Episode 66: How Influencers Can Help Nonprofits Drive Awareness and Boost Event Attendance

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. In this episode of the Elevate Your Event podcast, we are joined by Nick Lynch with Collidescope, where we're going to discuss influencers and practical tips, best practices, and case studies on how they can help nonprofits raise awareness, drive engagement, and boost attendance for their events.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast. We've got Jeff Porter here, CEO of Handbid and...

Stephanie: Stephanie Mason. She doesn't want to tell you what she does at Handbid. She does a lot.

Jeff: And we are joined by a very special guest, Nick Lynch, who is the CEO and co-founder of Collidescope. So Nick, tell us a little bit about Collidescope, how you got started, what you guys do.

Nick: Yeah, for sure. Hi guys, thanks for having me. So yeah, my name's Nick, the co-founder and CEO of Collidescope. From a professional standpoint, I'm based here in L.A. My background is mostly focused in advertising technology for almost two decades. I've been building advertising solutions and marketing solutions for brands and advertisers to better target their audiences on digital and social media. Just to kind of date myself, I used to work at MySpace. I've been in the social media space for a very, very long time. I was in Tom's top eight, you know, like that thing. If you or anybody else that's listening is as old as I am.

Nick: But from a personal standpoint, I'm a cancer survivor. I'm a Make-A-Wish kid. I've been a part of the Make-A-Wish family ever since they sent me to Disneyland when I was three, really involved with the L.A. chapter here for the past decade. And at the beginning of the pandemic, when things started to shut down, nonprofits weren't going to be able to do in-person events. The first thing I thought of is, what can I do to help? I have this digital marketing background, very involved philanthropically with the nonprofit space. What can I do using my background?

Nick: And I knew that corporations were spending billions of dollars a year on CSR -- corporate social responsibility, now this thing called ESG -- and cause marketing and lots of other different areas, and they would gladly spend more money directly with causes if they had better insights and reporting into what those dollars actually were doing for the nonprofit. I also knew that influencers were this emerging media at the time. They weren't the creator economy yet, but they were this thing that was starting to really take hold. Advertisers were spending billions of dollars a year to partner with influencers to promote their products. And I knew that influencers also wanted to leverage their platform for good.

Nick: So I knew if I could triangulate nonprofits, corporate partners, and influencers where there was vision and value alignment, I could create some opportunities to generate awareness for causes, drive funds for causes, generate interest and engagement around streaming events at the time. And so that was really the genesis of Collidescope. And what we had built were these tools and solutions to better identify those partnerships and then measure the efficacy of those partnerships, so we could really see what we call the double ROI -- return on investment for the corporate partner (reach, awareness, engagement, some marketing metrics) and then return on impact, like what do those dollars actually do for that cause? Did it drive new traffic to the website? Did it drive petition signatures? Dollars, event ticket sales, those types of things.

Nick: And over the last four years, Collidescope has really become like the Deloitte for social good. We really sit any place where there's media, marketing, and measurement for social impact. So it's been great. We've raised millions of dollars or helped raise millions of dollars for our amazing partners and reached tens of millions of people through all of our solutions that we've built.

Jeff: That's awesome. And so I would imagine, when you talk about calculating the ROI, do you find that nonprofits have that information, or do they struggle getting you the information on what some of those initiatives actually generate?

Nick: Yeah, I mean, the two things that we really try to focus on is first try to think holistically. ROI to us can mean a lot of different things. And I think a lot of the time, especially in the early times of Collidescope, the initial gut reaction is, I just want to know -- I got a dollar, did I get two back? Or I used a dollar, did I get five back? And we kind of take it even a couple steps back. And we say, well, let's really think about holistically, what are we trying to achieve in the short, mid, and long term? And we kind of break down different types of buckets for campaigns and for partnerships and measure accordingly.

