#AskGaryVee Episode 195: Bob Wright, Nonprofit Marketing & Fundraising

First and most, I
absolutely love the podcast. Secondly, I absolutely love
this book. Instant best seller. My name is Jerome Hardaway I am
head geek in charge for Vets Who Code also
known as Frago formerly United States
Air Force. What we do here is that we teach
veterans how to program 100% online at zero
cost of the veteran. By utilizing a pragmatic
approach and focusing on one language and problem solving
with that language our guys and girls of the Armed Forces are
focused more solving problems and thinking like a programmer
as opposed to learning how to do the same procedures
in multiple languages. Thanks to this we been able to
help 75 veterans gain jobs in the software technology
sector totaling $3.2 million worth of salaries. My question to you GaryVee
is how do we get into new communities that are tech rich
and talent rich and be able to build relationships with those
communities even though we are not natively there. Such as New Orleans
or Boulder, Colorado. Thank you. I thank you for
supporting veterans and thank you supporting Vets Who Code. – Political help. Get political help. That’s a very good story. You’re going to need some
governmental assistance. I hate to say that because at
the same time you can raise money, you can raise money
privately but your argument for what you’re doing has a
lot of political clout. And if you go down and if you’re
in Louisiana and you want to go into New Orleans there’s enough
politicians down there that would see this as
an opportunity– – To make themselves look good. – To make themselves
look good and to do something in the community. I think you have a good
political handle there to use. And by the way, once you start
raising money with the politics you get other people
wanting to join the program. It’s a good sounding situation. – This is why this show is so
fun when you have two people that can give advice because
they come from such different angles and I think that’s
incredible good advice. I would also say, my friend,
that getting in front of the tech companies who are going to
hire your developers when you’re not in Silicon Valley, you’re
not in Boulder is actually stunningly easy.
It’s called grit. You can spam people I’m sure you
had people through your career, in your career probably sent
you letters and faxes and now emails. I’ve been in my professional
career it’s been mainly email where they’ll
email me every day. Gary, I need to see
you for 15 minutes. I need to get to you.
I need to get to you. You don’t want to get
into stalker-land and be inappropriate but if you want
to email Slack, if you want to email Facebook, if you want
to email Uber or Airbnb, these companies are becoming bigger
by the moment too and are also looking to have relationships no
different than a politician that they can put on the website or
put in a press release while the getting yelled at for setting up
in Ireland and not paying taxes they can throw this kind of
thing and you’re right your narrative and we’re
about to hear some more. Nobody’s ever, ever the in
history of America going to publicly say I’m not
that into the veterans. – No.
– There is zero. There’s people disagree on
many things but not that one. I would say perseverance of
reaching out to the companies in Boulder, Silicon Valley,
New York and trying different tactics and also using Twitter
search and engaging with them because that’s the one cocktail
party of the Internet where there’s permission for you
to create a relationship. Those are two tactical
things that I would do. – The other thing to do would be
to try and get another another location somebody
working with you in the tech sensitives areas. Not necessarily Silicon Valley
but certainly New York or Boston so that you can take this and
develop something like yourself down there now you got three
groups out there and that’s where going to be able to spread
and job opportunities becoming back both ways. – There’s a lot of ways to
deploy remote teams especially around an issue like this
because so many of families affected by it. So many people, I’m not effected
by it but I’m passionate about it, I’ve been involved in it so
there’s a lot of tactics there. India.
– [India] This one. This is my dad.
– This is your dad?

Please don’t stop producing
it I watch every episode. Question from the New
World Symphony of Miami Beach. Our stability really depends on
having a group of core donors to give continuously year
after year after year. Their generosity is
essential to our sustainability. We know how to do this with the
old-fashioned ways using snail mail and email but how does
one do this with social media? Thanks in advance
for your answer. Bye now. – Now is he
dealing with Vets here? What– – [India] He works for
a symphony orchestra. – Symphony orchestra.
