Ep. 129: Creating Influencer Partnerships on Zero Budget: The Secret to Fundraising Success
EPISODE 129
Creating Influencer Partnerships on Zero Budget: The Secret to Fundraising Success
About the Episode:
Today, we’re talking about a game-changer: influencer partnerships and why they’re the fastest, most impactful way to raise funds, build awareness, and grow your nonprofit—without spending a dollar. If your nonprofit isn’t already tapping into the creator economy, you’re leaving money (and so much impact) on the table.
I’m breaking down how free influencer partnerships work and why they’re not just for big-name nonprofits. Whether you’re running a small shop or a million-dollar organization, I’m here to show you how to build authentic, no-budget collaborations with creators who want to use their platforms for good. Get ready for real talk, real examples, and actionable tips to attract influencers, activate your Social Street Team™, and crush your next campaign with style.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Debunking myths about influencers and how they can be part of your mission without a budget
Why influencer marketing isn’t a trend—it’s the future of fundraising
Christina’s proven method for activating influencers, creators, and local businesses to amplify your cause
Case studies that prove it works: learn how nonprofits have doubled their goals with influencer support
How to attract the right influencers: it’s about bold storytelling and showing them why your cause matters
Why NOW is the time to act and how to make 2025 the year of charge
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“You're not paying influencers – they are a curated group of partners who want to do this for you.”
“92% of people trust influencers more than traditional ads.”
“Influencers are leading decision-making for over half of millennials and Gen Z.”
“Influencers are creators, so they are looking for organizations that are mission-aligned, that are inspiring, that feel different.”
“If your messaging sounds like it is from 10 years ago, you won't attract anyone.”
“Over 50% of influencers want to work with purpose-driven brands. They want social change and impact and to see the world left better than today.”
“The future of fundraising is online.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 00:00Welcome back. I'm excited to dig into today's episode, because I feel like I'm pulling back the curtain on a lot of the myths and a lot of the maybe stereotypes around working with influencers, around what influencer marketing is, around the Creator economy. Today, I'm going to share what it is, what it isn't, and why it is the fastest way to fundraise with zero budget. Yes, I said that with zero budget. So I want to just start by like level setting. Let's get real. If your organization is not already leveraging influencer partnerships to fundraise, to advocate, to build up awareness for your cause, you're leaving money and impact on the table. Period full stop, it is 2025, now it is time to make this a huge part, a huge piece of your marketing and fundraising strategy. So today I'm going to pull back the curtain on how these partnerships can work the way that I teach it the social Street Team method, and why it's so important to find that alignment for those free partnerships with influencers and with the Creator economy. If you haven't listened to the previous few episodes, go back and listen to those first. Those will help kind of level set on what I mean when I'm saying influencers and the creator economy and things like that. That that will help kind of give you the backstory there, even if, and I want you to just stay with me, even if you feel like our nonprofit is too small, our nonprofit is not known enough. None of that's true. The method that I teach works for small shops. The method that I teach works for large, established organizations. I want you to just think about for a second that the influencer is not thinking to themselves, this potential partner isn't thinking to themselves. What is the biggest name I can partner with? That, isn't it? When it comes to social impact, they're thinking, Where can I make the biggest difference? And oftentimes the answer to that question is a small to mid sized organization. Okay,
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So let's establish some common misgivings that I hear when I talk to organizations about influencers, they say, Oh, well, influencers only care about partnering with big brands, right? We're not the big habitat. We're not the big Cancer Foundation. We're not the big established organization in our local town, right? Or maybe we don't have a budget to pay them, and that may be the first one I want to just go ahead and debunk. The process I teach is not paid advertising. You are not paying the influencer or paying the Creator to post about your nonprofit. No. There is no exchange of advertising dollars here. This is not a Facebook ad you're running. This is something that is a win, win. This is a curated invitation only group. We can have an application. You're literally inviting them to be a part of your very exclusive Ambassador team, your social street team, right where you're inviting them on. And so this isn't just open to anyone and everyone who wants to join. You want to have some exclusivity with it, right? And you want to have that exclusivity, and you want to have that buy in from the person that they in fact, want to use their social platform for good. And by the way, they do. We have the stats to back it up, so many non profit or so many influencers and so many creators have hundreds of 1000s of followers, and part of their model, part of the thing that they are so hungry for, is this give back model, this social impact, this movement model, and you are finding the people who care about the cause that you serve, the people that You serve, and they are raising their hand saying, How can I help? That is why it works like a charm every single time, and it isn't about paying them to post No, no,
