use your new technology. This exercise creates an opportunity to reevaluate legacy business processes and areas of inefficiency.

How to make it fun? Consider a non-traditional format to brainstorm your goals and strategy for the new technology. For example, Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting format where participants gather and build an agenda together democratically. Depending on the size of the group, you could also have participants’ favorite coffee beverage ready for pickup at their local coffee shop on the morning of the meeting.

2. Outline Your Needs and Requirements

Once you’ve got a strategy in place, start building a list of requirements that takes into account the goals and objectives of each area of the business and their wish list of what they hope to achieve with the new system.

For example, if you are shopping for a new Association Management System (AMS), your membership team’s wish list may include the ability to support complex membership and event types and robust reporting on membership trends. If you’re shopping for an online community, your events team may need to be able to host virtual events within the platform and segment users by their membership type. Your executive team will need to be able to document the ROI and see data insights showing how the tool supports the organization’s goals. And, your IT team will want to know how the tool keeps member, volunteer or donor data safe from cybersecurity attacks and can integrate and share data with other tools in your technology stack.

How to make it fun? Consider hosting a supermarket sweep-style game for participants to identify what’s most important to them in the list of requirements. Instead of groceries, you can print out potential features and benefits for a new piece of technology. Your buying committee is then timed and has to “run through the supermarket” and quickly pick the features/benefits that are most important to them. You can then hold a discussion at the end where you prioritize these across the group.

3. Build Your Proposal

Once you have a clear understanding of your organization’s needs and specific criteria, you’ll be ready to start crafting a request for proposal (RFP) or a request for information (RFI) that describes your objectives, requirements and questions for potential vendors.

An RFP or RFI is important because it clearly articulates your needs to vendors and establishes a baseline against which you’ll measure all proposals that are submitted. It also identifies the scope of the project and details all functional and system requirements that are needed to achieve your goals. It creates transparency around the process for evaluating submissions, how different features or benefits will be weighed and what types of information is needed from the vendor.

How to make it fun? While an RFP doesn’t stand for “really fun process,” that doesn’t mean it has to be boring and vanilla. When evaluating technology for nonprofits, many RFPs ask the same generic questions over and over such as, “What relevant experience do you have?” and “Do you have case studies to share?” While these are important, consider unique questions such as, “What’s something you believe in that some of your peers may disagree with” or “What risks do you feel are present that we haven’t included in the RFP?”

4. Select Your Technology Vendor

Your hard work has paid off and now you have multiple responses to review. Which will be the best fit for your organization? To create an effective process for selecting your vendor, we recommend you bring your cross-departmental team of subject-matter experts back together to ensure the needs of all departments are being met by the proposals that have been submitted. Filter out any proposals that do not meet the requirements you shared in your RFP.

For the remaining proposals, evaluate each one based on the qualifications and ranked importance that you previously aligned on with the team. You can then set up product demos (virtual or in-person) with your top vendors to answer additional questions and have a better understanding on how the technology will meet your needs.

Based on your evaluations of each vendor’s technical offering and proposed price, information obtained during due diligence, and any presentations or demonstrations, rank the proposals and then select the one that provides the best value.

How to make it fun? Add some spice to the standard product demo process by requesting your vendors to show off their skillsets in new and interesting ways. You can ask your vendors to structure their demo around a particular theme such as, “What kind of superhero would your technology be, and why?” Bonus points if your vendors show up in costume.

5. Get Ready to Implement

It’s not over once you’ve chosen a vendor. Implementing new technology for nonprofits and associations is most effective when you have a carefully planned process, timeline and list of stakeholders to make sure that the relationship with your new vendor starts off on the right foot.

To set yourself up for success, we recommend documenting both the before and after processes prior to implementation. Leverage flow charts to mark the steps that will be conducted in-person versus online. Develop a communications strategy for each of the internal groups that will be affected by the implementation and/or migration process and how the implementation team will support them at each step. The word “support” is key here.

