← We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
634. Making a Movement: Organize + Optimize - Jon and Becky
00:30:06
Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:03]
Becky
Our missions are made to move, to create change in the power of community. But change doesn't happen when we sit still.
- [00:10]
John
Hey, I'm John.
- [00:11]
Becky
And I'm Becky.
- [00:12]
John
Welcome to Making A Movement, a five part limited series from We Are For Good. This series is all about unlocking movement in your mission. We're weaving together the stories and lessons that have stuck with us from the movement builders, dreamers and doers who we've gotten to meet along the way.
- [00:27]
Becky
It's time to take that initial spark as activated and watch your movement take flight. We're so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hey, friends. Welcome back to the Making a Movement series. Hey, I mean, we are just getting started. I feel the momentum and the motion. In last episode we talked about that momentum. It was about mobilizing with purpose and getting that first spark of motion. And today we're talking about something that, let's be honest, we struggle mightily with here at.
- [00:58]
Adam Garrone
We're good.
- [01:00]
John
That's why we're bringing in the heavy hitting voices of the get this. And have led us in this way. Yeah. This episode is picking up and leaning right into how do we organize, how do we optimize to really take that spark and translate it into something incredible? So we're giving scaffolding for your movement today because we want to help it take shape. And we're going to be highlighting specifically three missions that, that do this in three very different ways, but equally as impressive. And that's Unshattered, that's Movember, and it's Susan G. Komen. You're going to hear more about these missions if they're new to you. But these are ones to track, these are ones to get involved in. But in this episode we're going to talk about the systems of sometimes they're deep, sometimes they're global. They're always wildly creative, but they share this common through line that movements need structure, they need systems and. And they need constant optimization to just get better over time.
- [01:52]
Becky
Do you remember that moment when we were at Community Coffee and Tim Lockey looks at us? Do you remember this?
- [01:59]
John
Yeah. This is so solid.
- [02:01]
Becky
Yes, please give the quote, John, because I know you've said it many times.
- [02:03]
John
So I mean, you know, our movement here is the Impact Uprising and many thousands of people have joined us as part of Impact Uprising around the world now. But there was a moment before that organizing took place that Tim Lockey looks at us and he says, here's the thing. An uprising is organized. I remember and I remember the lump in our throat of like, we need to get our crap together is what needs to happen.
- [02:25]
Becky
Yeah. Oh, we need some structure around this. So let me just set the tone just a little bit because this episode and discussion is really going to be split right down the middle. We're going to take the first half and we're going to talk about how do you organize? And the second half is going to be about optimization. And that organizing is all about how do you get people in the door, how do you just get them to the table, get their interest piqued? And that second part is optimization. How do you keep the door open as the mission grows so it can funnel more people in? So I'm ready to get started.
- [03:01]
John
Well, we start with organize. There's really not a better example that we can think of than Movember. That's November with an M. You've heard about this movement, right? Well, we get to meet one of the co founders, Adam Garrone. His story of starting Movember. It's one of our favorites because it started as this joke with friends, but it became a global movement because they built with clear steps and everything that we talked about in episode one, there was a way for people's own individual stories to play into this. And so we're going to play a clip of Adam breaking down how the whole thing started.
- [03:31]
Tim Lockey
Yeah. My brother sent me an email. The subject, I'll never forget it. The subject line is, are you man enough to be my man? His birthday is November 27th. And said, we're going to have a mustache themed birthday party. We're actually going to have two parties. One at the start of the month to prove you're clean shaven and then one at the end of the month for his birthday. And. And that's how November started. It was just a mustache themed party, which was epic, unbelievable.
- [03:58]
John
And I mean, tell us, you know, how it grew because it's millions of people that have been involved.
