How to Build a Community Ambassador Program with Tasha Van Vlack

Summary

Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell

Episode: How to Build a Community Ambassador Program with Tasha Van Vlack
Date: October 8, 2025
Guest: Tasha Van Vlack, Community Builder, Engagement Strategist, Founder of Nonprofit Hive

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Overview

This episode dives deep into how nonprofits can strategically and sustainably build a community ambassador program. Host Julia Campbell and guest Tasha Van Vlack explore the practical steps and mindset shifts necessary for empowering genuine, trusted voices to advocate for your cause—without overwhelming your team or budget. Their conversation is filled with actionable wisdom, memorable personal stories, and the unmistakable energy of two passionate sector leaders.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Tasha’s Nonprofit Journey & The Birth of Nonprofit Hive

• Tasha's Background:
  • 8+ years in the nonprofit sector, from client management to fundraising/marketing specialist roles.
  • Realized her “natural knack for connecting humans,” especially across LinkedIn.
  • Founded Nonprofit Hive: a 1:1 global community for nonprofit professionals with over 2,300 members in 80 countries.
  • "I just realized how impactful community was when you got to do it with other people in a way that felt at scale for everyone, not just me." — Tasha (05:53)

2. Rethinking Ambassadors: Internal Micro-influencers vs. Celebrity Endorsements

• Common Misconception:

  • Many nonprofits believe they need celebrity ambassadors (e.g., Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift).
  • Reality: Powerful, trusted voices often come from within — dedicated donors, volunteers, and community “super-connectors.”
  • "Who are your champions? You probably already know who a lot of those people are." — Tasha (07:49)
  • Trust and authenticity are more important than manufactured messaging.

• Control vs. Co-creation:

  • Nonprofit hesitancy often comes from fear of losing message control.
  • Julia’s analogy: “It’s almost like having a teenager... at the end of the day, there has to be some grace, some trust, some alignment with values.” (10:09)
  • Tasha: "More positivity—voices about your nonprofit—is only going to be a good thing." (12:57)

3. Structuring a Community Ambassador Program

• Finding the Right People:

  • Initial instinct: choose "power users"; Better approach: find those with mission alignment already speaking about your org.
  • Some supporters (especially introverts) are uncomfortable with public roles—offer them private ways to show support (like anonymous testimonials or Google reviews).
  • "It's actually the people who are already talking about us...that indicated to me they had the impulse to believe that deeply in what we were building." — Tasha (15:25)

• Creating the Role:

  • Low barriers to entry; don't overburden ambassadors.
  • Have tiered levels (e.g., country ambassador vs. general ambassador).
  • Set expectations and timelines—not indefinite commitments:
    • “People struggle when there is not a potential end date for a volunteer commitment.” (16:25)
  • Emphasize recognition balanced with autonomy.

• Key Elements for Success:

  • Clarity around expectations.
  • Opt-in/opt-out flexibility.
  • Ongoing communication and recognition.
  • "It’s meant that the majority of our ambassadors get out there and talk about us... and they've got that vibe." — Tasha (17:59)

4. Ambassadors and Incentives

• Meaningful Incentives Over Swag:
  • Incentives can include special access (to leaders, to each other), networking, or being part of exclusive communications.
  • “Someone on your team needs to own this program—even if it’s not a heavy lift program. Don’t just assume it will happen ad hoc.” — Tasha (19:24)
  • Regular, focused touchpoints (email, meetups, WhatsApp groups).
  • Let ambassadors form their own sub-communities and support each other.

5. From Transactional Fundraising to Community Building

• Mindset Shift Required:
  • Traditional fundraising is transactional. The future is “community-centric”—donors, volunteers, and ambassadors belonging to something bigger.
  • "Community supports operations, marketing, and fundraising... It's like community is at either end of the spectrum." — Tasha (22:40)
  • Volunteers can become donors and vice versa; engagement deepens identity.
  • Regular, meaningful rituals (not always big gestures) help reinforce belonging and engagement.

6. Tailoring Roles for All Personalities

• Different People, Different Paths:
  • Not everyone wants to go public; provide multiple ways to participate (e.g. scripts, toolkits, social prompts, referral emails).
  • “There has to be different avenues for people to figure out how to engage and support.” — Tasha (26:06)

7. Tools & Tech for Community Ambassador Programs

• Main Platforms:
  • LinkedIn as primary for Nonprofit Hive, but also Instagram, Facebook, TikTok (all scheduled from LinkedIn content).
  • "Choose your channel and repurpose." — Tasha and Julia (29:28)
  • WhatsApp for group connection.
  • Fixer AI and Lead Delta for communication and tracking contacts.
  • Streamyard & Descript for video creation; Proofpact for collecting stories.
  • "Our ambassadors know because there's a group of 12 of them, they're in a WhatsApp channel. Then we meet every other month for an hour to have more of an intimate reconnect altogether." — Tasha (31:10)