Implementing new technology requires a lot of change whether it’s to your business processes, your passwords, the departments involved, etc. Look for things that you can carry over—when it makes sense—from your current approach and build in time for people to get up to speed and feel confident with the new technology.

How to make it fun? Eliciting feedback is an important part of the implementation process. Instead of hosting a meeting on Zoom or in a conference room, create a series of happy hours or coffee breaks for the implementation team and involved stakeholders to share what’s working and any issues they’re running into throughout the process. Invite the project manager or implementation staff from your new software vendor to give both groups a chance to get to know each other and build trust.

Technology for Nonprofits & Associations: Want a Deeper Dive into the Buying Process?

These five steps are a good place to start when thinking about investing in new technology for your organization, but there’s much more to consider. Want to learn more?

Join me as I share a step-by-step process and key considerations for choosing new technology for nonprofits and associations that includes all of the appropriate internal and external stakeholders.

During the session, we’ll explore concepts in:

• Strategy: Why it’s crucial to internally align on your strategy before talking to vendors
• Requirements: How to establish and define your technology needs, and when to conduct a gap analysis
• Proposals: What a well-drafted RFP or RFI should look like, and when to use them
• Demos and Selection: What to ask and who to include in product demos and your selection process
• Implementation: How to make the transition more efficient, effective and easier on your team

Watch Now

The post Technology for Nonprofits & Associations: 5 Steps to Make the Buying Process Less Painful and More Fun appeared first on Personify.

These last few months have been

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the past few months educating yourself on social justice issues, searching for organizations to donate and support, and aligning yourself with causes that can make a difference in your community… while also taking precautions to limit exposure to the Coronavirus.  

According to a recent New York Times article, Color of Change, one of the largest online racial justice groups in the U.S., went from having 1.7 million to 7 million members and received “hundreds of thousands of individual donations” in a matter of days. On Blackout Tuesday, a day where people went dark on social media to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, ActBlue, the fundraising platform used by Black Lives Matter and other organizations, reported $41 million in donations within a single day. And the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a small community bail project, raised $35 million in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, which overwhelmed the small organization. 

Many political activist and racial justice groups have been flooded with requests from volunteers, donors and supporters—which is great news for these nonprofits. But it’s also a challenge for these organizations to engage new donors quickly, provide them with resources and education, and reassure them that their chosen organization is ready to meet this moment and is the right group for them to invest their time and resources. 

We’ve rounded up 5 tips to help you mobilize your movement and inspire action from your supporters: 

1. Make Newcomers Feel Included 

 When a volunteer or donor first joins your organization, their first interactions with your team will play a critical role in laying the foundation for their future relationship with you. How are you currently onboarding new constituents in the first few weeks, and how are you getting them involved immediately? This is particularly important in the digital world, because new volunteers can’t meet people at your volunteer info session or happy hour like they could in a pre-COVID world.   

Consider enrolling new members, volunteers and donors in a nurture drip campaign with emails to help them get to know your organization, activities and programming available. Invite newbies to your online community and create dedicated discussions and virtual events to help newcomers meet one another.  

2. Keep People Informed About Issues They Care About 

 People are raising their hands to learn more about your organization because you’ve demonstrated expertise and a commitment to a topic that is near and dear to their hearts. Make that relationship with the donor or volunteer more valuable by curating unique and relevant experiences that are designed to keep them informed and advance your mission—whether you’re focused on amping up fundraising efforts, increasing attendance at an upcoming event or growing your volunteer base. 

Rather than notifying your supporters about every activity in your organization and potentially overwhelming them, take advantage of a preferences center as part of your member management system or email marketing platform to deliver the content that will be most meaningful to them. You can also use newsfeeds and personalized content within your online community and virtual events platform to tailor content to their interests. 

3. Create Experiences to Engage Them Year-Round 

Many nonprofits and groups traditionally build their outreach calendar around a few key events that take place throughout the year such as an annual conference, fundraising event, 5K and Giving Tuesday. But, if I’m looking for a positive in our current environment, virtual events do not need to be constrained to the three days when all of your supporters attend your annual conference or the weekend that you hold your annual 5K.  