Nick: So we look at how much awareness did we drive, how much engagement did we drive, and then ultimately, how much action did we create from all of the things that we did. And so to answer your question directly, some organizations collect some of the information that helps us identify return on investment for awareness, return on engagement, or return on investment for action. But we help organizations really think through what are the ultimate goals, how do we make sure we focus on those goals, what are the measurements to help us understand what we achieved. And then if we need to put things in place to actually collect that information, then we can help do that.

Jeff: Right. Well, very cool. I'm kind of thinking through it. It almost sounds like you need to help these charities holistically start with, here's how we can help you. Here's how we can measure it. And here's the type of technology and tools and capabilities you need to make sure that we can actually track the results of this. Because we have these conversations with organizations a lot. Obviously, if they're coming to use our software, for example, in a lot of cases, they're coming from an environment, maybe it's paper or whatever, offline, where they don't have that capability. So are you kind of coming in with the whole package and saying, here's how we would help you pull this off, including how we're going to measure it? Are you building websites for them? Are you plugging into their website? How are you measuring that stuff?

Nick: Yeah, 100%. So it always depends on where each nonprofit is in their evolution of leveraging technology and where their needs are. We can provide everything from website design to campaign execution. Our bread and butter really is in the relationship side and the measurement side. Relationships could mean we could help nonprofits find corporate partners that align with what they're trying to do. We can help nonprofits find influencers that align with their mission. And then obviously on the measurement side, we can build tools and solutions or point them even in the right direction of, here's some free stuff that's just out there that you should sign up for, that you should make sure is implemented in your website or in your process to make sure that you're collecting information.

Nick: And then I always say, it doesn't need to be pretty. Collidescope started literally in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet was disgusting. It was gross. It was all over the place. Numbers were everywhere. But we were collecting everything. And we could really see, from mostly a linear correlation standpoint, when we did this, we saw this happen. When we didn't do this, this didn't happen, right? In very simple, straightforward terms. And just by collecting that information, putting it in a spreadsheet, and then taking some time to debrief around that data -- all free stuff, by the way. Google Sheets is free, Google Analytics is free. All of these things are kind of free. You just have to think through what those templates look like and find the time to review that stuff.

Jeff: Right. No, that's insightful. I actually think that that's really, really helpful because a lot of charities, I think, get caught up in what is this going to cost me? And so you're kind of eliminating one of the barriers to that saying, hey, look, there's free enough tools out there. You just kind of organize and construct them in a way that makes them useful to you.

Nick: Yeah, I love that. Exactly. Absolutely.

Stephanie: One of the things that you brought up that I'm curious to get into a little bit is you mentioned helping nonprofits hook up with corporate partners and with influencers. And that's something I've seen. A lot of nonprofits struggle with finding sponsorships, corporate partners. And then on the influencer side, I mean, I'm definitely a social media person.

Jeff: I am not. Jeff, not so much.

Stephanie: I am. But I don't know that I've seen a lot of the influencer-for-nonprofit connection. And so I'm curious about what you guys are doing there and that type of work.

Nick: Yeah. I mean, I kind of feel like we've been one of the early people to do this, and we've for sure been the loudest. What's interesting about what you just said is I think M&R just came out with their annual benchmark report, and they said half of the surveyed nonprofits use influencer marketing. So it seems to be much more prevalent than -- I don't see it much either. Like I see it with our clients because we do it and our partners, but it's definitely not something that I think at scale has taken root. And I think part of the challenge is people think it's expensive or you need a ton of money to do it.

Nick: And so let me go back to your first question about corporate partners. One of the things that we have really tried to over-communicate is our philosophy of what partnership actually means. So I just, not to be self-promoting, but I just wrote a book. Wiley's putting it out next week, and it really talks specifically about what the future of partnerships looks like. And in that book and what we've been doing at Collidescope for the last four years is really looking at corporate partnerships completely differently. It's not necessarily -- we're not trying to get a $25,000 sponsorship from you that we can put your name on. Those are great. And those will continue to happen.

