[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Rainmaker fundraising podcast, where we bring you tips and insights to help you raise more money for your organization and lead more effectively. I'm your host, Andrew Olson.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. This is Andrew Olson. I'm here today. I'm really excited to be with Taylor Clements. Taylor, welcome to the show.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: Hi. Thanks for having me. So excited to be here.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm glad you're here. So Taylor is the director of digital marketing at Barna Group.
[00:00:27] Speaker C: She.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: She's the host of the brand new Mission Money podcast. Y' all should go check that out right now. And she's also founder of Taylor Marketing Advisor. She's on a mission to help businesses and nonprofits expand their reach and drive more revenue and innovation through digital solutions, empowering them to unlock their full growth potential. Before we jump in, this episode is brought to you by your leader Journey, home of the 90 day Leader's Journey course that equips you to become a better leader by focusing on three key elements of leadership. Those are character, culture, and competence. Check it
[email protected].
taylor, before we get into questions today, take a little bit of time and tell us a little bit more about you and about what's not your official LinkedIn bio.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Great question. Yeah, so I live in Kansas City. I am a competitive west coast swing dancer on top of helping people, nonprofits with fundraising and working at Barna.
But, yeah, so dancer, I love the outdoors, love camping. I have a dog named Maisie and she is obsessed with fetch. And yeah, like you said, I'm just on a journey to help people learn how to fundraise better through digital channels. That's something I've done for the last 10 years. I'm currently helping a group out in Cameroon. They're launching orphan orphanages. Yeah, we've had a lot of success. We've currently sent over a dozen kids to school and are working on building our own orphanage. But there's. Oh, helping those orphanages that are already established there have better living conditions, getting them new mattresses, things like that.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Wow, that's really cool. So, okay, you work at Barna, you run a podcast, you own a small business, and then you even have time for things like being a competitive swing dancer. How do you fit it all in?
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm still figuring that part out. Uh, just launched the podcast, so my social life is probably gonna have to go on pause a little bit as that's getting launched. But, yeah, just love, kind of. I've always I grew up competitive, right. I. I rode horses.
So I have to keep a little bit of that, you know, in there. And it gets me out of my, you know, dancing. There's something about it that actually it lets you kind of get out of your mind and brain a lot. So I'm thinking and working a ton. Dancing is kind of my creative outlet to say, okay, let's put it on pewter and do something creative.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: I can appreciate that. That's why I go outside and chop wood. So, you know, a little bit different from dancing, but serves the same purpose, you know, let's start with kind of an origin story question for you. How and why did you get into the work of. Of serving nonprofit organizations and ministries? Like, what. What drew you to that?
[00:03:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I was a senior in college, was going into my senior year, so summer before it, and had been really just praying about what I was supposed to do. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. Kind of got radically saved that summer. My life dramatically shifted. I was at first, you know, doing journalism classes, studying mass media. I was a journalist, an internship in the. At a racehorse magazine. And I'm like, you know, no, if this is what I want to do first, that industry had some corruption in it, but also I'm like, you know, there must be something else out there. So I prayed that summer. I mean, you're seeing your year, you hope that you had it figured out by then. But I didn't.
And I somehow didn't get into any film classes before that. I don't know if you know how you stay up till midnight to get into those classes, but I didn't get into any until my senior year. I think that was God's plan because my senior year they built this $2.5 million film studio at Longwood University on the East Coast. I had no idea. I went into my first class, documentary filmmaking, and I left the class on that first day of my senior year after I prayed and fasted that summer. Hey, God, what am I called to do? And he said, I'm calling you to help tell the story of people. I'm calling out to do my missions, and I want you to help launch them and get them fully funded to go and do the things they're called to do. So that's where the dream started. I spent my whole next semester, literally day and night in that film studio. High tech wiring, green screens, like everything.
Prior to that, they had, you know, junkie pop up green screens and old Sony cameras. So really had an amazing time really learned everything. Started my own business.