– Oh a symphony orchestra. – Do like the kind of music? – I do but that’s always a
tough one to raise money with. – It’s more a nice to have
versus the kind of heavy stuff that we’ve been talking about in
the beginning or even the Vets. Okay so a couple things– – That’s a big place. There’s a lot of music
down there this should be able to do that. – The interesting part of
this question that I find fascinating, he’s also very
good looking man man, India, which makes a ton of sense.
(India laughs) VaynerMedia my company and
I’ll be curious to hear in your company days back to business
always dictating my non-profit, my family life,
the structure, the thesis. When I started this client
service business the thought of letting a client be too big of a
percentage of my overall revenue I was visceral to. I even turned out some
opportunities because I didn’t want to open Pandora’s box. I would tell you the thing that
scares me there is having any organization that relies on, and
you’ve seen this a lot at the levels you’ve played at, 1 to 3
people being so passionate that they’re driving so much of it
and then something could change. A life event could change where
something else starts and were sitting here in a
real-life example. – I have that problem myself
with our Autism Speaks because Suzanne and I have raised so
much of the money and we have been so much of the
infrastructure that we provided in everything that
pulling back is– – There’s a guilt.
– I can see there’s a gap there. – Yeah and there’s an emotional
guilt there for you, right? – Yeah, we built this and
now these guys have to run it. They’re saying we don’t
have you so, you know. – I think the answer this is
funny to have you on the show, your daughter’s part
of this ecosystem. I think you need
to create content. Whatever is compelling in mail
form that got people to say I want to call and have a coffee
and find out more about this, you need to create the videos
and pictures that can do that in a social media environment but
here’s some good news you can target people of a certain
wealth and demo and location on Facebook that can be very
efficient and is better data than historic snail
mail data and create that. There’s that lovely gal that I
know thinks or two about this. I don’t want you hogging up any
more time because you can chat to your lovely daughter
about this she knows the gig. So let’s move on India.

First, I want to thank you for
your overnight sensation video. All your stuff is great but the
overnight sensation video when I get discouraged I watch
it and it kicks my ass. Thank you. The nonprofit sector is broken.
Money controls everything. And for the nonprofit sector to
change and there hasn’t been a unique idea, a brilliant idea,
a disruptive idea in so, so long. It needs to change. And one of the examples that I
like to use his coffee kiosks. Here’s a coffee
kiosk at YouTube. At Google they’re
at every 150 feet. They’re common at most startups. Free yogurt, free milk
and free Red Bull and all kinds of free stuff. Here’s our coffee kiosk. I’m CMO of a large
nonprofit upstate New York. It’s not that we don’t care any
less about our employees, it’s there’s no funding. There’s no funding
for even free coffee. So the problem is the top
and how do we change that? How do we get funders to
have a startup mentality? If you look at the startup world
Twitter, Uber, Airbnb these are ideas that might be considered
radical different disruptive but somebody funded them and
they funded free coffee along with it. We are not gonna see change in
the non-profit sector until the funding streams change that
empower us to do the work. How can those of us in the
nonprofit sector that care how can we explain that? How can we affect change? How can this top-down change
come into the nonprofit sector? – Want me to take a
shot at this one? The answer to that is
you got to be blunt. You’ve got to go out
and finds some angels. Some people that you have reason
to believe are interested in your non-for-profit and have
some funds and have some ability may be to have a store, maybe to
have to money or something and you have to get them and you
have to be frank with them and do just what you’re saying. We’re trying to do all the
things we got all these people volunteering but we need
some startup money here. We need some angel to help us
get through this until we can have a larger thing. If you beat around the bush with
people they’ll say well I’ll give you small gift. No, no I really need
your help. Big help. – I got something
to add on this. You mentioned Uber,
Airbnb and Twitter. These are the top
.01% of startups. I know many startups this
startup, my company, started in the conference room of another
company and I guess we stole their free coffee and things of
that nature but the interesting thing is Robin Hood and
many other organizations have a lot of money. They have a lot of money. My biggest problem is there’s
a lot of NGOs that I know that have a lot of money and are
wasting it or not deploying enough of percentage against the
right thing so I think that we need to be a little
bit careful here. There’s thousands of startups