- [04:03]
Tim Lockey
It's raised around $1.5 billion. And each November, each year raises around 127, $130 million a year. It's just this phenomenon in terms of a fundraising campaign and it's all digital. The first year, there were 30 of us that sort of participated in my brother's birthday. And they coined the term Movember, which in Australia, mo is slang for mustache. So it was Movember November. And it was this really interesting personal journey because at the time we were the only 30 year olds or late 20 year olds rolling around with mustaches. And it created so much Conversation and so much controversy. It's like, hey, what are you doing? I mean, the look at the time was clean shaven. And I was working in the mobile phone industry and business development and stuff, and my boss said, you can't see clients like that. What are you doing? And it had this beautiful start, middle and end to the campaign, but the conversation sort of fell flat when I was like, oh, we're just doing this for my brother's birthday. So the next year I went to Trav and Luke, the other two guys involved, and said, hey, how about we put this toward a cause and we fundraise off the back of it? Because when you think about it, it's no different to any other event based fundraiser like doing a half marathon or a bike ride. You make a commitment to do something and then you fundraise off your friends and family and colleagues. And Movember's been called the laziest charity event in the world.
- [05:36]
Adam Garrone
You.
- [05:36]
Tim Lockey
You do less to embrace it.
- [05:38]
John
Yeah, love it.
- [05:39]
Tim Lockey
You know, that first year we cobbled together a website. You downloaded the donation forms. And then the next year, 2005, we integrated a credit card gateway, which was a first. You know, we were one of the first sort of to, you know, very progressive around that. And, you know, this is well before social media, so it was all email marketing and word of mouth. And then it just grew. It grew exponentially.
- [06:03]
Becky
Boom. I mean, there's so much I want to talk about with this movement, like how that movement moved like mustaches into the cultural zeitgeist of the world. Is a thing. But it's like, think about it. The mustache got the attention, but the real magic was giving people a roadmap. And we had Caitlin Whitaker on the podcast. She is a dear friend, former marketing lead for Movember, and she broke down how? I mean, he just said it right here. It was boring. I challenge that and say it was simple. It was very simple. And these toolkits made that map, that roadmap super clear for every supporter to jump into every single year. John, you and I have memories of working at a healthcare organization that had a massive Movember movement. And we got to be a part of it because we would vote on the greatest mustaches. There was joy in it, you know, but we're also getting educated. That is the benefit of being organized. And just again, we said this in the last episode. It's not about here's how to do it. It's like, here's how it works. You interpret it and go make it yours. So we're going to play a clip for you from an episode with Caitlyn where she talks about how they pulled this off.
- [07:27]
Caitlin Whitaker
Toolkit is literally like a physical toolkit. It lives on our box.com account. Like, it's not sexy. Like, if we were a bigger team, it would probably be built out in a beautiful web page on our website. But every year we have so many, you know, new assets we want to provide people or new video assets or, like, things our community has asked us for that we want to build for them. We've got like, a branding 101 guide that I was passionate about creating. I was like, I want people to have the messages. We spell mustache with an ou, like Queen's English, because we're. We're. That's how everyone else spells it around the world. And you can't spell Movember and mo without the O, so you have to spell mustache that way. So it's like even things like that. How we can educate our community to be in line with, with, you know, Movember's tone of voice and our writing guides and stuff. And that's a, yeah, marketing in the in the weeds moment. But, but in this box toolkit, we also have, like, social ad sets. Last year, we created zoom backgrounds. Of course, we have videos and photos and logos that our community can use so they really can go out and like, brand their events or, you know, share the right things on social. And then from a storytelling perspective, we really do want our community to be telling their stories. So when you sign up on Movember.com One of the first things you're prompted to do is fill out your motivation and share, like, why you're doing Movember and why you're participating in this. And then, you know, we, we prompt you later in the process to share on social, tell people why you're doing Movember and use your motivation as a starting point. And then we have a stories section on Movember.com where we are constantly telling the stories of our community and shouting them out. I love that, like, generational storytelling and how Movember is really, you know, impacting and changing people's lives.
- [09:23]
John
I mean, all of our favorite things converging. I heard voice style guide. I heard brand style guide. I hear story bank.
