Podcast Host (2:39)

I love it. And I'm curious before we kind of dive into, you know, we Were going to talk a little bit about this fusion of community building and technology. Being a technology leader yourself, but building community and maybe like finding that line between the human and the tech, which is obviously something I'm constantly thinking about too. But I'd love to just hear a little bit more of your kind of like founder story around that in terms of the need that or the challenge you were seeing in our sector that inspired you to start the nonprofit Hive.

Tasha Van Vlaack (3:14)

Sure. I would say every time someone says I'm a technology leader or a technologist, it doesn't resonate very well. Like I get. That's the moment when I get kind of imposter syndrome. Right. Where I'm like, no, not me. And it's our mutual friend Tim Lockey who will be like, you understand you're doing tech on a level a lot of people don't ever touch. And I'm like, yeah, I just don't feel like that's me. But honestly, I'm sure many of us can have it resonate that Covid was a really hard time. I'm an extreme extrovert. It was not my happy place. And I'd never socialized online. I'd never had to. And all of a sudden all the skills I had built over years in work and in community disappeared because I'd never had to do that this way. And I think many others that resonates communities that were in person kind of slowly got destroyed or tried to move to channels and different technologies and it's been really hard. It's a lot of work to build community online. And most of us don't know how to even start in the nonprofit sector. Add in how crazy busy everyone is and how little resources exist and there's a lot of gatekeeping to nonprofit community. Nonprofit upskilling. A lot of it is so deeply focused on learning, which is a good thing. But we often equate, I think, in nonprofit. Oh, we're in a learning community together, an academy, those kinds of groups. But there's a lot to be said about free form communication that doesn't have an end goal or the impact is an unknown. And that has to be, I think, okay. For a nonprofit, we have to have those opportunities to just learn by connecting instead.

Podcast Host (4:57)

This is actually, believe it or not, kind of the perfect segue to what we wanted to talk about today. Because you're bringing up something that I think is really true for like fundraising and fundraisers too. Right. Is like sometimes we try to over operationalize or over engineer a relationship building process. And then we wonder why it doesn't feel organic or why it doesn't lead to co creating something or really building community. And I totally get it, right? Like every nonprofit leader is doing way too many things, has too many hats on their plate. Like, I definitely am somebody who loves me some good automation, but I feel like there's this line that when we're all trying to navigate and folks who are on really, really different ends of the spectrum in terms of how they're using technology or using automation to create connection. And so I'm curious kind of how you think about that. Like both the spaces where we need to just be more like comfortable with it not, you know, being so prescribed and where the places like we should be thinking about automation because it's creates more space for real connection.

Tasha Van Vlaack (6:06)

It's such a relevant question right now because, and you've noted it, there's an enormous gap in the sector between what people are doing with technology, right? You've got people with black bot or a salesforce that are running these entire series of communications, you know, and I've talked to some really incredible people who I admire deeply, who are like, oh, I've got a welcome series that kind of rolls out my newsletter over an entire year. I'm like, are you joking? Like, who are you? How did you manage to pull this off? And I am not that person. So I will say maybe I'm on the touchy feely, like off the cuff side too much. But at the same time, you know, I do think that there's something really special about touch points. And that's the cool thing about fundraising is we talk a lot about touch points, but when we automate every touch point, I don't know if it actually should be labeled a touch point anymore because you're not actually doing the touch points work, right? So it does help to make there feel like there is a, there's a through line in the communication by continuing to have those touch points. But at the same time, I think everyone is starting to question with the rise of AI, whether someone actually sent that message or not for real. So if your cadence feels so uniform, like, you know, once a week they receive a quirky little touch point email and they're not sure if it's real or not or if it only comes through one communication channel all the time, only ever this way. I don't think humans actually like, when we think about how we consume social media or even how we consume information now we're going to so many different sources and I Think a lot of times if you've got a beautiful email automation series and that's your only touch point with someone you're trying to build a relationship or community with, I think most of us are starting to like, sniff out when it's automation only.

