122 – How to Build Great Non-Profit Websites with Lauren Andraski

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Feeling stuck on how to make your website actually work for your mission? I’ve got Lauren Andraski, and she reveals how community feedback, smart content strategy, and intentional web design can turn a website into a powerful connection and impact tool. So stay tuned.

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about all things like community-driven website strategies and digital connections with Lauren Andraski. Lauren builds spaces that foster real-life connections, enabling non-profit consultants and organizations to find community, share knowledge, and amplify their impact through Consultants for Good. She’s built a mega thriving network of over 1,300 consultants across six continents.

And today, she’s here on our show to share how feedback loops, intentional content, and smart website decisions can help non-profits and consultants alike thrive in a digital-first world. Lauren, thank you so much for jumping in and joining me on the show today.

Lauren Andraski: Thanks. I’m really excited to be here.

David Pisarek: We might as well get going. Consultants for Good has become a thriving network for non-profit consultants. When you first built the website, what were some of the core features that you knew you needed, and how have those evolved over time based on the needs of the audience and the users?

Lauren Andraski: Our very first iteration was about as simple as you can get. It was a Google Sheet. It was absolutely free, and every consultant had edit access to it. So, we started as a consultant-only network, eventually grew to include non-profits, actually based on feedback that we heard from folks. Part of my intention was that I was starting this on the side because I needed it. It didn’t need to get big. It was really just something that I needed as a resource for myself as well. So I kept it about as low-tech as you could, until it turned out that we had fully outgrown the Google Sheet. I will say it was a unique group of people. We had over a thousand people at one point with edit access to this Google Sheet, and nobody broke it, which was amazing.

Over time, what that evolution looked like was: I ran Consultants for Good for five years, initially for free, on the side, eventually it became a full-time job, and at that point, it was just for consultants. About five years in, so two years ago now, we partnered with and acquired Philanthroforce, which had really done a great job of creating a much more technical consultant directory. They reached out when they realized I was going full-time. And the timing ended up being perfect.

I’d been looking at it in a similar vein of: what’s the simplest tool that I can have right now? How can I keep this as simple as possible and as low-risk as possible as we launch into this paid membership? And they had already built one out that worked perfectly for a non-profit consultants. So, the timing worked out really well, allowing us to acquire the software they had already built.

I think part of that evolution, too, was when things weren’t working. So even very early on, if you wanted to email the other members, for example, you would go into that Google Sheet, copy everybody’s email, and send everybody an email. And the bigger part was: nobody was comfortable doing that. When it was 10 people, it was fine. But when we got even to the 30, 40 mark, people were pretty uncomfortable with that. And there was no way to really unsubscribe. You couldn’t get out of it, you couldn’t change notifications. And so then, we added a Google group into the mix, and that’s how people started messaging each other.

So there were a couple of smaller changes, but all really driven by using how simple the tech can be until it’s clear that it’s no longer working. That was when we upscaled.

David Pisarek: Now you’re also leveraging, there’s a big Slack community. So, it’s really neat to see how things evolve over time, with obviously, new technology that comes out, and ways that we can engage and connect with the audience that we’re working with or that we’re going after.

Lauren Andraski: Correct. And Slack was pushed into it because people kept asking for Slack. I struggled to remember to check Slack, but even so, as folks continued to ask for it, we had a couple of people who volunteered to actually manage and provide some onboarding training to Slack for folks who weren’t as familiar with it.

But again, something that came out of a member request and necessity instead of, what are all the possible ways that we could do this? Instead, people are telling me that they need, either, in this case, a specific tool, or I need to not send an email off of a Google Sheet, this isn’t working for me, can you find something else?

David Pisarek: What I’m hearing from what you’re talking about is actually listening to the members, taking the insight, the feedback, the thoughts, not necessarily acting on it right away, but taking a very methodical approach to it, going, “Okay, here’s what I think we need. Let’s start with this.” Then, as you grow, as things change and evolve, taking into account other needs and other ways of working with things, not necessarily going, “Okay, we’re going to spend $50,000 in building out a blah, blah, blah,” go all the way to the nth degree. What is the one step that we could take forward that will help 80% of the list or 90% of the list?