Nick: But we look at nonprofits almost like influencers themselves and media companies themselves, in that people want to be a part of the mission that those nonprofits are driving forward and they want to be mentioned in the same sentences. That's why initially sponsorships happen. And so if you look at it as nonprofits as media portals -- they have inventory, they have eyeballs, they have all these things -- so when you start talking to corporate partners about, this is how we're going to activate our audience to enhance your brand, and these are the things that we are going to be doing in order to engage our donors and our supporters so that your brand is interwoven seamlessly and authentically in that, and we're going to provide reporting of what that actually looks like. And today, if we could get $10,000 to do that, that would be great. We're going to show you that it was successful for your brand. We're going to show you it was successful for our nonprofit as our partner. And then next year when we do the same thing, we're going to ask you for $25,000 because it was so successful, or $50,000.

Nick: Just that conversation and just that reframing of how we're talking to partners is significantly different than a one-sheet that breaks down sponsorship packages. So it's a new philosophy. From a for-profit guy who's been in the space for a long time, it's sort of reframing -- we've been reframing things to try to sell other people other things. Now we're trying to take that same philosophy, but also back to the measurement and the metrics and the why, really position partnerships as mutually beneficial and scalable in ways that make sense.

Nick: And then when you throw the influencer side in, now you're just amplifying what you're doing. Company Y, we're going to do all the things that I just said. And, hey, we have this great partner who's a social media content creator. She's been talking about mental health for two years. She's got 50,000 people. She's going to amplify our partnership as well. Those are the types of ways that you start building these integrated, authentic partnerships -- mutually beneficial partnerships that can really scale over time and drive a ton of value for everybody involved.

Jeff: Right. So, all right. I love that. I'm going to address the elephant in the room, though, which is, does this really work for everybody? Because take Make-A-Wish, okay? Love them to death. So impressed that you're still connected with them. We did their event a couple of weeks ago here in Colorado. It's an amazing organization, but it's the Make-A-Wish Foundation. That, to me, sounds like an easier conversation to have with a corporate sponsor or an influencer than, for example, my charity, which is Prader-Willi Syndrome Association. It's a rare disease. It's got a much smaller footprint in terms of the types of people that it impacts or helps. So does this work across the board? Or how do you change your strategy when you're dealing with more of a niche charity or nonprofit versus somebody that has a really broad appeal or impact?

Nick: Sure. It's a great question. I get it all the time. The blanket answer is yes. Content creation and influencer marketing works across the board. And one of the biggest challenges, I think, and the biggest shifts that's happening in the philanthropy space for the nonprofit space is there's this widening gap of demographics. You sort of have people or donors or supporters of a certain age that have always been supporters of a nonprofit. They've been donating at a certain time and certain frequency. And then you have this younger generation that isn't necessarily tied to one mission or one nonprofit. They're highly active in certain causes, but their attention span may not necessarily be totally aligned.

Nick: And so the best way to communicate with them is through social media, where the other way may not necessarily be the case. Social media content creators -- there is nobody better at storytelling than these people online. They can take something extremely complex. And when I hear niche, I just hear like the way it affects certain people or what that community looks like needs additional storytelling so that people can be more contextualized to what it is and what the mission does and be more tangible so that there can be some emotional pieces to it. And so I believe, again I'm super biased, but these people who make content online can take anything and make it a story and make it something that's tangible. And if there's audience alignment with these content creators, then there's a win there.

Nick: And I think that there are millions of these content creators out there of varying sizes that are all open to a varying number of causes to be associated with or affiliated with.

Jeff: That makes sense to me. The message is still there. The impact is still there. The care is still there. We just have to explain it at maybe a deeper or more intimate level for people to understand it.

Nick: And I found this to be -- so a good example of this is, and I had no idea about this, but we've done some work with the MDA, the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The MDA, they cover I think 30 or 45 different rare diseases under their umbrella. But there's only sort of an understanding of one. And so the fact that their advocacy and their dollars and their support covers so many different rare diseases that I didn't know -- that's an opportunity to do more storytelling and work with content creators to do more storytelling about what those rare diseases are. What is the work that they do for those rare diseases? Why it's important. All of those types of things, and leveraging partners and content creators to do those things, only benefits the nonprofit and the mission that they're driving forward.