Went around kind of naively with my camera and just saying, hey, I'm ready to tell a story. And up going, you know, really wherever the Lord would call me to tell those stories. Ended up on a little island called Molokai helping launch a church, all the way to helping a family raise support to go live over in Africa, to go adopt a child over there. So just be like little one off stories that I would go and tell. They would take those videos and go and fundraise with them. Was always really successful. I mean, we would visually capture it. So they could go and take that and put it in front of people. They're saying, hey, would you join the mission? That's where I fell in love with it. It was really a calling.
Went into years after that I running my own business. I was so young, didn't know how to manage my time or my money and said, hey, I got to put this on pause for a second. Went to a nine to five, dug into marketing, digital marketing in the agency world. Worked my butt off learning how to, you know, do video editing, digital ads, social media, web development, SEO, everything in the book.
And then was like, okay, I think it's, it's time to kind of use that calling and take it into the nonprofit world. So work for FCA and Christian Broadcast Network. So the last five years I've really been digging into how to help large corporate nonprofits, but also have passion for these smaller missions as well.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Very cool. That's a great story. So if you mentioned storytelling a couple of different times in that response, and I know just having had a couple other conversations with you, how passionate you are about that. Talk to us a little bit about what it is about storytelling that really excites you.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Storytelling just has an ability to capture an audience and to share the emotions and journey and vision in a way that, you know, we can go up in front of someone and tell them what we want to do, but to be able to capture the impact, be able to capture the faces, the mission in a way that's creative and can really push things to the next level. Now you can tell storytelling in person. I mean, you can tell stories in person. As a storyteller, you can also tell the story through video. You can tell it through social. There's so many different ways written, right, to tell the story. And I love kind of diving into how we can most effectively do that, right? How can we get someone to emotionally connect with a brand, with a person, with a mission, and that's what the power of storytelling is. We can really get someone's heart connected to what we're doing and what we feel called to do through storytelling.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: So, okay. One of the things that I'm often challenged by as I serve organizations is there sometimes I feel like the brand marketing side of the house has a certain view of what the story needs to be that gets told. But that's often not the most effective way to tell the story to actually move people to action.
Talk to us a little bit about, like, what do you think the must have elements to a successful story are?
[00:08:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying too.
I think often we kind of go in with a vision, but sometimes I've realized on these trips that the story begins to tell itself, it begins to unfold, you know, and there's so many different angles we can capture the story from.
What I love to kind of teach her five things. First is having the donor as the hero. And so, you know, who's the hero of the story? It's not you, it's not the brand, it's not the organization, it's not the person raising the funds, it's the donor. A lot of times these videos are for support raising. Now, there are videos that are supposed to be informative, but how can we make the donor, the people that are actually helping fuel emissions, the hero? That's really going to connect with your donor's heart, potential donor's heart the most, as well as it tells a great story.
And the next thing, the second thing is conflict and resolution. So something that I love is, you know, I think everyone's heard of like, story, brand methodology, but it's the, you know, how do you start upfront with a conflict or an issue or the big question and then give a solution? There's just some things, you know, with the psychology of that people love a good resolution.
So having a good conflict and then how did your mission and brand solve it is just so key to a good story, you know. And the third thing.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, before you move on to the third thing, I want to pick at this for a little bit because I don't know if you've experienced this yet, but so often what I hear from organizations is we don't want to tell the conflict side of the story either. We don't want to ask someone to go back to sort of the toughest times in their life when those things happen, or we just, you know, often I'll hear our brand is a happy brand.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: It's.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: We're positive, right and so we want to avoid that, respond to that in the context of storytelling.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: For me, yeah, conflict. You know, you're. I'm all about branding. I'm all about having a solid brand, knowing who your voice is.
