Marketing in a time of change 

Lee Wochner:
Consumers spend faster. They’re less patient to do a lot of research on their own. We want quick, we want now. That’s what our guest, Tom Melesic, president and CEO of Easy Solution, a digital marketing and IT firm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania says, and he’s right. However we feel about it, people now rely on us to do their research, mostly online. They make quick decisions and they pull out their credit cards faster. So,

What can we do to translate that into action and success for nonprofits? How should nonprofit organizations respond to the way our habits have changed? How can nonprofits make best use of artificial intelligence and different modes of spending and working and even living so that they can better achieve their mission and thrive? In other words, how can we turn the chaos of today into our tools for tomorrow?

Tom and I will discuss these things and more on this episode of How to Market Your Nonprofit.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Welcome to How to Market Your Nonprofit, the Counterintuity podcast featuring interviews with experts in marketing, fundraising, strategy, and leadership who offer how-tos and inspiration about how you can help your nonprofit succeed and grow during a time of chaos and change. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience in marketing, strategy, and nonprofit management, here’s our host, Lee Wochner.

Lee Wochner:
Tom, it’s great having you join us today. Nice to spend some time with you.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Lee Wochner:
So I want to jump right in because I know you and I are both interested in the future and how we’re going to get there and we’re in the process of getting there. So there’s a lot of fast moving change in the world today and certainly when it comes to technology and marketing. So I’d like to start by asking you, what would you say have been the biggest changes in marketing and in tech since that long ago time of before COVID, like 2019? What has changed in the time since then?

Tom Malesic:
It has changed so much. COVID really allowed a lot of companies to either do the complete work from home or the hybrid environment. My company personally embraced the work from home, so it’s almost a hundred percent remote. I have a couple of people that come into a very large office building that I own, but for the most part, people can work from home. And this concept of Zoom or Teams and the video meeting has really—I want to say it’s quickened the pace.

So it used to be like if you came to my office or I came to your office, if I was 10 minutes late it was, “Oh, traffic on this road was really busy,” or there was all this extra buffer time. And now in the land of Teams and Zoom meetings, if somebody’s two minutes late for a meeting, I’m calling them because they clearly have a technology problem. And it allows you to move on to the next meeting super quick.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I feel like I get more done, but it’s definitely increased the pace, and I think maybe we’ve lost some connection as a result of not seeing as many people in three dimensions.

Lee Wochner:
There’s also this dynamic of existing in the real world and existing in sometimes two or three other screens. So I’ll be texting, I’ll have something on my phone perhaps, and then I’m playing Skyrim on my PlayStation. And I have an avatar there where I’m making potions or wielding a sword or something. Yeah, I’m one of those guys. And so it’s like, where do you really exist?

Right after our discussion, Tom, I actually have a physical in-the-real-world meeting with someone that I’m going to drive to. And that happens maybe a couple of times a month anymore.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, I had people in my office all day today. It was really strange.

Lee Wochner:
So work from home for sure, right? It’s interesting that you talk about the pace and how things have picked up. There’s digital security threats like holy cow. Today I went and signed up for something and there’s some new authentication process that I hadn’t seen before. I’m like, well, I’ll just do it. I don’t know. And then there’s artificial intelligence. There’s the GEO form of search engine optimization. It just seems like a lot.

Tom Malesic:
Immense change. That generative engine optimization is—it’s going to be a game changer and we’re just at the very beginning of this. And I think digital marketing companies—or just marketing in general—you’re going to really have to pay attention to Gemini and ChatGPT and Claude. It’s just going to be a complete change in how we generate leads or traffic to our site. We’re already seeing it. I’ve closed deals off of somebody finding me on ChatGPT. It’s crazy.

Lee Wochner:
So today we put out a press release for a client. And as you know, most of our work, almost all of our work, is with nonprofits. And ChatGPT is part of the press release send now. And you show up in ChatGPT, which I was thrilled to see. And then we were having an internal discussion today about the relevance of generative engine optimization for nonprofits. Is it important for nonprofits?

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, it’s going to be important for everyone.

So think of it like it’s the new Google. And over time, that’s really what it’s going to be. But it won’t just be one, right? Google’s in their own generative engine that they’re working on. Microsoft’s got theirs. So when you look at Copilot and everything else that’s coming on board, that is a slightly different version of how we think of search.