Podcast Host (8:00)

Okay, can we dig in here? Because I'm curious, like, you're bringing up something for me which is like, when do we care that it's automation and when do we not care that it's automation? Like, it's interesting, there's this difference between automation versus like mass communication. Right. So my newsletter goes out every single week, but it is not automated. Yeah, right. Like, I write that email every week with kind of like what's top of mind for me. But I am sending it to 17,000 people at once. And, but I try to write as if, and I, and I have heard this, like, I try to write like I'm talking to each person, you know, like in a way that feels connected to them. And I do really care about each and every one of them. Now, I could never email each of them individually and they would never receive anything from me if that was the, the only way I could connect with them. So, like, where's the line?

Tasha Van Vlaack (8:57)

Well, I would call what you're doing that is stewardship. Right. And maybe that's what we can talk about really, is that there's the stewarding of a relationship and then there's like the autopilot of a relationship. And I think sometimes those feel different. And you're a great example of someone in the sector who all of us look at and admire and watch because there's like, I don't know what Mallory is going to post about tomorrow on LinkedIn. Could be about her beautiful family. Could be a very personal story of her, like running in 10 directions at once. Could be also this moment where she decides to self service because she's got something new out there. There's something beautiful about the humanity that exists. Like, yes, people like predictability in terms of knowing that Mallory. I'm probably going to get an email from Mallory next week because she always sends once a week newsletters. But when the content always feels human and personable, like that's where the magic exists. Like, and I think it's only going to increase for nonprofits to have, you know, I mean, there's the whole community centric fundraising movement and so many other beautiful ways that relationship building is coming back in, I think, to fundraising more deeply. And so, yeah, I would say that there's like stewardship and Then there's automation. And yes, those two cover paths. But if your automation doesn't feel like you are being stewarded forward and it doesn't have some personality and personal feelings to it, maybe that's what I often see being the difference.

Podcast Host (10:29)

That's so interesting because. Okay, so do you feel like that piece that you were saying before around the need for people to connect without necessarily an agenda in. Is the magic that's in that type of connection similar to the magic that comes from letting content happen a little bit more organically or just this sort of openness? Are we hitting on the same realness that creates the conditions for that?

Tasha Van Vlaack (11:02)

Yeah, it's a really good question. I'm always of the mind that content for the sake of content is usually not the right plan. Right. Like, and I know people will look at how much content we pump out through the nonprofit hive, how much content I write myself, and people will find this incredibly obnoxious. But I write all my own stuff on the fly. Usually, like, the morning of, it's like, very, like, frenetic. Like, I think we're going to talk about this today. I had this great interview with one of our members, Maya, and there was this extra clip that I just sent her a quick message this morning. She's in Germany, so I was like, she's probably awake. Can I just share this? She's like, sure, you go for it. And. But I think those of us who do, when people see how much content we're putting out, I didn't start that way. It didn't start with that much content. Your nonprofit is not going to probably start that way either. But I think as we get more, like, comfortable being personal, those touch points actually sometimes feel more natural. And I think the heartbeat of, like, nonprofits building their own communities is there's an ebb and a flow. So not everyone's going to be involved at the same level. I'm sure you have spoken to this. I've heard some of your stuff in the past. Like, not everyone's always going to live at that same level. Like, when we talk about crazy funnels and that, you know, that's not how people actually work. They move in, they move out. They're here now, they've got a family emergency, they can't donate this year, I think we all are going to have to be more flexible about what it means to be into in community because people need that flexibility. And I think I have yet to have cleaned my email list, and I know that there are some beautiful, brilliant people who are like, clean your email list every six months. But I would miss out on the fact that we had a member recently who hadn't taken a chat in a year and just reappeared out of the blue and was like, I just didn't really need it for a while, but now I need it again. And so I think we miss out on that opportunity that sometimes people have their reasons for not participating for some reason and it doesn't mean that they want out. So, you know, like, I'm not saying you can't invite to go, hey, it's been a long time, you know, like, we'd like to see you re engaged and like really maybe make a concerted effort to go where are you at? But I do think that there's, as we move into like a more community focused fundraising, hopefully in the future, relational heavy fundraising relationships are way messier and I don't think an automation is so clean. And finding the mix between those two is going to be really tough.