I think that if a brand were to say, hey, we're positive, they. There's a way where you are positive, but you have to be realistic. My fifth thing, if I were to just skip ahead, is authenticity. We have to be authentic. People nowadays don't want to just hear all of the good things. They don't want to hear the positive, fluffy stuff. They want to hear the authentic, vulnerable voice of a brand.
That's really how you're going to connect with your viewers. And I think so many times we miss that, and then we miss the opportunity to tell the story. Well, conflict resolution, people love that. Imagine the most, your favorite movie. Right. It wasn't just no conflict, no plot twist. The same telling a donor story or putting it online. We have to be bold to tell the whole thing, or they're not going to see why they need to give. They're not going to see the opportunity to come and be a hero as a donor. I mean, oh, it's already positive. We already have everything taken care of. This is great. Smiling faces.
The brand is the hero. No. Allow the donor to come in and be the answer to the conflict, to the reason you started this organization, to the reason you have this mission.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: I was hopeful that you'd say something like that, so I appreciate you going down that rabbit trail with me. All right, what's number three on your list?
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Number three is emotional connection. Right. And we already touched on this a little bit. But how can you have your audience emotionally connect with your brand? It's going to be through showing the true emotions of what's happening out in the field. Field. Or where you're working or what you're doing. That could be everything from the emotions of the CEO or the person running the organization. Why did they start it? Or the emotions of the people you're serving. Right. The heartache they feel. Really think again about a good movie you've watched normally. It's because you can relate. And emotions are something so unique to the human experience. Right. And so if we can find the emotional connection that someone can have with our brand and with the story we want to tell, it just makes it that much more powerful in the end.
Number four, a journey.
A journey of transformation.
So, you know, having a journey for your users, this is something I teach in marketing and in fundraising in general. But you can take them on a journey throughout a story too, right? So not only in digital marketing do we take them on a journey from not knowing our brand to knowing our brand through content, through marketing, through advertising. You know, they don't know who, you know, we are. And two, we want them to be an advocate. We want them to share our mission, storytelling and, you know, sharing a video or writing your next email.
Really taking your user on a journey is so powerful from, you know, where you were in the beginning to where you are now. From, you know, how they, you know, might not know your brand to how you envision them being an advocate for what you're doing.
So that could be a way. Another example would just be transformation, right? These kids were helping out in Cameroon when we first, you know, got out. There were a lot of people, orphanages that were just kind of running on their own, women that were taking care of 20 plus children that had no help. They were literally praying, God, would you send someone? And we showed up at their thorn, like, wow, this is exactly. I knew their, their faith is phenomenal. They were like, I knew God was going to send me someone. You know, this is the answer and that is the journey of transformation. Now we've gotten them, well, we've, we've put down a foundation on their house. We're getting them new mattresses from when they, you know, so disgusting to now they have new mattress covers, new mattresses, now kids are going to school. That's the transformation that really connects with the heart of the viewer. They want to see that, right? How are you using care? How are you using those donor dollars to actually bring transformation to the mission that's in front of you?
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Let's take a quick break from today's conversation and talk about your leadership. Do you ever feel stuck or like you just don't know whether you're leading well or not? I know that's something that I've felt at times during my 25 year career leading people in teams. And many of the leaders that I've coached and advised over the years have also felt that way. That's exactly why I created the 90 Day Leaders Journey Journey email course. This course is jam packed with value to help you become a more effective and competent leader and to give you the confidence to step into any leadership opportunity. Course is broken into three key aspects of leadership, which are your leadership character, your leadership culture, and your leadership competence. Over the course of 90 days, you'll receive one email every day. Each email is brief, point and focused on a single specific topic to help you level up your leadership game. This is the same exact leadership training that I deliver personally to the leaders that I coach and mentor every day in business and nonprofits all across North America. Only instead of paying thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars, you can get access to this content at a significantly reduced cost. You can access this game Changing leadership email course
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[00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So this is a topic for a totally different podcast, but you mentioned the strength of their faith, right? I was in overseas earlier this year in Asia, and I found the same thing. Like, I, I was really struck by the difference between the average faith of an American and what I saw in Asia and just how much more trusting and flourishing the the church is there. So, anyway, different conversation. At some point, maybe we have that. You know, let's, let's continue in this conversation, though. So one of the things that you've talked about is making the donor the hero. I don't know to what extent you've experienced it yet. If you haven't, get ready because it's coming. But there is a growing discontent in the nonprofit sector around this idea and this desire to say, you know what? The donor shouldn't be the hero. It should be the institution or the beneficiary or some combination thereof. How do you strike the balance between not sort of canonizing the donor and putting them on a pedestal inappropriately, but also, to your point, making sure that they're the hero in the journey so that they actually get motivated to engage and respond? Like, how do you balance that?