8. Letting Go of Perfection & Being “Loud”

• Authenticity, Not Perfection:
  • Let ambassadors speak authentically to their audience (“authenticity is one of the few ways to beat algorithms right now”—Tasha, 35:44).
  • Overcome nonprofit fear of being “too loud” with messaging or too repetitive—most people don’t see every email or post.
  • “It is okay to get... a little bit loud right now. I think we probably need that.” — Tasha (33:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Embracing Community Voices:

  • "If you sat down with a team at a nonprofit and said, who are your champions? You probably already know who a lot of those people are." — Tasha (07:49)
  • "What if your messaging, because many legacy nonprofits in particular have pretty bland messaging, what if it was spiced up a little bit?” — Julia (11:43)
  • “A healthy brand and a healthy nonprofit can probably handle some different messaging without it being totally one-sided.” — Tasha (11:45)

• On Inclusivity in Ambassadorship:

  • "My introvert community, because they want to support me too. And if I don't give them a way to do that, it actually disengages them a little bit." — Tasha (26:42)
  • “People giving—that’s so personal. ...Someone that is talking about it and talking about why they're involved, that is someone that is truly special.” — Julia (25:11)

• On Program Management:

  • “You have to have someone on your nonprofit team that…commits…so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.” — Tasha (19:24)
  • “Owning doesn’t mean full time; just someone just has to be like the buck stops here kind of person.” — Julia (20:24)

• On Community, Connection, and Belonging:

  • "People like us do things like this. That's my favorite Seth Godin quote." — Julia (24:41)
  • “If we can't figure this out, what are we going to do? Because that's what people are craving.” — Tasha (24:29)

• On Getting Started:

  • "Have a brainstorming session with your team and go, who are three to five natural champions? ... Make time for a few 30 minute calls in your schedule... before you go out and create all the cool collateral." — Tasha (37:20)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:01 – Tasha’s background and founding Nonprofit Hive
• 07:49 – Internal micro-influencers vs. celebrity ambassadors
• 09:50 – Challenges of control and trust with ambassadors
• 13:40 – (Re)structuring a community ambassador program: selection and role design
• 18:41 – Thoughtful incentives for ambassadors
• 21:01 – Shifting from transactional fundraising to community
• 25:11 – Personal meaning in giving and involvement
• 26:06 – Supporting all types of ambassadors, including introverts
• 29:00 – Favorite tools and communications platforms
• 33:33 – Permission to be “loud”—frequency and content marketing
• 35:44 – Authenticity beats algorithms: trusting your community
• 37:20 – The first, tangible steps to start activating community ambassadors
• 39:30 – Fun shirt discussion, shared nonprofit pride
• 42:38 – Where to connect with Tasha and the Nonprofit Hive

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Tone and Takeaways

Julia and Tasha’s conversation is friendly, relatable, and practical, encouraging nonprofit leaders to embrace vulnerability, trust, and experimentation in community building. Both highlight honest challenges—control, scaling, supporting introverts, and impact measurement—but stay focused on solutions and culture shifts needed today.

Final Call to Action:
Start small: Identify a few natural champions, have authentic conversations, and co-create your unique, mission-aligned ambassador journey.

Connect with Tasha:

• LinkedIn
• nonprofithive.com

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“Community’s the future. This is where nonprofit should be … Let’s get people involved. Let’s give up some control. Because controlling it has not worked very well for us recently.”
— Tasha Van Vlack (40:03)

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello, and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place.

[C]

Let's get started. Hello, everyone.

[D]

This is Nonprofit Nation with your host, Julia Campbell. Today we're talking about how to build a community ambassador program. And my guest is Tasha Van Vlack, community builder, engagement strategist, and founder of the nonprofit Hive. And we're going to really dive into how nonprofits can create impactful and effective community ambassador programs without burning out their teams or breaking the bank, which is super important. We had such a great talk that I wish we'd recorded before we hit record. So now we have to pretend that we first met. But I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

[C]

This is so exciting. And I have to say thank you for having me on. And I'm having, you know, not a small level of imposter syndrome, because I've been listening to your podcast forever as a marketer, so I'm just like, wait, do I have something to contribute here?

[D]

This is wild. 1,000%. First of all, I noticed the Canadian accent. Yeah, my mom is from Toronto. I'm half Canadian.

[C]

Wonderful. We need those people bridging the American Canadian divide right now. So I love this.

[D]

Oh, my gosh. I know. I haven't been to Toronto in a really long time. I went there last June, I believe, for a wedding, but I haven't been back. But I'm just such a fan of Toronto. And I'm just such a fan of Canada.

[C]

Thanks. We, you know, I'm feeling pretty good as a Canadian these days. Yeah.

[D]

Looking down at us, feeling chipper. But to be we can't be bought or Canadians cannot be bought.

[C]

We. I feel, I feel like Canadians are stepping into probably the role we should have been inhabiting more is, you know, bridge builder and community builder and stepping back into something that I think comes a little bit naturally to us, or I hope it does, or I'm, I'm encouraging Canadians to be that. And I have many American members, like you said, started the nonprofit hive. I would say majority of our members are Americans. So I talk to Americans probably more than I talk to Canadians at this point.

[D]

I remember my mom when I would travel in like the George Bush years, the Iraq war years, I was traveling all over Europe and I would, I was traveling a lot and she would.

