How to Plan a Sold-Out Fundraising Event (Step-by-Step) - w/ Roger

Hello and welcome back to the Ready Set Do podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Roger Devin, marketing director at school auction.net to explore a world that I honestly knew very little about until this episode, grassroots funding. Today we're talking about how Roger integrated tech to help manage fundraising focused volunteer events and all the fascinating considerations that go into this with probably the most incredible one being how to tastefully marry technology and showbase to squeeze out ego-driven donations. Roger also walks us through how this industry survived and changed because of the pandemic. And we even take a fascinating detour into the potential death of the Google search in 2025 and how AI is disrupting even this space.

disrupting even this space. Find a bunch of old people with really fat wallets and ask them for money right before they're going to die. And that's the way that a lot of big charities bring in money for their programs. Fundraising for these smaller grassroot organizations. It sounds like a lot of work, right? Do you mind laying out the scope? You want to set it up so that the first person who makes one of those big donations is immediately showered in lots of applause. This tends to create a lot of social pressure. In line with our podcast theme of focusing on just the first few steps at any endeavor, my goal with this episode is to inspire you to consider how technology can be used to disrupt even industries that from the outside look like

from the outside look like they're impossible to be touched. And now without any further ado, here's Roger. Roger. Welcome to the only podcast in the world featuring stories of high agency individuals who are just a few steps ahead of us. Roger, welcome. Hi Nan, how are you? doing very well and you know really excited to you know kind of pick your brain about a few different areas like the things you're going to be talking about are not usually the type of arenas that I spend time in or that I know a lot about and that's usually a big reason for me to be excited about the conversation like this so you know just to set the stage uh for our listeners do you mind walking us through you know maybe the type of organizations that generally try to do um you like

that generally try to do um you like crowd work and you know try to pull in resources and generate uh revenue for whatever the reason might be given you're from the industry I'm sure you know a few different categories so if you could lead with that I think that would be really helpful for us to contextualize uh the rest of what we'll be covering what we're generally talking about here in the sort of the broadest possible umbrella is uh fundraising for charitable organizations um organizations that really just, you know, are going to be gathered together to do something that a for-profit company wouldn't take on or a government isn't going to do, doesn't have resources for, but needs to get done in their community. Um with breaking that down though into segments that we can approach. You've got, you

that we can approach. You've got, you know, your basic standard idea of a charity. The American Red Cross, the Cancer Society, Leukemia Society. We know these groups. We know who these groups are. Um generally groups that are at that kind of level that have got that kind of name recognition, they will primarily do their fundraising um for their cause, for their programs through um direct donations, uh legacy gifts in wills, uh major gifts campaigns, things like that. Basically, find a bunch of old people with really fat wallets and ask them for money right before they're going to die. Okay? And that's the way that a lot of big charities, you know, bring in much of the money for their programs. Another big factor and one that is uh definitely something we need to talk about here in

something we need to talk about here in 2025 is that many of these larger nonprofit organizations along with other organizations like nonprofit associations associations um tend to be uh on shakier footing this year because a lot of federal funding for nonprofits has been put under review or cancelled or suspended. um even the things that are being restored are being things that are being restored months and months late. Um so there's a little bit of disruption there. Now, where do I come into the mix? I come into it not at this level of fundraising at all. I'm not going to help you find old people and ask them for money. Um but what I have hand uh tend to help organizations with are fundraising events.

fundraising events. And event-based fundraising is uh most appropriate appropriate for grassroots level organizations. You know, things that are doing something on a hyper local basis. So, my favorite customer, you know, if we're going to break down our segments any further here, we talked got our big I talked about our big nonprofits. Now, let's talk about some of the others. I love working with schools with PTAs and booster clubs that are going to raise money to put computers in the library or dodgeballs in the gym. You know, I love Do you mind breaking down PTAs and exactly what Oh, yeah. A PTA is called a parent is a parent teacher association. There are a variety of different types of organizations that support uh uh parent organizations that support teachers and

organizations that support teachers and staff at schools. Many of them are called PTAs, but they have other acronyms they go under as well, HSAs and things like that. It's a group of parents who have decided that the resources available for their children at their children's school are inadequate and they would like to enhance those. So on that level, what do you got? You got nothing but a bunch of volunteers. You got a volunteer parents who don't necessarily know anything about charitable fundraising. don't necessarily know anything about how to do it at the professional level, but they can put on a party. They know how to do that. And it turns out there's a variety of formats the events here,

