The Chief Automation Officer

I signed up for Zapier on March 5, 2014. I was Chief Operating Officer at Stupid Cancer at the time. Back then, I couldn't tell you what a cloud computing stack was, but I had one, and Zapier unlocked many doors and flipped on many light switches for me, professionally.

Three months after joining Zapier, Slack hit the market, and I was off to the races with automation. Suddenly every business data point was funneling into Slack as it quickly became the brain of Stupid Cancer. I have blogged in the past about Slack, so I will avoid doing that here. As a result, Slack dinged all day long at Stupid Cancer, and it still does in my various current roles.

When Wade Foster, Zapier CEO, posted this on LinkedIn, I felt seen:

Without realizing it, I have spent most of the past decade becoming a well-tuned Chief Automation Officer. It’s subtly been the hallmark of my career.

One of my favorite byproducts of automation is just how amazed people are at the very nature of it. There is little budget or margin of error for trying things out in the nonprofit world, especially with fundraising tools. Most fundraising platforms are awful and siphon much-needed funds out of charities to line their pockets. They would argue that they make it possible for nonprofits to be successful, and that's a debate I would love to have. I digress. People are amazed when you connect multiple apps, and data moves around 24/7.

With Zapier, we could suddenly do more than our out-of-the-box fundraising platform could do alone. I was not left wanting seven features and having to settle for four. I could have it all.

• I didn't need to export donors and import them into Mailchimp.

• I didn't need to watch my email for Stripe donations; I could get a Slack notification.

• I didn't need to create a to-do list task manually; Zapier took care of it.

My pivot to the private sector has created more meaningful automation opportunities in recent years. Now operating a membership-based company, my automation is focused on moving people through different states, such as lead, contact, active member, and former member. These states affect how we interact with you and your place in our cloud stack.

I wish I could say I spent a lot of time making flow charts and thinking about the end-to-end journey of my data. The reality, though, is most of my Zaps are born out of acute necessity and team inspiration. Perhaps one day, I’ll start keeping notes.

One consideration when running through the paces of creating automation is where Zapier fits alongside an app’s internal workflow system. Zoho Campaigns comes to mind in this example. I might use Zapier to get you from Facebook Leads to a Zoho Campaigns Mailing list with additional information. Still, I will let Zoho Campaigns read your contact record and qualify you for an email workflow. Keeping track of these relationships is essential so you don’t create loops or unforeseen automatic enrollment.

Automation can be daunting if you don’t know where to start. Services like Upwork have professionals for hire on a short-term basis to get you started. Once you start seeing what’s possible and connecting the dots between your workflows and cloud apps, you’ll get back those wasted hours doing things manually.

---

Further reading:

• The emergence of the chief automation officer

• Chief Automation Officers Are The Answer … But What Is The Question?

My Smart Home

Years ago, sophisticated home automation seemed like an unattainable reality without the help of an electrician, networking expert, or a nerdy friend. The reality is that the market has a lot of options to smarten up your home. They range from the plug and play to flip-the-breaker installs.

A lot of these items come with different degrees of sticker shock. The configuration I am going to outline below was accumulated over many months, out of need and curiosity. When my wife and I bought a house earlier this year, it became clear that while not essential, these tweaks could significantly improve our quality of life. Onward!

Getting Started with Climate Control & Security

When we bought our home in May 2020, the first upgrade was swapping out the old Honeywell thermostat to a Google Nest Learning Thermostat. The home was unoccupied and temperatures in Central Texas were rising. I figured if I was going to be doing some form of pre-move manual labor, the thermostat was critical to cool off the house before I got there. Dropping the temps on moving day made the t-stat worth it.

As we settled into the new home, we realized that our bedroom ran hot at night. Our house is made of brick and gets sun on three sides. To solve this we put a Google Nest Temperature Sensor in the bedroom. During the day, I’ve got Nest prioritizing the hallway temperature, and overnight I’ve got the bedroom sensor controlling the system.

To round out our Nest install, I added two Google Nest Outdoor Cameras and a Nest Doorbell. I found this video really helpful when installing my cameras. With my Google Nest configuration set up to my liking, I moved on to the front door.

My three beautiful nieces live 500 feet away and often will come over to swim in our pool. I began to see a trend forming of us running through the house, dripping water, having to unlock or lock the front door. It became clear that, like the Nest Thermostat, a new August Wi-Fi Smart Lock would quickly pay for itself.

