This is the second stop on our live tour through the biggest fundraising conference of the year—AFP ICON 2022—in spectacular Las Vegas, Nevada!

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Welcome back, nonprofit friends! Nonstop Nonprofit is kicking off our season 3 with a four-part series loaded with live interviews from AFP ICON 2022! Hang out at our booth with us and talk to nonprofit's brightest stars about trends, impact, and the future of fundraising.

Episode two of our compilation series features panelists from AFP: Julia Campbell, Cherian Koshy, and Rachel Muir.  Let's do it! Listen to the full-length AFP ICON 22 live interviews on YouTube.

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Hello, I'm Justin Wheeler, and welcome to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit!

Welcome back, nonprofit friends! Nonstop Nonprofit has a whole new season ahead, and we’re kicking it off with a compilation series loaded with live interviews from AFP ICON 2022! Hang out at our booth with us and talk to nonprofit’s brightest stars about trends, impact, and the future of fundraising.

As a bonus, we’re capping this series off with the best clips from last season; so if you’re new to the podcast, stick with us—you’ll get all the goods in a fraction of the time.

Episode two of our compilation series features panelists from AFP: Julia Campbell, Cherian Koshy, and Rachel Muir.  Let’s dive in!

In our first segment we’ve got Julia Campbell, digital storyteller and nonprofit social media expert. Listen in as she goes over the ins and outs of social media and explains why nonprofits have every reason to be controversial.

Justin Wheeler Julia, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us here at AFP. How's it going?

Julia Campbell Thank you. It's going really well. It's a great turnout and gorgeous weather. And I'm just psyched to be here.

Justin Wheeler Is this your first in-person conference since the pandemic or.

Julia Campbell No, I did a couple last year in June, like the Hot VAX summer. And then I was actually back in Vegas last October for a different conference, but it was very different. Way less people, way fewer people, masked. Very I was kind of nervous about it. This one, I'm...

Justin Wheeler This one, it kinda feels like pre-2020.

Julia Campbell It does. It feels like we're back to 2019 maybe. I mean, hopefully we'll be back next year to the same level, but.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, absolutely. So you are a social media guru. And so we have to start with the obvious question. Elon Musk buying Twitter. What are your thoughts around that?

Julia Campbell Well, I'm not an Elon Musk fan.

Justin Wheeler Okay.

Julia Campbell I think that he's a bit of what we call like an edge lord. Like he is not quite a troll, but he works towards controversy. I also really disagree with his philosophy that Twitter should have more free speech and less regulation. I actually think that the social media companys Meta and Twitter and all of them should have more regulation instead of less. So I'm not sure what he has planned, but I'm not really a fan of turning it into a private company. I love Twitter. I've actually built a lot of relationships on Twitter. A lot of people I've met here have been on Twitter, and I don't want it to turn into the cesspool that I feel kind of Facebook has turned into.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell So I don't know. It remains to be seen give him the benefit of the doubt. But I'm not a fan.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. You know, one thing I saw he said in an interview recently, I hadn't I had zero intention of actually asking you this, but here we are.

Julia Campbell Here we are.

Justin Wheeler And think you have interesting perspective on it.

Julia Campbell It's important implications for a nonprofit.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. And he was asked about philanthropy. Yeah. And he, he said, you know, very Elon Musk-esq, he said that, you know, he would consider himself one of the biggest philanthropists in the world. And he's like not because of like how much like dollars I'm donating to charity. But if we all agree that philanthropy is advancing like the human race forward, like, then if you look at what I've done with the electric car industry, what I'm doing with like Space, what I'm doing with all these other companies, he's like these all have like very positive social impact, like on, on our world. Right? I like how that's it's it's interesting. I don't fully agree with it, but what are your thoughts?

Julia Campbell It's a very convenient definition of philanthropy. The world's richest man is talking about philanthropy, not in terms of dollars given, but in terms of business exploits that he is making money from.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell So Mark Zuckerberg talks about it in the exact same way. So to me, I think the implications for nonprofits and businesses and brands, in general, are do we want these huge billionaires, often they're kind of narcissistic.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell Do we want them running? What essentially are the town halls for a lot of people? I mean, if you think about WhatsApp, WhatsApp's been called, you know, the greatest unregulated utility because people across the world rely on WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family. Yeah, if you think about Instagram, I'm thinking about Facebook. I mean, all of these platforms, they do have the potential for social good, but if they're unregulated and if they're left up to these billionaires who kind of are out of touch with reality, I just don't think, I don't think anything good is going to come of it. I think we're just going to keep spiraling down these same paths.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell So I don't believe in breaking them up, but I do believe in more regulation. I don't necessarily know what that looks like. Yeah, but I do think that we're at a reckoning point right now.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, it makes sense. Makes sense. One takeaway I had from it was, do you like take a look like it put, put aside like, you know the characters.

Julia Campbell Yeah, yeah.

Justin Wheeler And you look at the organizations working on like climate change, for example, like nonprofits. And their ability to scale and the impact they're making and then compare it to.

Julia Campbell Well look at Black Lives Matter. You know, MeToo.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And so it's like it's an interesting like I think it's an interesting thought experiment for nonprofit leaders to go through, have, like in order for us to solve the problem that we're trying to tackle...

Julia Campbell Right.

Justin Wheeler How big do we have to be? Like how much scale do we have to achieve? And again, like, not every nonprofit needs to be $1,000,000,000, you know, organization in some degrees, they start to get less impactful at that size. But it's an interesting, I think, exercise to think about. If you're if you're solving a problem that's particularly complex and big, impacting, you know, billions of people, it's an interesting thing to discuss.

Julia Campbell So I, I do get asked a question pretty frequently, should nonprofits still be on social media? And I just think that, that question is oversimplifying it. I think what you're saying is, is a little more nuanced because we have to realize the power that it has. I mean, if you look at the marriage equality movement, actually, people were criticizing the marriage equality movement when everyone turned their profile picture, you know, into the equal sign. And Obama very famously lit up the White House with rainbow colors, and everyone was posting about it. But that kind of awareness and normalization of something is really powerful. So it's called slacktivism, you know, tweeting about something, posting about something, changing your profile picture. It's perceived as not as powerful as maybe donating or volunteering, but I still think normalizing these kinds of things. Like if everyone is hearing about something like maybe Giving Tuesday or Giving Day or we're all giving money, we're all doing Facebook fundraisers. Nobody is actually, you know, for my birthday, I don't want any more painted wine glasses. I had a painted wine glass collection. They are $28. What the hell am I doing with 90 painted wine glasses that I just break. Right. So for me, doing a Facebook fundraiser is much more fulfilling, but also for my friends too. And it exposes them to causes that I care about, maybe things that they haven't heard about. Yeah. So there's the exposure factor. There's the the impact factor, I think, because there's not that direct line where you can say, oh, I tweeted and then all of a sudden, you know, the Supreme Court voted pro on marriage equality, but it all adds up at the end of the day. [00:06:19]And I think any way you can normalize talking around like environmental justice, environmental change, climate change, talking about it constantly bringing it up to your friends and family. I really believe that that kind of awareness does make a difference.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What's your advice to nonprofits who maybe have like active digital presence, you know, across social media, but maybe haven't activated it from a fundraising perspective. Right. How do you help nonprofits guide them through sort of that activation?