variety of formats the events here, parties, uh, golf tournaments, things like that that these grassroots organizations can put on and put on profitably and make money with. Um, and they these organizations tend to depend on them year-over-year. This year we're seeing some migration into larger organizations too because of the forementioned federal grant thing. So there is a whole tier of organizations that are uh perhaps city or state in their in their scope. Uh and we're working with a lot of those lot more of those this year than than prior years. years. Fascinating. So really appreciate that a first step into kind of waiting into these waters. So a few questions come to mind. I think probably the most um lowest hanging fruit right if if I can put it that way would be um what are

put it that way would be um what are some of the legal ramifications of doing something like this. So when I say legal I mean legal/tact say I decide to start you know or do an event with maybe five other parents and I'm not a parent yet but in this world let's just that I'm doing that. So, we set up an event. There's like a nice big raffle. A bunch of money is raised. And then maybe let's just pretend we raised $5,000, right? And then maybe for our efforts, we decide the five parents and myself to keep like $1,000 for ourselves and then use the actual other $4,000. So now, do we have to pay taxes on that?

now, do we have to pay taxes on that? Even if they're using the entire 5k into whatever the plan was, are there taxes? Is there a permission that we need to have from the government to do this or you know just how does that part of the piece work? Okay, so we'll talk about things in general and we'll talk about raffles. Uh in general um and this definitely applies to raffles as well. If you are planning on offering a fundraiser wherein the people who contribute at the fundraiser can acrue a tax deduction which does tend to drive a lot of the activity at these you know people will think okay I can write this off on my taxes. Y if you're going to be doing that you have to have a 501c3 tax ID number. you need to be registered

tax ID number. you need to be registered as a nonprofit organization, in which case it's going to be kind of tricky for you and your other parents to spend the $1,000 there. You would have to be registered uh to be you would have to be registered uh registered either vendors to or employees of the nonprofit organization there. there. Makes total sense. Yum. Okay. With regards to raffles specifically, raffles are really tricky because they're regulated differently in each of the 50 states in the United States and then they're different in Canada and they're different basically anywhere you can hold a raffle. Raffles tend to have slightly different regulations on there.

slightly different regulations on there. I'm not going to give you an answer as to what you need to do for that here. I'm going to send it to your state treasurer. Talk to them. They'll know. Got it. So, that's super helpful. But I think yeah I I feel like the main takeaway there is that it's not something you can just you know randomly up and decide to do but of course if you take the right steps follow the right guidelines guidelines it's not you know it's not that hard to get into. So makes sense from there.

get into. So makes sense from there. There's another thing let me jump in because there is another thing as long as we're on this. There's another thing that has that our company understands very well but does not help people with and that are and that is personal fundraisers. This is the kind of thing that was invented with GoFundMe and we love GoFundMe. They rock. Go use them, you know, but I'm not necessarily going to help with those types of campaigns because those are regulated in a completely different way.

completely different way. Uh, fascinating. So, I I actually love that you brought that up because I think it would make sense in my mind to segue into this all of what you just described like fundraising for these smaller grassroot organizations. Yeah, Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work, right? And I can think of at least five different domains where I would personally would love um professional help. Right. So do you have do you mind laying out laying out the scope for me like where it is that you guys' job starts and where it ends? ends? Well, I'll tell you what we uh have learned the hard way, which is that when you're dealing with volunteer-driven organizations, organizations, you cannot expect them to be consistent

you cannot expect them to be consistent yeartoear in terms of who's working on things. They tend to turn over their personel. personel. The number of resources. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, whoever was working on it last year may not be working on it next year and it may be the same customer that I have and their volunteers. The one thing they have in common is that they would like to do good. Other than that, I've learned I can't really count on too much. So, when you come and you sign up as a customer with us, we're going to make sure you know how to use our software because our software provides the IT infrastructure under one of these events. It helps with your inventory. It helps with your ticketing. It helps your payment processing. It helps with