[A]

Say, oh, just put a Canadian pin.

[D]

On your backpack so people will think you're Canadian. I was like, I'm gonna not do that. But I am kind of. I am half Canadian, so. But tell me how you first got into nonprofit work and a little bit about what you do now.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. So have been working in the sector in some angle for over the last eight years, and that ranges from client management work into playing tech translationist when I met a mutual friend, Tim Locke, talking about that human angle. And that became good friends with Tim and met a ton of wonderful humans at that point. And then before jumping into the nonprofit hive, I was a growth specialist at a marketing and fundraising agency. But in every role I'd had, I was very much that connective person between a team providing services of our product or whatever and the nonprofits. So I started to make a ton of friends throughout the sector, even if we. I wasn't working with them, stayed in touch, started to build ad hoc community, particularly on LinkedIn. Great place to meet people. And then the journey kind of took me through all levels of marketing. I love relational marketing, content marketing. Listening to your podcast was. Was a lot of my. How can I learn about lots of different ways that people are marketing and nonprofit and discovered just this like, kind of natural knack for connecting humans. Great humans going, oh my gosh, you should really talk to this person. They're wonderful. And that then ended up becoming, slowly, over time, this dream of a place to gather nonprofit professionals and conversations. We called it the nonprofit Hive and it is a one to one community platform for conversations. And the original premise is still the heart and soul of what we do in putting every Thursday, people from all over the world in one to one conversations. We've got about 2, 300 members across 80 countries. And on top of that, it became non profiteers going, hey, would you write like, like, I'd love to write for your organization. And we started interviewing members and then that became LinkedIn Lives, featuring people in house who don't get to speak up about their work. And it just, it's been this like snowball where you go, what the heck is happening? And I just realized how impactful community was when you got to do it with other people in a, in a way that felt at scale for everyone, not just me.

[D]

I love the idea of a community. That was an idea. And Seth Godin talks about this a lot. So it's sort of like, don't create products for people. Create products that your people want. So it's like, listen to your community and listen to really what is the hole in the community. And I know for nonprofits it's connection. For people working in nonprofits, it's connection, it's networking. It's talking about the struggles of being a development director, the struggles being a marketing director and executive director, the struggles of getting grant funding and all of that. I think that that's just such a powerful way to build community. So. Well, first of all, Tim Lockey, I love Tim Locky, so I wrote him down, so we're going to mention him and give a shout out to him. But you have written a lot about, you know, how nonprofits, they might get the influencer culture kind of wrong. So they might think of ambassadors as something where they need to hire a Kim Kardashian or a Taylor Swift or get someone completely external to their organization to be their ambassador. So you talk about empowering internal micro influencers. How can we start? Like, where are we looking for these people? Who are these people?

[C]

I think you probably, if you sat down with a team at a nonprofit and said, who are your champions? You probably already know who a lot of those people are. Like in your network, in your nonprofits network. Sometimes they're volunteers, sometimes they're donors. We usually, at least I see, you know, for every 50 people you probably have in your network, you've probably got one super connector and you probably can pinpoint who that person is if you think for a minute who is making introductions for us even when we don't ask. And I always love in fundraising, you starting to hear more about people going, you can make the ask get out there. I think Kel Haney, who's wonderful, is always going, like, we need to make the ask. And she talks about a five minute ask and what does that look like? And from a marketing community builder perspective, I look at it and go, we're not asking very often anybody to talk about us. And why are, why are we not doing that? I know some of that is a control issue. I think within nonprofit. We're really worried about how others may present our brand to the world. There's maybe some concerns. I can understand that. That's not for everyone. I'm not suggesting we look at everyone in our community and go, oh, that's anybody who mitts like hits this, Anybody.

[D]

Who breathes, Anyone with a pulse.

[C]

Yeah, like, like don't. And not everybody. But I do think we can go. This person aligns with our values so clearly they get our mission. How can we enable them to speak in their own voice about what we're trying to build here, about what our nonprofit is about? Because their words actually hold probably more trust and power than your nonprofit, that maybe the person they're talking to, they have no knowledge of your nonprofit. Right. So it's that little bit of, I think, I think that it's a control issue in nonprofit or that's what I'm seeing. But I think that leaning into co creation is incredibly powerful, especially right now, 100%.

[D]

So I just had a client, a national organization, I will not call them out, that I was working with on developing their sort of peer to peer fundraising campaigns. And I was explaining, oh, you know, when you have someone that wants to create a fundraiser on your behalf, here's a toolkit that you could create for them, here's some messaging. They were absolutely opposed because they said, well, we can't control what they're going to post on Facebook, we can't control what they're going to say on Instagram, we can't control what they're going to say on TikTok. And to me, I mean, especially in the social media age where like you just said, our influences are peer to peer or people that we're listening to online, people that we're listening to in our networks, that's more powerful than ever. Those voices are incredibly powerful and trusted voices. No, you can't write the script for them. All you can do is kind of give them the tools and hope that they go off. It's almost like having a teenager, right? You have a teenager, I have a teenager, yeah. My teenager is going through driver's ed. Right. I cannot, I can put find my thing on my, on her iPhone so I can track Her I can do all the things I'm supposed to do, but at the end of the day, there's, there has to be some grace, some trust, you know, there has to be some alignment with values. So I think where nonprofits are losing this message is that they are not 100% in control of every single thing that's being said and put out there. But is it better to be ignored or to be talked about in an imperfect way than that's kind of how I feel.