 Nonprofit organizations can engage people year-round through virtual events, happy hours, meetups and more. Consider breaking your annual conference into mini-events that take place each quarter and require smaller chunks of time from our supporters. Empower your volunteers to host their own meetups and form affinity groups tied to specific issues within your organization. 

4. Give Supporters a Clear Path and Next Steps 

How many times have you joined an organization or donated to one without knowing how to clearly get involved and become an active member of the group? This has happened to me before and I eventually stopped engaging with the group. 

Your volunteers are valuable and it’s crucial to make it easy for them to understand the needs within your organization, and how to leverage their own skillsets and expertise to help reach your goals. Use your email newsletter and discussion boards on your website and online community to clearly articulate needs in your organization and match them with volunteers who have the time and expertise to support them.  

Consider using badging to highlight your active supporters when they log into their volunteer portal and digital spaces, to give them recognition for their efforts and drive engagement. Badges can be used for attending a specific number of virtual events, joining committees, emailing and calling their representative, and more. 

5. Deliver More Value to Help Offset Your In-Person Activities 

Nearly all organizations and nonprofits have struggled during COVID-19, whether it’s the challenges of a remote workforce, concerns about revenue and the need to use financial reserves, how to engage their volunteers digitally, and more.  

More than 70 percent of nonprofits reported a decline in marketing spending in 2020 as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and a significant chunk of this investment is coming from the loss of in-person events. Smart nonprofits are taking this time to focus on messaging and programming that is personalized, localized and relevant to their supporters’ needs right now, and they’re also being more efficient with their current marketing spend. 

How are your programs and activities helping your volunteers navigate the overwhelming amount of information and resources that are relevant to their interests? How are you connecting them with other folks in your organization who share their passion? And, are you giving them a digital space to collaborate, share their progress and actions to further your cause?  

Want a Deep Dive on This Topic? 

See more information and best practices for nonprofits to mobilize their movement and unite supporters. In this session, you’ll learn: 

• The evolving landscape for volunteers, donors and supporters in a COVID-19 world 
• Best practices and tips for organizations to unite their supporters and engage meaningfully through digital channels 
• A roundup of tools and technology that can help organizations be more efficient and effective with their investment  

Watch Now

The post Mobilize Your Movement: 5 Tactics to Unite People and Inspire Action for Your Cause appeared first on Personify.

I’m excited to share that we recently launched a podcast called Planet Leadership where I get to do that and much more.

Why I Created Planet Leadership

I’ve been working with entrepreneurs, CEOs and some of the largest associations and nonprofits for several years. It occurred to me that I don’t think that anyone is out there telling their stories and discussing the challenges they face, especially in the association and nonprofit market. I made the decision to call the podcast—Planet Leadership—because we feature stories about leaders who are trying to change the planet every day, and in many different ways. They are advocating upon behalf of their members to Congress, providing development and training opportunities to grow their industry and profession, curing diseases, eradicating poverty, protecting our environment, creating new companies and more.

I also work in the private equity world. Some people don’t understand how private equity works and may even have some concerns and questions about the role that private equity plays in both the nonprofit market and the commercial sector. I think there are a lot of great things happening with private equity so I’m excited to bring people from that world on the podcast to explain how it’s shaping organizations of all kinds.

We’ll talk to CEOs, executive directors and leaders who may not have a big title but are doing compelling things for their organization and driving transformation. I’ll ask these leaders things like- How do you build a great culture? What’s important to think about when building a great team? How are you scaling your organization? Why have you initiated a change in leadership? When leaders are successful, what are they doing to move the needle for their organization?

A Focus on Leadership Journeys

I will be sharing stories from some amazing Personify clients who have really interesting stories about their leadership journeys. But this podcast is not just about the association and nonprofit sector. It’s not about Personify. It’s about sharing the leadership journeys of individuals who are enacting meaningful change. And, I’m excited to give some of my colleagues, partners, friends and influencers in the market an opportunity to share how they got to where they are today and their advice for other leaders.