- [09:29]
Becky
I hear letting go of perfection and just letting it happen. Yes, Caitlin.
- [09:34]
John
Such a torchbearer. I love the playbooks and the clear asks, because when you really back up, that's how you organize. It's gotta be a spark that people can run with. And they did this with a box.com link like how simple but how easy, right?
- [09:50]
Becky
Yeah. I just think another perfect example would be Susan G. Komen. They are such experts at organizing and I got to give them all the snaps that they organized pre social media. I mean, just a lot like Movember. I mean it was person to person phone calls. I don't even know how much email played a portion of this. And Nancy Brinker took this personal promise and turned it into a national movement by organizing people around one clear step. And that was the very first race for the cure. So take a listen to this origin story. It's one of our favorites and it's totally baked in creativity and organization.
- [10:30]
Nancy Brinker
Nothing worth doing is ever easy because if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it or whatever. And you always have to expect that not everything works out the way you planned it, but things can work out with a whole lot of unexpected things that make it even better. I got a group of friends together later on, much later on, when Susie died or was dying, and she asked me to cure breast cancer. She asked me two weeks before she died to do this. And I said, of course I will. I had no idea what I was committing to, really, I had no idea. But I knew I had to get after it. And that was in about 19, end of 1979, 1980. By that time I was living in Dallas, Texas. I had married a wonderful man named Norman Brinker, who really was kind of the father of the casual dining segment of the restaurant industry. And he was an amazing human being because unlike a lot of very successful people, he didn't care so much about how much money he made. He cared about building a team, giving other people opportunities, and he ran it like a football coach would run a team. So one day I came home and I said to him, norman, I've got to figure out what I'm going to do to honor my promise to Susie. And so we went to bed that night and about 3 o' clock in the morning, I woke up and I saw my sister and her friends dressed in pink, carrying swords and running towards something. They were running and I said, norman, I have to tell you this. I woke him up and he said, honey, can we talk about this in the morning? I said, no, we gotta talk about it right now. So he said, I just don't know how. What do you want to do? And I said, well, it's gonna. It's a race. It's a run. It's running. They were running towards something. They were trying to get rid of something. And Go towards something better. And he said, well, see if you can get a volunteer marketing company, tell them what you're about, your dream, and then see if you can put a concept together. And. But before you do that, you better commit a lot of your friends to work with you on this project. So that's what I did. The next day I called Smart, all my friends, and they agreed to help. Because, remember, in those days, you couldn't use the word breast. And in print, print, TV or radio. No public media. And you really weren't supposed to use the word breast in public. It was kind of taboo. So I got the girls together and we decided we would have a big luncheon and we would invite Betty Ford, and then we wouldn't have to say Betty Ford, our first lady who had, in 1976, breast cancer and who changed the public recognition of this disease. We didn't ever have to say breast again, although we put it on our invitation. But bet Betty came and came to every single one of our lunches for the next. I think it was 25 or 30 years, as long as she could. And that day, when the doors opened in the hotel in Dallas and we had almost seven or 800 people there, it was stunning to me how many people this was touching. So right about that time, a few weeks before, I had come up with this race idea and wanted to explore it. So on our last meeting before the big luncheon event, I told everybody what I thought we should do. We should follow it up with a grassroots event, because we couldn't do everything just raising a lot of money in one ballroom in Dallas, Texas. There was no way we needed a grassroots movement to go with it. So the next year, we created the Race for the Cure, and we had seven or 800 people who showed up. Everybody said, nobody's going to show up and run for breast cancer. Nobody. I said, okay, well, let's see. Maybe they'll bring their dog or their child or whatever. And on the race day, I fully expected that we would have about 50 people that would show up. The, you know, the committee, their families, and that's it. When those cars started coming towards the parking lot on the race site, I knew. I knew we had something. I knew we had something that could communicate and translate and grow. And that's what my husband, he'd given me a series of lessons. He said, whatever concept you come up with, you must rate for its ability to travel. It must relate to everyone, not just where you have it, but if you want it to grow, you know, the Old adage, go at it alone. If you want to grow, have partners. So it took us a couple of months to figure out the model. And the model would be that these affiliates would leave 75% of what they raised or on their races or whatever they were doing and give us 25% from the national charity so we could fund science. And we had created one of the best scientific committees, I think, of any charity or even, frankly at that time, even the government, even though President Nixon had declared the war on cancer 10 years before. But we had one heck of a medical advisory committee anyway, the first race for that cure. I knew when we had 800 people show up that we had a success there and we had to bottle whatever that was.
