E3: Live from the Nonprofit Technology Conference | Andrew Mallis
Hello from the Nonprofit Technology Conference where Andrew and I are walking around and learning about all the cool nonprofit tech that's going on. What are
Andrew Mallis:you saying? It's Portland. Everything's made out of wood and and it's amazing.
Andi Graham:And they all have beards, everyone. Yes. So what are you seeing? You've been here many years before.
Andrew Mallis:I have. It's like my 4th or 5th conference for NTC. There's some virtual ones
Andi Graham:but I don't
Andrew Mallis:really I don't really count those.
Andi Graham:Do you know a lot of people here? Like, did you see a lot of the same faces and
Andrew Mallis:There are definitely repeats. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Some some people that that come year in and year out and always fresh faces.
Andi Graham:Yeah. That guy I was talking to last night knew everybody here. I mean he's like it's my 12th year I'm kind of an old pro. Yeah. He and his wife both work in the industry and so come a lot.
Andrew Mallis:It's a big it's a community event. It's like I think one of the beautiful things about Sven it's really recharging. Yeah. Like many so many non profits There are like, what, 1,900,000 nonprofits in the US and a lot of them are just an executive director and volunteers.
Andi Graham:Yes.
Andrew Mallis:And, maybe even larger, you know, 3, 4, 5 people person teams. It can be isolating at times to feel like, oh, you're you know, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, and you're working really hard, and no one understands exactly what you do. And then you you come and and and meet a community of people who are going through exactly the same thing that you're going through. And then you you meet the organizations that you looked up to, like the the Audubon societies, and you realize, oh, they have the same problems too, you know? And it it scales it in an interesting way and, and then creates a really strong sense of community and overall, like, global justice, which is great.
Andi Graham:That's a really good point. I always I've been in sessions and have it, you know, they always ask like who's here for the first time and it's been neat seeing all the hands kind of going up that this is the first time. I also think, you know, as a marketing agency when we work with clients, a lot of times the first thing we're doing is reviewing their marketing tech stack and, like, where their data is all housed so we can understand what we have to work with. And so we're often in 6 or 7 or so tools for every single client. So we see them all.
Andi Graham:So it's been really neat being here and seeing a lot of those tools are represented here obviously.
Andrew Mallis:Mhmm.
Andi Graham:But then talking to people about how they're using them because a lot of what we do is, I think you called it digital therapy.
Andrew Mallis:Oh, yes. Digital therapy.
Andi Graham:And that's what we do. People are coming. I mean, we just we're kicking off a client this week that for the last 2 weeks she's been emailing and saying, hey, our contract is up with this particular platform. Mhmm. Should we keep going with it?
Andi Graham:Should we use this? What else is is there? We're exploring x, y, and z. And I like to be able to have a little window, which I think this conference has provided enough. Like, I've been meeting with a lot of the vendors because it's such a nice way for me to see what else is sort of out there in the marketplace.
Andrew Mallis:Yeah. I think, like, the the technology space has been rife with conversation around, like, composable architectures and different, you know, everything kind of comes together. It's not it's not monolith. There was a move towards like more monolithic like DXPs, but that is getting fractured again because the promise of those monolithic solutions hasn't been realized. And the the trusts, the small amount of trust that those large entities still held is kind of evaporated a little bit with some of those efforts.
Andrew Mallis:And that's a good thing for organizations all over the place that are creating innovative solutions. But, it does displace that responsibility, for the composability, like, who's doing the composing? And I think there's a role for agencies to play in that. And you're smart to look at the landscape of options out there and, and provide, you know, trustworthy advice that's adapted to the needs of of your clients.
Andi Graham:I mean, it's a little bit self serving because, of course, we want to work with the most effective and efficient tools as well and a lot of the older, stalwarts of this industry don't play well with others and Sure. They have we have a really hard time moving data between different platforms and so when you're building campaigns it's it's really hard to do that. And so I think what's been neat about software as a service in the past 5 years is they've, first of all, they've accelerated enormous pace because they there's so many problems in the existing existing platforms, but they all now play well with others, which is just such a gift because we can actually build tools where we've got certain organizations that need you know, a really high strength and maybe new donor acquisition and another one that's got a more membership focused, whatever that looks like. But the data needs to all come into one platform, one CRM.