[C]

Well, and what if your messaging, because many legacy nonprofits in particular have pretty bland messaging. What if your message, what if it.

[D]

Was a little spiced up a little bit?

[C]

What if it doesn't resonate with them? And so they're never, you know, because I know there'll be people who kick back on this and go, well, why won't they just reshare what we already posted when we're talking about social media? Or why wouldn't they just take the blurb we already created for them and just use that?

[D]

They have their audiences and their own reputation.

[C]

They do. And, and maybe the thing they love about your nonprofit is not the thing you actually want them to speak about. And do you want them to speak about you in a wonderful, uplifting way, but it's not exactly what you wanted them to say? I don't know. Yes, it's, you know, I, my thought is that a healthy brand and a healthy nonprofit can probably handle some different messaging without it being. Being totally one sided. And if anything, let's say you've got someone who gets angry on your Google review of your nonprofit. Wouldn't it be nice to have how many lovely voices even if they're not saying the exact same thing about you, talking about you to balance out because you can't control that Google review at any time either. So I don't know. I always look at it as more positivity. Voices about your nonprofit is only going to be a good thing.

[D]

I love that. So what's your horoscope sign? Because you're a connector.

[C]

Pisces. I know. It's very big surprise. Most people.

[D]

I would have thought Gemini. Geminis and Libras are the big connectors. I know, but that's how we get along. I'm Cancer and you are Pisces. We're both water signs. Makes sense. So let's talk about a structured community ambassador program. So you teach organizations how to create this structured community ambassador program. You've built one with the nonprofit hive. So what does that actually kind of look like in your view, what are some of the essential elements?

[C]

So one of the first things, when we were trying to figure out what our own ambassador program was going to be look like at the nonprofit Hive, at first my initial instinct was to go, who are our power users? Who are the people who are doing the most one to one chats? That's going to be a clear win for us. And that actually was not the biggest differentiator. Because one of the funny things of people who may get very involved in community is, particularly when you have a one to one community, is you get a lot of introverts who will actually speak up in certain areas that they won't. They won't go up out and talk about you. And they would feel wildly uncomfortable. So I'm looking at those probably Scorpios. They're wonderful. The reviews after every single one of these calls, beautiful. If I asked them to go out and talk about us, they'd be like, why would you do this to me? This is torture.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

So instead for those people, we said, could you go give us a Google review? We've got these other places that maybe you'd feel comfortable attaching your name to. No pressure, but here are these places. And they were not the right people to ask to be ambassadors because they did not want the recognition that might have come along with being an ambassador and being that closely tied. So de qualified. My initial instinct was to choose, but I did look through that list and instead was looking for people who immediately the alignment was so strong with what the mission was. So I wasn't going to have to go back and question my choice of choosing them after the fact. When it came to alignment, we really focused in on people who were already talking about us that like they were already going out and very ad hoc. I was hearing from other people. Oh, so and so said this about you. Well, that's awesome. Like I'm not even asking them to do this and they're doing this. So that indicated to me that they either had the potentially the time, maybe not the time, potentially the time, the energy and the impulse to believe that deeply in what we were building that they wanted to talk about us. So I think that's a powerful indicator for people to choose to have as part of your ambassador program. We had a low barrier to entry, so the commitments were not enormous. We're now looking at different ways to go. Is there different levels within having a country ambassador versus like a general hive ambassador as the label we gave our 12 individuals who are currently holding that Title, we have way more people than we had when we started. That program gained like another thousand members since then. So should we keep it that small? Should we kind of bring it into being? So we really wanted clear ways to give them to engage. We did give them a. Here is like the expectations commitment. We set a timeline on it and they're welcome to opt back in if that's what they would like. But we wanted it to be clear that this was not an indefinite commitment. I think people struggle when there is not a potential end date for a, like a volunteer commitment to right with a nonprofit. I think it's important to reevaluate. Come back to the table. Hey, we love having you as ambassador. Would you like to come back to the table? Hey, it seems like maybe this was more than you were planning on. Would it be okay to put this position out to set the world again? And we again, the autonomy piece was really, really important. So we were really trying to find that balance between recognition of the position and. And their own autonomy. And that's actually what made the ambassador position more sustainable. Like, how do we balance that recognition and autonomy? And it's meant that the majority of our ambassadors get out there and talk about us. And I'm always like, oh, this is beautiful. Thank you. And I'll miss a post because they didn't actually tag us in in some sort of way. And then I feel bad that I didn't do it. But they're out there with that vibe. And they've hate to say that there's a vibe check with certain people, but I do think that there's a vibe check, particularly if you're a small nonprofit. I think there is something to be said for going, how do these people move in the world? And does it align with how we're kind of moving out in the world? But we kept that North Star all the time of really being for us, it's trust and generosity and belonging and that they were using a lot of that language in their posts and what they wanted to say about us too. So that that was the very beginning for us is, you know, and I'm still refining it and making sure the value was really high for the investors. Like, what is something that is different for them?