that don’t have free coffee. You’re also talking
about people being incentivized by capitalism. The reason people write checks
to Google and Uber and Airbnb is ’cause they want
to make money back. And I think you need to play
the reverse game in NGO which is much like the narrative of
your life and I’ve always known, since I was a young man
because I always believed I’d be successful. That the things I would capture
my attention though I became very involved in Charity: Water
and very involved in Pencils of Promise and through
Matt Higgins have been involved with you guys and done stuff
here for Vayner for you guys as well with Autism Speaks. – Matt Higgins is on our board. – I’m very aware. I know with all that being said
that the things that get the most of my attention will be
the things that affect me. Now I can finally say it
because very recently my brother announced, my partner in this
company, VaynerMedia, that he’s going to be leaving in a month
’cause he has Crohn’s disease. The pressure of it all is the
one thing he just want to be proactive luckily
everything’s okay. He’s just projecting
and being smart. That is something that’s pulling
my heart the same with my money investing in a company pulls at
my wallet, Crohn’s is going to pull in my heart
because it affects me. You need to go out and find the
things that you’re solving for, who are the 500, 5,000
wealthiest, that’s the truth, people that are affected
by the issue because your conversion rate is
gonna be better. I don’t accept and I love you
and thank you for watching the show but I do not accept this
notion that you have to compare yourself to the five or six
biggest Internet companies in the world where I can take this
camera with Staphon right now and walk down the street and
show you real shitty offices from startups that didn’t get
that funding and are grinding and guess what Google, and I
was at Twitter, I was at Twitter when there was 11
people at that office. It looked like crap. After they won it look nicer. Google tried to sell their
company for a couple hundred thousand dollars to Yahoo. Their office wasn’t
amazing at the time. We need to be careful of how we
contextualize ourselves as well. India.

organization in New York
that is a nonprofit called Art Connects New York and
we work with local curators and artists to do permanent
art installations in social service agencies all
around New York City. It’s an amazing organization we
have partnered with hundreds of artists and dozens of
organizations but it’s also super niche and so we are working
really hard to broaden the base of people who are interested in
Art Connects and ultimately will help donate to the cause. But with such a niche cause
and then we have one and a half full-time employees who
work for the organization. They do everything from
coordinating the installations to fund raising. We are super strapped and so
were looking for some ways that we can quickly gain momentum
to broaden interest in the organization knowing that
we have very, very limited resources.
Thanks Gary. – My sense is if you have a
venture and it’s got some complexity you have to have some
people or one person anyway that is really full-time on this. – She said one and a half right? – Whether that person is
paid or not paid is irrelevant. If everybody’s a part timer
I don’t see how anything I don’t see how you get it done because
somebody’s always going to looking at their watch in terms
of I got to go and what and it’s not going to be hard to
raise money that way. The other side of it is just as
bad where you take the money you raise and you pay two people
that are average to be there all the time and now
you’ve got your energy level for the
others goes down. – I don’t know the details but
I was always from afar when I became aware what you are doing
here was so impressed that you guys were able to do so much
when you were so busy being CEO one of the biggest. Obviously, I don’t know who
was full-time underneath or what happened. – First things we did I went
out to recruit a director an executive director and I got a
very attractive guy who had been in not-for-profit world for a
long time with cancer, leukemia. And he had a good personality
and I knew that we could get him trying to meld
these groups together. You need somebody that’s going
to be full-time on that issue, not part-time, and
he was very helpful. We were able to pull together
three different parent driven organizations with very
few full-time people. But we had to every time we got
the scale I had to have somebody full-time in there. Even though it was a drag on
the cost it was necessary. – Kim, listen, and you
know I’m never tone deaf. We’re not confused that the air
cover and brand equity and the place where Bob was in his
career is different than this organization and that’s
always quite important. I think the thing to really
think about is get the word quickly out of the equation. Unless you have a miracle
situation where some art installation or art moment
become so culturally relevant that everybody becomes aware
and I wants to donate a.k.a. the ice bucket challenge. People want to be cynical about
that, the data is very real. Incredible.