Julia Campbell Well, first of all, I think that's great. So if you're building a community but you've not activated them for fundraising, keep building the community because you have to look at it as making deposits into a bank. So when I built my business, I had, I had clients, but I knew I wanted to sell online courses. So I built my email lists, I wrote my blog. I constantly was providing free webinars and free value and building up that affinity and that trust and credibility. And I wish nonprofits would look less at social media like a transactional platform and more like building that community that then you can go to them and say, you know, for instance, I have a client who they're trying to end the dog and cat meat trade at the Yulin Festival, that famous dog meat festival in China. And they are constantly posting about the here's what we're doing. Here are some legislative wins we've had here, some amazing things we're doing. And then they activate them and say, okay, now everyone, call your legislators, tweet about it, raise some money. $10 goes a long way. But without that context, it doesn't work. It falls flat. And I think nonprofits were sold a bill of goods. They were sold some snake oil. We said, okay, well, not we, but me, definitely in the early days of social media said, set up a Facebook page and you'll just put up your link. Tweet out your link, LinkedIn your link and the donations are going to roll in. And now we realize there has to be a lot of community building and trust building up before that can happen. So they've got to play the long game here. It's like exercise, it's like diet, it's like anything else. You've got to play the long game and stop thinking of it like an ATM, you know?

Justin Wheeler Yeah, absolutely.

Julia Campbell I almost knocked that over.

Justin Wheeler It's alright.

Julia Campbell I'm like, my hands!

Justin Wheeler Next thing you know, the backdrop....

Julia Campbell Ah! It's gonna fall over!

Justin Wheeler So I was as Invisible Children for a long time.

Julia Campbell Oh!

Justin Wheeler Yeah, I was one of the founding team members there.

Julia Campbell Wow.

Justin Wheeler And, you know, we got criticized all the time for slacktivism,right? Because, like, we had I mean, we were our audience, our ideal donor. Our ideal donor profile was a 16 year old. Right. So like when we would build strategy, right? We're targeting 16-year-olds. At the time Facebook was just kind of like, you know, coming a lot. It was cool. It was much cooler to 16-year-olds back then than it is 16-year-olds today. And we had built an enormous community on online and hadn't actually asked them to fundraise or donate or anything like that. But we knew that, like this was like strong community. I think one of the best use cases of that community that we had was we had this event called The Rescue, and we had we are in 15 cities. And it was a demonstration to basically we were trying to get a policy passed in Congress and we had about 150,000 people in 15 cities. And the event was called The Rescue.

Julia Campbell All tweeting, all posting, all sharing.

Justin Wheeler Yes. And every city had a celebrity that, the only way that they could leave the it was like in parks was if the celebrity came to rescue them. And so, for example, it all culminated in Chicago where Oprah and...

Julia Campbell Could I have Idris Elba come rescue me?

Justin Wheeler Yeah, right. Yeah. And so, I mean, it was this massive... every city got rescued by a celebrity. We did nothing beforehand to like prep the celebrity. It was all just guerrilla tactics, you know, It was awesome!

Julia Campbell And they could do it however they wanted?

Justin Wheeler But it was the only reason that was possible was because it was a long, many years of building that community. Providing value...

Julia Campbell This doesn't happen overnight.

Justin Wheeler Exactly.

Julia Campbell It doesn't happen overnight.

Justin Wheeler A lot of people wanting like one night success or like overnight success. It never happens for really anything. AnythingJulia Campbell And what drives me crazy are a lot of nonprofits would kill for that kind of exposure and visibility, but they don't know what they would do with that afterwards. And they don't really understand. Like you said, it requires a lot of forethought. It requires a lot of planning. It requires a lot of community building. But when you say to me, I want visibility, okay, well, if you had all the visible visibility in the world, what would you do with that? You know, what would you turn it into or how would you nurture these people? Now they're in your world. They're in your universe. They're interested and it's it's just so funny. I think it's like dating. I mean, I also haven't dated in a very long time, been married like 17 years. But I imagine when I was dating you don't just instantly like get married unless you're on that show, whatever it is, like marriage is blind or whatever. Which doesn't work out obviously. But you have to really, you have to put your best foot forward. You have to engage people. You don't necessarily ask them for the donation right off the bat. You have to maybe give them another softer way to get involved.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell And as we know, people listen to their peers. So people are always on giving Tuesday and of year. Always ask me, what are your top five charities? Who should I give to? Does $10 actually make a difference? Should I be a monthly donor? And I say, yes, absolutely. Here are some organizations that I believe in that, you know, based on what I know about you and your ethics and your values. Here are some places I think that, you know, you could really make an impact if people listen to their networks. And that's the power of social media is elevating those social networks, that social graph.

Justin Wheeler Do you see? How do you see social media changing? I mean, there's obviously, you know, more platforms coming and different generations using different platforms. So what's your perspective on sort of like the platforms that, the social media platforms that nonprofits should be on?

Julia Campbell Well, that really does depend on your goals and what you're trying to achieve. But certainly if nonprofits are not paying attention to like Instagram reels and tech talk, that's a huge missed opportunity. I mean, it's not people think, oh, it's just 12-year-olds. Yeah, but it's also other older kids and millennials and Gen Xers and people that do actually have money and have visibility. These huge influencers that have an audience of a billion people or 100 million followers. So to me, I think in the future and even now, actually, it's not even really the future. It's going to be driven by influencers. It's not going to be driven by a nonprofit setting up a Facebook page and then trying to attract people. It's going to be much more impactful of a nonprofit is like, okay, I'm a you know, I'm the Trevor Project. I'm going to go reach out to an influencer on Twitch. I'm going to go reach out to an influencer on Tik Tok and get in front of their audience and engage their audience. Yeah. So rather than us trying to like claw and nail and like pull teeth to get people to our page, I think we're going to have to start thinking about how we can work with these influencers or have these built in audiences and yes, lose a little bit of control. We're going to lose a little bit of control. They might, you know, drop an F-bomb. I don't know. They might, like not have the perfect public persona. You know, certainly do your research. But we are not going to have as much control in the future. And if we try to constantly have that control, we're not going to succeed.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily unique to just the nonprofit community, but nonprofits do feel a lot more, they want to be in more control of the content, the message. Even like the way that like the programs that they deliver are explained and you know and there could be there's I think a good thing to that but oftentimes it could be at the expense of growth or, you know, being more inclusive and so forth. And so why do you think that's been such a challenge and how do we get over that?