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another common mistake that I hear is that sounds trendy, but it's not realistic for us, or that's not for us. Like I'm talking about influencer marketing, like it's some sort of a trend that is in and out, and I've got to tell you, this trend air quotes is just going up into the right I have a slide coming up in my webinar, and it shows the rise of the Creator economy and influencers. And you guys, it is huge, huge. It is not stalling out. It is growing the past decade. All it's done is grow now. If we contrast that with the rise of direct mail, it's flat. It is flat. If you contrast that with the with trying to find some other trend in the nonprofit world and say, Oh well, what about direct mail? What about grants? What about galas? What about this? Y'all, those are flat at best. The only thing that is rising in this growth is the creator economy, and that's why I really want you to go through this with an open mind and listen today, and if you're interested, but you're like, Oh, I know leadership is going to push back. Send them this episode. Send them this episode. Okay? Because the influencer marketing industry alone is worth $21 billion the Creator economy, which includes creators and influencers, And the Creator economy is $127 billion economy and growing. So this is not some sort of trend that is coming and going and will be gone next year. It is growing and so many for profits, years and years ago, really decades ago, shifted their model from paid advertising and traditional print media, and they said, We got to invest in these influencers, and they and all they've done is continue to invest more because the ROI is so high, it's 5x of every dollar spent. So what I want to get from you is, I'm sharing these for profit stats, but I want you to understand you're not paying these influencers. These are curated group of partners, right? Who want to do this for you, and I will share some case studies with you as we go a long way. So if you think that they're expensive to work with, spoiler alert, they're not, because, again, this is a free partnership in the same way that maybe your board members right, you're not paying your board members right. I want to go and give this distinction, though, this doesn't feel like board or committee work. It feels very light. It feels very fun for the influencer or the creator to participate in, okay, maybe your board doesn't understand the ROI, and this is really, really common. They think, what is the value anyway, of some celebrity posting about our cause, our fundraiser, on Instagram. Anyway. Why does that matter? It matters because that influencer that has 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, or sometimes even millions of followers, those people are engaged, those people already know like and trust that creator. So when that creator says, this is set, this is a brand I care about. These are the best socks. Think about the rise of the Stanley Cup. Influencers solely are the reason why the Stanley Cup is what it is they were going. Stanley was going to retire that cup that now people are lined outside of target when they have release days for it. Stanley was going to discontinue that cup. Two influencers said, We love this cup. Please make more of them. And it snowballed. Okay? It snowballed because when those two influencers shared with their audience everything that they loved about the cup, why it was so great for moms and it was such a great cup, and then they started to see that trust build. They saw a huge surge in sales with that. Then they started to have some exclusivity, and they released certain colors and certain in certain limited editions, right? And that snowball effect just continued. That worked. Not because Stanley said, Let's release, you know, purple as our new Stanley Cup color? No, it's because those influencers started talking to their audience, saying, What do you want to see more of we're excited about this color, and boom, right? That endorsement is worth so much more than you are giving your audience the opportunity to even think about what is the power of an endorsement. You just pause and ask yourself that question, What is that power of an endorsement? What would it look like if a thought leader who aligned with our cause endorsed it? What would it look like if a wellness blogger endorsed your environmental nonprofit? What would be the value of that? What would be the value of a foodie influencer who talks about new restaurants around town, then endorsing your local food bank huge, right? Do you see the natural alignment there?
