2128 - Mastering Nonprofit Communication for Greater Impact with Magenta's Grace Nelson

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Grace Nelson. Grace, not only are you an amazing bass rocker, which we'll probably talk about a little bit because I play the bass as a total amateur, something I picked up about a year, year and a half ago, but you are the CEO of Magenta, which we'll be talking about. Your website is magentastrategy.org. Grace, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for that introduction, and I'm happy to be here. It's always fun when you have a guest that has things in their background. So if you're watching, if you're listening to audio, I'll just describe what's in Grace's background, which immediately caught my attention and why we're starting this podcast 15 minutes late, because I started nerding out immediately.

1:49Grace, you've got a, an album, framed album of Depeche Mode Violator. One of my favorite alternative albums of, of the, kind of that era, late eighties, early nineties timeframe. and you also have a bass guitar hanging on your wall behind you. What model is that? What is it? It's a Thunderbird, Gibson Thunderbird. So we saw, we actually saw, I was inspired because we saw Silver Sun Pickups. They have a girl bassist. I was there with the other guys in my band. It was March 12th of 2020. So it was the last thing we did before everything shut down was go to this concert and she was playing this model of bass.

2:30So a few months later, I got my stimulus check and it was immediately gone, found the space online, and I wanted to be just like her. So here we are. Yeah. Well, so talk about the work that you do. Yes. With Magenta. With Magenta. With Magenta. Yeah. That's the other thing. I always joke that I'm going to quit my day job and go full-time with the band. And my friends are like, didn't you already do that once when you started this company? Didn't you already quit your day job? So I did. The first time I quit my day job was five years ago when I started Magenta. So we're an agency that specializes in fundraising communications.

3:06We work primarily with mission-focused organizations. So those are nonprofits or social impact firms. These are companies that are raising money to solve a problem, raising money for a particular mission. So in order to do that effectively, to raise money, they need to demonstrate that they're having an impact and that they're using that capital responsibly so that they can take that message to donors, investors. And that's what Magenta, that's where we come in. We develop frameworks and tools to measure the impact, and then we create content to communicate it in a compelling way. Well, why is it important to do it that way as opposed to, I'm sure you've seen ineffective communications and it probably gets you going, yeah, I can tell why you're having fundraising issues.

3:56Absolutely. I'm so glad that you started out with that question because it's a great place to start. I know that I'm speaking to a lot of entrepreneurs who are listening today and we all know that getting your message right is really important. I mean, that's a basic of business. For nonprofits, this is exacerbated because they have to do a lot of work to justify their revenue. Because the people who are giving to the organization who are contributing are not necessarily the ones who are seeing the benefits of that nonprofit mission. And so, you know, I mean, if I'm donating to a food bank, they're not feeding me, they're feeding someone else.

4:37And so nonprofits have to be very clear that they are stewarding that investment wisely in order to establish trust with the donor base. Um, and, um, I mean, there's just so much noise around year end appeals and social media. There's so much need. And so establishing that accountability and that responsibility is, is critical. Um, on the other hand, organizations that are able to effectively translate the relationship between dollars and impact, they can raise more money and then they can do more good. So that's good for everybody. It's good for the nonprofit because they run more efficiently.

5:19It's good for the donor because they are confident that their money is being invested wisely. And it's good for society because we want to see those problems solved. So to our, let's say, our friends that have to be, maybe they are adjacent to the nonprofit world. And let's say that you were to give just kind of like a mini state of the union of where we are today. Principles of communication, I completely agree with you. Listen, you can work super, super, super, super hard for that money, or you can work, get your communications right, and work one-tenth as hard. It's up to you, right? But I'm a big fan of the working less and working smarter kind of thing.

6:05Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it's an investment. Before I get into the next stuff, can you maybe comment on that point here? Yeah, I mean, I'll say again, that relationship between the dollars invested and the impact is very, very important to get right. And organizations who, there's this idea that the resources are so scarce and that nonprofits are resource strapped. In some ways, yes, absolutely. But there is an abundance of resources. So establishing that mindset that the resources are out there and that, I mean, they're out there for us to go and get if we can establish that trust is very important.