- [15:29]
John
I mean, from one local race to thousands of races worldwide, all because the mission was organized in a way that people could join in. Like, it wasn't about that one ballroom. It was about how can this be in every community. That's the heart of organize. And man, I have chills thinking about and hearing that story back.
- [15:49]
Becky
Yeah, especially when you see the scale of what Coleman has been able to do. I mean, they have eradicated I don't even remember how many types of breast cancer Nancy says they're researching. But organization was at the key, was such a key in a hallmark to getting this to a scalable movement. So, okay, I'm, I'm jazzed about organize. I am not feeling the imposter syndrome. I'm feeling good about that piece. So we're going to be shifting into optimization. So you've got your structure now. We have to keep it alive. You know what we call it, call it stoking over here? That is the optimization. It means you're going to tweak, you're going to listen, you're going to adjust so that your system keeps working as the mission is growing.
- [16:41]
John
Hey, friends, here's a bit of real talk. This movement doesn't happen without community. And that includes our incredible ecosystem partners.
- [16:49]
Becky
Big gratitude to Gift Butter, RKD Group, donor Doc feather whiteboard, and so on. These aren't just sponsors. They're mission driven allies showing up to fuel change alongside us.
- [17:00]
John
Their support helps bring you the free tools education keynotes and summits because they believe, like we do, that investing in people is what powers real impact.
- [17:10]
Becky
So if you're searching for a new CRM tech tool, maybe a brand partner directly, direct mail partner, or even an impact strategist, we'd love for you to start with our trusted Rex. We vetted them so you don't have to.
- [17:22]
John
You want to learn more, head over to weareforgood.com Rex that's weareforgood.com recs for VIP access to orgs and amazing humans doing really great work. So I'm so excited to introduce you to Unshattered. If you're not familiar with this organization, Kelly Lingard started this social enterprise to help women in recovery break that cycle of relapse by providing jobs, skills and most importantly, this beautiful community.
- [17:57]
Becky
I mean, she is such a beautiful disruptor in the impact community. And what's so brilliant is how they organize that mission so that it actually supports the people who are doing the work. So here's Kelly really explaining how structure keeps that healing going.
- [18:15]
Adam Garrone
So I got involved with a local recovery program. I just fell in love with the hard work women in particular do to get to sobriety. And while these programs are amazing, it was devastating to start to learn that even when people go through a 365 day program, residential program for a full year, they call it the day 366 problem. What happens next? There's nothing. And so you're congratulated and celebrated for getting to sobriety and getting to the program. But in most cases, you don't have job skills. You've burned nearly every bridge in your life. You most likely didn't have the chance to get an education. Most importantly, there's no safe community to go back home to. And so I just learned that it was about a whole lot more than determination and started piecing together all of the things that it looked like people needed to continue that journey. So at Unshattered, we say that our mission is to end the addiction relapse cycle. So we're paving the road between sobriety and long term success. So I initially thought I was doing a fundraiser for this recovery program. I learned how to sew growing up. And after my grandfather passed away, I received his suede coat too. Big shoulder seams are ripped out. I was never going to wear it. It hung in a closet for a long, long time. Sentimental piece I'm never going to get rid of. But eventually I decided to cut it apart, use the good pieces of suede and sew it into a tote bag. So I intersected this story of recovery and this recovery program that I was learning about and really had a lot of respect for. I thought, oh, we can help them raise some money. I'm sure I can teach a couple of these ladies how to sew. I'm sure we can get some people to donate some Old leather coats they don't wear anymore. We can make some bags and raise some money for them. So my big dream was to raise $10,000 for this program. That happened very quickly, and as it did, you just started to witness. When these women made something beautiful that somebody wanted to buy, it changed something in them. They felt value that they had something to offer. They were being creative, they were making design decisions, they were learning team leadership and problem solving. And just this emergence of something meaningful that mattered in their life was really incredible to watch. And so I thought, oh, I guess they just need a resume. What if they do a six month internship and they have a Runway and they can tell their employer like, here's somebody that you can call to speak on my behalf. That still wasn't working. So then it got to the point where some of these ladies really seem to like this. There's a need for employment, community housing, transportation, knowledge and education. What if we could turn this into jobs? And so we did that in June of 2016 and haven't looked back.