[D]

The incentives.

[C]

The general community.

[D]

Exactly. So let's talk about that. So I mean, when we say incentives, people might think, you know, incentives like a tote bag or an umbrella or something, but we don't mean that you might mean special access to you or. Or special access to each other. Networking I think is huge for Ambassad. So what are some incentives you think nonprofits should be thinking about when they're creating this program?

[C]

For sure. I think someone on your team needs to own this program, even if it's not a heavy lift program. So I think sometimes when we say ambassador program, we throw the label on it. We've made some potential journey material collateral and then we go go out into the world and do this wonderful ambassador thing, I think there should be someone who owns it. And even if that owning it means, hey, I send a once a month email that's meant for only these 12 people with an update or I run a one hour a month meetup, that's kind of a bit of a socializing, how are things going? How can we tie you back in, give you an update about what we're doing, care about what you're doing out in the world? That's a lot of what we've done. We have a WhatsApp channel for those people who do like to give that level of access. That's up to you. But actually what's hilarious is because our ambassadors are so well aligned, they're talking with each other in this channel more than I am guiding the conversation in the channel, which is great because they're uplifting each other. Hey, I heard about this grant. Would you be able to help give me a reference here? So they're making their own sub community based on being brought together as aligned humans. So. But I do think you have to have someone on your nonprofit team that even if it's a three hour a month commitment, don't just assume that someone on the team is going to ad hoc pick up three hours of commitment. I think you really need to go whether that's your marketing person development, maybe your ED even right to make it feel big, but commit that person to owning the program so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

[D]

Right. I agree with that. I think when we say owning, someone thinks, oh, it has to be my full time job. But that's not true. Just someone just has to be like the buck stops here kind of person and maintaining all of the, maintaining all of the different moving pieces. So you wrote a great article for Candid that talks about fundraising alone cannot ensure sustainability. I completely agree with that. I think the future is community. How can we make this mindset shift from like sort of transactional fundraising to true long term community building?

[C]

I think it's really tough. But thanks. Thanks for highlighting that. You write things. You never know if anyone goes and reads them. Because I do. Thank you.

[D]

And I love Candid as well.

[C]

Oh, they're fantastic. Yeah. Such a great team over there. And for me, I've been really following along with the community centric fundraising movement. Despite being a marketer. I love what they're doing, I love what they're putting out in the world. I think there are great examples of fundraising that is very heavily tied to community. It's often happening at a grassroots level, which I think is why we still have such a focus on transactional, because we're talking about legacy and organizations that have been around forever. That shift to move towards a community lens is so challenging because not their tech doesn't even really allow them to move to a community lens.

[D]

Right.

[C]

It's all built in, razor's edge or something. I won't. I won't call any other further names, but you know what I'm talking about. That is not very community focused. And I think it starts at the ground floor. Like, as a marketer, what does it look like when someone signs up for our newsletter? What does the welcome wagon look like when they become a member of the nonprofit hive? You know, everybody is moving into potentially, you know, they're moving around that community flywheel model. And yes, they move in and out, but who's keeps moving towards the center? Right? Who just. Who doesn't stay at the outer rings? And they keep moving in. And so I think there's a natural tie in where community supports operations, marketing and fundraising and fundraising, marketing and operations supports community. It's like community is at either end of the spectrum. And so I always look at it and go, there's knowledge that your volunteers donate. That's a huge part. We know that they donate, that the majority of volunteers donate. And if they can't donate money but they're already donating their time, is there an opportunity for them to also start talking about you too and help build out external, other relationships for your nonprofits? So the grassroots movements that I've been seeing are doing a much better job of tying deeply into either community first to the fundraising or finding a natural, like, how do we take our transactional fundraising and build it into community at the same time?

[D]

I think that's a really great idea and I think that's really great to highlight. I'll put the links in the show notes for me, I think that nonprofits struggle with, first of all, identifying ambassadors or community members, which we've talked about, but then really like engaging them.

[A]

Like, how do we keep them engaged?

[D]

How do we Recognize them. How do we make this something that they want to be a part of?

[C]

It's tough. Like, I. I always think there are rituals that we can create, and people love rituals, like, as much as people love to be delighted. And we talk about, like, the delighting part of fundraising or. Or experiences which are still important. It's almost like we've tied that to the idea that it has to be big to be a ritual. And I actually think it's the small cut. Like, at least in my experience, building out the nonprofit hive, it's that regular touch point that people love that go, oh, my goodness, I feel connected back to what is happening here. I feel like I belong here. That's where community supports fundraising. Because don't we want to support the things that make us feel like we belong somewhere? Right. Especially right.

[D]

We do.

[C]

Now more than ever. It's. I think that's why everyone's talking about community, like, it's this buzzy kind of word, is because everyone's going, oh, my goodness, if we can't figure this out, what are we going to do? Because that's what people are craving.