Jeff: That makes sense. Muscular dystrophy's got a huge variety of different variations to it. So to your point, they're kind of an umbrella organization for a lot of different types of forms of it. And these other groups are fairly niche underneath it, and it would be hard for them.

Jeff: Let's talk about influencers for a second. How connected or intimate does the influencer need to get with the cause in order to really tell that powerful story you're describing? Walk us through the process. How do you get an influencer involved? What do they typically do? How do they deliver the message? And what kind of examples can you share of impacts you've seen?

Nick: Sure. So it all starts for us in what the goal is. We typically bucket the conversation into three different goals. Are we doing this campaign and this partnership to drive awareness -- eyeballs and reach? Are we trying to do this campaign to create more engagement, get people to a website, maybe download a resource? Or are we getting people to straight ahead do something? Like we want them to do something -- sign up, buy a ticket, donate. What is the actual goal?

Nick: From there, then we start aligning the types of influencers that would best fit those particular goals. For example, if it's just an awareness goal and you want as many people as possible to be aware of it, as much reach, as much eyeballs on it, then you probably want to work with as large an influencer as you have a budget for. And they don't necessarily need to be directly tied to or be directly associated with the cause, but they should have some sort of interest in it. There should be some authenticity to it.

Nick: As you get downstream into the engagement or the action piece, that's really where you want to partner with influencers or content creators that have some tie to a mission. So, for example, we work really closely with one of the largest adoption nonprofits. For the last three and a half years, we've done tons and tons of influencer marketing campaigns. Every single one of those influencers is either an adoptive parent or has been adopted or is part of the foster care system. And so obviously those are directly tied to the mission and they can speak authentically about it.

Nick: And ultimately, authenticity is the key word. If you are an influencer and you've never once talked about sustainability or environmental causes and you're trying to do a campaign around it, then maybe do the awareness bucket because you maybe have a large audience and we want people to hear and talk about it. But as you get down the line, if you've never talked about a particular issue or particular mission, and all of a sudden you're talking about it, the likelihood of getting your audience to really engage with it in an authentic way, or really do some type of action around it, becomes less and less likely.

Stephanie: Okay. So in terms of getting an influencer engaged, if a charity came to you and said, hey, we have a desire to work through an influencer to drive donations, ticket sales, you name it -- are you helping them identify who the best influencer would be and then setting up that connection?

Nick: Yeah. So typically when people come to us, we'll build out the campaign strategy, we'll create a campaign brief that details exactly what we want to accomplish, how we want to accomplish it, what some visual references are, what are some talking points, what to say, what not to say, how to pronounce people's names -- very, very specific details around a campaign brief. And then based on that brief and the goals, then we'll go out and either leverage creators or influencers within our network that we've worked with before that align with that mission, or we'll go and do a broader search or a deeper search for influencers that are specific to what the campaign would call for.

Stephanie: So I've got a question. What are some of the barriers to entry that you've heard from nonprofits that are keeping them from maybe getting into using influencers? And how do you address those?

Nick: Yeah, the number one thing is always cost. Okay, well, great. I love this. I would love to use influencers. I don't have $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 to spend on an influencer campaign. That's the one I hear by far the most often. There are four ways that you can fund an influencer campaign, and three of them are pretty much free.

Nick: So the first one is donation posts. If you have gone through the process of really thinking about what kind of campaign you want, what the goals are, and what specifically you're hoping to achieve from an influencer partner, you can figure out who you should reach out to and be very articulate about -- this is what we're doing, this is what we hope to accomplish, this is what we think you could bring to it, and we would really love to partner with you. And would you be open to donating a post? Nine times out of ten, they'll at least respond to you. And most often, if they're very aligned with your cause, they will probably donate one post. So it's super important to go through the process of being very specific before you do that outreach. If you've done that, the likelihood of getting a response and having a conversation and actually getting them to donate a post, if they're aligned, is pretty high.