Lauren Andraski: Yeah, and I think some of that, for me, comes from I’ve been in the non-profit sector for most of my career, minus a short, probably two-year stint in healthcare IT. I was on the tech side for part of it, running a very custom, very specific platform. But then, when I watched non-profits trying to do the same thing,

I watched so many non-profits really struggle with exactly that: I’m going to invest in this big tech solution. But, actually, after this initial investment, our team doesn’t actually have the time, or the money, or the knowledge to keep it up to date.

So, I typically try, as much as I can, to use existing systems where there’s some other entity that’s keeping it updated because I’m not running a software company. At this point, the one that we do use is called Brilliant Directories, and it’s low-code, so there’s a lot that I have to update on the back-end. But even then, I felt comfortable doing that because I knew what my tech skills were and could do that. Otherwise, again, I was really trying to, what are the drag and drop options? What are the things that are lower lifts for me?

And then, I think on the feedback side, yes, it was intentional when I started Consultants for Good. Part of it was also, that I knew a handful of things out of this group for myself as a consultant at the time, but I was okay if that was all it was, and it was never a monetized community. It didn’t have to be bigger than that. And then, on the other side, I didn’t have time to do a whole lot more. So, there’s the feedback part, but there’s also the, like, go, and telling people to do the ideas that they have.

So that comes up a lot of why it would be so great if we could, for example, someone just asked about a session on Registering with the Government to Apply for Government Grants. Great. That’s not something I know a lot about. What a great idea! We should run that. When are you free to run that session? And so, I think that has been a way of being able to incorporate that feedback more successfully, too.

When you run a community, you have people sharing ideas and feedback all the time, which is fantastic. You just can’t do it all.

Some things aren’t things members are asking for. So there was the, yes, intentional, it’s the right thing to do to listen to your community. But it’s also been more successful doing that because then I’m pretty directly able to meet people’s needs and involve them in the execution of that, which also, I think, just really helps people feel a lot more sense of ownership, sense of being inside a community when it’s not just: Here’s an idea. Okay, facilitator, you do it. No, I’m part of this. I’m also part of making this successful and supportive for other folks.

David Pisarek: I think there’s a lot to be said for being part of a community as well. If you’re a digital marketer or you help organizations with grants or whatever it happens to be, being in a group where you can be open about, okay, I’m having a struggle with a client with this, from the consultant side, or I’m looking for somebody that can help on a proposal and maybe we can work together to make this a reality.

Being part of a community actually makes it easier, right? Because you’re not alone. Other people have dealt with whatever the “struggle” is that you’ve got in front of you right now, or they need some help, or support, or some insight, or some feedback, to help them level up what they’re doing or to solve a specific problem, and communities are amazing places for that.

And the Consultants for Good Community isn’t necessarily just for consultants, right?

Lauren Andraski: Correct, yes. We have, and this is another thing, kind of, somewhat based on member feedback, but also, when we acquired Philanthroforce, they already had an established non-profit membership. We had gone back and forth. So far, our focus has only been on consultants themselves, while still getting a lot of input and feedback from non-profits.

We didn’t really have a space for members, for non-profits to actually join. They already had that built out. So that pushed us into that a little bit. And it helped us look at: what does it look like to really live the piece that we want, where consultants are not just this third piece of the non-profit sector, but are actually a lot more connected to both non-profits and foundations within the sector? And, the better way to do that was to also make sure that we’re getting things in front of non-profits.

We’re supporting non-profits with: how do you actually do an equitable consultant search? So a lot of the content that we’re providing for non-profits has become pretty automatic and obvious. And we have a lot of ways for non-profits to, specifically, ask for and provide feedback, to say, here’s the thing I’m confused about, or I’m hiring a consultant, but I need help with fundraising, but we don’t have a budget, and we don’t know what we need. We just know we need a fundraiser. And so, based on those sorts of questions that we get, we’ve really been able to design the non-profit offerings and support as well.

David Pisarek: I see that, as a way of fulfilling your mission, being able to help these non-profit consultants, but also help non-profits and be the connector, the glue in there to bring these two communities that should be working together, to actually bring them working together.

Lauren Andraski: Yeah, exactly. I think that was the thing that’s been part of what we’ve hoped to do long-term, that just pushed us into it.