And y'all think about this, 92% of people trust influencers more than traditional ads. Imagine that level of trust endorsing your nonprofit, and it makes sense, because an influencer is one human to another, saying, I like this, and I think you will too. An ad is just like spaghetti on the wall. It's a billboard, right? It's just putting it out to everyone. Whereas influencers there has that natural alignment and that trust built, Influencers are leading decision making for over half of millennials and Gen Z. So. If you're not where you where they are, you're invisible. Think about that. Half of the decision making is through influencers for Gen Z and millennials. So I want you to think about if we had a social street team with 10 people on it, which a lot of my clients start out with, that they start out with five or 10. You're saving at least five hours of fundraising time per week, because you start to have this army mobilizing, bringing up your cause, bringing up your advocacy, bringing up your fundraising, right? Because they're literally using their own platforms for good, and that's why this year, I'm advising every nonprofit I work with to put influencer partnerships front and center with their revenue strategy. It is the fastest way to scale your nonprofit, to scale your visibility and to scale your funding. Why you don't need a big budget to do this, you need bold messaging that stands out. You need to prioritize this, instead of prioritizing some old best practices that don't work, that are low converting and that are time sucks, you know, like the annual event, right? So here's the catch, here's the catch, here's the distinction. If your brand is outdating. Your storytelling is boring, your messaging feels transactional. The Creator economy, they'll just keep swiping right. They'll keep scrolling. Influencers are creators, so they are looking for organizations that are mission aligned, that are Aspire inspiring, that actually feel different. And that's that's kind of the that's the edge, right? That's why, if you've said, if you say to me, Christina, I've already tried this, it isn't working. That's the edge. That's what you're rubbing up against. Is the fact that your current the status quo, quo. If I go to your website, if I read your last fundraising appeal. If I check out your last online fundraising page, if I check out your Instagram, y'all, they're boring. They're stuck in the zone of indifference. They're stuck in this very vanilla, very safe, very status quo messaging at best. And that is like the first step you've got to hit, like, find some fire in what you do every organization, I want you to ask yourself this, you are not the only organization that serves the community you serve most likely. So, for example, if you serve the home homeless sector in your town, there's probably another organization that does that too, or something very, very similar. What makes you different? How are your values different? How is your voice different? How is your founder different? How are your programs different? How are your services different? Where's the fire? What's the why behind that? When you answer those questions, you answer them in a very bold, very even, like, like the two of us having coffee, layman's kind of way, people will be attracted to it, and influencers will raise their hand going, Hey, how can I help? Hey, I saw your reel and it it caught my attention. I want to be a part of this. How can I help? So you want to make sure that you're doing like an internal audit of are we attracting people to want to be part of our movement, to be want to be part of social change? And if the answer is no, the good news I have for you is that's okay, we can change that, and it's actually a lot easier than you think. We teach a process inside my coaching program, the club. We teach you how to do this, right? So we teach you how to make those influencer relationships, how it's a little like dating, right? Where it's like you start to, like, warm people up before you ask them to be part of your street team. We teach you how to brand it. We teach the entire process, but it does start with you in auditing the messaging, the words, the stories that you're using.
I want to share a few case studies with you. I want to share a case study that I found in the wild. I will be sharing some details about this in my upcoming webinar, so make sure you click the link in the show notes to what to register for. That one that I found in the wild was there is a Swifty, a Taylor Swift Fan, and she is a creator, and she has over half a million followers on Instagram. She probably has that many on tick tock. I'm on Instagram. That's what I checked. And what she's doing is she's going to like as many Taylor Swift shows as possible on this recent tour, and she live streams them. And when she live streams them, to catch the live stream, you can make a donation to a non profit of her choice in the town that Taylor's in. So if Taylor's in Atlanta, she's part this, this creator, not Taylor Swift, but the actual creator who's live streaming this is partnering with, you know, a local, maybe women's shelter in Atlanta, or something like that. And she's going to all of like, it's just wild to see the partners that this creator has partnered with. It's wild to see the impact of. I'm talking like 60k raised, 40k raised, starting these fundraisers on behalf of these organizations, and people saying, Yes, I want to help. And one of the things that this influencer did really well is she talked about the organization and what drew her to that cause. So instead of just like, sharing a couple of random posts from the shelter here in Atlanta, for example. I'm using like just this as a fictitious example. She actually said, Here's what drew me to the shelter, here's what makes them