Andrew Mallis:But Yeah. Definitely.
Andi Graham:Still not great though.
Andrew Mallis:It's hard. It's hard. It can be hard.
Andi Graham:Have you gone to any of the, web sessions? I know that's your slant.
Andrew Mallis:Yeah. Not not yet. I I I wanna go to the next round of of talks. There's one on, I think, large content migration. Oh, I
Andi Graham:saw that one. Yes. That
Andrew Mallis:looks that looks interesting.
Andi Graham:That one's on my list too. And I also saw some around accessibility, which I actually thought would be a lot more representative.
Andrew Mallis:2 of the 2 of the sessions were canceled on accessibility. Interesting. And and my my session was not accepted on accessibility. So I'm feeling a little little bit. I did I did talk about accessibility like we did last year already.
Andrew Mallis:So maybe they thought Oh, you did? Good to hear. Played out.
Andi Graham:So Who knows? I mean, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that at least 3 to 5 sessions every single session is on what?
Andrew Mallis:A artificial intelligence. Generative AI. Uh-huh. AI. But I think, you know, I mean, it makes sense.
Andrew Mallis:Like, almost half the attendees this year are robots. So we really have to cater to the, you know, the audience. So Yep. That explains it.
Andi Graham:I think it's, it's hard to choose their even the titles were so similar that sometimes I'm like, okay, one of them is AI for marketing and the other one is marketing with AI. The other one is personalization. Yeah. Obviously, they didn't use
Andrew Mallis:AI to come up with their titles. Or maybe they all use AI to come up with their titles. That's why they're all the same.
Andi Graham:I like your comment though that the they take speaker applications so far in advance of the year. So last year, the applications are due in September, October, and then by the time the conference rolls around, Chetchee
Andrew Mallis:had come out. No. It's time to come out. Whatever.
Andi Graham:Yeah. And it was the hottest topic. So it's really hard to beat because, you know, I do apply and speak at conferences as well, and you realize, like, I just sent out applications for conferences in October November.
Andrew Mallis:Yep.
Andi Graham:And, like, that's probably not even where I'm gonna be interested in at that point, you know. So
Andrew Mallis:Is this project we're working on gonna be done in time? Yeah. I have a case study, You know? Are we still, you know, we're in the honeymoon period right now, but are we gonna be able to stay up on stage and Yeah. Share the love, like It is earnestly.
Andi Graham:There's something to be said though for a balance of, well, there's a lot of data stuff we've been seeing and cybersecurity has been a lot of sessions and a lot of AI. Mhmm. I'm I'm surprised there hasn't been more around accessibility only because and I know you said you submitted one, but it's it's becoming a bigger I'm sure everybody's beat to death on it, but at the same time, I'd still we still work with organizations for whom it's a non issue. And they don't wanna invest in it or they don't want to, you know, and so we do what we can, but it's a business use case. So
Andrew Mallis:It's well, it's legislated in a lot of areas, And you don't build
Andi Graham:without it. I'm just saying that a lot of organizations are like, oh, we have to what?
Andrew Mallis:I think here there's there's a high there's a high level of consciousness around accessibility because it's not just about, like, meeting standards. It's really about approaching it from an equity mindset. And everyone's trying to build inclusive digital communities and, and and also real world community.
Andi Graham:Yeah.
Andrew Mallis:And that that kind of helps motivate organizations to take on those those those challenges. But they can be hard and at scale and for small nonprofits, a lot of people are looking for sort of turnkey solutions. It's just not not so so easy. It requires some knowledge and education and empathy, really, because accessibility can be situational and, you know, if you're in a library and you want to watch a video with captions on, it's not that you necessarily can't hear but it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
Andrew Mallis:And, if you're, I don't know, in a stressful situation, you're you might be cognitively impaired trying to get information about directions to a place or a thing. Right? Your your mind's not working well in a crisis. So those are those are all more complex needs to address when it comes to accessibility. And I think this this community in particular is really well, really well attuned to those concerns.