[D]

Yeah. People like us do things like this. I mean, that's just my favorite Seth Godin quote. People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to express themselves. And I always tell nonprofits that people giving that's so personal. That's. If they want to share that publicly, that is them expressing what they stand for and what they believe in and what they want to encourage the vision that they see for the world, the change that they want to see in the world.

[C]

So it's.

[D]

It's incredibly personal to be involved in a nonprofit and someone that is talking about it and talking about why they're involved, that is someone that is truly special. But I love that you also talked about the introverts or people that might not want to get a video or might not want to do a public testimonial that might want to be involved in maybe other ways or do a Google review or maybe do an anonymous testimonial, something like that. I think there are ways to involve kind of all levels of ambassadors, and.

[C]

Those people may need the script to be fair. I'm not going to poo poo on scripts. I actually just made a page for our hive members on the website because one of the most common questions over the last year appreciate my. My community so much because they're like, how can we help? Like, people want to help. And when we get that question instead, that might Indicate to me that this person isn't actually looking for an ambassador style role. They want to just be told how they're being serious, how can we help? But it also probably needs to be at a certain scale. So maybe they're never going to want to run a peer to peer campaign because asking other people for money gives them the ick. But they would love to put together, you know, oh, wait, you're really looking for corporate sponsorships. And I am in business and I'd happily send this around. So I think there is, there has to be different avenues for people to figure out how to engage and support. And so maybe that means there's different ambassador tracks. You know, you're going to have the big loudmouths like me that when somebody says, hey, could you talk about us? And I'm like, I got you, let's go, and I'll spit it everywhere. But I also have had to find ways to engage at scale in a way that's flexible and comfortable for them. My introvert community, because they want to support me too. And when I don't give them a way to do that, it actually disengages them a little bit too. Right.

[D]

And people do like a toolkit. So they love images. Like, I don't, you know, I'm not going to go into Canva, necessarily create a graphic myself, but if you give me one or if you give me some talking points or a video I can share or something that I can jump off from, like a jumping off point, I'm usually happy to share it, you know, if it's aligned with what I'm doing or things that I believe in. I think making your content easily shareable, but also, like you just said, providing a lot of different avenues for people to share in the way that they're comfortable.

[C]

Absolutely. I think you need to speak to your audience. Right. And marketing and segmentation and everything. Yes, there is, there are going to be different journeys for different people. And it is more work and I do think it is more of a setup. But as we noted, so much is changing. I don't think the next generation of donors are looking to, you know, I'm like the elder millennial kind of age range and the non profits that really grab at my heart. It is personal. It is, absolutely.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

When we've tried to divorce fundraising from what we know is true, which is that fundraising is personal, what's our plan here? Right. Like when people are asking to become more involved and, and, and find these spaces for belonging and community and they're looking to non profits to give them that. It feels like it's an investment we have to be making.

[D]

What are you saying? Some of your favorite tools. So do you recommend just, you know, you have like a database and you're pulling from that and then maybe you have email and then you're so kind of coordinating from there. I know social media is probably not ideal because we don't have full control over it, but do you have any favorite tools that you use?

[C]

So we are super LinkedIn heavy. Our community organically grew up completely through LinkedIn. That's, that's our spot. Yeah, I mean we, we have you. If anyone goes out there and looks. We, yes, we do have Instagram. Yes, we do have TikTok. Yes we do have Facebook. But it's all the same content that's going up on our LinkedIn. So everything was built for LinkedIn. I do think it is okay to choose your channel is totally still post to other things. You know they're not going to really.

[D]

Choose your channel and then just repurpose.

[C]

Repurposed. Right? No, no biggie there. But I also know a lot of our community members when we highlight them Instagram's their primary channel. So it would be foolish for me not to also highlight that and take advantage of when they talk about us on places like Instagram. And LinkedIn has been the spot. It's a fairly easy way for myself. We're a very lean marketing team. I've got myself and a junior marketer for the majority of our marketing. But we suggest to people tag us in if there's something you think we should be on and then we kind of, you know, go off of LinkedIn. I do probably spend way too much time in LinkedIn direct messaging more than I should. But I also find email tends to get bigger and harder to action on. I recently started using Fixer AI. I don't know if anybody else.

[D]

Oh, I don't know. I use Read AI Fixer AI. Okay.

[C]

Fixer. It kind of buckets and over time it learns your voice and so it helps you be able to start your emails and like put together drafts. That's been critical. Again we have really hyper focused in on the idea of one to one connection. So we actually built our own tool to handle our community one to ones and that's been phenomenal because in many ways our community feels connected but we're not the ones having to be in every call to do that.

[D]

Right.

[C]

And pull that off. And our ambassadors know because there's a group of 12 of them, they're in a WhatsApp channel. And then we meet every other month for an hour to have more of an intimate reconnect altogether. And so I don't think it means to have an ambassador program that you have to be available 24 7. And that's where I think if you set the expectations too high, then the expectations become, well, if you want this much value from me, what, what's the exchange? Right. What's that exchange look like between nonprofit and ambassador at that point? Just trying to think, what are the other great tools? Lead Delta, if you're a LinkedIn geek like myself, like, Lead Delta is a great tool to kind of keep track of the people. If that's your like primary spot. I know lots of people who are still enabling and highly using Reddit groups.