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that one thing is with storytelling specifically is where I teach the donor as the hero. Because if you think about it, if they're not, we live in such a.
And I don't want to make this as a bad thing. They are the hero in a lot of ways, right? They are the ones that are funding the mission, the organization. And if our marketing is set out to reach with, you know, and connect with their hearts, it's essential that we make them a main character. Right? Because people love it to be about them. They love to see themselves. So I always love telling people when they're storytelling, show the donor, show the person helping. They love to see themselves, right? How can we show more the people that are really contributing the most, whether that's a volunteer and time or a donor or the people we're helping, Right. They love to see themselves if they don't. I think so many times brands get this wrong where they make it all about themselves and their logo and they miss the opportunity to connect with the heart of the people they're trying to serve or are the people they're trying to connect with. So when it comes to externally showing, you know, the impact and connecting with the people, we want to connect with our core audience, our target audience, that's also essential to know, right? Who is your audience? Who are you trying to talk to? You're not trying to talk to your brand's employees, right? That's not going to do that, not going to make an impact. We're trying to talk or even people that know your brand, right. I think so many times we get marketing and content wrong where we already, we just assume that they already know who we are. If we're trying to explain, expand and to grow, we have to assume that someone doesn't know who we are, they don't know our brand, they have low brand trust, they trust people more. I think that's something that social media and fast consumption has really created. You know, I think where we balance that, you know, where I've worked in organizations is we celebrate our donors, right? We celebrate them, we celebrate milestones, we celebrate when they've given a certain amount, there's appropriate celebration. But on the back end, you know, we don't make it all about them. We have appropriate celebrations and, you know, ways that we show appreciation through just recognization and email marketing. But at the end of the day, it's about the people we're serving. It's about the mission at hand.
And we can't control, you know, if it kind of turns in a different way. But I think by showing the impact and really keeping the mission the main thing, it just naturally won't put the donor on a pedestal, right.
To show their story and to connect or, you know, who are we talking to?
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. All right, completely different direction here. What do you say to. And I'm particularly thinking of somewhat, you know, older generation nonprofit leaders and fundraisers who will say, because I just had this happen a week ago, something like, I hate being on camera. I don't want to stand up and record myself asking my donors for anything or, or telling a story because I'm just uncomfortable.
I, maybe this is a little bit too aggressive. But my, my response lately has been get over it because it's where the market's going, right. And there's an expectation of it. But you're probably more helpful than I in this case. How would you coach someone who has that Concern or that fear to overcome it so that they can effectively tell the stories of their organization.
[00:19:56] Speaker C: Yeah. How I coach someone that's kind of concerned about putting themselves on camera. I see this a lot. Right. I think that what I coach is it's not about you, it's about them. It's about the donor, it's about the mission. Right. I think so many times it's. It's like fundraising one on one. When someone's going out there to a table to ask for funds, if they're going, thinking, it's about me. And if rejection happens, it's about me. And, uh, then it's like this whole mindset training that you have to do to be able to be bold, to say, hey, I'm not just begging. I'm not scared of rejection. I'm not scared of, you know, if they think I'm just asking for money, it's not about that. It's not about me. It's about them. It's about the donor, it's about the mission. I think once we get out of our head about it being about me, about people looking at me. Right. And make it about what we're really doing, then that fear can go away. I think there's multiple reasons someone wouldn't want to put themselves on video. I think for the older generation, right. They may not be as used to it. It's definitely new, like you just said. But it's so key. Right? And so like you said, get over it. I would just. What I say is, it's not about you, it's about them. How can you get out in front of the camera and remember, this isn't for you.