payment processing. It helps with management inside the event. That's what we do. That's what we sell is that kind of software. And I'll teach people how to use the software. But we also have to teach people a lot of times how to run a fundraiser, how to actually pull one of these things off. Where do you what are the decisions you make that actually lead to better fundraising and more money raised versus other choices you could have made. Both legitimate choices, both choices that could be supported in the software, but I know that if you go down this path, you're going to be frustrated, etc. So, we do accept that, especially given that we like to deal with the grassroots nonprofit

grassroots nonprofit chair or volunteer-driven nonprofits that we do have an education responsibility here. We do. We got to get in there. We got to give you the tips and the tricks because generally, you know, my customer is somebody who stuck up their hand to volunteer for something thinking, I'm the kind of person who gets things done, but maybe they never did this thing before. Yeah, they've never done this particular thing. They can handle a big project.

thing. They can handle a big project. They just need to know the scope and they need to know, you know, the domains of knowledge as you're bringing up here. That's that's stuff that uh that we know insanely well. Definitely. Yeah. And there's always that need for, you know, subject matter expertise, right? No matter what you do, where you go. Yeah. Yeah. It's just always good to have in your back pocket or at least have the access or to be able to call up somebody and be like, "Hey, I have absolutely no idea what to do here. Can you help?" And I guess on that same note, I guess because you've been doing this for a while, what are some of the biggest pitfalls or maybe when you see this happening, you you're like, "Yeah, this is not

you're like, "Yeah, this is not surprising." Like, you know, just people that that mistakes that people make again and again, especially first time organizers of these events, um they tend to not understand how ticket sales are going to happen and this leads to some unnecessary panic. Um, generally, uh, everybody wants to start their ticket sales 6 months ahead of time. That's kind of silly. Everybody's going to buy their tickets three week, you know, within the 3 weeks of the event.

know, within the 3 weeks of the event. You know, that's one thing. Holding an event that includes a live auction without holding what we call a special appeal. This is a magic moment that can happen at an in-person fundraising event, but it generally requires a stage and it generally requires a mediator, a person who's a professional mediator to pull this moment off. It looks it looks easy, but it's actually something you need a professional for. And this is a moment where you simply um you kind of change the context of the event for just a couple of minutes. You say, "Okay, we've been having lots of fun here, but we got to get serious over the next five minutes." And you set the stage and you simply ask for donations in defined amounts. There's a way to do this that

amounts. There's a way to do this that turns this into a spectator sport. And when done correctly, you pull donations out of people that they were not necessarily thinking they were going to make. You're really creating a lot of social pressure on this. The thing that we know about organizations that do include a special appeal in their fundraising event is that that is usually worth 50% of the revenue they make that night. Wow. Wow. So, if you're going to set yourself up to where you could do one of these things and then you choose not to do it, that's a bad choice. You know, that's a choice where you're foregoing um uh some of the fundraising potential in the room there. You've gathered all of these people together. You know, you might as well squeeze the lemon, right?

might as well squeeze the lemon, right? And so is the key differential there the way the person asks for these people to meet that special absolutely is it's a it's a particular type of performance it's a particular type of uh sale um and just as we all know that you don't sell insurance in the same way you sell socks you know one is a consultative sale and one is a is Not you know th this special appeal is a requires a particular psychology because what you're working on is you're working you're working with ego. Ego is a major driver here. You want this to be public. You want there to be you want to set it up so that the first person who makes one of those big donations is immediately showered in

donations is immediately showered in lots of applause. You set everything up for that moment. This tends to create a lot of social pressure. tends to drag along people who are like, "Oh, "Oh, yep. Me too, too. I'm here too. I'm also here for our kids. I love my son as much as you love your daughter." You know, that's so interesting. Yeah. And there's a way to do this that really is quite effective. Um there's a way to mess it up, uh way to there's a way to mess it up, uh which is generally to mess it.