Andrew Mallis:So I'm a little surprised there isn't a little bit more, but it's becoming increasingly a given which
Andi Graham:I agree with that. I do think there is room for just talking about what the accepted standards are and sort of where the WCAG is going. I think there would have been a nice use case for that so people know what to expect because our clients do get sort of surprised sometimes when those things come up. But we've just like we've had with the email deliverability issues that is happening over the last and how many the main updates we've had to go make for all of our clients who all of a sudden are getting, you know, reduced deliverability of their emails and they don't have the right policy set up. So
Andrew Mallis:Sure. Yeah. A lot. Gotta get those those entries in there.
Andi Graham:Other than that, there's a lot of CRMs.
Andrew Mallis:A lot of CRMs like I can't there's new CRMs. They're doing it better though. I need a CRM to keep track of all my CRMs.
Andi Graham:It's true. There's a lot of them.
Andrew Mallis:It's really, yeah. It's it's getting it's getting kind of intense. A lot of donation and payment.
Andi Graham:Fundraising platforms.
Andrew Mallis:That's always always popular.
Andi Graham:Yep.
Andrew Mallis:Gotta get the dollars, gotta get the donors, gotta attract the donors for sure. Member management.
Andi Graham:Member management. I have not seen a lot of. Where have you seen member management?
Andrew Mallis:A little bit. I mean sometimes it's baked into the the financial Yep. Yep. Financial pieces.
Andi Graham:I'm looking for a little bit more of that. I actually talked to one provider engaging network to advise me against using their platform for membership. Okay.
Andrew Mallis:So, yep.
Andi Graham:We do have a client that
Andrew Mallis:uses engaging. Neon's not here. They were here a couple Okay. Few years. But I haven't seen them around here for a little while.
Andi Graham:Yeah. So
Andrew Mallis:it's surprising because this is this is totally their target market.
Andi Graham:Yeah. There's actually a number of vendors I've been thinking I haven't seen that we work with quite a bit. So I'm curious what the why they choose to or not invest in this particular audience, which seems like they're where they should be, but maybe I'm wrong. This
Andrew Mallis:could only do so much, maybe.
Andi Graham:Yep. That's true. I've also seen a lot of SMS and I've actually gone to a couple sessions on SMS, which I think is really interesting because
Andrew Mallis:Have you done much of that?
Andi Graham:We do very very very very little of it. Only when our clients ask us to. And the truth is the one session I went to talked about, when you're dealing with different populations, there are some populations that are literally
Andrew Mallis:Mhmm.
Andi Graham:Not checking email. They are not using email. They are not using in their all SMS. And so especially when you're reaching out not just Gen Z but like lower income communities like they live on text. And so it's a interesting way to diversify like, think a lot of marketers and nonprofits are Right.
Andi Graham:Missing. So Yeah. Entire conversion There's
Andrew Mallis:a lot. I mean, that's why, you know, Segment and Twilio merged too to, like, try to build out more of that diversity of data pathways.
Andi Graham:One of the biggest sessions I went to was the Audubon Society, which you were talking about, and, he was talking about diversifying his donor base, and how they attacked it. And they took the Audubon Society, if you can imagine who their customer profile looks like. Right? Is a very Mhmm. 65 year old white male Yeah.
Andi Graham:Who loves birding. And so they have this whole onboarding onboarding segment or onboarding sequence where the very first email was like how to get started with, birding where they recommended a $700 pair of binoculars. Uh-huh. Alright.
Andrew Mallis:That's great.
Andi Graham:Because birding is accessible and welcomes all. Right?
Andrew Mallis:Yes.