different, or here's maybe something you didn't realize about women who stay at the shelter, right? She actually did a lot of first person content and then linked to the fundraiser. And the last time I looked at one in particular for this, for this tour stop in the Midwest that she was doing, she was at like, $60,000 raised. Think about that, like, think about Wow, the other sort of lens, the other side of that that is really, really important here to think about is, how did the Creator choose what partner to partner with in each tour stop? And the answer is, the creator just chose, right? She didn't actually get solicited by nonprofits, from what I can tell, she actually just said, Ooh, these are kind of mission. These are causes I tend to care about, like, these are the buckets. And then she would go and look around and find one that kind of felt right to her. And that goes back to what I was saying earlier. Is you want to make sure that your content isn't so boring, vanilla, unappealing, just generic, right? That if somebody landed on your page and was interested in partnering with you, that they felt fired up, right? That they felt fired up. So the lesson here is it's not about the celebrity, because I hadn't heard of this creator. I believe she's in She's based in maybe Utah or somewhere out west, right? And she wasn't a celebrity, but she had the natural alignment, and she was able to say, and I love that. What she did, she's like, I'm a Swifty. So her fans were Swifties, and then she said, Now, Taylor Swift's going to these different tour stops. Now, how can we, how can we make a little good happen here? How can we bolster up this natural thing that I'm doing anyway, which is live streaming, which is going on these, these tour stops, and do it for good. And she was able to do that in a really great way. So that alignment is really, really key. I want to share another case study with you.
So one of my clients actually used a lot of creativity. This is a million dollar plus nonprofit, and what they did is they partnered with micro influencers. So micro influencers are folks that maybe have a couple 1000, 10s of 1000s of followers online on their given channel. And they partnered with micro influencers, they partnered with local businesses, and they partnered with artists for their seasonal giving campaign. And what was really cool there is those are like three very different buckets for their street team, right? So they were able to have street teamers that were local businesses, creators and artists, and they let those businesses and creators and artists do content on behalf of this nonprofit that was their choice. So they have a digital toolkit that they give them. We have this inside the club, but then to let an artist create a mural right on behalf of your organization, with a call to action to donate, and then to let the business maybe talk more about what the business does and how that relates to your organization. For example, this was a homeless shelter, so they were talking a lot about food insecurity, right? And I love that, like creativity, and also not to put yourself in a box that, oh, well, all of my street teamers have to be famous online influencers? Well, not necessarily. Your street teamers can be local businesses. Your street teamers can be micro influencers, your street teamers can be local artists. So what was the result? There awareness, engagement. They had a huge influx of followers. They had a huge influx of prospects, and they all actually doubled their fundraiser, right? They continue to build off their street team year over year. So really, really makes the entire process of fundraising, not only a lot more fun, a lot less stressful, because it's not so low fundraising anymore. Okay?
So you might be thinking, Well, how do I attract influencers? So I already gave you the harsh truth that if your messaging sounds like it's from, you know, 10 years ago, you're not going to really attract anyone. But I don't want you to think that, well, we've got an amazing we've got amazing social content. So where are they? It's not quite like that. You do need to actively engage and go through and we teach a process to like, find your buckets of alignment with your influencers. So you need to find out. You don't want to cast such a wide net that you're just saying anyone and everyone should be on our social street team. No, you want to narrow in on the buckets and start actually asking them and developing those relationships. And one of the latest stats that I pulled prepping for this recording was that over 50% of influencers want to work with purpose driven brands. I mean, we know this. We know this from millennials. We know this from Gen Z. They want to see change. They want to see social change. They want to see social impact. They want to see the world left better than it is today, right? And so if they can use their platforms for good, and they can do it in an easy, fun, collaborative way, they are in, y'all, they are in, all right.
So what are some typical kind of questions that I hear, if you're like, all right, I'm interested. This sounds cool, yeah, but so let me go with the Yeah, buts. Here are some Yeah, buts, yeah, but we don't have any influencers in our network, right? You're wrong about that. And I want to say you're wrong about that for a few reasons. One is your street team can start with your superstar volunteers and donors and community leaders. It can start there. You have micro influencers under your nose. We now live in a time where somebody knows somebody, somebody on your board member, somebody's cousin, daughter, friend neighbor, is a YouTuber. Somebody's cousin, friend neighbor alumni has hundreds of 1000s of followers on Tik Tok, like everyone, we are the creator economy. Now, you just haven't been looking for them.