I’ll also reveal some details about my leadership journey. In fact, we spend time talking about it in the first episode. I’ve had several people ask me what it’s like to be a CEO and run a mid-size software company. We’ve gone through a significant transformation at Personify including rearchitecting our product structure and we have bought companies from entrepreneurs who have been really successful. I’ll share the process that we have gone through when we’re acquiring a new company and let the entrepreneurs from the companies we have acquired discuss how they built and grew their organization.

Who We’ll Speak With

We’ll come out with new episodes of Planet Leadership every other week. On the podcast, we’ll feature entrepreneurs, association executives, nonprofit leaders, private equity folks and much more. These are people who are trying to make a difference in the world and do something great. Here is a sneak peek at some of the upcoming interviewees:

• Amy Porter, founder of AffiniPay, a payments technology solution for associations, law firms and accounting organizations.
• Matt Ott, founder of the nonprofit organization Black Fret that supports local musicians in Austin.
• Loretta Deluca, founder and CEO of Delcor, an organization that partners with associations and nonprofits on their technology strategy.
• Michael Wilson, founder of the company Small World Labs (which is now Personify Community) that was created to connect nonprofits and people with disabilities
• Susan Robertson, interim executive director of ASAE, the organization for association management.
• Other leaders that have a great story to tell

Wherever you get your podcasts, I encourage you to go out and subscribe to Planet Leadership. I’m excited to be on this journey and hope that you’ll join me in learning from our amazing leaders that will share their stories.

Listen to the Latest Episode

The post Planet Leadership: the Podcast for Associations, Nonprofits & Entrepreneurs appeared first on Personify.

The goal of our community is to make sure that “no post goes unanswered.”

Earlier this year, my colleagues and I had a chance to sit down with Lacey Horta, a Senior Support Specialist at the Canadian Cancer Society, and this statement about how they approach managing their online community really stuck with me.

About the Canadian Cancer Society

The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) is a national, community-based organization dedicated to improving and saving the lives of people affected by cancer. They have taken a comprehensive approach to fight cancer, including:

• Funding research on all types of cancer
• Educating Canadians about early diagnosis and prevention
• Providing support services
• Serve as a political advocate on cancer-related issues

Additionally, CCS is Canada’s largest national charitable fundraiser of research into all types of cancer. At CCS, Lacey and her team enable connections and support among the organization’s members across the country. One of the ways in which they do this is through their online support community, Cancer Connection, which is powered by Personify Community.

About Cancer Connection

This community was created to support not only people with a cancer diagnosis but also their loved ones and currently has more than 8,000 members. Community members can start or join existing discussions categorized by topic or cancer stage, join groups to find like-minded members and have a safe space to discuss difficult issues, exchange messages of support with other community members and even share personal journals in the form of blog posts.

Recently, CCS launched a community mentor program that empowers superusers within the community to gain more education about the platform and welcome new members and help them navigate through the different resources available online. CCS recently conducted a survey among community members and found that 97 percent felt that the community was a place they could trust. This is a tremendous accomplishment and speaks to the value that the organization has created in its online community.

The mission of the Cancer Connection community is to make sure that people who are experiencing cancer do not have to go through it alone. It’s crucial to connect them to other people who are going through something similar so that they can feel supported and hear stories of hope.

One of the things I love about working at Personify is that every day I get to help our nonprofit and association clients achieve their missions and better serve their members. While I’m certainly familiar with the impact an online community can make – as it drives much of what we do – I don’t always get to hear the personal stories of how these communities can truly transform lives.

Online Community Misperceptions

We were especially grateful to have had the opportunity to sit down with Lacey recently as she shared stories of hope she’s witnessed within Cancer Connection. She shared that a common misperception about online communities for specific health concerns is that community members don’t have a support network outside of the community. However, that’s usually not true. Members of Cancer Connection often have a support network filled with friends and family members.

They turn to the online community because they don’t have people in their support network that are going through the same experience of having a cancer diagnosis. So, the community can be really powerful in connecting individuals that would otherwise have a challenging time finding one another.