[D]

Facebook groups, Reddit, yes.

[C]

So like there are places that you can create some of that more tight knit community. Should you be looking for it then? Just probably having a really clear spot for folks to go back and look for those storytelling prompts, the social media toolkits. I actually think video doesn't need to be fancy at all right now. I don't see any reason to be building fancy videos. We record in Streamyard, Edit and Descript and just push it to like our social media channels when we interview members of our community and ambassadors. So. So I think there are actually some pretty great inexpensive tools. We use a storytelling software called proofpact to grab stories after. So we use those as well.

[D]

I need a full list of these tools. I'm gonna have to write them all down. Yeah, I'll put them afterwards.

[C]

Sorry to everybody.

[D]

Listen. Love it. No, I. Oh no, my listeners love tools. All the tools.

[C]

It's a pretty intense content like where we're at now. And I will say that everybody is listening and they're gonna be like, what is this girl talking about? I can't recreate this. It did not look like this.

[D]

It didn't start like wasn't birthed from this, you know?

[C]

Yeah, start like this, right? It does look like a lot now because we have so much content, we also repurpose content you can pretty much guarantee. But if you sent out a newsletter, it was not seen by what, 50%, right? At least.

[D]

I mean, if you've got a 30% open rate, that's amazing.

[C]

You're crushing it. You're crushing it with your 50% open rate. So it is okay to talk about the exact same thing that week over your social media like, or you probably should talk about it in some capacity. Yeah. I really think even a nonprofit I'd worked with recently was going, you know, don't you think this is too many emails to be sending? And this was regarding a peer to peer campaign. I was going, this is like one email a week leading up to your peer to peer final date. Like, no, everybody probably wants more. And you're only seeing a 40% open rate. Most of the people haven't even seen this email. It's okay to get. It's okay for nonprofits to be a little bit loud right now. I think we probably need that. Right. And so an ambassador program helps you be disproportionately louder without it becoming something that your entire team has to take on and build out the kind of content marketing strategy I'm talking about.

[D]

I love this. So I know a lot of advocacy organizations really enlist ambassadors to go out and address like misinformation online or be the voice in conversations that are on social media, or, you know, just talk to people about like, hey, this is a, this is a misconception about vaccines or this is a misconception about cancer, this misconception about food insecurity, homelessness, whatever it is. I think like you just said, nonprofits need to be loud and we need to be more unapologetic about what we're doing. Like, we're so apologetic all the time. We don't want to annoy people, we don't to over inundate people. We don't want to ask too much. But the truth is the need is greater than ever and the noise is greater than ever. And I see our role as combating misinformation and really advocating for the communities that we serve and sticking up for the issues that we believe in. And if not us, then who? Right.

[C]

So.

[D]

So let's give our ambassadors the tools that they need, which is like you just said, the toolkit, the website, they can pull what they want from there. They can. You know, I've even seen organizations do short webinars and trainings on like how to make an Instagram reel, how to make a TikTok video, like how to talk about this issue with your friends. I think those are all very helpful resources. I think we can't just look at our ambassadors as like pushing our promotions.

[C]

Absolutely. Let them authentically talk about you. Right?

[D]

Yes.

[C]

If you're, if you're bringing them into the point that you trust them enough to do any resharing of your stuff, wouldn't their voice probably be the kind of voice you want Talking about you anyway. And authenticity is one of the few ways to be algorithms right now as well. Right? Like that's you. When people authentically talk to their voice audience that they already have some sort of voice to, it has more depth. It just does. Right. And so leaving some room for creativity. And actually I loved your combating disinformation example because maybe there's the possibility to create some sort of GPT that's already been taught on a bunch of your material that instead, when you're asking somebody to get out there and talk about you, and instead of giving them hundreds of documents of this is how we talk about X, Y and Z and vaccine decisions, could you create something that makes it much simpler for their them to go out at scale and feel confident talking about that? Because I have to say, even with my background biology degree, I would hate to get in some of those forums. That would scare the bejesus out of me. So how can you make them feel empowered to go, I got this because I'm going to say this in, in a way that, here's your prompt to say it authentically like you, but here are some words we avoid using like exactly. Guidelines. Right, Exactly.

[D]

And I really do think ambassadors really do appreciate that and they will understand that. So as we wrap up what is sort of one immediate action that a nonprofit leader can take today to begin activating ambassadors in their community, I think.

[C]

I would, you know, have a brainstorming session with your team and go, who are three to five natural champions? We can just already kind of see and maybe do take a moment, you know, whether it's the marketer on your team, Ed, according to how your, your team dynamics are made, make time for a few 30 minute calls in your schedule just to even see, hey, we're thinking about starting something like that. These are probably the people who are going to naturally say yes. They're probably going to value that. You see, you see them, you see how much they care and what would they be willing to do before you go out there and create all the cool collateral of what you think someone would be willing to share about you? What do those people want, you know, would like, what would they actually be willing to do? And it might be different for all five people, but it would give you a great starting spot to instead go, here's something we could bite off in the next month right in or maybe or hey, this actually from the sounds of it, from these three to five natural champions, this is a six month out project before we launch this because it's not going to just be graphics and prompts and hashtags. It's going to be. No, they really want, you know, a decent amount of information to speak about us correctly, at least at the nonprofit hive before we take on anything new. I am that obnoxious person calling up my. My crew and going, here's this wild idea.