Nick: Second thing is a barter. Many nonprofits have swag. They've got hats. They've got shirts. They've got hoodies. They've got sweaters. Maybe they've even got in-kind donations from a hotel partner or a restaurant partner, whatever the case may be. Let's trade. Hey, we've been seeing some content from you. I know you're aligned with our cause. You also like seafood. We've got a $100 gift card or $500 gift card to Red Lobster, and we'd love to send that to you if you do a post for us. It's a silly example, but you get the gist. You could trade.

Nick: The third thing is a co-marketing opportunity. This is where your corporate partners or your corporate sponsorships come in. Maybe there is an apparel company either locally or nationally that you work with that will do maybe a shirt every year to support your cause. And maybe they would normally market to an influencer already. So maybe they'll give you a couple thousand bucks or even pay for the whole entire thing. So they could subsidize a good portion, if not all, of a potential budget. So that's not necessarily free, but it's like free light.

Nick: And then the fourth one, if you have to pay, you can ask for a nonprofit rate. You reach out to the influencer. You give them all the information. Again, it's very clear that they're aligned with your mission and you'd love to work with them. You're on a limited budget. Would you be open to some type of nonprofit rate or some kind of discounted rate? Acknowledge that they're high value. We're not asking anything that doesn't acknowledge how valuable you are, but would you be open to some type of discounted rate?

Nick: That's like the four ways that I have been successful, and I've gotten influencer relationships all four ways. But I think the biggest barrier is, I don't have the money to do it. And so I think those are four ways to approach it.

Nick: The other way is, great, I actually have a little bit of budget or I do have some stuff to trade. Where in the heck do I find these influencers? Like, where do I go? If you have a social media account, go to where people are following you. Look at who's following you today. I guarantee you there are people there that have some level of influence -- 1,000 followers, a couple thousand followers, 10,000 followers. That would be likely a great partner for you. So go there. Look who's following you today and see if they would be a good partner to do some type of influencer campaign.

Nick: I think those are for sure the two largest things that I always hear. And I think that those are very, very achievable things to get past if you look at it those ways.

Stephanie: I love that. Those are great tips. I think it's ingenious.

Jeff: Right. But it takes some persistence and some drive to be able to push through on this. And I think a lot of people get timid around this. I'm not sure how to approach this person. I'm afraid to ask. And guess what? You don't get what you don't ask for. Go for it.

Nick: Sure. I love the idea of a donated post. I've never heard of the concept of a donated post. I love that. But remember, the ask is super important, and the more specific and intentional you are on that ask, the more likely you are to get it. Because I can't tell you how many times I have been told by influencers how many just blanket asks they get -- hey, can you post this for me? Can you reshare this for me? Without any context. Can you just do this for me? They're not going to respond and not going to answer to that. But they will likely respond to somebody who really lays out why they think they would be a good partner and how much it would benefit them and what exactly you would like from them. That shows intentionality and thought. So make the ask, but make the ask very specific and very intentional.

Jeff: Yeah, I love it too. Are you doing this through a DM somewhere? Are you reaching out to these influencers?

Nick: Yeah, I mean, our influencers probably get a little annoyed from me because I can find them anywhere. But I usually will start on their social media channels or social media accounts. Most of the content creators or influencers will have secondary and tertiary platforms. Maybe they have a blog. Maybe they have their own website. Maybe they're selling merch. There's a lot of different ways that I will, air quotes, track them down. But it will start with a DM. If I can find a website or a blog that has additional information, like an email, I'll also start there. But I'm coming from a good place. I'm trying to get them associated with a cause that I know that they're aligned with. So I'm not super annoying. I'm not trying to sell another pair of shoes. It's like, hey, we're trying to save some dogs here. We know you're a dog lover. How can we connect, right?

Jeff: That's great. So have you -- give us an example of one if you can. If you're not able to, that's fine. But if you have an example of one campaign with an influencer that helped a charity, I'd love to hear it.