We’ve been talking to non-profits, especially the smaller ones, who are like, “Well, I can’t afford a consultant,” or consultants are always insert “X” experience that they have with a consultant one time. When, really, we’re talking about we’ve got 1,300 consultants, you would have 1,300 unique experiences working with those consultants, too. Since everybody’s brand and approach is so different.

So we send, for non-profits, for example, we send one question poll every week in our newsletter where we’re highlighting different content. The nice thing about that is, if you don’t want to hire a consultant right now, or if you just have a couple of questions, you need a couple of tools. Great. You don’t need to hire a consultant. So, we share different content every week, which comes from consultants. So you can get a taste of what they’re offering without actually fully engaging. But then also, answering those polls helps us know what non-profits are asking for right now? What does that look like, and what resources can we provide?

I think on the other hand, there are things we stopped doing. We used to have, basically, Capacity Building sessions for non-profits, so online webinars, and we found attendance was about four people. If we were lucky, 15 one time, but still not well enough, especially given there’s so much content like that that’s out there for non-profits, and we just weren’t where people were going for that specific medium. And so we stopped doing those.

Instead, now we have several partners that offer those, and their sessions have 200 attendees, at those sessions. So we make that connection, again, listening to them, without them explicitly saying, “We aren’t enjoying your webinars.” They were saying that by not showing up. So, what are other ways to still make those connections in places where non-profits already are, and where folks are telling us that they would prefer to get access to that information?

David Pisarek: Having the data makes it easy to make some business decisions. Going, okay, we’ve got 1,300 people on our list. We have 4, 5, maybe 10 showing up. That’s under half a %. Let’s put our time and effort where we can have a bigger impact, and we can connect people with these other areas that are actually doing this, and they’ve got attendance coming, and let’s be the connector there.

Let’s provide the relevance and allow people to interact in a meaningful way that will get them the enrichment that they’re looking for.

Lauren Andraski: Exactly. On our team, both Jenni Getzy and Peris Wanjiru, do a really great job of looking at metrics on social media posts and newsletters. What are the click-through rates? What are the open rate? How do we use that then to make decisions about the content that we’re providing as well, specifically to each of our audiences, too?

So, non-profits are looking for different content than consultants are. And so, yes, we’re asking specific questions, but also what is actually getting people’s attention? What is actually useful for folks, and how do we use that then, to make sure that that content remains helpful?

David Pisarek: On a number of episodes, I talk about the importance of analytics. Actually having the data, looking at it, reviewing it. Do you or anybody in your team review the analytics? Go, “All right, here’s what people are actually looking at,” like Google Analytics, for example, or open rates on emails based on subject lines and things like that?

Lauren Andraski: Yeah. So both Jenni and Peris actually just did a full analysis for… We usually do every quarter or so, an analysis of social media posts and newsletters. So it’s all in the same analysis, but nice to see where there is or isn’t cross over. So some topics or wording will do better in one place than others. So, for example, for the newsletter, specifically, I believe it was anything that had the word “free” in the subject line did really well. Some of that is a qualitative analysis of just noticing those trends. Then I’m trying to think for a social media post, what those looked like?

We do this about every quarter, so we will do an analysis on that. And then once a year, Jenni pulls together; it’s called our Landscape Analysis. Basically, it’s a really deep dive into our website data to see which of our consultant members’ profiles, for example, have the most views, which content has the most views, and then, we use that as another way to show non-profits, “Hey, here’s what other non-profits are looking for. And if you miss this content, here’s what was most popular this year.” And then, on a consultant side, that gives a lot of really good models of, “Wow, that person’s profile is really well updated. There’s some good clarity,” or, “Oh, I guess these on-demand resources are getting a lot of attention, maybe I should post some of those, too.” Just giving examples on both sides of content to look out for, and we make sure that all of that is pretty data-driven as well.

David Pisarek: If anybody’s interested, take a listen to episode 44 of the podcast. I had Jenni on the show as well, so some good insight there.

Back to this episode, taking a look at the analytics going, “Okay, here’s what’s working, here’s what’s not working. Let’s lean in on this a little bit more. Let’s do a little bit of A/B testing.” Instead of free, maybe test out no-cost. I think it stands out more.