which is generally to mess it. Yeah. Generally don't wing it. Don't just think that it's as easy as it looks, you know. um and try to get somebody who's done it before. Uh so that's a a pretty key thing there. The other, you know, there are other uh sort of core mistakes that people make fairly frequently that we could talk about, but I'd kind of say, you know, let's talk about a specific event with a specific uh charity and and you know, see where you know, I can give some tips and tricks there. So yeah. No, we'll be we'll put my contact information in here somewhere, right? You know. Oh yeah, of course it'll be all over the Yeah, it won't be hard for any listener to, you know, find you. Sure. Sure. Um yeah, but I like that and I think what I was actually thinking of doing um next was

actually thinking of doing um next was specifically around the tool that you have, you know, that that is built for this. I think it would really be helpful if you can walk us through almost like the customer journey here. Say I'm a person that is trying to do this. I realized that probably a few Excel worksheets are not going to suffice for a planning of this level. So I purchased the tool. I have access to it now. And then if you can walk us kind of through the key steps and like the unblockers that happened because of the tool, I really think that would be you know super helpful for our audience to visualize like the benefits that come out of this. There is one key pain point that I want

There is one key pain point that I want to solve more than any other pain point involved in the fundraising auction. So when I start answering a question like the one that you just asked me, I'm going to start at that key pain point. That key pain point is kind of at the end of the fundraiser. So we're going to work backwards a little bit. The Keith Hane point for any particular fundraising event happens after the fun part of the event is over. And if we're thinking that we're holding a party on a Friday or a Saturday night and people are kind going to have dinner and then we're going to do this and we're going to do that and we're going to have an auction and then we're going to drink

auction and then we're going to drink and we're going to dance and we're going to have fun. The fun probably ends about 10:30 p.m. Maybe a little bit earlier, maybe 9. Who knows? depends on your organization and how hard I like to party, right? But after that, you need to collect payment from people and you need to get them their stuff that they may have won. And at this point, the guests are in a mindset where they're thinking like, "Party's over. Get me home." No, I don't. Wait, there's a line to get out of here? Uh-uh. No, no, no, no. I didn't sign up for this. And why would there be a line? Is it just because of because you're trying to take payments and because you're for the things that

and because you're for the things that they guessed won and then you're trying to get their stuff and it's like you got to kind of process all of these people and that's a problem if you're making them stand in line because then they're going to be grumpy and if they're grumpy they're not going to come to next year's fundraising event. So that's the same point I want to solve. All right. So let's work backwards. In order to do that, let's put together a system that lets everybody check themselves out. So, if I can spread the work of having, you know, collecting payment by saying, "Here, you just do it yourself on your phone." Okay, I can do that. In order to do that, what do I want to do? I want to

do that, what do I want to do? I want to have access to their phone somehow. I want the bidder interacting with their phone in the context of this fundraising event. Yep. Right. So our software has to be mobile optimized, has to be mobile accessible, etc. there. Um, so I have to have information about guests and you know their email address or some information about them in order to get them a notification that they can check out.

notification that they can check out. Now, um, that's a tied to guest information. I'm going to tie that guest information to a ticket because people like to sell tickets to their guests to attend the event to help cut down on the hard costs of putting on the event. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Right. So now we need to have integrated ticketing in the system so we can start building a guest record. And then what we do with that guest record as the guest moves through the event is that essentially it's an ecommerce application. application. We're holding on to all of the inventory of everything that the organization, the charitable organization is going to use to extract money from guests. That could be the idea of a donation. That could be

be the idea of a donation. That could be an auction item. It could be a raffle ticket. It could be a spot to attend a party in the future. You know, the the event itself is going to have multiple ways for people to make a contribution to the organization. They're going to wander through that that event as if it was a department store. They're going to go to each of their little boutiques and spend a little bit of money. And then at the end of the evening, we have to collect that money. All otherwise, all of this is for not, right? And our guests just want to go the hell home.

guests just want to go the hell home. They just want to go home. They want to get to their car. They want to go home. They want to send the babysitter home. They want to kiss the kids, you know, and that's it. And they don't want So, you know, essentially, I want to optimize so that that guest can get out of there as fast as possible once the fun is over. So, we're building this e-commerce system that they accumulate a shopping cart full of stuff at the appropriate time. They review their shopping cart, push the charge my credit card button, and then they're out the door. they're they're on their way home. Um, Um, this type of infrastructure is a very very scaled down type of idea similar to what you would use to run a

similar to what you would use to run a department store. You would need to have your inventory management. You would need to have all of your payment processing. You need to have your interface with the buyers there. Um, and that's not something that a P, you know, software like that that runs a department store is not something a PTA has on hand. Of course not. And they're not, I mean, most charitable organizations wouldn't know how to run it if they did. So, we have created a specialized version of that that works extremely well. And u, and you know, we use it to help people put playground equipment on the playground. And I feel great about that.