Julia Campbell It's just the status quo. It's what we learned. It's what we were brought up with. A lot of nonprofits, myself included, when I was a development director, started out as a volunteer coordinator, became a development director, was invited to be the executive director. And I thought, that's not how businesses work. Like businesses don't take an intern necessarily, and then they become the CEO. Oh, that's just not the way they work in nonprofits. For some reason, we just let our passion determine our business acumen and or our marketing skills, which is it's not necessarily correlation. And I also think because we have so many rules and regulations that we have to follow, the board is very skittish. I also think it's generational. A lot of nonprofit boards are older. Yeah, a lot of. Nonprofit boards that I work with. It's like therapy to talk to them about social media. The development director is 25 and the board is all in their seventies and they're like, Well, I don't know the tweeters, you know, I don't know the whatever. And it's, it's fine, but they don't really have the interest. They don't need to know. They don't really want to know. Yeah, they've been doing the same thing, writing grants, doing whatever for years so that that sort of barrier to innovation I think is generational, but it just really is the status quo. It's also how we are terrified to take risk, like you run a, you know, a startup or not, you establish company. But like when you run a startup, you take risks. Yeah. Like you have to to grab attention to actually do cool things. Nonprofits are so risk-averse, they can't take a single shred of risk. And that's why we kind of stick to things that we think we know were yeah, and we are so afraid. But then we see somebody else do it and we're like, Oh man, I wish I thought of that. Yeah. So I wish there was more risk taking.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, absolutely. And I think also like, you know, and this is sort of a part of the risk thing, is nonprofits, they want to be safe. And if you think about like...

Julia Campbell Non-controversial.

Justin Wheeler Non-controversial, as I say is like...

Julia Campbell Which is not a thing.

Justin Wheeler Right? Yeah. I mean because if someone...

Julia Campbell Everything is controversial.

Justin Wheeler Everything is.

Julia Campbell This rug is controversial. It's a rug offended someone today.

Justin Wheeler This is a pink rug. Not blue though.

Julia Campbell Someone is mad about it.

Justin Wheeler Someone is mad about it. But one of the things we actually, the exercise would go over quite a bit and Invisible Children before launching a campaign is we had this like polarization concept and we wanted to always be polarizing, but not like not in a way that was like just blatantly offensive. But we wanted to polarize... We wanted to, and so for us, it was Joseph Kony. He is the villain. And we are going to polarize Joseph Kony. We're going to make everyone hate Joseph Kony. Because it'll get people to talk. It'll get people to do things and then...

Julia Campbell It'll get conversations started.

Justin Wheeler Exactly, exactly. And so I think that that's something that nonprofits can get better at, is incorporating more controversy or polarization into their messaging and language.

Julia Campbell There's no attraction if there's not repulsion.

Justin Wheeler I like that.

Julia Campbell You can't attract people to you if you're not repelling other people. So I found that in my business, you know, if you've ever seen a zoom call with me, I have my wall of amazing women behind me. I wear my politics on my sleeve. I was considering wearing a protect trans youth shirt here today, and I thought I wanted to get like get a little dressed up. But I was like, I don't, I really wear my politics on my sleeve and it attracts people to me that I respect and want to work with. And then some people are like, Nope, and that's fine with me because it's just not a good fit. And I want nonprofits, they have to understand I literally do not care what your mission is. It is polarizing to someone and thinking of the little, tiny community arts theater where I live, they're called Stage 24. They there are people that are like, why are we going to give money to the arts? The arts don't do anything. The arts are all liberal. They're teaching our kids to be gay. Like we've actually gotten emails like that. And I'm thinking it's a community theater, it's based in community. It's like giving back. It's, you know, art is supposed to be creating empathy and telling stories and joining us all. Every single mission is going to be polarizing to someone, and you have to not get upset about that. One or two emails that you get about people that hate you like yeah, nor the haters worry about the people that love you and then keep feeding them what they love. Like they love the arts. They love the culture of inclusivity. They love that kids from all abilities and all walks of life and all economic, you know, status can go there. I think playing into your strengths and why people love you and not being worried about the one or two people that are going to hate you, people hate you no matter what. And it's just...

Justin Wheeler I look at it as...

Julia Campbell The way life is.

Justin Wheeler And you know, if...

Julia Campbell Like you have tattoos.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell Someone is going to come and be like, snare at you. It's just, you cannot please everybody.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. Actually, Kishshana and I were just actually talking about this a couple of hours ago. Yeah, you can't about that. You can't. And I think when you upset people, it's a sign that what you're doing is working. And you should, I think, should celebrate that.

Julia Campbell If you don't upset anyone, no one's listening.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell If I sent out an email, well I don't really a lot of my emails right now are not so controversial, but especially around during COVID, around Black Lives Matter, when there was that huge surge of violence against Asian-American Pacific Islanders, I would comment on it. I felt like it was my duty. I would send things out or talk about it.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Julia Campbell And I feel like if I didn't get any pushback or people saying they love it or hate it, no one's reading it.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, yeah.

Julia Campbell So what's worse, being ignored or getting a little bit of pushback?

Justin Wheeler Yeah. Totally. All right. So now onto the serious questions, the rapid-fire.

Julia Campbell I know, but I'm not going to even have one answer because it's like picking children. If you're going to ask me, who's your favorite child? I don't know.

Justin Wheeler How many kids do you have to do?

Julia Campbell Two.

Justin Wheeler What's their ages?

Julia Campbell Twelve and seven.

Justin Wheeler Twelve and seven. I have four.

Julia Campbell I feel like I knew this about you.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. So, we had twins that were a surprise, but ten, eight and six-year-olds. So it's a, It is a houseful. Okay. So you can just respond however you want. There's no wrong or right answer. This is your personal opinion and you may offend somebody, but that's okay.

Julia Campbell I'm sure I will.

Justin Wheeler And that's all right. So favorite movie or series?

Julia Campbell My, can I do both? My favorite movie is The Nightmare Before Christmas. My favorite TV series is any RuPaul's Drag Race, any country, all-stars, anything.