This is something that a lot of non-profits and consultants should be thinking about: great, you’re sending these emails, great, you’re publishing blogs, but what’s working? What isn’t working, right? The time, I think quarterly, is really great, at a minimum. I’d say, at least, once a year, take a look. But helping to organize your thoughts, and plan out better, and more strategically will help you grow your non-profit, maybe get more donations, get more clients as a non-profit consultant, to grow to where you want to be and achieve the goals that you’ve set out for yourself.

Lauren Andraski: Something I’d like to know that, too, is that’s always been one of those. It would be nice to have an official communication strategy, it would be nice to look at our data, when I was running Consultants for Good by myself for five years.

But, when Jenni came on, as a communications consultant and expert, it was so nice to have somebody who’s like, that is her specialty, that is what she does. And so, to have her look at that data through her lens and have that be a specific project, something that I didn’t have capacity for, and was just going to keep getting pushed further and further down my to-do list, it’s not something I’m an expert in. I could have done maybe an okay job. It would have taken me three times as long as it took her.

Being able to bring somebody in, if that’s something that, like me, just keeps slipping down your to-do list, it can be a really great thing to bring in outside help who also often, a consultant, doesn’t have the exact same tie or the exact same vested interest. They want you to do well, but as they’re looking at this, data is just data. There’s not, all of the things that run through our own heads to explain why the data is not as good as we want, or it is better than we think it is, or what have you. So that can be a really great base to bring in somebody.

So, for example, we also do an annual survey to understand how well we’re supporting consultants. We ask non-profits as well, how, if they went through any of our consultant match lab processes, how much time did it save you? Did you feel supported? Did you feel like the pool of consultants you had access to was more diverse than the pool that you would have had otherwise? Questions like that. That was another great example of something that the analysis of that was just flipping down my to-do list, and it’s something that Jenni is an expert in. So, being able to bring in consultants for those things that, yeah, you know you need that data, but it’d be easier to just keep running your newsletter as is, it’s really nice to have that support for data analytics. Absolutely.

David Pisarek: I’m just going to put on my consulting hat for a moment, my mentoring coaching hat. If you’ve got something on your to-do list, this happens to me, too. This is the formula that I go with: If it’s on my to-do list, I make sure that I put it in my calendar. I’ve got it blocked off. I’ve got time blocked off to deal with whatever this thing happens to be. Inevitably, something comes up, might be a fire of some kind that needs to be dealt with. Or maybe there’s a prospect that we to connect with, and that’s when they want to meet. Of course. Murphy’s law, they’re going to want to meet when I need to do this thing. Of course. So I move it in my calendar to another day, another time, whatever it happens to be. I put a little asterisk in the event title in my calendar so I know that I’ve moved it once, and I forbid myself from moving it a second time.

If I feel like, oh, something else is coming up. This is really urgent. I need to deal with this. This is the only time. Then I look at that task, and I go, Is this something I need to do? Is this something that needs to be done at all? Maybe we can just- Maybe, I thought it was important, but it’s not really important. Or is there somebody in my team that… If it is important, is there somebody in my team that I can delegate this to or have them take on for me? And if not, if it’s still important, who can I bring in to help with this task? To deal with this?

I think a lot of non-profits, I worked in non-profits for about 16 years, you’ve got this mega to-do list with a thousand things on it. How do you ever work through all of it? It’s really about prioritization. If there’s something really important that keeps getting pushed off, there’s a psychological reason why you’re doing that. Subconscious, maybe conscious, but if it’s important, you have to make sure it gets done.

Maybe the timeline is wrong. Maybe this is something that has to be done six months from now. You’re like, “Okay, well, I’ll start on it now.” Okay, push it back a month. Work on it then. But, get the help, get the support, get somebody in that can actually help you deal with this task that, for whatever reason, you’re like, I’ll deal with it later.

Lauren Andraski: That’s brilliant. I think I subconsciously do that. If I move something to my next week’s to-do list, I have it all set up in days, and I notice I’m doing that a few days in a row. I keep skipping it for a few weeks in a row. But I like that with the asterisk to really acknowledge that you’ve already moved it once. Now it’s probably time to rethink that. That’s brilliant.