playground. And I feel great about that. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. And actually, as you were sharing that, I think one of the first things that went through my mind was how was this being done before this tool existed, right? Cuz I mean it just there's just so many points of failure, right? Somebody raised a little plaqueard that said they're donating such and such amount, but they just never did and they just left at the end of the night. Well, there are there are still organizations that will run their fundraising auctions manually and and you can do that. you absolutely can do it. Gotcha. Um it's not an optimized guest experience experience in in terms that like if you're doing everything manually then you have to have onetoone interactions in order to get everybody processed um rather than

get everybody processed um rather than one to many interactions right as you can do with a sort of an e-commerce style approach. Um, but you can do, you know, I like to tell people if you're the little rascals, you can put on a fundraising auction. It's like, Darla, go get some items and Spanky go sell some tickets and, you know, the dog is going to be the the entertainment. You can do it that way. Absolutely. And many organizations will do so if they have a small cozy event with the same people coming year after year and they kind of all know how it's going to work and they don't necessarily want to modernize anything and and that's fine. That's out there. It's there. It is. There's a ceiling on how much you're going to raise. There's a ceiling on how many people you can accommodate. There's a

people you can accommodate. There's a ceiling on how good the guest experience can be. Um, so that's why, you know, we put this together. We did it because our kids were in school and our fundraising auction needed some software and there were some competitors out there at the time, but they were all oriented towards the high end of the market. They were they all wanted to chase the American Cancer Society. And I kind of thought, you know, there's a big market out here.

you know, there's a big market out here. And it turns out it's the majority of the market that runs fundraising events. 75% of them are put on down at the grassroots level, not at the major national level. So, you know, there's a lot of events down here that could use some quality software, too. That was our thinking. thinking. Definitely. And around what you said about that 75%, I can I'm almost curious to double click on kind of the product side of the house here just a little bit, right? So, yeah, obviously when you start doing this, I'm sure there must have been at least a few iterations. You must have gotten feedback from your initial pilots and then pivoted accordingly. Can you help paint the picture of first of all if there has been a lot of change from the first version to present date

version to present date and what some of those iterations have been and a couple examples on what prompted those. I'm very curious to explore that. Yeah, there are um yeah, there's a there's a there's a decent timeline here that I'd like to to to run through that that answers the question. About 2007, we start the company. First iteration of the software was adequate for running an in-person fundraising event where all of the bidding was done manually with either paper bid sheets for the silent auction portion or bidding paddles for the live auction portion. Um, which was kind of the way things were happening at the time. We were designed our software for the events that were actually happening at the time. Um, a couple of years later, we add the ability to do online auctions. Private small online

online auctions. Private small online auctions for your community, not eBay, just selling even at an in-person event. You're saying just completely Well, generally gener Yeah. And when we first introduced this was, hey, here's an appendage you can add on to your in-person event. Do a little bidding ahead of time on a few items. You can transfer those bids to a paper bid sheet and you can finish them at the event.

and you can finish them at the event. And that'll be a fun little twist. Fast forward, things have kind of flipped. More auctions are online than offline now. Uh really, huh? Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. But in 2011, it wasn't that way. Yeah. Was it just now go on a Zoom to do this type of thing? thing? Oh, we'll talk about that that just a second here. I'm getting to that. Um we had mobile bidding around 2015. And this is an interesting inflection point because we had approached event um auctions from the point of view of these old style events and modernizing the ways these old style events happened.

ways these old style events happened. And then as the market evolved, we were adding more and more tools onto that to kind of match where the market was going. There was a whole other group of competitors that entered the market at this point and said, "The problem with auctions, the problem that we need to solve is paper bid sheets. they need to go away. And so they started by building a bidding system that worked on your cell phone, smart bidding, mobile bidding, right? And we said, "Okay, cool. That sounds great." We incorporated that. Um the those new competitors though, they had to backfill and fill in all of the event management stuff that had to have it around. They didn't have that. They just had a new mousetrap for the bidding. Yep. Yep. So we all kind of came together at that