If you're thinking, Yeah, but we can't afford this, I would argue you can't afford not to do this. You're spending so much time on low RIO activities. They may be events, they may be direct mail, they may be something else grants that take forever to write, when you could just be building 10, just your first 10 influencer partnerships, rolling out your first street team campaign in less than 60 days. You absolutely can do this in 30 to 45 days if you want to roll out that first fundraiser with your street teamers. This isn't, again, about paying them. This is time saving and time and money creating, right? So really, can't afford to wait to do this. You might be thinking, well, what if we're too small to matter? What if we're too small, we don't have a name, you know, a big name, a big presence, right? It's really not about the size, I promise you. It is about showing up with confidence, and it was about showing up with creativity. And I also want to offer that this is such an untapped area. Influencers, doors are not being knocked down right now by nonprofits, saying, Hey, will you partner with us? Influencers, doors are being knocked down by brands saying, Hey, can we send you, you know, this swag box, and you'll post about it. Will you partner with us? They're getting a lot of that, but they're not getting many requests from nonprofits. 10 years from now, they will five years from now, probably now is like the most golden opportunity, because it is so wide open, you could have the perfect influencer who's never been asked before. One of my family members has several hundreds of 1000s of followers on Instagram, and she I've asked her, and I've asked several of the friends in my life, who are bloggers, creators, influencers, how many times have nonprofits emailed you or direct message you and said, Hey, can we partner with you for an upcoming fundraiser? And I always hear a resounding None, zero, but that sounds cool, and I wish they would. Or every once in a while. And this is true for a family member. She said, one time, one time an organization asked me, and guess what she said? She said, Yes, I'd love to. That's, I mean, y'all one time, it is wide open. There's no competition. So it's like, why are you doing this old, outdated stuff that made your end a grind? When you could be doing this, and you could be it's like scaling out your fundraising team, if you're the executive director, if you're the director of development, and you are like most, and you think that it's all on your shoulders. It doesn't have to be. If you have a straight team. It literally takes it off your shoulders. It doesn't mean you stop fundraising. It does mean that you suddenly have a group of strong advocates who want to help you get there. Okay, so you might even be thinking,
Yeah, but how will even find someone right? It maybe feels overwhelming like the idea of just finding influencers who align with your mission. So I would say we teach this in the club. We have scripts, we have templates, we have complete video training to walk you through this process. But again, you can start with micro influencers. You can start with people who are already raising their hand. Is interested and engaged on social media? Okay? You might be thinking, do I have to pay them? Hopefully, you've gotten so far you shouldn't be paying them. This is not paid this is not a paid sponsorship or a paid ad or anything like that. This is about alignment. This is about mission alignment. This. Is about them. Want This is as reciprocally a positive experience for them as it is for you. The way that you feel so excited when somebody with 100,000 followers would post about your nonprofit, they feel so excited to do that for you, because they're like, holy shit, I'm making change in the world. Like, think about that creator. Let's just pause. Think about that creator who raised $60,000 for a women's shelter. She did that. Her and her followers did that. She did that. Like, think about how amazing that must feel. She lays her head on her pillow that night. She's like, holy crap, me and 600,000 of my followers, the ones that donated made this happen. What a gift like. That's as I was sure, the nonprofit is celebrating too, right? But what a gift for her to be like. I cannot believe my platform was able to do this like. I think that would be such a wild accomplishment. You know what I mean? Like, such a like, what a celebration to be like. I made that happen. I used my Instagram for good. So this is as much for them as it is for you.