Nick: Yeah. And I think it's an event-based campaign that I love sharing, which I think is right down everybody's alley here. At the very beginning of the pandemic, our partners, the American Lung Association here in L.A., they had to transition their annual in-person gala to a streaming event, and they had transitioned it to a really cool talent show that essentially took talent from the local teams here in L.A. -- or Southern California. Dodgers, Padres, Angels. I think those three teams. They were able to get 10 or 11 baseball players to do some really cool talent show content. And then essentially the streaming event was showing these videos and then the audience could vote.

Nick: And so at the very beginning of this, two things happened. One, I said let's measure everything. So let's put some things in place to make sure we're seeing how many emails go out and how many people open it and how many people go to the website every single week and how many people are signing up. Everything -- I nerded out, I built a disgustingly ugly spreadsheet, and I got all the data that I possibly could get. I asked where all the bodies were buried in terms of, okay, who on IT does this, who on IT does that. We dug in and we figured out how to pull all that data.

Nick: And the second thing was, we started to align creators or influencers that were sports enthusiasts or huge Dodger fans. But we kind of put them in the corner for the beginning because we had, at the time, thought this is going to be an event that's mostly driven by email. We had several tens of thousands of people on an email list. We were going to do some mailers. Kind of what you would think of as almost traditional event marketing. We have this huge email list. We have a huge mailer list. Let's just push all that stuff out.

Nick: And so I said, cool, we just got to measure everything. We sent out emails. We did a couple social media posts -- crickets. No traction on the website, no signups to the event. I said, well, cool, let's do some of the social media stuff. I was able to secure some of these influencers. They will donate a post. Let's do it. Let's just have them talk about sports and how fun it is to integrate sports with charity. And then right when we did it, we saw a huge lift in traffic. We saw a huge lift in event signups. And we're like, wow, this is awesome. How do we replicate it?

Nick: So again, this is why it's important to measure everything, because on its surface, everything looked great, but when we dug deeper, we actually really found that Instagram was really the only platform that was driving anything. And of Instagram, only a certain type of image and a certain type of content was driving traffic. So within the first week of doing these types of things with these partners, we knew that every single piece of content that we worked on needed to follow this rough format, and we needed to make sure that we just bombarded Instagram. And that's what we did. And we just rinsed and repeated for two months. And we smashed their fundraising goal, I think, by about 170%.

Nick: And what happened also, by really focusing on the marketing tactics that worked, which happened to also be free, it reduced a ton of upfront cost of marketing. Because we said, let's not even put money into physical mailers or let's not put money into the ads that we were going to do. Let's just focus primarily on social media content and influencer content to drive what's driving. And we reduced the expense ratio to around 8% or 10%. It was so low.

Jeff: I'm getting super excited about this from my event.

Nick: And they've done it every year since then. I think we did the third one earlier this year. And it's a great formula. And even though more people are going back to in-person events, I still believe that there's room and space for digital and streaming events done right, marketed right, and messaged right, to make sure that you can really reach people.

Jeff: 100% agree. And in some ways, they're easier.

Stephanie: Yeah. So how far out do you start before the event?

Nick: So we try to start anywhere from eight to 12 weeks. That's when we start doing teaser pieces, start introducing things. And then the cadence almost changes every month. Three months out, it's a light tease, maybe one or two posts. Two months out, it kind of doubles the frequency. Four weeks out, the frequency triples. And then the last 10 days, it's like bombard.

Nick: And I mean, I think everybody in the event space, nonprofit, for-profit, it's like the last 10 days are the most intense -- when everybody decides to do what we wanted them to do for the first three months of promoting.

Jeff: But that's kind of the cadence that we've always followed as well -- light tease and then ramp it up. It's funny though. For a long time, we run a Kentucky Derby fundraiser, which happens to be coming up here soon, like three days. But after a while you just get trained and accustomed to when people make that final buying decision on "I'm coming to your event," because it's typically the Thursday or Friday before the Saturday event, or could be Saturday morning. We've seen that too.

Stephanie: So the caterer hates that, for sure.