No one's even thinking about you in this moment. They just want to hear your heart. They want to know that they're behind that, a mission. You know, something that's so important is brand trust. Right? And so to have a CEO, to have these key leaders out in front of their audience, is so key to being transparent, authentic. And whether these executives like it or not, their face needs to be out there. It's so important. They. They carry the key and the heart to the organization. Their vision is what drives the mission. So getting them in front of the camera is so vital. And I would just say, hey, it's not about you in this moment, it's about them. Make them comfortable. I think as a videographer, as a storyteller, if you're the one behind the camera, making it an environment that doesn't feel overwhelming, maybe that's. They don't want to look at the camera. Okay, we can just do a. We're sitting down, ignore the camera, it's not even here type of moment. There's different angles. You know, if you. You have to kind of approach that and just say, okay, who's my. Who's the person? I'm trying to tell the story of today?
How can we make them the most comfortable and to take the pressure off of what. This is beautiful.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
Another thing that I often hear when we start talking about, particularly video storytelling, is, oh, my goodness, I don't have the money for that. Right. And I think a lot of times nonprofit leaders are thinking back to what a video crew used to cost 10, 15, 20 years ago, where it was like five people and multiple cameras and like all this production, right. For. For really high quality production.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: I mean, if you're doing a shoot for linear television or something like that, of course you have to invest more money. But in today's environment, the way that social media has kind of reshaped content creation, what do you think is sort of minimum viable product? And how should nonprofits think about their investment in video storytelling particularly?
[00:23:05] Speaker C: They're such a big scale to this, right? I mean, you have the. Just like you picture you painted, it's the mega production, and then you have just the iPhone, right. I think you could tell a story just as well with your iPhone than you can mega production. If you're, you know, doing this on. If you're a smaller organization, what I like to advise is invest in the camera you can afford to lose. So, I mean, you have to take it. My camera, I just. I had this massive whole production set, and I wouldn't take it anywhere. And then I got the, you know, $800 camera, which is still a big loss, but maybe not as much as a $2,000 piece of equipment. I take that $800 camera everywhere now. I'm capturing the story. I'm capturing images because I'm not scared to lose the camera.
So if you're out there capturing the story on your own, invest in the equipment you can afford to lose. You'll take it more with you. You know, if you're going on trips or internationally, whatever that might look like. Additionally, it. Right now, even AI can enhance this microphone. If I didn't have it right. If I were just speaking into my computer, I think technology is going to get really, really good. I can take an image now and get rid of any grain within it using Lightroom. The ability AI has now to really, really enhanced content Is amazing and it's only going to get better.
So if you're looking at your budget and going, hey, I don't know where to start with this, I think there's a lot of room from an intern with a phone who, you know, this younger generation knows how to tell a story. They know how to capture an audience. They grew up on social media. It takes a little coaching, but, like, you can start that small or you can hire a team. I say whatever you can afford to do the most of. I would say quantity is so key. I was helping with this channel. It was a YouTube channel, made a million dollars in revenue a year in ads. And what we found is quantity actually trumped quality. And a lot of the videos. Now that is not something I would coach typically cause, you know, quality over quantity. But in this world, mass consumption and social media, people want things quickly. They want a lot of it. You have to produce a lot of it to keep up. And so what can you do? Who is it going to take? I would invest my time and money into getting the person that I know can go capture the most versus, you know, maybe this million dollar or maybe, sorry, I would spend my time investing in just the setup that can get me the most content versus a setup or hiring outside of the company to just do one video.