Justin Wheeler Okay. Awesome. Tacos or cheeseburgers?

Julia Campbell Tacos. Fish tacos, preferably.

Justin Wheeler Fish tacos, okay. Beach or Mountains?

Julia Campbell Beach.

Justin Wheeler Beach. That's right. Digital reading or an actual book?

Julia Campbell Actual book. But I do have that Remarkable tablet that I love. So writing, but I'd say an actual book.

Justin Wheeler But I feel like if it's digital, I don't read it like I...

Julia Campbell I can't concentrate on it.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. Yeah, it's and it just feels, it feels more sophisticated to be holding like the book...

Julia Campbell It actually does.

Justin Wheeler Specifically, actually, it's not a question on here but hard or softcover?

Julia Campbell Hardcover.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, yeah. That's almost like a given, right? Ice cream or froyo?

Julia Campbell Ice cream.

Justin Wheeler Ice cream? Football or fútbol?

Julia Campbell Baseball.

Justin Wheeler Okay, I was like, oh, like, did I say baseball? But there you go.

Julia Campbell Baseball and Basketball are all these sports I like. Are you going to me Moana or Encanto?

Justin Wheeler Aladdin, but that's a good one. That is hard.

Julia Campbell No, that's terrible. I wouldn't be able to.

Justin Wheeler You wouldn't be able to.

Julia Campbell Encanto. Moana is second. Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Justin Wheeler Okay. So. So you're saying Moana over Aladdin.

Julia Campbell Yes. Yeah but Moana is amazing because Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote most of the songs and Moana is just. But Encanto is wonderful you should watch it. you have four kids!

Justin Wheeler Oh yeah I've seen it.

Julia Campbell We don't talk about Bruno.

Justin Wheeler YeahJulia Campbell Now you got that in your head, sorry.

Justin Wheeler Now it's going to be in my head the rest of the day.

Julia Campbell You should ask people because that's a sure sign they don't have kids.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. That's true.

Julia Campbell You should be like we don't talk about... And if they're like, we don't know!

Justin Wheeler See if they finish the line. Yeah, there ya go. I like that. Julia, well, thank you so much for joining us.

Julia Campbell Thanks. Justin.

Justin Wheeler Have a great rest of the conference.

Julia Campbell Okay, you too.

Justin Wheeler Thank you.

Julia Campbell Thank you.

In this next segment, Cherian Koshy, author, mentor, and nonprofit investment specialist, makes taxes, stocks, and investments sound … fun.

Justin Wheeler Cherian, thank you so much for stopping by and joining the podcast.

Cherian Koshy My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Justin Wheeler You've been quite busy, a couple of sessions and on the board here at AFP. So how are you holding up?

Cherian Koshy I'm exhausted, but I'm loving it. It's great to see people. It's great to just meet people that you've only met on Zoom or on LinkedIn or something like that. And so it's really cool to just be able to be in person for this.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, it's great to be back in person for conferences all together. So you guys have put on a great event so far. Thanks a lot for all the hard work.

Cherian Koshy Thanks so much and thanks for being here. It means a lot. Yeah. Now that it's after the pandemic.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, absolutely. So. I want to talk about endowments. Yeah. With you. And...

Cherian Koshy I know a little bit about that.

Justin Wheeler A little bit about that. Have a couple, just kind of like 101 questions for our listeners and then want to kind of dig in to sort of like why? Or, actually hear from you whether or not this is a fit for all nonprofits.

Cherian Koshy Oh, I can answer that question right away. No.

Justin Wheeler No, okay good. We're gona stop now.

Cherian Koshy Are we done?

Justin Wheeler It's done. It'sover.

Cherian Koshy Fastest podcast ever.

Justin Wheeler There you go. Well, let's start with tell us a little bit about the company and where you guys, what you guys specialize in.

Cherian Koshy Absolutely. So I actually did fundraising, frontline fundraising for 25 years. And two different fundraisers or two different investment firms reached out to me during the pandemic because they were seeing a lot of nonprofits struggling with sustainability and they wanted to to see if I would come work with them to help their clients do better with regard to fundraising, but also kind of manage investments and figure out what that looked like. One was a big box firm name that you would know, and they had a $5 million minimum for assets and also wanted me to work with individual high net worth donors. That really wasn't my wheelhouse. That's not what I like was super passionate about. I work out a lot with small and mid-sized nonprofits, so this other firm only works with nonprofits and foundations, so. And they had no asset minimum. So if you have $100 or $1,000 to invest and start the process, of building that, and we can get into, kind of the different strategies for why you might do that. But the idea was that they were open. They were really excited about helping that part of the sector that wasn't being helped by other investment advisors. So that's how I ended up, you know, deciding to go with this firm. And the other part that's really cool is they will open up a brokerage account so that any nonprofit can accept a gift of stock and charge no commission.

Justin Wheeler Oh, wow.

Cherian Koshy Because what they realize this is just pushing a button. Yeah. So as long as you just get stock gifts from a donor and you're putting it in your checking account, you're not investing it. No fee.

Justin Wheeler Right.

Cherian Koshy I was like, I love that. These are my people.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, that's awesome. So share with us a little bit about sort of like the profile of nonprofits where this sort of investment vehicle makes sense. Yeah. For for the organization.

Cherian Koshy Sure. So the thing that people mostly think about are these big like Harvard size endowments, right? Where they're spinning off revenue and whatnot. And operationally, they're taking a portion of that whatever, three or four or 5% using that for whatever their programs are. That is one model. And we have clients that are really big that, you know, we have community foundations where we manage actually manage other advisors and put together like one stop shop for their board and then help them with with advice on investments as well. But most of our clients are the they have a Mackenzie Scott event where they have a donor who leaves them a bunch of money in their will. They don't need that money immediately and they don't want to put it in their checking account because inflation's going to tear into that, especially right now. Yeah. So like, what do we do? How do we make that work? So we develop out generally two different strategies. One is for those funds that you might need within the next 3 to 5 years, we'll conservatively invest that, but it has more liquidity to it. So if you need to pay bonuses or raises or something like that or pay for operations, you can do that out of that fund. And then we have sort of what we call the long term, forever money that you're starting to kind of build up. It's a vehicle so that you can talk about plan giving with your donors and say, hey, we've got this strategy for what that investment will look like if you want to in Dallas scholarship or you want to endow, you know, the food bank in some way or you want to make sure that these services are provided long after you're gone, just. And we can we can work with you on that as a donor. Here's what that would look like then. The thing to realize is that every investment advisor basically has the same tools, especially when it comes to nonprofits. There's yeah, you're not going to like invest it all in crypto or invest it all in Apple or something like that.