Very real. They had a moment but that’s a
virality that comes around once in a generation and so we need
to be much more practical in that those one and a half people and
they’re incredible I would like to think, look, I think anybody
that devotes their careers and all their time to nonprofit are
so passionate about that that they can be patient over
5 to 7 to 12 year window. It’s Keri here with
SurvivorRadio.org.

It’s Keri here with
SurvivorRadio.org. We’re an online radio station
aimed for the cancer community. Our goals are to provide both
insight and monetary support for incidentals and cancer
patients all around the world. We’re a fairly new nonprofit
with limited resources. So how do we grow both
our listenership and our funding in 2016? What platforms should
we be doing this on? We’re trying to grow both
so looking forward to any answers man, thanks. – And I notice in the
copy he says the older demo. Keri, I would tell
you Facebook groups. I’m obsessed with
Facebook group virality. I would go and search Facebook,
look for groups whether it’s cancer support groups or people
that are passionate or have vibes in that environment or
just even general medical or different groups of that nature. Literally email the admin,
which you can do in those environments, try and join
them and see if those groups can bring some awareness. In the beginning,
you have to ask. When you have nothing else when
you don’t have dollars you have your creativity
and you have a grit. So you have to ask. Whether it’s influencers, I
mean look, you just did here. You asked on Twitter you
followed what were doing and now 50,000 people in a
week will see this. You’re going to
linked up in here. Staphon, let’s link of all the
organizations because I want to make sure everybody clicks
and finds out about them. In the same way that you
asked and you took a shot here hundreds of other people took a
shot and didn’t get on the show, won’t get the exposure. That’s
just the way the game works. I think Facebook groups the
older demo is actually a very, very intriguing play. Any other thoughts from your
standpoint on things that you’ve seen outside of your
own ecosystem where you had equity, Bob. Things that you’ve watched from
afar or have watched over the last 30, 40, 50 years of seeing
things grow from not having any leverage in the beginning and
them hacking their way or people that were able to get to you
through your career that had no relationship or anything but
just reached out to you and I thinking a friend who reached
out to Malone and a bunch of other titans in media and
actually got to spend the day with most of them because most
of them actually just said yes. – Let me offer a comment to you
that probably not directly on that point but something that’s
been bothering me for a year or so people come to me and ask me
how do I get into the business? You want to look at yourself and
decide what kinds of things you really want to be
associated with. You gotta kinda make some
decisions you can’t be dragging 15 different ideas. You gotta make some decisions. But given the situation today
especially with the Internet the best thing you can do when
you’re starting out is to get in the technical side
of the business. Learn whatever you can on the
technical side of the business. What you’re doing here with
the camera and you’re picking up information how do you use the
Internet from a standpoint of the technical part. You become very
valuable to other people. Whether it’s a not-for-profit
especially not-for-profit where everybody wants to do they want
to do Facebook groups and so forth, how many people
know how to do that easily? If you really get comfortable in
these areas then you can be very useful and much in demand. – Become a
practitioner, go figure? Actually have a skill.
Go figure. – And you keep learning once
you’re in here you’re learning and learning more so I don’t
have to call up Ahmed every minute to figure out why I can’t do this
or that and the other thing. And it kills me. If you’re comfortable with it,
you’re building a basis that’s going to be very attractive
whether it’s for-profit or not-for-profit and you can
really help people and that’s what, people who looking
to hire people who can help.