Won't this take a lot of time? Christina, no, you're spending too much time right now doing things that don't work if you are begging and hounding and begging and fingers crossing and hoping and praying that your board members makes make some introduction to a high net worth individual, and you followed up with them so many times, and now you're kind of annoyed with your board member, and you're hoping that the other major donor, you know, gives more this year, even though they told you you're at your max, and you're taking them to lunch. Then you're doing the follow up call, and then you're doing the handwrit note. Think about all the time that takes. Think about it. It takes so much time. Instead, you could be creating your first street team with 10 to 20 street teamers, building a simple fundraising page with a juicy story. We teach you how to do this in the club, a compelling story. And we go like, bring another 50k in that way, do your first do your first street team fundraiser, bring in your first 10k this quarter, with that, with a whole new group of prospects. We haven't even been talking about that, but the prospects, the donors, the donations that come in through this fundraiser are likely going to be a lot of new leads for you, a lot of new donors for you, think about the value there. So fun. So we provide you with template scripts, tracking sheets, workflows, to make sure that the process is actually time saving, not time sucking. And remember, you're starting small. You're not starting with a street team of 100 so you can roll in, layer this in to existing workflows. So for example, if you're like, oh, but we have a big, you know, spring appeal we do, and we have an event we do in this rank. Totally fine. But do you want to sell that event out maybe two weeks early, like my clients do, then use a street team to help you do that. Right? Do you want to make this process actually easier and not tight and like you're working, you know, 60 hours a week? Cool, have a street team. It will save you time.
Will this even work? So some boards, some leadership, are skeptical, right? Because maybe they're thinking this is a fad, or maybe they're thinking this is a big one. We already invested in social media before, and it didn't really do much. I would argue you invested in the wrong kind of social media, if you're spending lots and lots of time creating content, creating beautiful videos, Instagram Stories, reels, feed posts, blah, blah, blah, yes, low ROI. Why is that a low ROI? Because at best, one to 10% of your followers see your content. That is not a good number. That is not higher high. Roi, I would rather, and let's say you have 1000 followers. You're creating all of that content so that 100 people can see it. Not great, right? Not strong. Roi, so your board, your leadership, might be, right? That social media, in that way, isn't the smartest use of your time. That's why you want to partner with influencers, because they have 10x sometimes 100x of the audience you do, and their audience is so much more engaged, because this is their world, right? Their audience is used to watching their IG stories every single day. Their audience is used to sometimes getting their weekly newsletter, reading their blog posts, hanging out with them on Tiktok doing IG lives with them. Their audience is like sticky, super hyper, engaged. Such a better opportunity.
I'm thinking about a nonprofit I worked with that moved from the west coast to Texas, and one of the things that she did that was really, really smart is when she planted roots in Texas for her organization, she started partnering with influencers there in Austin, local to her city, and. Started partnering with them to raise visibility. Hey, we're here now, our audience, our impact, our programs are here now, and it was such a great way, even as like a a what's it called like as a foundational piece. Maybe you're not using your street team to fundraise, and I want to offer amazing You don't have to. You can use it for awareness. You can use it to sell out your programs. Like to fill them out to you know, if you're having trouble getting the programs or services like booked out, great for that. For memberships, it's great for so there's a lot of ways, if you're maybe adding a new city, adding a new location, adding a new program, something like that, a street team can be huge for this. And that's not even for fundraising. Such a good win, win.