Justin Wheeler At the blackjack tables here.

Cherian Koshy Yeah, exactly. So it's only these broad based index funds and you're trying to optimize the best you can. Okay. But the thing that like the investment advisor that doesn't know nonprofits really well typically doesn't get is that you don't need a tax advantage for nonprofits. Right. They could nonprofits could theoretically day trade because they don't...

Justin Wheeler There's no long term or short term capital gains tax.

Cherian Koshy Yeah, exactly. There's no short term capital gains. So they could do that. We don't recommend that. Obviously, we don't do that for our clients. But you. Could be more proactive in managing assets rather than just saying like this Ron Coe, I'm dating myself, but like set it and forget it, machine where you don't never touch it, you can kind of say, and we do this all the time where we say, Hey, this is what we're seeing in the market right now. We're recommending this the shift.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. And there's no tax harvesting or anything like that needed.

Cherian Koshy Right, exactly.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Cherian Koshy But I think the key is, you know, to your first question, it's not right for every nonprofit, but it is right, different vehicles are right at for different nonprofits.

Justin Wheeler I mean, because I think like I mean, nonprofits of all sizes should think about their long term sort of financial plan. And I mean, depending on the size, I mean, everyone has, you know, committed wealthy donors who one day, you know, could pass on a nice endowment or whatever it might be.

Cherian Koshy And some of them you don't even know. Right. So what one of the things we encourage all the time is sort of this passive marketing of what you have available so that someone who doesn't want to tell you that they're going to put you in the will knows, ah they have a strategy, they have a plan. I won't overload this organization by dropping $1,000,000 on them or even $100,000 like, someone dies and they have their house and they want to sell their house and give it to the organization. That's honestly like a big situation that happens a lot.

Justin Wheeler So how much how much money is in planned giving? Like I mean, what's the, what data do you have around, like, how big is this market?

Cherian Koshy It's gigantic. There's 10,000 people who are retiring every day right now. And so the baby boomers are, some of them have extended their retirement plan because of the pandemic. Yeah, but the general idea is that planned giving right now represents the largest wealth transfer in human history. It's trillions of dollars in money that's moving from the boomers to Generation X and millennials. A lot of that is transferring in stocks.

Justin Wheeler Oh, interesting.

Cherian Koshy So that is a considerable opportunity. And for nonprofits to be able to kind of tap into that, really see what that looks like. So to modify my answer, I don't know that investments are right for every nonprofit, but every nonprofit should be able to accept a gift of stock. Because you don't know where that is going to come from or what donor will need to do that, honestly and so just having that vehicle available is important for every nonprofit.

Justin Wheeler It's like very rarely have I seen it being easy to give stock, right? It always involves downloading something or connecting brokerage. And so do you guys make that easier for for nonprofits or is it still...

Cherian Koshy So honestly, we don't. I'll be totally honest. The way that FINRA and the SEC works, it requires you to say, yes, I want to transfer these assets in this form to this to this charity. There's not a lot of ways to get around that unless you transfer your assets to some side of some sort of holding organization that then transfers it to the nonprofit and then somebody's got to get paid to do that.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, yeah.

Cherian Koshy Our view is if you're going to give $5,000, I think the average stock gift is like $6,000. So you're going to give $6,000 to an organization and you want it to be used, we don't want to take anything out of that. So there are companies out there that will charge like 8%, 10%. And for a small nonprofit, I have, I sit on the board of an organization, they got a $50,000 stock gift, the broker charge them 2%.

Justin Wheeler Wow.

Cherian Koshy $2,000 to a nonprofit.

Justin Wheeler For pushing a button.

Cherian Koshy That's literally pushing a button. Yeah, that's a lot of money.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. So with today's volatility in the markets, do you do you recommend nonprofits to to liquidate the stock donations immediately or to hold them? And obviously, it depends on organizations, cash flow and so forth.

Cherian Koshy Absolutely.

Justin Wheeler But what's your perspective on it?

Cherian Koshy I would start with with the cash flow needs, of course, of the organization, we'd work through those specific scenarios. A lot of times gift acceptance policies or organizational policies around stock gifts we'll talk about liquidating immediately. That's not actually the right answer because you might, you might have a dividend coming up on an Apple stock or something like that, and because of that, if we waited two days, the nonprofit would end up with more money. So that's one of the things that we'll look at very intently and make sure that this is the right answer for the nonprofit. But in general, you know, it probably is the case that most of the time you just liquidate it, use it for operational dollars. In that situation, yeah.

Justin Wheeler That makes sense. You know going back to plan giving here real quick one of the like I think barriers at least I don't know like I don't have any like data to back this up. And I would be curious to hear what your thought on it, is I think that like nonprofit professionals are in this like grind, constant grind. I've got to hit the annual budget, right? January 1st starts over again, I gotta hit this number and so like planned giving is much more like long term.

Cherian Koshy Yeah.

Justin Wheeler You don't see like the benefits of your, of your efforts like right away.

Cherian Koshy Yeah.

Justin Wheeler And so I wonder like how much of that actually prevents organizations from having a more strategic approach.

Cherian Koshy It doesn't. That happens around the boardroom table and with with senior executives all the time. They're like, why would we think about planned giving? We need money to pay people now and to do these programs now. There's some really great research from Dr. Russell James out of Texas Tech University that talks about the fact that when people make planned gifts, their annual gifts increase.

Justin Wheeler Oh, interesting.

Cherian Koshy So and it, I mean, it makes sense from a psychological perspective. If you are, if you're putting 20% of your like future estate into a nonprofit, that's a pretty significant psychological connection that you're making with what you're donating to that organization. So you want to see that organization succeed today?

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Cherian Koshy You want to make sure that they've got the resources. So we, so his longitudinal study identifies that annual fund gifts increase when you have planned giving donors.

Justin Wheeler Any examples of like organizations whether you work with them or not that you've seen that have a really effective planned giving strategy? And what do they do that sets them apart?

Cherian Koshy I would say everyone that is doing some form of planned giving is doing it well because they're telling donors.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Cherian Koshy Right. Yeah, exactly. They're doing it. They're telling donors that this is an opportunity and not a lot of donors know that that's an option. And then you can get more complicated but I don't think you need to. I think there are some particular organizations that are really smart about planned gifts and I think the common thread is that they are intentional about reaching out to people based upon data or relationship conversations. What I like to do, and Dr. James talks about this as well, is when you're having conversations with people you're truly listening for, what are those cues. What are the things that might indicate, and one of the biggest ones is I'd love to do more, but I can't.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Cherian Koshy And that's where you can say, let's talk more about that. What is it that you really want to do? And how can we talk about a gift in your will or a gift of an IRA, which is a really smart thing to gift rather than pass on to your heirs.