David Pisarek: I live and die by my calendar. If it’s not in there, honestly, it doesn’t get done. If there’s a task that I need to do, but it’s not really important, and it’s done right now, I might move it a week and a half, two weeks later. I might not remember then that I’ve moved it. I need a mechanism to know that I’ve actually moved that thing.

Lauren Andraski: That’s great.

David Pisarek: Okay, so your organization, you’ve got lots of programs and resources.

How do you make sure that you’re keeping the website user-friendly, so people aren’t overwhelmed by the amount of content that you have on there?

Lauren Andraski: A couple of things that we do, we continuously build out.

We have an FAQ page section. If there’s anything, especially if we’ve gotten questions on it already, that’s usually a good indicator. Instead of just replying to an email, if it doesn’t feel too specific, great. We’ll create an FAQ page as a way of actually addressing that, assuming other folks might have a similar question.

For example, if folks aren’t quite as familiar with the phrase “capacity building,” that’s one thing that we use a lot as we’re talking about a way that consultants often support non-profits. We have an FAQ page that explains what capacity building is, provides real-life examples, and outlines the types of capacity building that consultants can support. And then, at the bottom, we’ll link to other similar ones. If somebody is really feeling like a deep dive, they can take that time and dig into that. But even then, there’s still quite a bit of content.

So we update each of our different membership types, non-profits have a separate dashboard that’s got menu items that help navigate, to walk through all of the different areas that we can support. And then, Jenni does a really beautiful job with our LinkedIn and newsletters to share incremental reminders. When you first sign up, you’ll get a weekly newsletter letting you know different things that you can engage in. These are what we recommend when you first get started as a way to explore little bits at a time. But then, over time, we send reminders. So if you forgot to check out the landscape analysis, for example, when you first joined, no big deal. In a few months, you’ll get a reminder.

Everything on the website is searchable, so you can find what you need as you go. Because, for example, if you’re seeing something about capacity building, but you don’t care right now, that’s fine. You’ll get a reminder, or you can search for it later when you need it, but really, trying to have things be nice and incremental to make that easier to find.

I think back to that feedback side, too, that we will get feedback. So, for example, this is more on the consultant side, but one of our consultant match lab programs is called Easy Match. And with that, non-profits can submit a consultant opportunity, and that lands in the inbox of any consultant who matches the specialty, for example. So maybe they’re a fundraiser, that goes to their inbox. The buttons used to say accept or decline lead. When you click accept lead, nothing happens. People thought they were submitting that they were interested or that their profile or something would happen. But all it does is basically just help us know how many people are accepting leads, how many people are interested in those leads, so that we can keep an eye on what the most helpful opportunities are to share with consultants, what those tend to be, what’s coming up, and then also give feedback to the non-profit.

For example, if only one person saved their lead, we might help go back through if they haven’t gotten a lot of responses. I kept getting so many questions. People kept asking how it worked. Members were explaining it to other members, which was very helpful. But basically, then I reached out to the community and I said, “Hey, here’s what this button actually does, which is that it adds it to your saved lead in your inbox. That’s all it does. You can track it. That is all it does. What do you want me to call it?” And now it’s called Save Lead. And there’s a note above that says what that does. Says that you have to reach out separately.

So even small things like that, when we get repeat questions, we try to keep an eye on those and then think, are there things in the website or our programs, or elsewhere that we can adjust? And let’s say we did save lead, and the questions didn’t stop. Great. I would have asked again or thought about, “Okay, who are some members that are asking these questions? What do other similar, maybe consulting firms, use? What language are they using?” Until we stopped getting those questions. Really trying to anticipate some of those needs, make things easier to find, but then, also react when we’re getting repeat questions.

David Pisarek: I love the idea of building a knowledge base. You’ve done it as FAQs. There’s some really great SEO benefits to having that, but also, it helps alleviate some of the email that comes in, especially if you’re directing people to, “Hey, we have these FAQs on an onboarding email that we get when they submit a request or something like that.” That’s really cool.