So we all kind of came together at that point. we're all continuing down the pathway together from there at that point forward. Then 2020 happens. So in um early February of 2020, late January, early February, first week of February, I start getting calls from my customers in Seattle saying, "We're all having to cancel our our events here. There's something that's happening healthwise, you know." Uh, and so I realize something's going on and I send a note out to our entire customer base saying something may be happening.

saying something may be happening. Remember that we're here that you can convert your event to an online auction if you need to. And so we helped a lot of people convert over to an online auction, but at that point online auctions were silent auctions only. They were asynchronous. You place a bid, you wander away for a little while, I come in, I see your bid and I decide to bid a little bit more than you do. And then I wander away and you wander back and see that I bid more than you did. We bid some more. And is that notification based or do you manually have notification based? And yeah, and and then we also incorporate things like max bidding style. So, you know, you can set

bidding style. So, you know, you can set a max bed and it'll bid for you. Uh but uh now people wanted to do their live auctions with their larger items. They wanted to be able to do those special appeals I talked about earlier and an online auction circa 2019 really didn't accommodate those kind of things. So now we all had to come up with how the hell are we going to do a live auction during a pandemic. We were the second company to introduce a feature that allowed for virtual live auctions. The first was a little company out of San Francisco called PB. Applause to them. Um, we come out about two weeks later with our solution and it basically is specialized Zoom for auctions. It's Zoom with

Zoom for auctions. It's Zoom with integrated bidding and chats and things like that. And you know what? For 2 years, that saved everybody's bacon. It was a great thing to have available during that time period. There was another thing that everybody agreed on. They were no fun. It was not as much fun as getting together in person. Nope. Yeah, I can imagine. No, especially with something like bidding, right?

something like bidding, right? Exactly. No, it just it, you know, it helped keep a bunch of organizations afloat, but it wasn't necessarily fun. We still have that capacity. We still we still will host three or four of those a year, but it's down to just a handful of organizations now. And those tend to have a slightly different use case for it than everybody had during the pandemic. We do tend to work with a lot of groups that are hunting for cures for diseases, diseases, uh, rare diseases, diseases you've never heard of, diseases that you really don't want to hear about, you know.

want to hear about, you know. Um, and oftentimes these will be groups that are nationwide in scope, but local in terms of their office. They may only be able to afford an office in St. Louis, say, but they're supporting doctors and patients nationwide. nationwide they have a donor base. They'd like that donor base to participate in a live auction, but not everybody's going to fly to St. Louis for that. So, you know, that's the use case for now, those virtual live auctions. They're pretty handy. They work pretty well. Um, but we're social beings and so people have gone back to inerson events if they can go back to inerson event. That's so interesting. Wow. I mean, I'm just going to chaotic kind levels there are to this.

chaotic kind levels there are to this. Yeah. And and it's also so interesting how obviously it's kind of trite when I say it like this, but like how much of an impact real world events have on products that are then felt many years down the line, right? As you said, this isn't used as much, but you have the capability, right? It'll it will always be around because of 2020 which was not just by itself itself just a completely random unexpected blip in recorded human history. Yeah. Yeah. Um which is yeah as as as you were saying super fascinating and yeah I guess I'm curious from so as of now right as you were um hinting towards that in in when we first started obviously things it sounds like are changing a little bit. It sounds like

changing a little bit. It sounds like there's way more midsize players that might be coming into the market or that that wouldn't have previously considered doing so. So, does the game plan remain the same for them or are we bu working on new features or how do you approach that that type of a shift as it's happening in real time? Um, we've always been able to adequately accommodate the high-end customers. Um, just because we didn't chase them with our marketing dollars doesn't mean that we couldn't handle their types of events. And we and there are some that we work with that we do we are able to handle their types of events there.

handle their types of events there. Generally though, we the there's going to be an education component to midsize organizations that have turned away from doing events. Uh simply because there is a perception um in the nonprofit industry that past a certain point in an in a a charity's growth cycle um galllets just aren't worth it. They're not worth it because they're too expensive. they're not worth it because they're too much work, etc., etc. Um, I don't think that that's necessarily true. Um, I think that it is, it has been roundly demonstrated by many of the organizations that rely on events that you can run them profitably.