Justin Wheeler Why is that? From a tax...

Cherian Koshy Yeah, from a tax perspective?

Justin Wheeler Okay.

Cherian Koshy So right now and we'll see if the law changes, but right now, if you give your kids equal shares of the IRA, they've got to take it out in a period of time. Now, depending on your age and their age and their income, they've got to pay tax on top income as income for that IRA disbursement. So it's really smart if you have other assets to get those to your kids and then gift an IRA to a charity.

Justin Wheeler One last question. Yeah. And then I'll let you go. Since I know you're so busy, well I do have some rapid fire questions real quick I want to ask you real quick.

Cherian Koshy Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Wheeler On this note of tax.

Cherian Koshy Sure.

Justin Wheeler Are there any benefits in planned giving, and I think you maybe just answered this like, you know, give your IRA instead of your house or something like that. But like for like an estate, right, someone that designates 20% their estate to like a charity, is there a right way to go about doing that so that the family who's left behind isn't left with a larger tax bill? Or do they do they receive impact from that?

Cherian Koshy Yeah, absolutely. So when I was a fundraiser, that was the difficult question to have because I was the fundraiser, not the finance advisor, financial planner. So now we get to have those conversations with donors on behalf of the nonprofit so they don't get into the sticky stuff. But there are absolutely tax wise ways to make gifts at the end of life, but they're also tax wise ways to make gifts today. So you get an inheritance from your parents. You have an income that you've got to deal with right now. You can structure gifts that will pay you right now for a gift that you make to charity or pay your kids money, right now or in the future, because you've made a gift to charity. So these things are going to become really more popular as estates get settled. But a lot of times we think about estates and they're $25 million things. There are people with houses that have appreciated during the pandemic. They're sitting on a two, three, $400,000 house, they got to figure out what to do with that. And what we always say is you'd rather that go to a cause that you love and care about than to the federal government.

Justin Wheeler Federal Government, absolutely!

Cherian Koshy How do we make this work so that you can do what you're really passionate about?

Justin Wheeler Have you found that like donors are sophisticated with, on the tax side of of giving? Or do you think that it requires a lot of education?

Cherian Koshy Sometimes they do. Sometimes they have an advisor that's really smart about it and really understands charitable giving, and they can do that. The nice thing for us is when because I come from a fundraising background and our organization only works with nonprofits, when we pick up the phone, we're like, Justin, thank you so much of this gift. What made you make the decision to make a gift to this organization? This is the impact that you're having because we know who our clients are...

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Cherian Koshy And then we can feed that back to the development director, or the staff to say, here's how you can follow up with this person, appropriately.

Justin Wheeler Right.

Cherian Koshy But the nice thing is that some donors are like, I've heard about this. The fundraiser told me about this. How can we make this happen? Well, advise them. Provide them with the right tools to be able to maximize what they want to achieve. Other times we have donors that call and they're like, We don't know. We just want to give some money.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, yeah.

Cherian Koshy You know, and in those situations will help work through their circumstance. We don't advise individuals, but we can advise them on that particular gift to the nonprofit.

Cherian Koshy Got it. Yeah.

Justin Wheeler All right, let's do see some rapid fire questions.

Cherian Koshy Absolutely, knock it out.

Justin Wheeler All right. The serious questions.

Cherian Koshy Okay.

Justin Wheeler All right. Here we go. There's no wrong or right answer.

Cherian Koshy All right.

Justin Wheeler Movies are series?

Cherian Koshy Probably more series, but depends on the movie., but more series.

Justin Wheeler Serious. Do you have a favorite series right now.

Cherian Koshy Have you seen Severinse?

Justin Wheeler Yes, I'm watching that right now.

Cherian Koshy You're not done yet?

Justin Wheeler I'm on episode four.

Cherian Koshy Okay. I'm not going to spoil it. It is mind blowing. Mind blowing at the end! Let's talk about it after.

Justin Wheeler Okay. All right. Yeah. Tacos or cheeseburgers?

Cherian Koshy That's like picking between my kids.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Cherian Koshy No, I can't do that.

Justin Wheeler You can't do that. All right, so you're saying both.

Cherian Koshy Is there a taco cheeseburger. That should be a thing.

Justin Wheeler Now it is. Now it is!

Cherian Koshy Now it is. Trademarked.

Justin Wheeler Beach of the Mountains?

Cherian Koshy Ah, beach.

Justin Wheeler Beach. Yeah, me too. Digital reading or an actual book?

Cherian Koshy Ah, Digital, actually, audio book is.

Justin Wheeler That's, that's the way to go for you?

Cherian Koshy Yeah, that's easier for me. Yeah.

Justin Wheeler Okay. Okay.

Cherian Koshy Easier for me.

Justin Wheeler Ice cream or froyo?

Cherian Koshy I'm lactose intolerant.

Justin Wheeler So none?

Cherian Koshy Neither.

Justin Wheeler Neither. Gelato, maybe?

Cherian Koshy Yeah, maybe.

Justin Wheeler Because I think it's dairy free, isn't it?

Cherian Koshy It's got to be special, but, yeah. Not a big sweets person.

Justin Wheeler All right. Ah, football or fútbol?

Cherian Koshy Football.

Justin Wheeler Football, okay. So, like, you call soccer...

Cherian Koshy I call fútbol, soccer.

Justin Wheeler Okay. Got it. And then last one here, important, Moana or Aladdin?

Cherian Koshy Aladdin.

Justin Wheeler Aladdin. What about your kids?

Cherian Koshy They love everything. My my little girl loves Encanto right now, so that's, that's kind of her big thing.

Justin Wheeler Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Cherian Koshy Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Justin Wheeler Thank you.

Cherian Koshy Thanks.

Alright, Rachel Muir is our final segment in this episode. Rachel is a nonprofit consultant, trainer, and speaker. She makes us laugh, high-five, and face our failures. head-on.

Justin Wheeler Rachel, thank you so much for joining the Nonstop Nonprofit Podcast. How are you today?

Rachel Muir I'm doing awesome. Thanks for having me as your guest.

Justin Wheeler Absolutely. Thank you. How has AFP been going for you?

Rachel Muir It's fantastic. It's great to see everybody in person and tons of great energy here in Vegas. Lots of great sessions.

Justin Wheeler Absolutely. How are... You had these sessions yesterday? What were the topics that year?