Lacey sat down with us at PersoniFest to share how the organization uses Personify Community to connect those affected by cancer to one another and shared a powerful story of acceptance and inclusivity.

Hear Lacey’s Story

The post Meet our Latest Game Changer: the Canadian Cancer Society appeared first on Personify.

Meetings aren’t a four-letter word, but they might as well be. Many of us spend our days as slaves to our calendars, going from one conference room to another in the hopes of driving our organizations forward. But the reality is that meetings often fail to accomplish what we need them to and we leave them no better off than before. A frustrating experience to be sure.

But while meetings may be part of your workday, it’s helpful to remember they’re part of your board of director’s free time.

Board meetings can be about reporting metrics, answering questions and having your performance judged, but these meetings can accomplish much more than that. Board meetings are the most useful when they focus on a common goal: charting the organization’s future, not scrutinizing its past.

In our recent webinar, Get Your Board on Board, Personify explored a number of ways to improve your relationship with your nonprofit’s board and shared four strategies to help you optimize your time together.

1. Get Organized

Before involving anyone else, take the time to cover the basics. Know your audience, understanding their expectations and their knowledge of the topic. Be aware of any pre-existing attitudes around what you’re planning to discuss and consider how it impacts them. Reflect on how your initiatives align with the strategic plan. Always ask, how does this help us:

• Grow revenue
• Increase engagement
• Streamline work
• Create a clear view of organizational health
• Reduce costs

2. Find Friends

If you find that one of the board members responds particularly favorably to your pitch when you give it to them one-on-one, see if they’ll agree to be your advocate. In advance of the meeting, collaborating with an advocate can help you clarify:

• Blind spots in your pitch that might need improvement.
• What board members’ primary concerns might be.
• Any questions members might ask.
• Areas where you might need to do further research.
• If your idea is well-founded or needs significant reworking.

3. Plan the Conversation

Send the agenda in advance, ideally 72-hours before the meeting. Offer a preview call to answer questions and solicit feedback. This gives you a chance to ensure every board member truly understands your perspective and turns up on the day ready for a productive discussion. If they disagree with a decision, you will understand why. If you want their support for a hard decision, you can figure out where they stand before the meeting. Think of your pre-meeting like a congressional whip “counts the vote.” Pre-calls can also help you with 1–1 rapport building so that you’re more in control of the room when you’re all together.

4. Go Into the Main Event Prepared

Be aware of your biases, challenging them and asking yourself if they’re serving your organization? Frame the conversation, providing the context and background to ensure all parties are on the same page. Show that you’ve done your due diligence by presenting facts gathered and share options for consideration. Ask questions and facilitate a broad conversation, ideally led by your advocate. Address critical feedback with the feel-felt-found formula:

• Acknowledge how the board member feels, “I understand how you feel. This investment represents a lot of money.”
• Offer an example of someone who felt the same way, “The Association for American Professionals shared similar concerns when they were looking to upgrade their constituent management tools.”
• Share what your example found in terms of results, “Ultimately they decided to move forward and found that the new features allowed them to save significant staff time, as much as 8 hours per week.”

Board meetings don’t have to be stressful, tense events. Run effectively, board meetings can move your nonprofit closer to its goals. They can provide support and encouragement to your staff. Every moment you spend preparing for your board meeting is a minute invested in the meeting’s productivity helping you eliminate stress and improving your nonprofit’s overall performance.

Looking for additional information? Check out our Get Your Board on Board eBook and on-demand webinar.

The post 4 Tips to Make the Most of Board Meetings appeared first on Personify.

• Will anyone log in, let alone participate?
• Will our staff need to prompt every discussion?
• Will our members, of their own volition, really connect with each other?

In an interview for CMXHub, sociologist and strategist Danny Spitzberg says those fears can be assuaged with trust:

“What I think businesses can eventually get their head around is that people will participate. There will be user-generated content. There will be all these things that might match up with some of your metrics or business objectives generally. You have to suspend your disbelief that those things won’t happen and just trust people radically.”