- [21:03]
John
And y', all, you gotta go to this website and meet some of these women's stories and see what they create. You just think listening to that, what if Kelly would have stopped at that fundraiser? What if she would have raised $10,000? Connecting back to episode two where we talked about values, she saw this deeper gap was jobs, was employment and what kind of agency that would open up for the women in recovery. So she built a system that could scale real, meaningful, deep, lasting change. And that's what happened.
- [21:33]
Becky
And she was so uniquely poised and positioned to do that. And I think one of the interesting parts of her story is she never worked a day of nonprofit in her life. She was a physicist at a Fortune 100 company. But she was like, I could see patterns. And, and that is what optimization is. It's like what's working, what's not. And they optimize along the way from that initial start. And she shares how they have continued to adapt their programming based on needs. And so take a listen to this.
- [22:06]
Adam Garrone
You know, people always say this must be so opposite of your old job. But really my background in physics and engineering is pattern repetition and recognition. And so I think that that is what has benefited unchartered the most, is my ability to see that there are patterns in this journey of recovery, both of things that work and things that tend to go awry. And it has helped me figure out how to address and support. So I'll give you an example of that, is that about six weeks in for every single person, they start to lose ground. And you can just see this moment where they wobble, right? They come in very enthusiastic, really thrilled to be here. And then they start to say, I think I want to go back home. I think I'm fine, I think everything's fine. I'm just not going to use this time. But what is happening that we have figured out is that they have to grieve their old life. And so they're recognizing that there were some positive things. Like they did have a community, was not maybe a healthy one, but there were rhythms and meaning and identity. They knew who they were on the street. And so the difficulty and the long horizon of trying to rebuild all of that is difficult. And so you start to look back and only see the positives. And so we've learned that in this 10 week training curriculum that we have to start them off on week number six. The discussion that we have is grieving your past. And it is okay to both feel like I miss it and also move forward. Just because you miss it doesn't mean that you want or should go back, right? So it's those moments where it's like, why does this thing keep happening right here? And being able to recognize the pieces that are causing women to sort of become destabilized a little bit and then strengthening the program that we're delivering to help them navigate through those times.
- [24:04]
John
Optimization in action. I mean, so dang good, so freaking inspired by Kelly and the amazing team there. So I have a challenge for us though. I mean, you can't not listen to this and think, what patterns were we seeing? Or maybe what patterns are we missing right now? Is a great question to lead into. And so we just have a few prompts that I think are really powerful that you could take to yourself to kind of think through a journal through or take it to your team next time you gather. But one is, where are people getting stuck or dropping off in your process? You know, where do you feel like there's always that friction? Keep on coming up. The second one is what questions keep on coming up again and again. From our perspective, that's some really good content because people are asking like, there's a. There's a north star to coming back to that and explaining it from your perspective. And then number three, what part of your process feels clunky or confusing every single time? It's like, what's that thing you keep stubbing your toe on? Like, let's fix that. Let's put words to it and start to like remove the clunk is. Can we remove clunk? Is that something we can do?