Rachel Muir So yeah. So I kicked off with Cherian Koshy and Tammy Zonker with what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Our biggest fundraising fails and how we survive them.

Justin Wheeler Love it.

Rachel Muir And it was awesome. Tons of vulnerability and inspiration and humor. And then the next session that I did was with Rachel Clemons from Mighty Citizen, and it was winning fundraising campaigns that hit the fundraising jackpot. And it was a pure 75 minutes of eye candy fundraising campaigns that worked to inspire and get people, you know, excited about what they can do. And lots of for-profit examples, too. Really great customer centric marketing.

Justin Wheeler I need to ask about both the failures and the successes.

Rachel Muir Oh my, Yeah.

Justin Wheeler So tell me about some of the... I'm a big fan. So I think actually, I mean, failure is is a great thing because if we learn from it, we can improving it and get better. I'm a big fan of trying to fail as fast as you can instead of, you know, prolonging the failure. But what have been some of of the failures or what were some of the failures that you all discussed?

Rachel Muir There were so many hilarious ones. I mean, one I have to my friend Lynn, our who fundraising donor guru, she's amazing. She shared one where she accidentally fed a donor potpourri. That was pretty hilarious. I shared one where I confused capacity with generosity. And I went and asked a donor for much too large of a gift without properly cultivating them beforehand and never made that mistake again. But I will say, regardless of the mistake, mistakes are what makes us human. And sharing your mistakes with your staff is what makes you warm and relatable and allows everyone to not make that mistake again. Yeah, and one of my very favorite discovery questions when I was a donor to ask is, what's your favorite mistake? And I encourage people to think about like, what's your favorite mistake? Because, you know, for most for most fundraisers, I would say, oh my God, I solicited a gift. And then they said, Oh, well, I make my giving decisions with my partner, wife, husband, best friend's psychic, 12 year old son. And you won't that make that mistake again? But what's your favorite mistake can be a really great opportunity to learn from others were embarrassed about the mistakes we made, but it's that vulnerability that makes us attractive to other people. I mean, it's what makes us human and what makes other people drawn to us.

Justin Wheeler Like, much more authentic?

Rachel Muir Exactly.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. On the winning side, best campaigns. That's the eye candy that you mentioned. What were some of the highlights?

Rachel Muir Yeah. So okay, so one of those that is so fantastic and everyone died laughing and, this is it's a toilet paper company and it's called Who Gives a crap. And they did this this crowdfunding campaign to get started and they called it the sit down and the founder was literally sitting on a toilet until he raised like $50,000.

Justin Wheeler Wow. It was like a lockdown on the toilet.

Rachel Muir A lockdown on the toilet.

Justin Wheeler Interesting.

Rachel Muir Hilarious. But what's great and I encourage everyone check out www.whogivesacrap.org. It's a B Corp and what they do is 50% of the profits go to develop sanitation projects and latrines in developing countries. So, you know, like so many people in the world that are living without access to clean toilets and it causes all kinds of diseases that can be easily prevented. And so they literally give away 50% of their profits. But what's really special and unique about them that everyone can steal is their customer centric marketing. Their marketing is they immediately they make you feel like a donor from the get go like the the auto email response is "congratulations Rachel you just did a great thing. You're saving people in the developing world right now while you go potty!" And then they just go on and on. It's, it's joke after joke, but it's also they ask all these really great survey questions to get to know you.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. It sounds like it's a very engaging...

Rachel Muir Last question is, are you a folder or a scruncher? So it's hilarious. And everyone can learn how to think about the donor journey or you're, you know, just your constituent journey from their marketing. Yeah. So that's just one really great example. But there are tons of great examples.

Justin Wheeler On that, it sounded like there was like a lot of humor a part of like this campaign. Nonprofits are normally pretty serious. So do you think that nonprofits can incorporate more humor into their fundraising and appeals and just overall donor engagement?

Rachel Muir Okay. This is a great question. And so to speak to that, I want to share a totally free tip, totally free tool, that's an endless point of great inspiration. And that is Humans of New York, Facebook. Because every day, Humans of New York and obviously you're following them, they share a news story about someone. They have an attention grabbing headline. That person's vulnerable. They're sharing their story. And whether it's like a gay teen coming out to their intolerant parents or, you know, a vet who is suffering from PTSD. You are bought into that story and you want to know what happens next.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Rachel Muir So I would say but I think the biggest thing about Humans of New York is the vulnerability and the authenticity. Not every nonprofit can pull off humor. Some nonprofits can, and they can be cheeky and they can be silly and they can make fun of themselves. And that can be a great way to endear yourself to get your your emails opened. [00:06:05]Some nonprofits can't but all nonprofits can use vulnerability and authenticity. And that's what fundraising is. I mean, at the end of the day, all fundraising is is a quest for empathy. And if you're not using... If you're not being vulnerable and if you're not sharing stories that, you know, draw me in and include conflict, why would I care? I mean, the whole goal is to make me feel something. [27.6s] Yeah, all... You have to use empathy and emotion, fundraising. You're not being manipulative to do it. You're being smart because all that works.

Justin Wheeler Totally. I say I helped build an organization called Invisible Children. Back in my fundraising days.

Rachel Muir Oh, my goodness. Amazing organization.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, it was a very fun season of life. But we had a... When we were when we talked about like creating like media or campaigns, we had a rule it was we call it a golden rule and it was make people laugh before they cry. Yeah. And the reason why the reason we did that is we felt like if we could if we could get you to laugh, like we did something that bought you in for trust. And then we get really heavy on like talk about like, yeah, the real problem, you know, we have this like sort of trust established and obviously you can't do it. You can't do it with every campaign or, or every piece of media that you create and every cause. It may not be. You cannot be... And it may not be super...

Rachel Muir But you can do it and you can do it in unexpected ways. I remember seeing an ad for planned giving that was a zoo and it had a picture, a close up of two elephants. But it's like it's like you're it's like you're walking behind the elephants and all you can see is their butts. And it said, well, you leave a little bit behind. And it's like, that's funny. Yeah. And you know, and I saw another one that was this guy in this, you know, this, you know, like 40 year old guy looks kind of like Weird Al Yankovic, obnoxious velvet suit, you know, like, just looks like a crazy person, just dressed like a nut. And it says, Leave a charity in your will or estate. Be the eccentric uncle you wish you were. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah, be that eccentric, like rich uncle wearing like a velvet Gucci suit. Why not? You know, so I think you can have fun. And even with a mission that's really heavy, you cansStill, there are opportunities to be playful. Yeah. And there are always opportunities to be vulnerable, you know, making fun of yourself, making it, you know, we're all human. And one of the examples that I actually shared in the worst mistakes was one from one of my clients. I've a membership program called the League of Extraordinary Fundraisers and one of my members in my program and this is happens a lot of members, there's a data glitch, right? Did that ever happen to you? A data glitch?