When we moved to the land of Google in the early 2000s, late ’90s, nobody thought the Yellow Pages would go away, right? And well, the Yellow Pages not only went away—they moved to digital marketing companies. And honestly, I think those companies are going to go away because they couldn’t adapt as quickly into tech because they still stayed in Yellow Pages land.

So Google became the new Yellow Pages. And I’m not saying that Google is going to go away, but we’re adding this new layer of: how else do we look for things? And when you start to think of AI in general as your personal assistant, then because you’re asking it to report back and give you stuff—you’re going to Google and saying, “I’m looking for a nonprofit in Los Angeles that really works on homelessness. Could you list the top 30 places and their annual revenue and donor base for me?”

Before, you’d have to go do all that research by yourself. But now ChatGPT or Claude or these engines can pull that data back, and then you can ask follow-up questions and follow-up questions. So when you start to use it as your research assistant, the game changes.

Lee Wochner:
And one of the reasons that it’s really important to come up there—you are absolutely right about everything you said, of course—is that we’re now in this zero-click world where people don’t want to click deeper, and Google and some other folks don’t want you to click deeper because who has that microsecond of time to spare, right? So now you put in a search and immediately ChatGPT or Google or someone is giving you not just links to go to—because who wants to invest the time in looking at those?—it’s giving you the answer with an attribution that is a link.

Tom Malesic:
Right, it’s just giving you the answer in many cases now. Does it screw up? Yeah, sometimes it does. So does your friend—if you ask a friend, and they screw up too.

Lee Wochner:
Sure. Yeah. Me too.

So, and then what else? Do you feel that consumer trends have changed in the past five years? How people spend or behave or anything that would affect organizations?

Tom Malesic:
Consumers spend faster. They’re less patient to do a lot of research on their own. We want quick, we want now, we want convenience, which is why Amazon dominates so heavily. Heck, I buy it on Amazon and they shipped it 15 minutes before I thought to buy it. So this concept of same-day shipping and just the pace of the world is going so much faster.

So from a shopping standpoint, right, you need to get them what they want as quick as you possibly can, which speaks to that zero-click. If I can just ask for a product and AI delivers that product and I say, “Go ahead and buy that,” all off voice commands and it hits my credit card—like that’s the future.

Lee Wochner:
So in 1999, when I was running a nonprofit, I did a whole mail campaign of “please send us some money,” which worked out really, really well for the nonprofit and they should still do it. But probably every 15 minutes, I now get a text asking me to make a donation to something or somebody, which frankly is intrusive, and I don’t always appreciate it.

But this thing of—you’d better be getting your message out quickly on Facebook or someplace in your emails, on your homepage, in your newsletter, everywhere, because people are going to look at it and then they’re going to move on. And so you have to have them click and donate then.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah. And I think the fundamentals of marketing—what’s that compelling reason? Why do they buy from you? Why do they donate to you? Why do they volunteer for your organization?—is even more important today than I think it was in the past. Because there’s so many things competing for your time and attention that the more compelling your message is, the more likely it is that you’re going to disrupt them in that moment and move them to make a decision or do a little more homework or come to your website or volunteer or give that thousand dollars.

Lee Wochner:
So you and I are in agreement. There’s just been a lot of change and there’s more change coming. And everybody of course is working with a budget, and the budget is time and money. How does somebody with a nonprofit organization or a small business prioritize all that? If your stuff needs help so that you’re getting more response from consumers, from donors, how do you prioritize what you’re going to do?

Tom Malesic:
I look at what I’m good at right now and what I’m not good at and say, what are the things that I need to fix immediately? And that’s what I’m going to prioritize.

What we find is that the website is this completely ignored entity. And it really shouldn’t be. Your website needs to be your very best salesperson. It works 24/7 tirelessly. It doesn’t complain. It doesn’t take a vacation. And if we didn’t equip it with the right words and messages and structure, it’s like having the worst salesperson—you’re paying them a hundred grand for them not to make any calls. And when they do show up, they show up like they just got done mowing their lawn or shoveling snow. They look a mess, they’re dirty, their hair’s a mess, and they smell. And that’s what we do with our websites all too often.

I think, especially in nonprofits, we get this wonderful opportunity to tug at the heartstrings of our donors. And small businesses don’t get this passion play in many cases. Small business is “see a problem, solve a problem.” Nonprofits have this passion behind them and we have the opportunity to do video and tell our story and really get our core audience to want to take an action.