Another thing that's important to note is bulk capturing and repurposing the content you've captured. You could probably repurpose a lot more than you do as well.
So again, who is that person that's editing? Who's the person responsible for, you know, really maximizing the content you created? That's also going to help you maximize your budget.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: So I think that was spot on. And there's so much value in there. If you're listening to this, rewind the last 60 seconds and listen to that again. One of the things that this reminds me of, I actually believe that the nonprofit of the future, you know, when we look at all the different fundraising that happens, right. Bringing in new donors is so ridiculously expensive. And I think it's only going to get more expensive. I. I was talking to another charity recently and, and we were actually doing lead generation for them. So not, not fundraising, but bringing in someone to their marketing ecosystem who's not yet a donor, but who's not giving a cash gift in their first interaction.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: It's. It's about a content transfer, right? A value transfer that's not financial. And one of the things that it brought up, the question was like, or. Or rather the point of view was you're going to have to become a content engine unto yourself if this works.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: And I think that that's where, I mean obviously that's where business has gone.
The, the most successful commercial marketing operations today are largely content driven businesses because you can do it at a much higher return on investment over time. But you have to create, to your point, a ton of content. Right. And, and so I think that that takes us out of the realm of once a year we're going to shoot a video and we're going to use it in these three events and then we're going to be done right to how do we do this at scale? And so, you know, you mentioned this a little bit when you talk about bulk capture and repurposing. But if an organization needs to really kind of become a content farm, right?
And they need to really be capturing and building content that can be used not two or three times a year, but like dozens of times a month, right. How do they need to think differently about that whole strategy and what do they need to be aware of, cautious of and how does it change the way they plan?
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Have you read My Amazon Number One Best Selling Book, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits make and how you can avoid them yet? It's the book that I wrote with expertise from over 20 nonprofit leaders and their 300 years of combined experience. You can download it for free today. Just visit andrew olson.net and go to the free resources tab on my site.
[00:28:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's, you're spot on. I mean it's a big shift that's happening. I think it was, hey, we're going to do this one annual video and now it's how can we do mass content production? Right. I think keeping it right sized is good. So looking at your budget, I think that companies need to look at how they can shift around some budget to prioritize this. You said it before, but I mean with donors becoming more expensive to acquire, we really are going to have to tell a story. That's how people are connecting is through organic content and authenticity. Right.
So I think storytelling and video, social media, YouTube, just those different things are a really important thing to invest in to help tell the story, connect with your donors, connect with your volunteers through storytelling. I was a part of helping shift a major media company into producing more social media minded content and that was a big shift. I think that you have to have your CEO and top leadership on board. It takes the whole team. It's not just your marketing department saying hey, this is the priority right now. You have to have from top down really on board with making social media mass content production priority. I've just seen it where the marketing team knows it, they get frustrated, they know it needs to happen. The resources aren't there. Or maybe the resources could be there, but there's not belief. We talked about it earlier, but having the CEO and leadership up on camera is important. So really, organizationally, top down, what this company did right, is they got in front of all staff and they said, hey, you guys are all social media managers now. You know, like it's not the marketing team, but as a company, this is where we're going. And I thought that was really great. Once they said that, it just started to rapid fire, things started to shift organizationally. So if you have that vision from the top down, you're going to see the most success. I think when you don't have buy in from leadership, that's my biggest concern. And red flag of, hey, you might be, you may not move until you get leadership, executive leadership, buy in across the whole, the whole organization.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: So you just said something else that I think is going to scare a lot of nonprofit leaders. You said the, I think the quote was, you're all social media managers now. And I can just hear it right now. There's CFOs, there's legal counsel inside organizations that are saying, wait a minute, we don't want 47 people speaking for our organization right now. I firmly believe, and I've seen the data to support, at least in the commercial world, that, you know, very few people have trust and engagement at a deep level with brand social content. Right. It is all about the individuals. So I, you don't have to sell me on it, but how do we sell the scared to death CEO or CFO or legal counsel who thinks, oh my goodness, somebody's going to post something that's terrible and all of a sudden our brand is going to lose, you know, 85% of its value overnight. When that happens, what do we say to them to get them comfortable, to test into this?