Jeff: But you just have to kind of plan ahead for that. I think this is definitely the future of event-based marketing, because as you're describing this, I'm going back through the years -- 17 years of running this event, all the different things we've tried. Obviously 17 years ago, it was not much on the social media side, but we did print, the big print mail pieces. The marketing mail pieces, we put them out six months in advance. People put them on their fridge, great pictures of the kids, they loved it. We would do the email blast. We'd buy email lists. We did that. We did advertising in the local newspaper. That actually attracted the crowd we didn't want. But either way, we tried all of these things. And we did a little bit of social media, but as a small organization -- I think a lot of our clients probably feel the same way -- they're not Make-A-Wish. They don't have thousands upon thousands of followers. They need this approach you're describing. I need to go find the people that have the followers. And not just that, the people like you that know how to not just find them, but to put the campaigns together that are going to drive results.

Jeff: Because I'll tell you right now, an organization like ours, I would say it's fairly typical of the types of customers we work with a lot. And they don't have the expertise in-house. They might have a social media manager or somebody who's doing some posting, but to really think through how frequently am I posting -- like what you mentioned earlier really caught with me, which was we figured out which Instagram photo was generating the most response.

Nick: Yeah, I think that's awesome. That's why I nerd out on the data, and not everybody has the time. But like I said, just collect it and find some time to look at it later because you can't optimize what you don't measure. So it's super important.

Jeff: I agree. And then you just think about for yourself. I'm thinking to myself, I never thought about this correlation between influencers and nonprofits. But why didn't I think of that? I go to social media to see what's happening locally here in Denver and what events are coming up and what do I want to spend my time on that weekend. I go to social media to make buying decisions a lot of times. I'm going to social media for so many decisions. Why wouldn't I also go there and find organizations that I'm interested in giving to or getting involved with?

Nick: Yeah, 100%. And that's what we've been trying to preach for the last four years -- the gospel of content creators and partnerships and storytelling. And I think that there's been a lot of attention paid to, you need to be on social media, which I agree. But I don't know how many more times I can hear "be on social media and post whatever." You have to really think about strategically how to use these platforms, how to partner, and ultimately how to weave a narrative and a story that creates an emotional connection that people want to be a part of and that people want to follow. And if you can do those things, then you're going to be well ahead in building community for your mission and momentum for your mission to achieve the things that you want to achieve.

Jeff: Yeah. And if influencers are the best at telling stories, which clearly they are, we've seen it, then why not let them tell your organization's story? Why not leverage that?

Nick: Yep, 100%. Maybe our ego's getting in the way. Maybe.

Jeff: Well, you know what? We would love to connect our audience with you because I think you have a lot you can offer them. So why don't you let everybody know how they can get in touch with your organization and then if there's any particular other piece of information they need to know in order to engage with you, share that as well.

Nick: Yeah, no, for sure. Our website's collidescope.io. My email is nick@collidescope.io. I'm on LinkedIn. I don't like social media, even though I help and support it, but I am most frequently on LinkedIn. That is my social media platform of choice. And you can connect with me there. And right now, I'm just being obnoxious talking about my book, which comes out next week. It's called Impact Redefined.

Jeff: There you go. It's time to do the book tour, Nick.

Nick: Yeah. That's right.

Jeff: I'm going to see you on all the news shows now. There you go. Awesome. All right. Well, this has been awesome. I have learned a lot. And I am somewhat excited, but also maybe wishing that eight to 12 weeks ago, you and I would have talked and you could have promoted my own event. But we'll connect on that next year.

Nick: Yes, sir.

Jeff: All right. So we're going to wrap this session up. Thank you guys for listening to us. Nick, thank you again for being our special guest. That was a really, really rich conversation and we appreciate it. And so we wish everyone, all of our listeners and those that are watching on YouTube, we wish you all the best in your next fundraising event.

Jeff: We hope you enjoyed this episode and learned a little bit about influencers and how they can help you boost attendance and engagement at your events. Special thank you to Nick Lynch with Collidescope -- make sure you check them out at collidescope.io. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.