6:49And going back to nonprofits having to do a lot of work to justify their revenue, if they're not an expert in doing that, then they can burn through a lot of time, a lot of money, they can burn through people and resources and then still not get the results that they're looking for. So whereas if they're clear about their philanthropic mission and their progress towards that mission, then the results just keep growing. Yeah. Well, okay. Let's now talk about State of the Union, where we are in 2025 in the nonprofit world. What are you seeing? What are the kind of the trends that you see happening right now?

7:27And if you're looking in your crystal ball a little bit, what would you say to nonprofit leaders or folks in organizations, in high impact organizations looking forward, what would you urge for them to pay attention to? Absolutely. Transparency is the number one thing. More so than ever, information is available. That is great because we can access the information that we are looking for about an organization or about a cause by going online. We can make that information readily available to our followers, to our audience by, you know, putting it online, putting it on social media. On the other hand, audiences, you know, they get bombarded.

8:14And I think that, I mean, somebody gave me some statistic about how many ads we see subconsciously a day. And it's like in the tens of thousands of ads. And so the most important thing for a nonprofit to do is to establish their track record and make it really clear how they are solving the problem that they say that they set out to solve. Because what funders are looking for, we know that funders that, you know, private foundations or corporate social responsibility, or, you know, we know that there are funding sources that are out there. And we know that they have identified societal problems that they want to solve.

9:02And so what we encourage nonprofits to do is be able to go to those organizations and say, okay, the only thing standing between you and this problem, between the problem and the solution is this amount of money. We have the plan to solve the problem. We have the plan to feed the people. We have the track record to show that we have done it. There's this much of a need. And all you need to do to solve the problem to get from point X to point Y is to help us raise this much money. Because then that takes out the illusion of, okay, you know, I'm donating$10 ,000 and this, you know, they come back every year with, you know, with an appeal and what happened last year.

9:49So we're making it very clear, we will solve this problem for you and for society. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Grace, talk about your work. Like when your work with me, I don't know if there may be a particular client that you've done some work with, but I'm really interested in before and after, just like impact of your work together with your clients or partners, and what a difference can be made by really dialing in messaging? Sure. Well, most of our projects fall into one of two categories or one of two deliverables. The first type is a case for funding or sometimes called a case for support. and this is a forward-looking plan and on a very basic level it tells a funder this is how much money we're raising and these are the outcomes you can expect to see when we've raised that much money the second project is an impact report this is a backward-looking document and it tells the funder again very basic but tells the reader this is how much money we raised and this is what we did with money.

10:58So we're either, we're, we're usually working towards one of those two deliverables. There's a bunch of components that, that, you know, come in in between. But those are, those are the project deliverables that we're, that we're working towards. And we have sort of a process of seven components that go into that, that make it very clear what the, what the organization is, is the strategy towards building that, that case. Yeah. And then Grace, do you mind? So I've got your website pulled up right now. It's magentastrategy.org. And I don't know if you want to maybe highlight things that you're, I guess the work that you're out here doing for a friend that's listening to us.

11:46A lot of times folks find this podcast because it's been recommended by a friend. A lot of times folks Folks are doing research on you. And so they're listening to our conversation because they want to get to know Grace. But, you know, a lot of times next step is like, well, okay, well, now let's kind of browse around your website. So what would you recommend? Or maybe on the socials, you know, how do you engage with folks online? Yeah. And what resources you have available that you would recommend? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in terms of engagement, LinkedIn is where I'm most online.

12:23Yeah, I can see it. We did do a lot of work on the website last year because I've done a lot of work over the past five years in honing our offerings and establishing sort of a niche. When I started the business, I was marketing us as fundraising consultants, which, I mean, is basically what we're doing. We're consulting in the fundraising field. but that could mean a whole lot of things. And maybe other entrepreneurs who are listening can relate to this, but my offerings were so broad. I was a fundraising consultant and that could mean writing proposals, that could mean running events, it could mean doing an online campaign.