So really, I would say that if you took a look at your website—and if you want, I’ll give your whole audience, whoever wants it, you can download my website checklist and evaluate how their site is doing against what I think are great standards. Fix your website first. And then look at: How am I getting found?

Lee Wochner:
Nice.

It is interesting. Once again, we are in complete agreement. I see bad websites all the time, and sometimes people are reluctant to make the investment. But it is true. It’s like you say—it’s like you showed up looking like you just mowed the lawn.

So flipping that funnel around: what are the opportunities? Let’s say it isn’t so broken. What would you go after that you think is opportunity-based right now?

Tom Malesic:
I think for a lot of nonprofits, social is a great opportunity base because you can tell the story. And I think anytime we can build relationships within the community, those are always great opportunities for nonprofits.

And again, I go back to: What do you do well? We master this one thing. So we master our website. Great. Next opportunity: we master SEO. How do we rank on Google? Then how are we doing our email marketing? Is our email list engaging? Does our message meet the needs? Are people finding the email and then going to our page and giving a donation or taking whatever action we want them to?

So the opportunity is to look at the full path and say, “I’m trying to do X”—get a donation, increase volunteers, get people to show up to events—whatever the outcome is. We need to track it to the outcome to say, did it work?

There are so many amazing tracking tools out there that are practically free. We track every phone call, every lead for all of our clients. Whether you filled out a form, purchased something, or called the business—I know. And I’ll tell you what lead source it is, and we can track it back to revenue.

So look at those things to say what’s next. And oftentimes, it’s kind of like if I said to you, “Hey, Haley, what’s the best exercise program that I can do?” The answer is: well, there are about 35,000 exercise programs you can do. The best one is the one you’ll actually do.

Lee Wochner:
Awesome. Really important.

Lee Wochner:
Well, then I would tell you StairMaster.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah. So for marketing, same thing. What’s the one you’ll do and that you’ll execute on? Do that one. Because moving the ball forward is still moving the ball forward.

Lee Wochner:
Cool. So let’s talk a little bit more about marketing and I really appreciate the viewpoint you’re bringing to all this. I know you work with nonprofits and you work with small businesses. Is there a difference in how you work with each of them?

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, small businesses are much more service or revenue based. So they look at the world slightly different. And I think one of the things that nonprofits can really do is to try to put that small business owner hat on and say, we do need to generate revenue. I think a lot of times small businesses miss the point that businesses have three core functions: sales and marketing, operations, and finance.

So if you break business down to its fundamental structure, I think what a lot of nonprofits do is they miss the whole sales and marketing piece. And they’re so focused on their core of delivering their service or their mission that this sales/marketing piece just gets ignored—or it’s, “Oh yeah, you know what, the executive director can just do that on the side.”

And I think that’s a big mistake. And I see it in smaller nonprofits versus larger nonprofits obviously having a little more structure. But I think when you’re under that $2 million mark in nonprofits—which, quite honestly, is most nonprofits—they just forget that sales piece is so important. Because they don’t want to call it sales, because that seems icky. So they call it development.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I’ve met a lot of really good people running and working in nonprofits, of course. I sometimes wonder, you know, their degree of business background. So, I mean, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My grandfather was an entrepreneur, my father, my brother, my brother-in-law. I started my first business when I was 12.

Tom Malesic:
Generally not.

Lee Wochner:
I did investment-grade comic books through the mail—collectible comics back in the day, right? Yeah, it was a load of fun and it meant a lot to me. And my dad staked me $40 to start and I bought some ads and I had comic books and it lasted for years and years. I did pretty well off it.

But you know, the really good people start nonprofits or go to work in nonprofits without sometimes relevant training—and you really see this in the arts, for instance. And for some of them, the business aspect can seem scary. It’s like, “No, I just want to help people. I just want to do this music thing or this theater thing or I just want to feed people. I’m at the food bank.”

And I totally get it. And they’re trying to work a budget and they’re trying to work time.

How do you help an organization like that that’s doing something really valuable? And they may—I’m only saying this because I’ve seen it, Tom—they may view the business people with some suspicion sometimes.

Tom Malesic:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I think nonprofits are in a particularly difficult space right now, right? Because grants are changing. I work with nonprofits that had a lot of federal or state money that was coming to them and all that stuff got frozen and is still less than what maybe they had done. So now you’re pushing to your individual donors, your corporate donors, and your events.