Andi Graham:And so they started,
Andrew Mallis:they did
Andi Graham:this yeah, they started taking their, they took their data and they used a tool called Trend Smart that'll match your data against publicly accessible data like name directory, Census Bureau stuff. And so they could identify and put together racial, ideological, ethnic profiles of their donor database.
Andrew Mallis:Yeah.
Andi Graham:Then they started mapping their marketing performance against those segments.
Andrew Mallis:Yeah.
Andi Graham:So, like, how many of their black black audience are opening emails, interacting with them, engaging with their paid media, etcetera, etcetera? And they were and then they started making small changes in all of their messaging to try to change that. Instead of saying, well, we need more of these people who are interacting and as an engagement metric, they said we're trying to engage with this metric.
Andrew Mallis:Right. Right.
Andi Graham:I thought that was really interesting. They removed the $700 binoculars and said, here's some backyard birds that you can start talking. Because that's like the most popular version of birding is backyard birding. My husband's deeply into it right now. Yeah.
Andi Graham:But I just thought that was neat. And you start paying attention a little bit more to, like, the things you're recommending in your messaging and how you're Sure. You know, sharing your craft, I guess. I don't know.
Andrew Mallis:Yeah. Definitely. I remember hearing those jeez. I wish I could remember, like, specifics, but I remember listening to a podcast. It was a, a black ornithologist, and he was saying, you know, he faced all kinds of issues because people are kind of freak, you know, black man in the forest with hair binoculars, like, what are you doing here?
Andrew Mallis:And, and like a lot of, like, it's not always a smooth experience for him to be exercising his passion, but in sharing it and bringing more people like to it, it's it's it's starting starting to change. I like what, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is doing. They have, like, a huge database of bird calls and people contribute to it.
Andi Graham:Oh, that's neat.
Andrew Mallis:It's, you know, from all over and
Andi Graham:Yeah.
Andrew Mallis:And because, like, the sometimes the birds migrate, so their their songs may change and or not in different Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. Or different countries and how they have adapted or become regionalized. And all of that is being, you know, processed with with AI. They have a pretty cool app that you can get and
Andi Graham:We've got the app. I know. Yeah. We're constantly we're looking at every leaf and every flower and every bird call. Like That's awesome.
Andi Graham:You do when you get old, it turns out.
Andrew Mallis:So Well, my son my son is like 7, so he's super interested in
Andi Graham:getting older. Do it too. Yeah. Yeah. For you.
Andi Graham:There's that middle age where people just don't do that though. Like, 20 to maybe 35. Yeah. Too busy.
Andrew Mallis:Too too busy.
Andi Graham:Alright. Any thoughts to wrap this up?
Andrew Mallis:Any thoughts to wrap this up?
Andi Graham:You coming back next year?
Andrew Mallis:Most probably. Yeah? Yeah. Definitely. I mean
Andi Graham:Just always on the West Coast?
Andrew Mallis:No. Every, other year. So n, 10, the they are based in Portland. Yep. And so this is sort of home base.
Andrew Mallis:And then, every other year they alternate. It was in Denver last year. I'm not sure what'll be next year. They'll announce it.
Andi Graham:I'm sure it's a conference. Or do they do kinda like Denver, maybe Salt Lake City?
Andrew Mallis:Or maybe Baltimore.
Andi Graham:Oh, okay.
Andrew Mallis:Might be a Yeah.
Andi Graham:It seemed DC would I've met so many people here from DC, which makes a lot of sense. It's a lot of the big national nonprofits are based there.
Andrew Mallis:So It might be more expensive to organize in DC too. Yeah. That's that's a factor too. They wanna make it accessible and not have the ticket prices be too high. So Portland's
Andi Graham:been been
Andrew Mallis:good to them, generally.
Andi Graham:And it's been fun, like, the parties, the food, all of
Andrew Mallis:that stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean our party our party was so
Andi Graham:fun. That's awesome. That's great. I think it ended up totally perfectly. So I was very happy.
Andi Graham:Yep. Yeah. So we'll see you here next year.
Andrew Mallis:Alright.
Andi Graham:Bye.
Andrew Mallis:See you later.
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