13:04And I found that I was competing with other fundraising consultants, which there are on projects that I did not even want. And so I had to find that we talk about in the entrepreneurial journey, finding that intersection between what we're really good at and then what we actually like to do. And as I worked with more and more clients, I found that so many of them either weren't getting their message across to their funders and their funders were going, well, like, what is actually happening with all this money? Or even internally within the organization, folks were getting sort of bogged down in the day to day, and, and no longer even inspired by their own mission, because they were not tracking their impact.

13:52And they weren't tracking, you know, understanding really where the investment was was making progress in terms of the organization's overall mission. And so I found that I really thrived with the digging into the organization's strategic plan and pulling out the components that could be turned into a persuasive case, which is essentially what we're writing. If it's an impact report or a case for support, we are persuading someone to join the organization on their mission. And that document is something that an organization can go back to if they're, you know, in their event messaging or in their social media messaging or whatever it is.

14:31So all of that to say, if you go to magentastrategy.org, magenta like the color, strategy like the word,.org, then you can see our offerings page. And we got really specific about demonstrating what those offerings mean, because I went through this long journey of being convoluted and just sort of doing anything for anyone in the nonprofit sphere. And so within each section of the offering, you will see, here's a case for support. Here's who it's for. This is what you can expect to happen after this project is completed. And here's an example. And that's for every one of our offerings.

15:13Grace, one last thing I wanted to talk to you about before we kind of, again, talk about next steps for our friend that's listening here is you recently celebrated your fifth anniversary. And I really, actually, I'm quite inspired by this series that you did on LinkedIn. Oh, thank you. What's that? I said, thank you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. About your five lessons that you've learned as an entrepreneur. Of those five lessons, are there any that you feel inspired to share today? Absolutely. I'll go back to the productizing the offerings. Again, for service providers in particular, I think it can be very difficult.

15:54We talk about setting boundaries and setting scope and working with clients. And I mean, that's just exacerbated when you are not clear about what your offering is. And so fundraising, consulting, super broad. And with every client that I would onboard, I would sort of have to start over with solving this problem for them. And I didn't start with the solution. And so as I learned more about what I could offer that made the most difference, and added the most value for my clients, I started to create more process around my offerings. And eventually, even though each one of my offerings, it is a service, but I have turned it into a product.

16:45And what that does, it takes some of the anxiety out of starting with a new client and sort of feeling like you're starting with a completely blank canvas because it gives you some guardrails when there's an offering that has some process around it. And it also has created just, I've got SOPs and timelines and just, you know, where I can press a button and the whole process lays itself out when I start a project. So getting really, really clear about not just what your organization does, but what does that mean in terms of clear offerings, and then turning those into products so that it's really easy to show a potential client, here's what it is, here's how long it takes, and here's what you can expect to see at the end.

17:33grace your website is uh magentastrategy.org and by the way i wanted to say thank you so much for the book recommendation for chillpreneur uh i feel like i could have co-wrote that book oh yeah that is my vibe as well do you want to just mention something about that oh i read chill chillpreneur I mean back a year into starting my company I was just I I had I was figuring it all out at once and um there's this mindset sometimes in in um entrepreneurship that you gotta grind and you gotta hustle and so I was you know try to do 10 jobs and just wearing way too many hats and I thought that that was appropriate because of this sort of hustle culture um until uh someone from an entrepreneur cohort recommended Chillpreneur to me.

18:25And it freed me. It gave me permission to embrace the parts of entrepreneurship that were why I started my business in the first place. Like I can choose my hours. I can do the things where I'm most effective and feel most supercharged and add the most value. It's a really great read. Highly recommend. Yeah. All right. So your website, magentastrategy.org to our friend that's listening. and they say, I would love to chat with Grace, sounds like there might be some help that she might be able to provide, what do they do? Absolutely. So find me on LinkedIn. If you search, if you just Google search Grace Nelson Magenta, my LinkedIn will come up.

19:04You can also find us on Instagram at Magenta Strategy. Grace Nelson, founder, CEO of Magenta Strategy, website magentastrategy.org. Grace, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Joss. Enjoyed it.

19:22Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

20:04I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

20:46I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening. And thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.