Podcast Host (13:33)

Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean I actually, it's so funny, I posted today this interview that I did on what the fundraising with this incredible woman, Jill Vorindren, Covenant House. And she talked about what it was like to lead a development team kind of during COVID and sort of how she thinks about ghosting or these moments where our donors are feeling really overwhelmed and what it looks like to sort of like stay the course and be patient and keep creating opportunities for connection and information that don't require a lot of the other person and what that did for their relationships over time. And I feel like we're. You're right. Like we're in and we keep being in these moments and we're probably never going to not be in these moments where life is full and sometimes really overwhelming and sometimes really stressful and we have so many different like expectations on what like people's behavior, quote, unquote, should be like. It's interesting. I'm sure that people ebbed and flowed 50 years ago. Right. But nobody was watching their like open and click rate metrics. And so the speed of that feedback was just like not the same in the sense that like we're, we are maybe expecting something from humans that is just actually not how it works.

Tasha Van Vlaack (14:54)

Yeah, absolutely. And we even had this cute back and forth about booking in this podcast about our email. Inboxes are insane. Sorry we missed that email. Like, oh, you know, so it, this is how humans are. Which also would be. Is a whole other conversation where I would say your touch points can't just be email anymore. That's not going to work in fundraising and marketing, in however you communicate. I think people are expecting different types of, what does it look like to have engagement and touch points. It's going to be different than it used to be. But I think we're entering a new age. There's a lot of distrust for whether something is real. And again, like you said, does it have to be real? There's gonna be lots of people who don't care. But I do think community building has to have a little touch of vulnerability and flexibility. And like, people, when you use the word community, which everyone uses fairly loosely right now, it actually requires something a little different. There's an action to community, and so sometimes that action is your team probably has to get in there and be part of the community itself.

Podcast Host (15:58)

Yeah. Okay. Can we dispel another myth while we're at it? Cause I just. I love what you're talking about, and I'm oftentimes on this podcast, I, like, sit in the role of the, like. Yeah, but kind of fundraiser. Right. So I'm thinking about one of the things that I've been really impressed with the hive is that people make time for it, because I think there's a lot of limiting beliefs. And we put this on our donors too. Right. They don't have time to meet with us. They don't want to meet with us. Their inbox is really overwhelmed. So that means that they don't have time for anything. But what you're finding is that people are making time for connection, that they are making time for that open space because it feels good and because it's meeting a need of theirs. And so I'm curious, like, how you would kind of recommend nonprofits challenge that own maybe limiting belief inside of them around the openness of their community to connection.

Tasha Van Vlaack (16:52)