The second thing that you mentioned, that I made a note about, is customization based on the user. If you have a consultant logging into the system versus a non-profit logging into the system, what is it that they see? We’ve done this for some of our clients where we build, basically, a user dashboard. When somebody logs in, what do they see based on their profile, their role, and their need? It’s a really great idea to be thinking about ways that you can engage your audience with custom content. So maybe your website doesn’t have a login. Like a non-profit, you probably don’t have a login. But if you know, all right, here are the audiences, the avatars, the personas that we want to connect with, you can build FAQs around those. You can build landing pages around those to help direct traffic to them, to help them.

So, if you were a hospital, maybe you have a landing page that’s for “Need medical care,” right? Here are all of our departments that we have. Here’s how to get in touch with them. Here’s how to book an appointment, whatever. If you’re looking to volunteer, you have a volunteer landing page. If you’re looking for a job, HR should have a career section. You can really build, maybe you’re a caregiver, maybe, or whatever it happens to be.

I love the idea of really understanding who it is that’s coming, the nomenclature, the wording, the labels, the tags that things should be so that it resonates with those people so you can get them to do the thing that you ultimately want them to do when they land up on that page. So great job.

Lauren Andraski: That’s great. I think one thing that’s helpful with having a dashboard and also the FAQs, but also instead of just answering an email, for example, every single time, but pushing people to go back to the website, every time, is because that is where most of our updates exist.

And so, it’s less about whether people really need me to tell them how to log in every week; that’s fine. But what I want is for people to get used, to get comfortable with being in this digital home of consultants for good and know that if I need something, I know where to find it because I think that also saves them time if they’re not waiting to hear from me and get an answer, but, “Oh, it’s probably on my dashboard.” And so, I’m really trying to get people into that habit of going to your site.

I think something else I would say, too, is if you don’t have people logging in, but you have different information you want to provide to different folks, it can be as simple as a clickable table of contents at the top of a page. So it jumps you to the information that you need for that group. iit doesn’t always have to be as clear as, you log in and everything’s really specific. You can still have some things within there that folks are able to navigate.

I think where we started was we tried to talk to everybody with all of our language before we had an option for logging in, but it’s a totally different audience. And so mostly we just fully left out talking to non-profits, talk to consultants with a little asterisk of like, if you’re a non-profit, though, here’s your stuff way over here. And I’ve really tried to make things, and are still working on the homepage, for example, making things a lot more clear, by actually creating more separation instead of just trying to fit everything into one block of text.

David Pisarek: And that’s really one of the key things, is how can we serve people what it is that they’re looking for, what it is that we do, what Consultants for Good do, and how can you get people to understand that that’s what it is. I know that C4G champions the belief that consultants can do meaningful work and ultimately be financially sustainable. In terms of thinking about your audience, how does the website and messaging support the balance? There’s purpose and there’s professionalism, and there’s that whole landscape?

Lauren Andraski: Yeah, great question. I’ll start with the non-profit side, because I think one of the things that we want to make possible is also, how do you become financially stable as a consultant? You have to be hired. And so, a couple of things that we do to support non-profits to be able to do that, is providing resources. Some of it’s just content, or sessions, or other videos, and things that we’ll share about what does it look like to run an equitable consultant hiring process.

We also just added under our members-only offers, these are available to both non-profits and consultants, a Capacity Building Grant Roundup. So these are opportunities for non-profits to apply for funding that could actually cover the cost of a consultant. Trying to bridge that gap. And then, we also have a few foundation partners, who have a bunch of grantees, and have agreed to support consultants for good, and support their existing grantees to get access to consultants. So, wanting to really bring together all the different pieces in the ecosystem so that that’s possible. And ultimately, non-profits get a whole lot better support, and they get funded support in some cases through some of that.

We, on the consultant side, to support that accessibility also, we also offer, we just closed out our Consulting for All Scholarship Fund which we run through the community. So we just opened up 45 year-long scholarships for consultants, which also then, in turn, gives non-profits access to a larger pool and a more diverse pool of consultants as well. We really try to support consultants to get their content out there.

One of the things that can be tough starting out with your own business is doing your own marketing, because how many newsletters does a non-profit need to subscribe to, for example? If they only have a communications question once in a blue moon, they don’t necessarily need a communications newsletter. But when you share your content as a consultant through Consultants For Good, every week we highlight somebody’s content in our newsletter, and we highlight daily content on social media.