events that you can run them profitably. You absolutely can. They can be profitable. And you and we've got all sorts of tools for mitigating the work the workload. So, you know, there's going to be a way going to be a there's going to be a way of having to um help these people, you know, help these organizations organizations uh learn the lessons that we've learned in the auction or you know, in the gayla business while they weren't paying attention, you know, while after they had turned away from it. So, it just gets more to the education component really. And so that also I feel like is something that I see again and again with other guests on the show as well where you're almost trying to do this. I think the term the technical term for

think the term the technical term for that is for this is inbound marketing, right? So yeah. So you're almost opening up the eyes for people that were or are not your customers but that become your customers once they consume the information that you put out there. Absolutely. So is that something that you you guys do on your you know social media channels or otherwise?

media channels or otherwise? It's the only thing that works for us. I mean really it's the in inbound marketing is the only thing that really works for us because if you think about it outbound marketing requires that you be able to identify a buyer. Yeah. And my my target buyer is a mom whose kid is in third grade this year and she went to the PTA meeting and she stuck her hand up at the wrong time. I can't do outbound marketing because I can't find her. I need I need her to in her moment where she's thinking like, "Oh my gosh, what did I do? What did I?" And she starts googling for help. you know,

she starts googling for help. you know, I want to be there with the help she needs in order to understand the scope of the volunteer job she's just taken on and how to tackle it. So, inbound marketing is absolutely required because I kind of have an invisible the part of the market that I love working with is an invisible part of the market.

an invisible part of the market. Yeah. Which it, as you said, is the biggest chunk that you are working with right now. Yeah, it is. It's like who's chairing who's chairing the auction at your local congregation? I don't know where you go on Sunday morning, but you know, they they often have they often will hold fundraising events during the year. Who's chairing that? I don't know. All we know is it probably isn't the same person who did it last year, you know. Yeah. And so just for I guess just for some context because it'll be like really jarring otherwise maybe. But but I work or one of my very close friends actually works at a study abroad business. Um Sure. And this is a very similar problem that they run into in in their case.

that they run into in in their case. It's obviously a bigger pool of outbound marketing that you can do that would work, right? Because you can identify demographics, age, whatever, and then figure out that this person is probably interested in study abroad. But a big component for them is also the inbound piece. And he really struggles with that. And I can already imagine and extrapolate that a lot of our listeners that are trying to do this just it's just hard to do, right? as as I can imagine. So can you share any tips or tricks that have that you've seen or frameworks maybe that work specifically around the domain of inbound marketing or as you said the better way to put it I think is supplying helpful information out into the world right but it's not as

out into the world right but it's not as simple as that you have to do it in a way where I don't know like it just doesn't feel simple to me at all so can you share a little bit about the best way to do that wow it's changing you know one of the crazy things about 2025 is that um with the massive disruption that has occurred to search on the internet um we're we're I'll give you the answer that was good up until about four months ago and then I'll I'll tell you that we're all looking for the next answer.

we're all looking for the next answer. But you know I did a lot of content marketing. marketing. The idea being that I know this about my most desired customer. I know that she has probably never done this thing before and that it has a lot of moving pieces. It has a lot of domain she has to be aware of and that she's probably a little nervous about what she's taken on. This is going to put her in a position where if she can find a free resource that she can gobble down that'll help, she's going to be interested in that. So, we've done ebooks, we've done lots of podcasts, we've done lots of videos out there talking about how to implement a particular t tactic, something like

particular t tactic, something like that. The idea has been draw people along, give them give them what they need in order to feel less nervous and then they'll be then, you know, maybe they'll be grateful, you know, and maybe they will allow you to talk to them any, you know, beyond that. Maybe they'll allow you to make a sales pitch. Um, if you can demonstrate value, maybe they come on board. That's why that's the way we've been doing it, you know, for a really, really long time. Uh, we do that with we also do pay-per-click.

do that with we also do pay-per-click. We have done a lot of pay-per-click through a variety of venues, Google obviously, but also the other search engines also places like Capterra and G2, you know, which tend to be places that that aggregate um special interests, you know. Okay. like you know you go to capture and you start browsing and you're down in a rabbit hole where everything is is hyperfocused right and um and that has always been you know something that's been successful for us.