So the more we can pull from the community in different event-based marketing—whether it’s your gala, or I have a nonprofit, I can’t believe how much money they make on bingo. Like, it’s mind-boggling. Like, huh, bingo—yeah, bingo! Right? So they get all these prizes and they are, you know, like a bingo master. And I mean hundreds of people showing up to bingo. Like you just—you just don’t know.

It’s a night out. So essentially what you’re saying is—if I’m understanding you correctly—what you’re saying is, right now they should look at their revenue streams and diversify. To use the business speak that you and I would use, they need more channels of revenue because some of the pre-existing stuff is not existing right now.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, and I think that’s just gonna continue. I think that’s gonna be a trend.

And the more we can move to that individual donor and those corporate gifts, I think that’s going to really be important. And it’s kind of a fundamental business principle.

So I had a sales job when I was in college, and my boss used to say—the owner of the company—he’d say, “Look, Tom, the tail can’t wag the dog.” And he’s right. So in other words, if you have one funding source that is 60 percent or more of your revenue, and that funding source drops or goes away completely—in my world, if you lose one customer, do you start to fire people because you can’t make up the revenue?

And that’s what happens in nonprofits too with these big grants or federal funding. So if your biggest funding source goes away or drops because you didn’t diversify—because you let the tail wag the dog—that’s a mistake.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah.

And indeed, one of the boards I sit on, we had an emergency meeting last week and then a follow-up meeting last night because we didn’t get a grant we had gotten two years in a row. And the very good people running the nonprofit had assumed it was coming again—and it isn’t. Exactly as you said.

And so what did the board members have a discussion about except diversifying revenue? Here are the other ways we need to get some revenue. Yeah.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, and I think all businesses need to do that, nonprofits need to do that. You need to look at—it’s kind of like risk management, right? Where’s the risk in your business? And there’s always a risk in income. That’s just important to look at.

Lee Wochner:
If you’re a—so I’m going to ask you two questions about region in a way. So if you’re a local nonprofit, right, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the local community—let’s say a food bank or a shelter or a clinic—what’s the best marketing you think those folks can do?

Tom Malesic:
I think those folks, it’s probably more related to the community. And having ties to individuals throughout the community that are influencers that will help drive the revenue. So to me, the local nonprofit—your board is so important. And can your board raise money? And is your board financially backing the organization?

So if you have a board member who won’t either raise $1,000 or give $1,000, why are they on the board, in my opinion? They have to be able to help drive the revenue and be kind of these community spokesperson, right? I want people on my board that everybody knows, right? I want business people on my nonprofit board, right? Who have influence with other people who have money to give, right? Because that’s how these nonprofits survive, is who in the community can help fund us.

Lee Wochner:
And great answer. And what if you have a larger service area? What if you’re statewide or national? What if you’re one of those nonprofits? What’s your best marketing?

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, then your best one, you should be larger at that point. So let’s hope you have a lot more revenue stream to push that money into marketing to make the money. Right. So I would I would look at at bigger marketing tactics or strategies. Right. So I would definitely look at social. I would look at email. I would look at texting. Really, at that point, you have probably a regular newsletter or magazine that’s going out in your bigger profits.

Lee Wochner:
We’re going to take a short break here, but when we come back, Tom and I are going to talk about the do’s and maybe don’ts of marketing and running a nonprofit right now. Stick around.

Jaclyn Uloth:

According to the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the shelf life of a website is two years and seven months. So if your website is three years old or older, it probably needs a tune-up or a complete overhaul so that you can stay current and engaging. A website refresh provides design and content improvements to drive donations and new technology to save you on time.

A website refresh provides design and content improvements to drive donations and new technology to save you time on tedious tasks while keeping your website safe from hackers. a free assessment of your website, contact us through our own website at counterintuity.com or email lee at lee@counterintuity.com. We’re ready to help. And now back to our show.

Lee Wochner:
And we’re back with Tom Meleszek, president of Easy Marketing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And we’re talking about marketing and what’s changed and nonprofits. So Tom, one of the things you say is that success is about more than marketing or technology. It’s about people, purpose and progress. And that meant a lot to me. I really liked that. What do you mean by that?