Justin Wheeler Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, totally.

Rachel Muir And, you know, the the letter was addressed to, you know, Alex, but it didn't say Dear Alex, it said Dear Rachel. And so Alex is opening this letter and it's like, wait, what? She did it a oops, campaign, the oops emails. She did a really cute oops postcard with a photo of a kid, which is what they're serving. Yeah. You know, making a oops face like a face. Like, she just made a really big blunder. She raised more money from that appeal. She had donors calling her on the phone, telling her, don't worry about it. Stuff happens, it's fine. I mean, she developed she raised like almost $40,000 more money.

Justin Wheeler Oh wow.

Rachel Muir She had a better open rate and she developed a lot of new relationships and strengthened other relationships. She came out in front of it and said, I messed up.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, I just acknowledged it, head on.

Rachel Muir And she also did a really great job of integrating what happened back into her mission. And she said, you're. I want to reassure you that your data is safe, just like the kids are safe. Thanks to you supporting Idaho Youth Ranch.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Rachel Muir Just genius.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. Yeah, she got ahead of it, address it in a humorous way, but also took it serious and said, Hey, don't worry, your data is safe. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I realize the probably should have done this up front, but I didn't ask you to share a little bit more about yourself, your story, an a little bit more about your business.

Rachel Muir Yeah. So my background is in nonprofits. I started a nonprofit called Girl Start to Empower Girls in Math, Science, Engineering and Technology when I was 26 with $500 on a credit card and raised $10 million. And now Girl Start is about to turn 25 years old now. But what I do is I do consulting for nonprofits. I have a membership where I teach nonprofits and I do a lot of training and speaking the session that I mentioned, in case anyone wants to grab this on the fundraising examples, I made a download and people can grab it at www.rachelmuir.com/jackpot, but it has all the examples that we shared and links to some of them. Some of them were videos. Like the Who Gives a Crap. But there are examples from all over the world and we also have the results in there too of how those campaigns did.

Justin Wheeler Got it, awesome. What is the next seven months as we enter 2022, which is crazy that we're almost halfway through? What are you excited about? Any projects are working on or campaigns that you're helping launch?

Rachel Muir Well, I think the most exciting thing for me is that travel is back and it's really nice to see people and reconnect with people. And it's been a really long time in lockdown. And so it's really nice, just like things coming back. And I feel like it's not just I mean, just there's this fundraising conference, but also for nonprofits, you know, and I think I'm also excited about some of the things that we learned. Like, I feel like there are lots of positives of organizations going out of their comfort zone and learning how to do things like video email, and using texting for stewardship and lots of other things that we did in the pandemic that I hope will continue to be technology tools that people use moving forward.

Justin Wheeler Absolutely. Yeah. There was an acceleration of tech adoption in the last couple of years, and I hope that it continues and nonprofits, you know, take that and continue building on top of it, because I think we saw a lot of really great innovation and I hope it doesn't get left behind.

Rachel Muir Absolutely.

Justin Wheeler Got some Rapid Fire questions now for you.

Rachel Muir Okay.

Justin Wheeler So there's no wrong answer. Movies. Are you a movies or series person?

Rachel Muir Oh God both. I mean, both. But I mean, right now I'm totally watching Ozark. So no spoilers, I guess and Better Call Saul.

Justin Wheeler Yeah.

Rachel Muir Final season. So I mean, I miss I miss movies. I miss, like going...

Justin Wheeler Going to the theater.

Rachel Muir Going to the theater.I haven't done that yet.

Justin Wheeler I feel like there hasn't been like any great movies lately.

Rachel Muir Stuff didn't get released.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. People aren't going theaters. Yeah. Tacos or cheeseburgers?

Rachel Muir Definitely tacos. I'm from Texas. I'm from Austin, Texas. I mean, yeah, Tacos that's like an entire food group along with queso. Those are two seperat food groups.

Justin Wheeler Oh, that sounds so good right now.

Rachel Muir And then margaritas.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. Oh, queso. I didn't have lunch today so that like just made me more hungry. Digital reading or an actual book?

Rachel Muir I actually like an actual book in my hands. I, like the whole experience of like having a book.

Justin Wheeler Hardcover or softcover?

Rachel Muir I'm happy with either. I usually end up with a hardcover because it's like something I want to get right away. One of the best books I read recently was The Midnight Library, and it's a fascinating book about like that explores kind of different options of what like that movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow in the nineties of like, what if you chosen a different path? What would your life have been like now? And it's a library where you can go and like check out other parts of your life.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, interesting. And you said you finished it or you just started it.

Rachel Muir Yeah, no, I finished it. I couldn't stop reading. I couldn't put it down.

Justin Wheeler It sounds fascinating. Ice cream or froyo?

Rachel Muir Oh, my gosh. I'm, I love them both. I love them both. I like, froyo with Mochis.

Justin Wheeler Okay. Congratulations, you're the first person to say Froyo today.

Rachel Muir Sweet!

Justin Wheeler Yeah, so you are unique. Football or fútbol?

Rachel Muir Oh, my gosh. I totally am not a sports person. I literally just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Justin Wheeler I am exactly the same. The only reason why I sports is on in my house is if a friend comes over to watch sports, but not sports person. Okay, last one. Moana or Aladdin?

Rachel Muir Moana.

Justin Wheeler Moana. Nice. I mean, it's not classic yet because it's only been out for a couple of years, but I can watch it over and over.

Rachel Muir Have you seen Encanto?

Justin Wheeler Oh, yeah.

Rachel Muir So good.

Justin Wheeler Oh, yeah. Our kids love it. And it is a tear jerker.

Rachel Muir Yeah. The music's amazing.

Justin Wheeler Well, thank you so much for joining us

Rachel Muir Thanks for having me!

Justin Wheeler I look forward... We got to we got to bring you on for a longer episode.

Rachel Muir Yeah, I'm all over it.

Justin Wheeler Where we can kind of dig into something more topical, but thank you. So much for being here.

Rachel Muir My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit!

This podcast is brought to you by your friends at Funraise. Nonprofit fundraising software, built by nonprofit people. If you’d like to continue the conversation, find me on LinkedIn or text me at 562.242.8160. And don't forget to get your next episode the second it hits the internets. Go to nonstopnonprofitpodcast.com and sign up for email notifications today.

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