something that's been successful for us. Um, there is a new learning resource on the block though. You know, my canonical customer, the nervous mom of a kid in third grade. When she now sits down to start looking for information, that information is going to come to her not from my ebook or maybe secondhand from my ebook, but it's going to come in an AI overview. You know, how do we get into the AI overviews?

how do we get into the AI overviews? This is a real question for a lot of us that that uh have depended upon search and pay-per-click for many many years as a method of discovery into you know some of these these these niches. Yeah. No, I love that call out and it's actually remarkable as you said the difference that four months can make because actually just this past week or it might have been a couple days ago where I saw somebody farming for engagement bait on Twitter with the idea being that if whatever your brand is, they can have chat GPT recommend that brand organically to people when they query a certain thing, right? So I immediately like my first gut reaction to that was that's probably quack. There is no way you can engineer that, right?

is no way you can engineer that, right? Because how are you um engineering OpenAI's model and how it interacts with prompts? Like that's not allowed. But it's funny that you say that because there are people out there that are already preying on exactly what you just said, right? How do you get into that search search but obviously being nefarious about it, right? And obviously that doesn't help anybody. anybody. No. And and there's a reason why a lot of us as marketers are really unnerved here. It's because I don't as a consumer, as a browser, I love AI overviews. It's great. You know, it's a faster way to get the answer that I'm looking for and usually they're good enough and that's great. Terrific. You know,

know, as But that's not all that search did. Search also developed into probably the most important marketing channel in the world. Yeah. In the history of the world. Yeah. Yeah. And none of the AI guys that are putting out their search engines there have put forth a wide or a public an available to all comers way to market through Mhm. the responses generated by their technology. technology. So, um, many of us are really wondering when they're going to get around to that, if they're going to get around to it, or did they just kill or did they it, or did they just kill search and just decide that search search must die and all of you marketers can go figure something else out of it? that that's you know honestly the only thing I can think about in

the only thing I can think about in terms of that intersection which isn't even a real answer because if we are focusing on search then it fails but probably what Meta AI has right on their tools and platforms like if you go on Facebook and search for something it probably won't recommend you things right it's not actually search search but I can see maybe down the road where they would want to connect that with recommendations or maybe when somebody's running ads They can then figure out if that person is looking for that ad to be shown. shown. I will sign up for that tomorrow. [snorts] [snorts] That's actually surprising to for me to like do you really think that would work like really well cuz you're way more experienced.

experienced. I don't know whether it would work well, but I know I have to replace what I was doing with search and to a large extent with paper click. So I'll try it. So, you're convinced that pay-per-click is cooked for sure. Like, there is no going back and there's not it's just not a long-term viable solution where we are as of today. Obviously, it's September 2025. 2025. I hope not. What I can say what I will say is that I think that pay-per-click through through the traditional framework of Adwords or Bing ads or you know the other search engine type advertising.

engine type advertising. Yeah. That delivery framework for the ads I think must change. Yeah. No, I agree. It absolutely has to change if pay-per-click is going to survive. And those of us who have been willing to participate in the pay-per-click world for years are chomping at the bit to be able to participate in it in this world. We'd like to see it, please. Perplexity, would you reach out to me? Sell me some ads. Come on. That's so interesting. But yeah, Roger, it's been such a delight learning from you and your experiences. And thank you so much for taking the time here today to walk through this fascinating world which I knew nothing about until about an hour ago, but that I feel fairly

an hour ago, but that I feel fairly comfortable with now. Um, if I may say that myself. So yeah, thanks so much. And of course, anybody listening, feel free to reach out to Roger. All of his links will be in the show notes. And yeah, hopefully you have some new organizations that are, you know, enabled to do something like this that weren't before. So, thank you. Fantastic. Thank you, Noan.

Fantastic. Thank you, Noan. That brings us to the end of that episode with Roger Deine. If you're looking into raising funds for your local grassroots event, check out school.net. If you found value or if you enjoyed this episode and if you would like to support me, the easiest way to do that is by subscribing on YouTube and leaving me up to a fivestar rating on Spotify or any of your favorite podcast apps. Please also share this episode or any clips that you come across with those that are near and dear. And I will catch you all in the next one. New episodes every Wednesday.