[A]

What do you think?

[C]

And asking those folks, because it's community led, right? Like, what does the community say?

[D]

Yes.

[C]

And then that floats up to what we actually think is possible versus me getting it in my head that we could do this and then trying to dictate downwards that that's what we're going to do. It just doesn't seem to work.

[D]

Where did you get your I'm in my nonprofit era shirt? Is that a nonprofit hive?

[C]

I wish it was mine.

[D]

So cool, right?

[C]

No, it is the ladies at relational nonprofits. I think that's what they're. I'll have to send it to you. Yeah. Catalina Parker and Julia Devine and just I talked to them one day and they had said something about having cool T shirts. And, you know, I'm on an Etsy store being like, gotta have that shirt, like, immediately.

[D]

In my nonprofit era. Yes.

[C]

Era, Right. So, yeah.

[D]

And I want to see what your shirt says right now, because you can't see mine. Oh, look at us with our shirts.

[C]

Oh, my goodness. So my quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So, like, yes.

[D]

I've got my Ruth Bader Ginsburg bobblehead over there. You know, all my. My RBG stuff. So it says, equal rights for others does not mean.

[C]

Yeah, it doesn't mean less rights for you. It's not pie.

[D]

And mine says. What does it say? Drink coffee, Fight racism, empower women. So look at us with our shirts.

[C]

Bringing the equal vibes. And. And, you know, I think community, like you noted earlier, and you said, community's the future. Like, this is where. This is where nonprofit was and should be. And this is the space we occupy with a power. And I'm just jazzed to see that other people are starting to go, yeah, let's get people involved. Let's give up some control. Because controlling it has not worked very well for us recently. So it's time to change things up. Love it.

[D]

I love it. I love it. And would your ambassadors put your slogan on a T shirt that's always sort of my. Or, like, even just your logo? Like, put it on their car, put in a rubber sticker, put it on a shirt. Because it's saying to other people like, this is what I stand for and this is what I believe in. And like, clearly you and I do that very well because of our, our shirts and everything in our backgrounds. But I think that's so important because we need to. There are certain members of us, like you and me, that want to show other people what we stand for. Not everyone is like that. But the people that want to and want to spread the word, we have.

[A]

To give them the opportunity we should.

[C]

Right. And, and it's only going to deepen that connection to your nonprofit to be able to stand up and go, I'm, I'm standing with these folks like, this means something to me. And again, whether this works for your nonprofit or not, and, and it's a bit of a double edged sword. And I still haven't officially rolled out the title to say, hey, any hive member, feel free to label yourself as a hive member. You've probably seen this on LinkedIn where people get into this. I'm A, X, Y and Zed.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

I actually want you to own this title because you're in and you're actually very active in the community.

[D]

So.

[C]

But our Hive ambassadors, I said, if this is going to be useful to you in some way, shape or form on your journey, you're out there representing us. This is free. You don't have to, don't do it if you don't want to. But if you want to, I would love to be connected to you because I think that that's a great win for what we're building and I hope you feel the same way. And we had one of our members, Hive Ambassadors, who's been also a longtime member of the nonprofit Hive. Jared, no seller, great guy, works with the Boys and Girls Club in Winnipeg in Canada. Just send me a message saying, oh, I'm at a local community event and he's there and he's got a little placard saying, jared Novosellar, BGC Winnipeg. And right beside it, Jared Novosellar, Hive Ambassador, the nonprofit. I was like, you know your face go, oh my God. As if people are out in the world talking about us this way and saying that this is what they are a part of. It was just beautiful. I loved it.

[D]

Oh, my gosh. How can people connect with you and learn more about the nonprofit hive?

[C]

Well, I am loud on LinkedIn all.

[D]

The time and that's how we connected.

[C]

Yep, LinkedIn is a good spot. And so please feel free to get in touch and chat there. And yeah, nonprofit Hive.com, you're welcome to join. It is a completely free community and we say it's a community at scale. So as flexible as you'd like to get involved and you want to be super in, we've got a spot for you if you would like to just show up once every six months because you are a busy Ed. We got you there too. So it is a very inclusive spot. We are always looking for authors about the nonprofit. Work experience has been a a beautiful journey and we'd I'd like to love to connect to anybody else who's thinking community is the next step for their nonprofit.

[D]

This has been so great, Tasha. Well, we're going to be best friends. I can't wait to meet you in person. Thank you so much for being on.

[C]

Thank you too, Julia. This was awesome.

[D]

Well, hey there.

[B]

I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening.

[D]

All the way to the end.

[B]

If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make.

[D]

Sure to subscribe to the show in.

[B]

Your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact.

[C]

So that's pretty much it.

[D]

I'll be back soon with a brand.

[B]

New episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram. Juliacampbell77 Keep changing the world United Nonprofit Unicorn.