You heard it: Building a community is a radical act.

Having an organizational culture of trusting your members is important for community. But community also requires building trust between members. Being part of a community, after all, means sacrificing a sliver of one’s own individuality in favor of a shared identity. Your members need to trust each other enough to know the sacrifice will be worth it.

How do you go about building trust? Modeling authenticity is key. Community managers can build trust by listening, sharing and responding in their own voice, by admitting mistakes, and by asking for help. But in addition to those very important ways of being, there’s another age-old way to build trust on a more massive scale: by facilitating ritual experiences.

Here’s the thing: studies have shown that groups of people who participated together in a completely bogus ritual trusted each other more than those in control groups did. For example, in one study, participants in an invented ritual were more likely to share their own money with other ritual participants than with non-participants.

A different study showed that participating in rituals seems to enhance the quality of an experience. Brands like Oreo and Guinness, writes social psychologist Heidi Grant, have smartly built ritual into their marketing campaigns, “created added value right out of thin air” or, out of the twist of a cookie or the careful pour of a beer.

Think about rituals that you engage in as part of a community – physical, online or both. Does your organization take every new hire out to lunch, or induct them with a common project? What are the shared experiences that bind members of your association together at the annual conference? What do members of your advocacy group do together to celebrate gains (or acknowledge losses)?

New online community members should have these kinds of experiences, too. We need to invent new rituals where they may not exist, leaning on organizational culture, community mission and vision and member personas to make them on-tone, delightful and organic. We need to listen for and gently acknowledge and elevate any member ritual practices that arise organically. (If your member base has already created their own common rituals, great job!)

Joining a community – really joining it, on an identity level – is no small transition for members. How does your community celebrate every crossing of that threshold? How do you mark the passages and milestones that take place beyond it? Helping shape and illuminate the unique rituals in your community can bring delight to members and add another layer of meaning to membership, building trust for the group as a whole.

The post Radical Acts: Rituals and Building Trust in Community appeared first on Personify.

Source: CNN.com

Recent days have seen Sears in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. While the company has been in financial straits for some time, the pressure has been mounting and today comes reports that the company may avoid bankruptcy thanks to a last-minute bid from CEO Eddie Lampert’s investment company. Certain Sears creditors are expected to object to the deal whether it’s the best outcome of the company’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

It’s a complicated situation and one that brings up mixed emotions. As a consumer of a certain age, I remember dog-earing the pages in the Sears Wishbook for Santa, visiting the store for back to school clothes, working with my grandfather’s Craftsman Tools and spending my hard-earned babysitting money on a small, 13” black and white TV from the Sears electronics department.

But there’s another dimension complicating my feelings around Sears and their recent challenges: I used to work there.

I joined Sears Holdings Company, parent company to Sears, Kmart and (at the time) Land’s End, as a product manager. During my time there, I managed payment and post-order. My role covered essentially everything from the time a shopper entered their credit card and coupon details through shipping and delivery of items.

I can’t speak for everyone I worked with, but most of those on the team were energized by the vision of transforming Sears for the 21st century. But even back then there were challenges, many of which have been widely reported. Here are three of the lessons I learned from the experience.

1. Consistency Matters

With a huge number of stores and a robust operations center, Sears was an early pioneer in the omnichannel experience. The ability to order online and pick up from your car in designated parking spots, which is now widely advertised by several big-box discount retailers? I worked on that product for Sears – in 2010.

While a great idea in concept, and even an idea that was (arguably) ahead of its time, the buy-online-pick up-in-store idea kind of flopped. Why? The devil was in the details. For example, take coupons. Often the user saw a promotion online that they hadn’t applied towards their purchase because they didn’t know they could. The result? Disappointment.

In today’s hyperconnected world having an experience that’s streamlined, clearly communicated, familiar and complementary across the board is even more important. If you are coordinating experiences between various channels, whether in-person events, chapter communication, international outlets, social media or your website and online community, regularly do a quick review and ensure your messaging is consistent across the board. It can save you time and customer service headaches down the road.