One of the ways that I came up with this process, I'll give you a little back story, is years ago, I used to own a social media and PR agency, and we were tasked, we were hired to do the entire marketing plan, strategy, roll out all of it and community building for a $300 million development. And while on paper, that sounds fun and cool and like, oh, wow, huge budget. The catch was big. The catch was the development was under construction at the time we were brought on, it was like hard hats, completely pile of rubble under construction. But what the client wanted, what we were brought on to do is to get the community excited, to get them behind us and to actually build a buzz. So when they did, they did like a rolled opening with retail, with offices, with food, with living. It was like huge. They wanted people to be like, can't wait line outside, ready for it, right? And so for us, immediately it became clear that the traditional advertising press releases. I'm trying to think posting on social, like, all the things you just do, like your bread and butter, marketing was gonna be fine, but not gonna cut it. Not gonna cut it was gonna be like, very status quo of us. And that's when we started to go. We need a street team. We need a street team. And previous to that, I worked at a rock club, and that's where the concept of the street team is used like and has been used is so powerful. So for us, for this development, we used our street team as influencers and creators, and we gave them behind the scenes tours, and we gave them the content that no one else had, no one had like a glimpse inside to like, what was, what was Pont City Market? This was the development. What was it gonna look like? What? What was the food hall going to be like? What are they doing in there? What does it look like? You know, these behind the scenes looks. So we had artists, creative, photographers, influencers, everybody, and they actually like we had, I remember it was like our first kind of behind the scenes influencer event, and maybe we had 20 come something like that. And then something happened. And I remember in the DMS, the influencers started asking us, Hey, can we partner with you? Hey, we want to post about you. Hey, hey, it was really interesting. So instead of us going to them, which is how it began, they started coming to us, and that reciprocity, right? Because they were as excited they wanted to share with their audience the happenings, the coming soons, breaking the news, giving them behind the scenes kind of taste making, right? And it was such a cool moment. And it was, I can't even think of a number 10x isn't it, I would say was 100x more powerful than us just posting on the social network or us putting out a press release, or us putting out a print ad, or us putting a ad out on a billboard, there was nothing more powerful than getting a really strong thought leader in Atlanta to come in and Use their preferred channels, whether it's YouTube, Instagram, wherever, and talk about what's coming, or talk about a behind the scenes, or help us break an announcement or newsworthy and like that costs nothing. That costs nothing, right? It is a win, win for both parties. And I think that the problem is, is that so many nonprofits This is foreign to them. They've never done this before. They may not even know that this is how influencer marketing works for the for profit sector, and that's okay, but just because you've never done it before doesn't mean it's not for you. Doesn't mean it's not wildly profitable. Doesn't mean that it's hard, it's not it's none of those things. It is just something you've never done before. And that's why I love to say, let's just start with your first 10. Let's just start with your first 10. Let's add them. You can roll them into an existing event. You can roll them into an existing fundraiser. If you're like many of my clients, and you are making your recurring Giving Program front and center and part of your revenue plan this year. Oh my god. Partner with them to have an amazing rollout or launch campaign or growth campaign for your monthly giving program. Huge. What a great way to build up your monthly giving campaign is to actually have your influencers partner with you and build that up.
So these are all of the things that we're doing inside the club, we are helping organizations scale from half a million to 750 from 750 to a million. We are helping organizations work less and raise more. I just had a message come in from one of my clients who said, We did it. We hit our goal, we exceeded it. And like the intonation in his voice was so fun to hear, and he was breaking down where the revenue came from year over year. And it's like the future of fundraising is online. Yes, you may have great bed at bread and butter with direct and that's okay, and I love that for you. But it's not just pouring your heart and soul and time into grants. It's not pouring your heart and soul and every ounce of bandwidth into a 5k or into an auction or into a gala. It's sitting in your office, emailing your street team, mobilizing them and raising 20k like this is what our clients do. One of our clients raised or hit their goal of 15k before lunchtime on Giving Tuesday like that's what I want for you. I want to do a happy dance for you too. So make sure you hop on our list for this month's Webinar. Double your fundraiser, and leave your board speechless. And invite your board. If you or anyone who's like a little like curious or resistant, invite them. They can come hang and doors will be open for the club on january 30. If you need leadership approval, if you need a template, if you need a program brochure, I highly recommend you register for our webinar, and we will send you that you can always send me a direct message on at splendid consulting on Instagram, and I can send it to you there as well. We have all of that for you. Doors will be open for two weeks. That is your chance to join the Club. That is your chance to grab our bonuses, and the doors will be closed. I don't know when we're opening it again, so highly recommend you join. This is the place if you want to unlock another 50k in funding or double your next fundraiser. This is where you get the strategy, the support. We do weekly coaching, we do power hours, we do social, street team focused calls, so it is all there for you. You also get direct support and feedback. So if you want feedback on anything, and I mean anything, I'm going over after today, I'm reading a thank you letter template for one of the organizations in our club who sent me shared. She said, please go over this. Thank you. Template that we're gonna be updating for 2025 Yes, I'm happy. So if it's messaging, story conversion for fundraising emails, fundraising pages, street team pitches, I got you. That's the work we do in the club, and I will see you soon.