So, really trying to make those connections on behalf of consultants when, for them, for example, growing a blog, growing a podcast, takes a lot of time, and therefore unpaid hours, and unpaid work. So, whatever we can do to help consultants kick off that business development process a little bit faster while helping non-profits also speed up, and in some cases, we’ll actually cover the consultant search process, and manage the consultant search process for them as well. That’d be the last thing.

I think, through the Consultant Match Lab, we have a few different options. So, we’ll help non-profits do the scoping part of “I need a consultant, but I don’t know exactly what that means or what they can do. I don’t know what to budget for that. I don’t know what that looks like.” Easy Match, which I mentioned. If you’re already ready, and you want to just submit your proposal, have some consultants apply to it. But then the last one is really to further help make those connections stronger. So we will run the consultant search on behalf of a non-profit because I don’t think that most small non-profits, for example, need to be experts in how do you run an equitable and accessible Consultant Search.

If you do it once or twice a year, that doesn’t need to be something that you’re good at or spend time at. And so, because we’re familiar with those resources, we will run that process for free for non-profits to, again, support on the non-profit side, but also to help consultants speed up that business development of finding clients in that process. Was that a clear answer? Was it a pause? That’s a big one. Okay, I feel like I rambled that a little bit.

David Pisarek: Further to your point, there are really four pillars that business ownership consultancy is based on, and it all starts with leads. You can’t make sales, you can’t deliver, you can’t grow if you don’t have leads. Being part of a community like this, where there’s an opportunity to potentially get those, and to connect with the non-profits to provide them with the service that they actually really need, is an amazing opportunity. So, thank you for putting the community together and building it to where you have.

For listeners who are non-profit leaders or consultants, what’s the best way that they could get involved with C4G and take advantage of the community, which, by the way, side note, I’m a member in there as well, for everybody, so happy to answer any questions if you have as well. But how can people get involved?

Lauren Andraski: For non-profits, our memberships are always free. You get access to those articles, on-demand resources videos, that all come from consultants. Those are all fully included. We also offer a health insurance and benefits program that non-profits have access to, to support running an equitable and effective consultant search. So all of that is included as part of a free non-profit membership. We’ll send you a link to sign up for a free account.

On the consultant side, we are offering 10% off of our paid consultant memberships through the podcast today. We’re excited to offer that, along with a 30-day free trial. And I think something I’ll note for the consultants too is, yes, leads are important, but what we found through the community is the folks that have the most luck are folks like David who connect with other Consultants 4 Good members and have those partnerships and find a subcontracting partner or people to team up with, and build it out that way.

Yes, leads are important, but what we’ve seen is that relationships tend to be even more so in growing a successful business, successful partnerships in the non-profit space.

David Pisarek: Love it.

Lauren, these have been some amazing insights and thoughts around community-led digital growth and web strategy. I hope folks listening to this or watching it, we’ve got our videos up on YouTube podcast because they switched from Google podcast. It’s now YouTube podcast. I hope people listening have gained some valuable advice and pointers from our conversation today. I’m going to put you on the spot. I love to ask my guests right at the end, if you were to issue a challenge to anybody listening to the episode, something you want them to do in the next, let’s say, 24 hours after listening to this or watching it, what would that challenge be?

Lauren Andraski: Great question. In the next 24 hours, I would say reach out to somebody to have a deeper conversation that you have, somebody professionally, and see if you can make a personal connection and find some things in common with that person, as well as far as how you might deepen a connection.

David Pisarek: Love it. That’s so great. I don’t remember which episode it was, but I did talk about creating connections, networking and growth mindset type stuff. If I can remember which episode it is, we’ll get that into the show notes. Lauren, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

Lauren Andraski: Great. You can find me on LinkedIn. Otherwise, feel free to reach out at [email protected].

David Pisarek: You can also go to consultants4good.com. We’re going to have all the links and things on our show notes page. And you’ve got a little bit of a giveaway, so you’re talking about the memberships, and they’re free for non-profits. There’ll be a 10% discount code. I think it’s C4GWOW for the 10% off paid membership or consultant’s membership. We’ll have those details on the show notes page as well.

So thanks again for joining Lauren. It’s been great having you here on the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast.

And until next time, keep on being successful!