[00:31:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, to give clarity, what I would encourage is you're not a social media manager by posting. That's marketing's job. Stay out of their lane. Let them do what they're good at.
You know, I've heard where like executive leadership is like, this is what you need to be posting on Twitter. No, you don't need to be telling marketing how much they need to be posting on Twitter or Instagram. Leave that to them. Your Responsibility as leadership is to be thinking. You see the stories, you probably are closer to the impact at times.
You, the meetings where you know about the future of the organization, you're connected to the vision in the next five years, your donors love to hear about what is your five year plan. And so as a social media, pseudo social media manager, what I mean by that is when you're in those meetings, just have your social media cap on as well as your executive leadership. So you're, you know, not even social media content capture communication.
What are you hearing on your side that you can pass to marketing? What doors can you open it up through where you're at to help marketing get a better handle on telling the story? Right. You're closer to it. So everyone in your organization should be thinking, how can we tell the story of what we're doing the best? Right? And how can we get it out there? Also, you know, what resources? How can I help encourage and empower the people that are actually out there telling the story?
Additionally, maybe you're a smaller organization, maybe you don't have a marketing department. Maybe you are the marketing department.
How can we, the people we're connected to, you know, you're out there, you're looking at the impact. How can you pull up your iPhone? Your iPhone. When I graduated and studied film, my teacher said, I said, hey, I'm starting a business. He said, use your iPhone, don't buy a camera. And maybe I didn't listen to that at the time, but I wish I did because it would have saved me some money. It really does. Captures 4K, get your settings right, 24 frames per second. It's usually good for social. Pop out that camera and take the video of the person in front of you. Tell the story. You know, you have a great resource right there in your pocket.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: It's great insight.
We're just about out of time. Before we leave though, what do you say to encourage the person who's sitting there going, I don't even know how to start.
[00:33:53] Speaker C: Yeah, bring people that know how to start around you. You know, there are people out there that do. There's consultants, you know, like Andrew and I almost. I mean, I'm always open to have a conversation and to explore. Hey, where do you start? Who do you need to hire? What's the intern you need to get? And there's, there's people out there. So if you're feeling a little overwhelmed by this conversation or the world of digital overwhelms, you just know that there's resources out there. There's people out there that want to help, and sometimes it just takes that encouragement of just reaching out and asking the question. Maybe someone knows a good connection. Maybe you reach out to your local college and say, hey, do you have an intern that's in your, your film department, your marketing, you know, in your marketing school that would be open to helping us for a. A season?
Learn from them. You know, don't be afraid to learn from them. A lot of them probably know the answer to what you're looking for as well.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Great insight, Taylor. Thank you so much for being here today. How do people reach you if they have a question, want to connect with you?
[00:34:54] Speaker C: Yeah, great question. I'm on social media. My podcast, Mission Money Fundraising is where you can find me. It's on Spotify, YouTube, and please reach out Instagram as well. Or LinkedIn. Taylor Clements is where you can find me. That's my handle on both of those. So please reach out on LinkedIn or Instagram and happy to help where I can.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks again for being here today.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Rainmaker fundraising podcast. I have two favors to ask before I let you go. First, if you enjoyed this episode, please rate us and review us on whatever podcast platform you use to listen to this show. It'll help us reach more people with the tips and insights that you find most valuable. My second favor is a little bit of a favor to ask, but also a little bit of a gift to you. I write a daily substack newsletter called the Leadership Growth Newsletter. It's free to you and I write it to help people lead more effectively and in both life and at work. I'd love for you to click the link in the show show notes and subscribe to that newsletter as well. Until next time, friends, I hope you make it a great day.