Tom Malesic:
I mean, the starters is the people in your organization, right? So people talk about that the customer is number one. And I don’t think that’s true. I think your team is number one. I think it’s the people in your organization, because if you take care of your people, guess what? They take care of your customer. And I think that’s so important. And, you know, the process to me is the better processes we have in our organization that are documented and followed by all the better our organization runs.

And then that leads to progress, like where are we going and what’s our mission and how are going to get there. To me that’s the progress. And you know, one step forward is still one step forward at the end of the day. And we want to have our organizations just keep that forward momentum moving all the time.

Lee Wochner:
You know, this really landed with me when I read this about you. And you’re talking about progress and forward, which I like. And then we do a lot of work with University of Southern California on their spatial science program, which is about mapping in very fascinating ways. And so I’ve started to think, and then we talk about local markets and national and federal, right? And so then I start to think about radiating circles.

If you’re treating the person you’re in a relationship well, then you develop a code of behavior and then you’re treating other people well. And if you treat your coworkers who Lord knows I rely on them, like Lisa Pham, our producer, I really need her, right? So I try to treat her well and then it just seems to expand where treating more and more people well and it just radiates positive change.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah.

Exactly. And I think it’s not just treating them well, it’s having clear expectations of them and that everybody knows what’s expected so that no one’s disappointed of, gosh, Lee, I didn’t know you wanted me to do that. Why are you upset with me? Right? I think a lot of times when we have the communication friction, it’s because we didn’t set clear expectations of their job responsibilities and their role in the organization. And then we also probably did a really bad job communicating where we’re going in an organization know where we’re going how are gonna help us get there?

Lee Wochner:
So I mentioned that I serve on three of these boards. And with one of them recently, I discovered and then the board discovered that, yeah, some of the roles are a little ill-defined. And so people are doing each other’s jobs, and some of the jobs aren’t being done. And again, really good people. We just want to help them straighten that out. Pardon me? Yeah, they stepped exactly right.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, they step over each other. And it’s hard.

Lee Wochner:
And the other thing I’ve seen is that people working in nonprofits are dedicated to achieving that mission. And then, so I guess my question is, if you’re in a nonprofit, how do you balance the needs of the mission, which is helping people, serving the community, providing the art? How do you balance that with the business needs of the nonprofit? Like, know, staying profitable, making sure the numbers perform, et cetera, et cetera.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, I think the more that people that run nonprofits really understand that it is a business. Nonprofit is a tax structure more than anything else. Right. And you’re in the business. If you’re in the business of helping the homeless or you’re in the business of feeding people who have food insecurities, you’re in that you’re in that business and they need to understand that if you don’t have a healthy organization, then you can’t deliver your mission because you don’t have the money to do it And I think really if they go back to just fundamental organization structure, sales and marketing, operations, finance, you could add HRIT on top of that if you wanted. But there are these core tenants and you got to have all those be strong. So let’s just assume there’s the three. If sales and marketing is great, but operations like we can’t deliver on it and we don’t know how to manage our money, the organization is going to fail. So if any one of those is weak, we just don’t have a strong organization.

Lee Wochner:
It’s good to do less and do it well. And I’m preaching this all the time. Can we do less and do it well? Right? Really own something. Whatever sort of organization you have, can you really own something, perform it well, be known for it, and then talk about expanding from there? Can we do less? The 99 different programs that are muddling along are really impact making a big enough impact for the downside that comes with that approach.

Tom Malesic:
Right, there’s always opportunity costs. Every time you start a new program or a new initiative, what’s the money that had to go into that and or what did you stop doing someplace over here because of time? Yeah.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah, exactly. It’s like working a to-do list every day instead of investing in the thing that’s really gonna move the ball forward.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, so I think one of the things I didn’t mention is I’m also an EOS implementer.
So it’s called the entrepreneur operating system. one of the things that’s a core principle is quarterly rocks or quarterly initiatives or quarterly goals, if you want to think of them that way. So that you commit to one or two projects or things that you’re really going to advance for the next 90 days. And you focus on that. And that helps you get rid of the shiny penny. Because if you say, no, no, I can’t add anything new in this 90 day window, well, you’re teaching yourself to say no.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah, we’re big EOS fans. We run on EOS ourselves. I talk about EOS a lot. I’m not an implementer or a coach, because again, you can’t say yes to everything, Tom. But I have steered a lot of people to EOS over the years, and good for you. Pardon me? It is a game changer, absolutely. What do you think is the greatest challenge in this very peculiar time? You and I are about the same age, and we’ve

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, it’s a game changer. It’s a game changer.