2. Know Your Audience

Shortly before leaving Sears, I spent time with the customer service call center team. As the company focused on building out a massive online marketplace, many of the shoppers I spoke with found already found online shopping a challenging experience. They were calling to complain and taking their business elsewhere. And those were just the shoppers I spoke with.

We were building the business from the top down, but maybe it should have been from the bottom up. Take the time to talk to the constituents engaging with your organization. Understand their preferences and behaviors, acknowledge their concerns and use what you’ve heard to build an organization that meets their needs and exceeds their expectations. Your retention rate will thank you for it.

3. Stay Focused on What Matters

Sears sought to evolve their business by building a large online marketplace to rival Amazon. They partnered with small businesses and amassed a huge catalog of products. But in doing so, they lost sight of what made them successful. Popular, and profitable, brands like Craftsman and Kenmore got lost in the mix.

If you’re planning to expand your organization in 2019, look at the programs your constituents know and love. Do the new benefits that you want to introduce make sense? Will they build on your success or distract constituents from understanding and internalizing the value you provide?

Wrapping Up

With some time away from the ecommerce space, and from the outside looking in, I recognize what’s happening with Sears as an important example of how vulnerable an organization can become — no matter the size, brand or history. The nonprofit sector, with its lean resources and commitment to the invaluable work of social good, can’t risk exposure to the same risk. Learning from the past to secure the future can be a good place to start.

The post 3 Lessons for Nonprofits from the Fall of a Retail Giant: Seeing the Softer Side of Sears appeared first on Personify.

We love them, we hate them, but we keep making them.

In new research from YouGov, about one quarter (26%) of people report having New Year’s Resolutions for 2019. As for the specific resolutions people are making, the most popular one is “exercise more” (59%) followed closely by “eat healthier” (54%) and “save money” (51%).

But according to podcast HowStuffWorks.com, 35 percent of us who make New Year’s resolutions break them by the end of January. And only 23 percent of those who make a resolution will see it through to completion. Can this year be different?

With each new year comes the promise of a fresh start, the chance to introduce new habits and stop bad behaviors holding us back. Whether in our personal lives, for many individuals and organizations both stumbling out of a holiday-induced haze of either overindulgence or (for those in the charity sector in particular) over-work, January provides the opportunity to set the course for what will be the year to come.

It occurred to me though that many of the resolutions we make as individuals can be equally beneficial in our professional lives and for our organizations. Consider the most popular resolution: exercise more.

Commit to Good Data Hygiene

What about the health of your organization? What about the health of your data? Many of the standard health clichés apply. If you put garbage in, your mouth or your database, you’ll get garbage out. Excess weight creates an additional burden, to both your knees and the systems on which your organization relies.

If it seems like a stretch, an attempt to create a seasonal blog post out of thin air, it shouldn’t. The impacts of poor data hygiene are significant:

• According to Forbes, 84 percent of CEOs are concerned about the quality of the data they’re basing their decisions on.
• Gartner measures the average financial impact of poor data on businesses at $9.7 million per year.
• MIT recently reported the cost of bad data can add up to an astonishing 15-25% of revenue.

The thing is, while individual people have the luxury of trying on a New Year’s resolution and failing only to try again another year, organizations aren’t that lucky. In the nonprofit sector, resources are limited and every penny counts. The financial impact of poor data hygiene is terrible on its own but poor data can also lead to higher risk. There aren’t always do-overs and new habits need to stick to make a difference.

Embrace the New Year as an opportunity for a fresh start! Whether you’re looking for a total data makeover or the life-changing art of tidying up your database. Check out our webinar, New Year, Fresh Start: Clean Data for Big Results, as we explore ways to kick off the year with optimized data designed to deliver the results your organization is looking including:

• The real impact of poor data on your organization
• How to identify and understand the root cause of bad data quality
• Practical tips and techniques to get your data healthy – and keep it that way

Watch On-Demand: New Year, Fresh Start: Clean Data for Big Results

The post Make a New Year’s Resolution to Clean Up Your Data appeared first on Personify.