How Faigy Gilder Helps Nonprofits Streamline Marketing and Maximize Impact

Tasha: Good morning. Thanks so much for joining us. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your nonprofit origin story?

Faigy: Awesome. Hi, Tasha. Good morning. Um, my name is Faigy Gilder. I live in Northern New Jersey. I have been working in the nonprofit sector for more than 13, 14 years. I studied nonprofit management and policy in graduate school.

Faigy: And I’ve been doing nonprofit communications and marketing roles my entire career. And as of two years ago, I started my own consulting business. So amazing.

Tasha: What drew you into like, that’s a very specific course. Like what drew you into nonprofit work?

Faigy: Uh, yeah. So I have just, always felt like I wanted my work to have a deeper meaning and I, I’ve kind of always known that.

Faigy: And in college, I studied journalism actually. Um, I like to write, I’m very creative. It goes right into the marketing thing. Um, but at the time journalism was in an upheaval and smaller papers were folding and being acquired by bigger places. And I was told by a number of people, this isn’t the right time, go into a field instead.

Faigy: And one person said, go into what you would want to write about. So I took that advice and I went into cause work. Um, and then after college I did an AmeriCorps program. Um, and that was during the AmeriCorps program, I applied to graduate school and then I just kept going. So Love that.

Tasha: That’s great. And what has been your favorite part of working in the social impact space?

Faigy: I really love the people. I think the people are smart and kind and driven. thoughtful, honest, um, the people who are drawn to this kind of work are really special to work with. So that’s my favorite part.

Tasha: I think that’s great. That’s so on point too. And something that I, you know, as someone who also does a lot of marketing and communications, I think that’s maybe what’s missing in some of the donor communications, donor engagement work is like the people behind the work are incredible.

Tasha: The people you’re serving also incredible for sure. And some of those stories can really touch hearts, but when we’re looking to build donor trust, some of the best people I’ve ever met in my life are in social impact, doing incredible work. And so often their stories are not part of what we communicate with

Faigy: donors.

Faigy: A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. And we might be having different overhead conversations. If more people understood who was working so hard in the space.

Tasha: Absolutely. Okay. I love that. That’s great. What about challenges in the nonprofit space that you’ve had either, you know, in your work, in your consultancy now, what have you found to be challenges?

Faigy: So it’s interesting because as a nonprofit marketing consultant, People come to me with their challenges, right? People come to me with their problems. And so I often find them really interesting. And as an outsider, I get to look at it from a different perspective and help people examine it and figure it out.

Faigy: And maybe Stop spinning their wheels, right? A lot of my work, I focus on organizations where they feel stretched thin, right? Everyone is wearing multiple hats. They’re not a behemoth with a big marketing department. And so often I’m helping people focus on the work that makes most impact and preserve their energy for that.

Faigy: Instead of trying to post everything and be everywhere. All the time. And I think one of the challenges I encounter in that work, um, often are tight budgets, of course, and I don’t just mean for hiring people to do the work also that sometimes there are so many incredible tools out there that could save staff a lot of time and sometimes I think it’s easy to be tempted to be a penny wise and a pound foolish about that.

Faigy: Right. That you should pay a few hundred dollars for a service that is going to let your staff member focus on other things. Right. And so I think that’s a big challenge I see a lot is, um, helping people understand the benefit of letting AI or letting automation do those things. Simple, repeatable tasks and giving your people a chance to focus on the relationship building.

Faigy: So that’s something I see a lot.

Tasha: I think one of the frequent complaints I would have about AI, you know, AI or automation is that often nonprofits look at it as, well, you’re going to get, you know, a bunch of automation going, we’re going to use AI to do X. And instead they look at that as an opportunity to take on more projects.

Tasha: based

Faigy: work.

Tasha: When really sometimes I look at it and at least how I’m using AI or automation, like you noted, it’s a place to instead almost double down and go like, are we giving the care to clientele? Are we giving the care to donors? Are we Building relationships, because oftentimes if we put more energy into those spaces, the return on investment

Faigy: can

Tasha: be quite large.

Tasha: And most nonprofits, I know that has actually been a struggle or especially these legacy ones. They’ve moved so far away from a really personal, personalized or personal experience or continuing, and, you know, they’re losing donors at a rate that is pretty uncomfortable.

Faigy: And

Tasha: I love that your specialty and the thing you work on is the thing that I would say.

Tasha: Most nonprofits complain about the most because anytime you say Google ads or the Google grant or any of that stuff, everybody just like turns and runs.

Faigy: Right. It’s just a

Tasha: comfortable spot.

Faigy: Yeah. One of my strengths is that I’m really comfortable with technology. So, um, one of my past jobs was I worked for a nonprofit technology consultant and I helped export data, clean it up, import data into other places.

Faigy: Um, so I’m really comfortable with these. With these technologies. And when I started digging into Google ad grants, I discovered a good niche because, as you said, a lot of people are pretty nervous about it. Yeah, Google ad grants also is a wonderful part of the top of the funnel work. So the way I think of it is nonprofit communications and marketing is the top of the funnel, right?

Faigy: You’re building that pipeline and development work is deepening those relationships. And I think, for instance, if you could use a Google ad grant to fill the top of the funnel, right? To get more people to your website, get more people engaging with your content, maybe have some good Resources that people submit their email to sign up for, and then you nurture people from there, and I think that part of it is really right for using a lot of technology because you want people to have the time to build their relationships right instead of if you have one person on staff responsible for all of your communications, you want them to have time to make phone calls.