I think similarly, when we first had this idea and it seemed kind of wild and a mutual person we know in the sector. When I pitched it to Evan Wildstein, I was like, do you think this is a thing? And he's like, well, we absolutely need it in the sector, but I don't think anyone's going to participate. It was his very. I've got it on recording, actually, which is great. And I throw it at him every once in a while and say, you know, you didn't think this would work. And I do think part of it is timing. I can absolutely lean into the fact that coming out of COVID where people have been at, the isolation in the sector has only grown not decreased team psychological safety. We could go into a huge discussion about those things. So I think non profit has never needed non profit community more than it does now in order to sustain itself, in order to find some coverage for this weird middle ground we're all finding ourselves in across countries. Because, you know, I'm in Canada, 60% of our members are American. They're in what somewhat feels like a unique boat with so much turmoil. Grants and, and. But that's not unique. Every single country I'm talking to, there is a decrease in nonprofit service. Like the services needs are rising and the money is going down from government. So this is a great time for us all to come together and brainstorm and think outside the box. And so if that's what is being experienced in nonprofit, why would that be any different in other places, right? Like, why would that not apply to other sectors too? And if you want your nonprofit donors to see themselves like your donors to see themselves as part of your community, I think they really need to know what does it mean to be part of this community, how do we interact? And without having those conversations with them one on one. I love finding out why someone joined the nonprofit Hive. Every week I take three chats. So that's why it was a little late getting to this because I had to finish up my other chat. I love taking three conversations with community members and going, what brought you here? Like, what are you coming here to get out of it? And I do think our donors, if we took a little bit more time with them. I love when someone asks me, why did I decide to donate? Because there's always a reason. Even if my reason is, I love this fundraiser. I will follow them to every organization. That's not a bad data metric to have, right? Like, that's okay.

Podcast Host (19:16)

Totally, totally. I love that. So I want to ask you another question about, like what Evan said and when you were first building this, why did you keep going?

Tasha Van Vlaack (19:27)

I think one, I'm actually incredibly risk averse, which not everyone would necessarily know off the bat, but I'm incredibly risk averse. And I interviewed a whole bunch of people I knew in the sector and got their thoughts on it first before. And then we actually launched a wait list when we first started. And so but we had 200 people sign up in less than eight weeks just off an idea. Like, this is what the idea is. So to me, it was a pretty strong leading indicator that there was something here. And so, like, maybe it's worth to try to. What would it take to put together an mvp. What would it take to launch the most ridiculously simple thing in six weeks? And that's what. What we went for.

Podcast Host (20:08)

So how has your, you know, we wanted to talk about like the relationship between kind of community building and automation. And I'm curious, like, how that maybe has evolved with the hive. Like, I can imagine. I'm just thinking about what I've been doing with practivated, right. So much of what I'm doing is manual and it's making some of my team members absolutely bananas. But I really feel like early on I want that personal touch. Like I want everything to be coming from me. We don't know the patterns yet. I don't want to make these grand statements about how we should be structuring certain components because we don't know. And I want to hear from our users and learn from them and build for them. So I'm curious, but I, but I know that coming down the line, certain things that right now are so manual will become automated. How have you navigated that, especially in like a community building platform?

Tasha Van Vlaack (21:01)

I think for myself at least, I am still the biggest user of my tool, right? Like, I still use it more than everybody else, which I think is key because then I can kind of see how it's working for other people because I'm a user. And so like, that's helped a lot to never step too far back from actually how people are using it when we're talking about nonprofit professionals. And I'm sure this will resonate. You have to keep it really, like they're not looking for high tech things, right? So like we can over engineer it and people will then go, well, why is it doing this? Because of how we built the tool. One thing that's really easy for me to see is who are my power users immediately, who are the people who are in all the time, right? And so we keep track of engagement and that then helps me figure out who to put more potential like time in because I'm so thankful that they have done this. And so they are my biggest advocates, my ambassadors, the people who talk about what we're doing. And when people say the word viral, it's like, not really. It's actually relationship. Like, this is relational marketing. That's what that looks like. And it works really well. And most nonprofits are not taking advantage of it almost at all. So there's that piece. And then I think, you know, the other big thing that I, you know, emails, those can be automated. Like our welcome series. Of course that can be automated. Our weekly cadence that can be automated, but it's those touch points in between that I am still the one answering my LinkedIn messages, which sometimes drives my husband nuts. But. And I like to every once in a while when somebody pops into my head, maybe not great for a workflow, but I'll be like, I haven't heard from this person in a while, but they're in my head. And I'll go, hey, just was thinking of you. Hope all is well. Like, that takes so little. But it's those little tiny touch points that when you're building community or you're building a product or like, those are the pieces that I think stand out for everyone else because they stand out for me when other people do them for me. So I think if there's something you love having somebody do for you, it's probably. Probably matters the same way. Right to them too. We're pretty things. Humans are kind of simple sometimes, but we like to over complicate it.