- [25:07]
Becky
Yeah. I'm so glad you used that word. I've never used it like as a verb that's. Or as a noun that's fantastic. But I do feel the heaviness of that. And I'm, I'm really glad you talked about friction because, you know, in our sector, I think it is really hard for people to feel empowered, to lean into tension and to address tension. But sometimes those friction points are your biggest clues for what we need to tweak next. So we want you to look for em, we want you to listen for them, and we want you to be really brave and don't be afraid to change something small to keep that mission strong and to keep that momentum going. And if again, back to what you just said, John, if you're hearing that repeatability over and over, what is the cost of not listening to that? That's going to be the bigger risk as people start to drop off. So I do think that there is power in leaning into those friction points.
- [26:04]
John
I think this is for big and small alike. You know, even a big mission like Susan G. Komen has become. They've created this massive impact. I want to come back to them because as they grew, Nancy explained that scaling meant that your systems had to grow too. And I love this clip.
- [26:21]
Nancy Brinker
At the height of its size, 140 affiliates throughout the country and globally and all the way to the Caribbean and many other countries. And then the more science we funded and the more throughput that brought us where those were the, those were the outcomes of what we were doing. It caught on. And everybody wanted a race for the cure in their state, everybody wanted one in their town. And then we had to put limits on it and grow as fast as we could. But understanding we were building expenses as we did. And that's really the other lesson I learned. You have to be very careful when you grow something because you have to know how much it's going to cost. And when it comes too expensive, it no longer can function. So you've got to be prepared to change, to adapt to the current environment, whatever it is. And a lot of people don't want to do that because it's comfortable doing the same thing over and over and over again. That works and works and works. And the money's coming in sooner or later. That wasn't the story. After about 35 years, 30 years, we noticed our revenues were incredibly high. Hundreds of millions of dollars every year. But so Were our expenses getting like that? And it was very hard to imagine scaling this back, but it had to be done.
- [27:37]
John
Yeah. I mean, so whether you're starting with five friends or you're raising millions, our missions all need bones. Like, we have to get back to the core of organizing and optimizing.
- [27:49]
Becky
I just think Movember gave people a roadmap. Coleman turned one promise into this worldwide movement. Unshattered has paid more than $2 million worth of wages to women in recovery since 2016. When you can wrap that organization around it, watch what's working and what's not and optimize, I just think the game changes for your movement.
- [28:16]
John
Yep. I mean, this has been an episode packed with the wisdom of our guests that have come on the show. We want to leave you with a one good thing. You can think of this as something that this is your move. This is your next move coming out of this episode today. And it's this, what tiny piece of your mission can you organize or optimize right now? It could be writing that one pager for how volunteers can take action right away. Or maybe it's automating. Leaning into some of those tech tools that are priority baked into our software could be automating a thank you email. Or maybe it's simply handing off a task to someone else. I know I could listen to my own advice on this because we tend to want to hold on to things and when we if we really want to scale, we've got to figure out ways to optimize our ability to do that and to be able to show up in more places than when we just where we started.
- [29:05]
Becky
I believe I am a believer. I am a rabid fan in all of this, so hope this has been deeply helpful for you to get unstuck to start that forward motion and movement. I want to tee up our next episode that'll be coming up next. We're going to be talking about voice and vision and John, I'm going to try to hold myself back because you know how powerful I think words can be, stories can be. And when you can cast that really big vision, people want to be a part of it, especially if they see themselves in it. So the right tenor, the right pacing, the right word choice, all of it is going to matter. So once you're organized, how are you going to share that message? So people see it, they feel it, and they carry it forward. So there's a little teaser for you. We hope you come back. Until then, friends, you've got this organization and optimization is as much of the journey as the movement is. So lean in and know we're rooting for you.
- [30:05]
John
Send a new fist bump.