Lee Wochner:
This is a rather peculiar time. What do you think is the greatest challenge nonprofits and the businesses you work with are having right now?

Tom Malesic:
Yeah.

Tom Malesic:
For nonprofits, I think it’s funding. I think hand, at least the nonprofits that I’m part of it’s it’s veteran state grants that are much harder to get or have gone away or have been delayed. I think that’s probably from my standpoint, that’s one of the biggest things and more so more nonprofits competing for less grant money. I think that’s that’s a challenge. think the you you could say maybe it’s not a challenge with the biggest opportunity that I think creates that little like, huh, what’s going to happen there? I think it’s AI. It’s how are we really going to use that? How can the nonprofit leverage that? Because typically nonprofits aren’t, they’re not aggressively forward-facing in technology. They’re generally, because they’re underfunded, they’re using old technology, old computers. At least that’s what I see a lot. It’s harder because they’re on a tighter budget and they’re trying to spend as little as possible in the process of running the organization.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah. So right now, as we just talked about, a lot of organizations are facing some real challenges. And a lot of organizations are succeeding in new ways, by the way. And we should note that. I mean, absolutely true. So how would you advise an organization right now if they found themselves in trouble? What do you think they should do right away?

Tom Malesic:
What kind of trouble are they in?

Lee Wochner:
Well, I mean, I think you’re so I had a lunch meeting months ago with a I was invited to it by a friend, a colleague, and and the gentleman we were having lunch with said, just as you say, we didn’t get this grant or the money is held up. It’s been granted. It’s not been funded. We don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re going to go out of business. I’ve had another one recently.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah.

Lee Wochner:
where we need $50,000 to do X, which is our core thing, and we don’t have it. And yet another one that says, we looked at this and now we think we have two months of operational money left. And by the way, anybody listening, there’s lots of success too, so please don’t run for the hills. I’m singling these out because Tom asked. And so all three of those happen to be, I guess my question is,

Tom Malesic:
That was my…

Tom Malesic
Don’t do an out-robin!

Lee Wochner:
is some of it related to planning, and this is the impact of not having planned, and some of it related directly to funding, which of course some of it is.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, think it sounds like it could be both, right? So is it planning that we didn’t forecast something well? Is it…

Is it overspending? Is it that we just didn’t, we didn’t prioritize sales and marketing enough? You know, I think when you find yourself in that pickle, you got to figure out how am I, how am I going to go, how am I going to go get the 50 grand? Right. Or whatever it is, right? Like, who do we know? Who can we go ask? You know, where can we raise? Can we get five people to give us $10,000? Right. So I would look at what’s the, what’s the short term stop gap?

and what are our resources that we have available to us? What can we pull from to be able to do that?

Lee Wochner:
So great answer. I take an approach very similar to yours. We do. Which is, what’s the burn rate, to use the corporate term. I.e., here’s the amount of money and here’s the rate at which we burn it. And so you heard in the one example, they said two months. That’s a burn rate. OK. Because if it’s two minutes, you’re already done. So you want to know how much time you have.

And then you would you want to figure out the different revenue streams, which again is the diversification solution And then you want to look at you know, what are reasonable targets for each of them? And what are what are we gonna go get and then I try to figure out in my life and with every Everything a failure rate right a success rate. So we need the $50,000. Let’s say so we need to do x

times that in asks. So maybe the ask is 200,000 and we only need to succeed with 25 % of those asks. And then, you know, and some of the asks are gonna be $1,000, $200, $250. And some of the asks are gonna be, as you said, 5,000, $10,000. And you’re asking different people in different ways and you’re doing the bingo night. I like the bingo night.

Tom Malesic:
Right, you’re doing bingo.

Lee Wochner:
I love the bingo night because it gets people out and they’re in a communal setting and they’re talking and they’re having a good time and this organization did it and then they can say and we’re having a drawing you you know here’s a buy some wrap you get other ways to raise money during the bingo night so I love the bingo night and the texting for donations and the email newsletter and the personal appeals I love all of it it you cannot rely

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, you gotta have the 50-50. It’s a thing.