Podcast Host (23:15)

Well, I feel like we get overwhelmed with or we like step multiple steps ahead. Right. Like a big thing that I feel like I've had to kind of reel myself and my team in around is like, well, this is going to be a problem when we have 500 users. And I'm like, cool, what an awesome problem to have. Like, I will solve it then. But right now I want to do it this way because, yes, it's my time. Yes, it's whatever. But like, that it feels like the right way to show up right now for the community that we have. And what I hear you saying too, that I think nonprofits often will, like, skip ahead. Like, oh, they're trying to think about how they build the whole thing with their, like, end goal North Star. Instead of being like, okay, our goal is to build more community. Or maybe our goal is to automate certain things and take certain things off of our plate. What's like one small way to start with that that feels like testable, where you can manage the data around it, where you can see how it actually impacts your community members. Like, you know, I love what you're saying about kind of living in your own data and making decisions based on that. Because I think I wouldn't set up a 47 step automation flow if you're never going to look at what happens to people in it.

Tasha Van Vlaack (24:34)

Yeah. Or even for yourself. You know, you built practivated because you were like, I wish this had existed. Right. Like, and so I do think, and not everybody is going to be in a nonprofit that they have that same amount of like emotion and passion and attachment to as maybe you and I do for the things we've created. And that's okay. But I do think that you should be able to imagine yourself as the donor for this organization and maybe there's a couple Personas and you have to like figure those things out. But what would be the experience if I became a donor to this organization and if I never hear from them again other than one automated thank you. And then like, I think we all know that's not going to be enough moving forward.

Podcast Host (25:16)

Yeah, I mean this is not to steal Tim San Antonio's term, but like this really is that like experience design component. Right. That maybe it's not about what's human and what's not. It's about what is the experience. And if you're really putting those lenses on and thinking through that whole experience, some of them are going to be those open connection points without an agenda and some of them are going to be automations and both of them are okay as long as that the human on the other side's experience is being considered in each of those interactions.

Tasha Van Vlaack (25:52)

Yeah, I could not agree. I mean Tim is amazing and is doing such incredible work and I think there are a lot of brilliant people in this space who are thinking through that intersection of tech and where tech and humans meet and, and we have to figure that out. And I was reading this great article about, and I'm going to talk about it at some point for sure, but the future of community being analog and like this renaissance of analog. And so as we move and all this new tech is coming in like nonprofits, I always think they're so perfectly suited to community, but because they're still trying to adopt automation, they're actually maybe missing. They're like, wait, you're actually closer to this than a for profit company might be. But we're concerned about getting this other system and you know, like we said, there's somewhere in the middle between automation and community to meet. Yes.

Podcast Host (26:41)

I love it.

Mallory Kson (26:41)

Okay.

Podcast Host (26:42)

We knew this wasn't going to be enough time but I love every conversation with you. Tell folks where they can follow along, join the hive. All the things.

Tasha Van Vlaack (26:50)

Yeah, absolutely. So you can find us just the nonprofit Hive.com. you can learn more about our community there. It is free. We have wonderful sponsors throughout the sector that make that possible. And you know, we're a community of 2,100 members across 76 countries. So it has been just a wild, beautiful ride so far. I'm on LinkedIn feel free to reach out and connect. And we also run a very busy business page on LinkedIn where people share their thoughts and articles interviews on the sector.

Podcast Host (27:19)

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Tasha Van Vlaack (27:22)

Absolutely. This was great. Thanks Mallory.

Mallory Kson (27:29)

I hope today's episode is inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Mallorykson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tool, tools and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit Mallorykson.com PowerPartners last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good, hard work you're doing.

Podcast Host (28:19)

To make our world a better place.

Mallory Kson (28:21)

I can't wait to see you in the next episode.