Faigy: You want them to have time to take meetings. You don’t want them to be spending all day just trying to fill your pipeline. That is a waste of your resources.

Tasha: Yeah. And like you’ve noted your person, if they’re responsible for your Google ads or Google brands, or even social media, those are big jobs. Like those are small lists, even when you know that work, or even when you feel very confident or comfortable in it, or I had this lovely, uh, woman and we were chatting the other day about, LinkedIn, and I was just going through what I know of the nuances of LinkedIn background and things she hadn’t realized that, you know, you tag this person in and then they don’t engage with this content.

Tasha: It can actually drive down how far it goes. And she’s just tagging in random organizations that she made it like. And I was going, this is not what you want to do. Right. And so, but I’ve spent the time and the energy and continue to learn all of those pieces. But, you know, I can’t do the work of engaging one to one with your donors or, or knowing who, you know, I might be able to give you your list of like, Hey, this group looks like they’re really engaged.

Tasha: Here’s some people you could probably leverage these relationships with. If I don’t work in the nonprofit, like, so it’s kind of. Um, yeah, I love the type of services you offer because I think there’s such value add for nonprofits there. Thank you. Um, so my next question is on peer support in your nonprofit work.

Tasha: How does peer support help you stay engaged in, in this work in this sector, you know, how do you find, yeah, like how does peer support.

Tasha: Support you, I guess, in your work. Oh gosh, it’s everything.

Faigy: Um, peer support is really, I mean, first of all, like I said, one of my favorite parts of this work is the people. So it gets me going. Um, but also having a really strong network as a nonprofit consultant is really important because if something is not in my wheelhouse, I, I will tell you that, right?

Faigy: Like I want the work to be successful. You want the work to be successful. And. Every single nonprofit worker, consultant, um, freelancer that I’ve met feels the same way. And so all of us networking with each other, we take it very seriously because we want to make good referrals. So first of all, that’s a really important part of my work where, um, people come to me often with like, for instance, I’m not a great writer.

Faigy: But I know a lot of really wonderful grant writers. And if part of your problem is that you need someone to help you do that, I will be the first to tell you it’s not me, but here’s someone I know, right? And all of that requires building up your peer support network. Um, I also just really love brainstorming with people, and as a soloist, I find it really, really important to regularly connect with people in the field, you know, get a sense of what’s new, what are people trying, what works, what didn’t work, commiserate about the challenges, celebrate each other’s successes, I find it really critical as a soloist to have that kind of team, at least of people doing this kind of work, similar kinds of work, or other people in the sector.

Faigy: Absolutely.

Tasha: I would say wholeheartedly ever. Yeah. Because sometimes you just have a day where you’re going, I hope I’m not the only one drowning in things involving invoicing and like just things that you’re like, I really don’t want to do this. But when I talk to somebody else about it and go, here’s my friend’s boss, he doesn’t want to do this.

Tasha: And you’re like, okay, I’m not the only one. It’s easy to get caught up in your own head. I think, especially when you’re working by yourself and I know even for people in house who are founders and executive directors and marketers and funders and they’re doing it all, it’s easy to feel like you’re failing when you don’t have someone to share in what the struggles

Faigy: are.

Faigy: 100%. Nonprofits, you’re always You’re working with less resources and doing more jobs with less time. So it really is easy to feel like you’re not doing as good a job as you’re probably doing.

Tasha: Yeah, absolutely. So you’ve been a member of the Nonprofit Hive for a while now. Um, appreciate you so much, um, doing this with us and your posts and your sharing.

Tasha: What have you found you’ve gotten out of being a member of this community?

Faigy: I love it. I’ve met all different kinds of people and I love that I get to actually have a conversation with people. That’s my Actually, my favorite part of linked in and the hive are that I get to really have real conversations with people and not just chat online.

Faigy: And the hive gets me out of my shell. It, you know, instantaneously there’s someone else there who does this work, who shares my interests. And, um, I’ve had some really great conversations either with people in the nonprofit space, and we talk about different marketing ideas and also different challenges they have, um, people who.

Faigy: are also consultants and we get to exchange what’s working and what’s not working and what, what makes the work run. Um, and, um, I’ve met people in different countries, which has been really great, like people doing this work in different countries. And it’s really interesting to learn about what the nonprofit sector is like in Canada or England, or, you know, other places.

Faigy: Um, so it’s been, yeah, it’s been really wonderful to be a part of this community and I appreciate you spearheading it. I think it’s a lot of people are really excited about what it, um, it’s a great way to network. It’s great. Thank you. No, it’s

Tasha: amazing. Well, I appreciate you jumped right back in, basically came back from maternity leave and jumped into this, which You know, brave, brave soul.

Tasha: So I’d love for you to share a little how people can get in touch with you. What services you offer. I always like to bundle up the end of the conversation that way.

Faigy: Thank you. Yeah. Um, I am very active on LinkedIn. My name is Faigy Gilder. My website is small org. coms dot com. My specialty are nonprofits that feel like they have too few people doing too many things.

Faigy: I have a strong background in this field and I have been in your shoes and I am not afraid what’s under the hood and I’m very adept at technology. And my favorite things to do are to help you set up or clean up your Google ad grants account. coms dot com. to set up your email automation segmentation, um, to create lead gen that for instance, your Google ads go to, and then you start nurturing people by email afterwards.

Faigy: Um, and I’ve done a lot of other kinds of projects too. So, um, if I sound like I might be a good fit for something you need, I would love to talk to you.

Tasha: It’s amazing. Thank you so

Faigy: much. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you, Tasha.

Tasha: Thank

Faigy: you.