Lee Wochner:
Here you go. You cannot rely on the government grant as that’s part of what we’re talking about. So diversify it all and still go get the government grant if you can get it. But I would not bet the farm on it know, nonprofits aren’t any different than small businesses. Small businesses have the exact same problem, right? They run out of cash. It’s why 80 % of small businesses fail in first five years. It’s not because they had a bad idea or a bad product or were poorly managed. They just run out of cash, right? They just, they don’t have enough money. And if you can start to look at your P &L in a very strategic way to say, how much money do we have in cash reserve? You know, how much money do we need to spend? Is there a cyclical spend to our cash?

And how do we have enough sitting there that in bad times we pull from that?

Right. So in business terms, it’s called current ratio. Right. What’s our balance sheet against our cash? And I’ll have people argue with me all the time. I sit in a peer group and and they’re like, look, the target number for current ratio is no more than three and a half. And I’m like, 13. Right. Like, like you give a lot of cash in the business because I want I want that leeway to say, well, if there’s an opportunity that comes up, I want to be able to take advantage of the opportunity.

Tom Malesic:
But if I lose a big customer or something, or something really goes wrong, like COVID, right? Like who predicted that other than Bill Gates, no one. right? And like there are people, there are scientists that predicted that, but the rest of us like, we’re just trogging along and they’re like, no, you’re not on essential business shutdown. Like what? Right? So, but I had tons of money in cash reserve. So I wasn’t worried about going out of business.

Tom Malesic:
other businesses were. It’s just like your personal finance. If you lose your job today and don’t make a penny for six months, can you exist? How many months in is it really a problem?

Lee Wochner:
I felt especially bad for the restaurants. mean, that’s, and we actually were hired to do a campaign by city of Burbank. That’s where we are to do a campaign about there are 400 restaurants in town and marketing them. So the people knew different restaurants they could place an order from and go pick it up or get it delivered or something. And it meant a lot to do that.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah. Think of what they learned. Like they learned restaurants that didn’t do takeout learned takeout. They learned more apps, the website became more important, and those are things they still offer today that they might not have moved in that direction.

Lee Wochner:
I feel like I should just go to Pennsylvania, spend some time with you and then go to Hershey Park, by the way, which I haven’t been to since I was a kid. I love Hershey Park. Yeah, you and I could talk for hours. Do you have any further advice you’d like to share with people listening to this podcast?

Tom Malesic:
Sounds good. We’ll do Chocolate World.

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, just keep moving forward. Your organization exists for a reason. Dig deep into your purpose and your passion and promote the heck out of it. Don’t be afraid to talk it up, talk it up. I think a lot of times we don’t aggressively talk about some of the nonprofits that made for a part of it as much as we should be.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah.

Lee Wochner:
I tell people, it’s funny you say that, I tell clients you’re being too humble. Let’s talk it up. Just as you say, talk it up. I mean, are doing amazing things. Homelessness is dropping in LA and you can see the difference visibly. That’s just one example. In Los Angeles, we cleaned up the air decades ago. I can tell you the air is much cleaner than when I moved here.

Tom Malesic:
Yes.

Lee Wochner:
It’s incredible what we can achieve when we actually work together and do things. and there’s nothing scandalous about telling people about it. We should talk it up.

Tom Malesic:
Absolutely. The nonprofits do great work and everybody needs to know the great work that you do.

Lee Wochner:
And I’m gonna take a great big bag of groceries to an event tomorrow night to restock the food bank. I’m excited about it. I want people to have food, right? I mean, sure, we should all talk it up more. I think you’re absolutely right. If listeners, give money. If listeners wanna reach out to you, what’s the best way,

Tom Malesic:
Yeah, and give money, right?

Tom Malesic:
The best way to go is to our website, so go to ezmarketing.com. It’s the letter E, the letter Z, marketing.com.

Look me up there or you can just type my name into LinkedIn. I’m pretty much the only Tom Malesik in LinkedIn, so you’ll find me right away. Send me a connection request. I’m happy to meet with anybody. Just give you some free advice. If you want a free audit, take a look at your website. I’m happy to point out a few things to you that might make the world of difference.

Lee Wochner:
A real joy getting to know you and having this conversation. And we’ll put all that in the show notes too so people can find you. Tom, have a great day. Thanks a bunch.

Tom Malesic:
You too, happy to help.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Thanks for listening. How to Market Your Nonprofit is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please like and follow the show. Visit counterintuity.com to learn more.