Keeping the Lawn Green

In Central Texas, your Bermuda grass can quickly go from green to white/yellow/brown if you’re not careful. Our new home came with a Hunter X-Core manual sprinkler controller. Between a broken dial and not knowing if the sprinklers were actually coming on at 5 am, I was ready for something a little nicer. Enter the Hunter Hydrawise WiFi-enabled controller. It’s got a great app to set up your programs and read reports on actual watering.

Network Coverage & IoT

As I began accumulating smart home devices, It was clear that my AT&T router wasn’t going to consistently support the diversity of devices both on the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz. For those unfamiliar with the differences, Netgear sums it up well: 

The 2.4 GHz band provides coverage at a longer range but transmits data at slower speeds. The 5 GHz band provides less coverage but transmits data at faster speeds. The range is lower in the 5 GHz band because higher frequencies cannot penetrate solid objects, such as walls and floors.

As I began to flirt with the idea of upgrading my home network, I was quickly pointed in the direction of Unifi.

With a little bit of false confidence and a few hundred feet of cat6 cable, I began planning my wireless access point (WAP) plan. This was prior to Cardi B. ruining that acronym forever.

I decided to install two Ubiquiti Networks Unifi 802.11ac Dual-Radio PRO Access Point (UAP-AC-PRO-US) in the house. One in the hallway, visible from most of the large interior rooms in the house, and one on the back porch, ensuring full coverage over the pool and patio.

Once I had installed these two WAPs, I identified an opportunity to fill in the front part of the house by adding a Unifi Beacon HD Access Point.

In all, this setup has proven able to support all of my devices. One critical step is to turn off the internal WiFi in your cable modem as these are doing a much better job.

Lights. Cameras. Apple HomeKit.

Having done everything prior and paying the related credit card charges, I was ready to put a cherry on top of my smart home with some smart light switches. 

At my day job, I oversee commercial office space facilities, among other things. A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the Lutron Vive product line. It is an incredibly flexible solution in an environment with 100+ switches. The residential application, Lutron Caseta, is total overkill that is well worth the price of admission.

As with the rest of my smart home devices, I started with solving a problem before moving to non-essential purchases. First up was getting my Lutron Smart Start Kit to lay the foundation for what was to come.

With my Lutron environment established, I was free to begin expanding as I saw fit. My priorities were as follows:

• Turn exterior lights on at sunset; Turn off at sunrise

• Turn select interior lights on upon arriving at home

• Create scenes based on time of day or event

With this strategy in mind, I was able to use the Lutron app and Apple HomeKit to create some slick automation. When my wife or I arrive home, certain lights come on to welcome us. When we both leave, all of the lights shut off, with the exception of the exterior lights.

Along with this home occupancy logic, I have also programmed a few scenes in Apple HomeKit: 

• Party City: All common area lights up to 100%

• Relax: 7-9 pm lighting down to 30%

• Max Chill: Most lights off, one at 20%

• Leave Home/Goodnight: All lights off, except front exterior. (They run on Lutron sunrise/sunset schedule)

• Fans On: Sometimes the smoke detectors go off or the humidity level in the house rises, this quickly circulates air with the HVAC fan on and ceiling fans spinning.

Utilizing Apple HomeKit, I am able to have the majority of my products under one control panel. There are times when I will use a native app, such as the Lutron sunrise/sunset integration. There has also been one instance where I had to buy something to connect two devices that didn’t want to play nice together: Google Nest & Apple HomeKit. Of course, these two would not want to have their products integrate. Luckily, there is an aftermarket bridge that warms up this cold war and connects Nest to HomeKit. The Starling Home Hub plugs in to your network switch and with a quick configuration connects all the devices seamlessly.

All Projects Have a Finish Line

As I mentioned earlier, this didn’t happen overnight, nor do I feel a sense of completion. I still have light switches I would like to switch to Lutron, devices I could tell Alexa to control, and ways to turn our app-controlled devices into more passive experiences through motion detectors and geofencing.

For the holidays, I received two MyQ Smart Garage Door Openers and some Wemo Smart Outlets, both indoor and outdoor. With these recent additions, I am nearly done with my smart home conversion.

I hope this narrative inspires you to finally start your smart home project and align with a product line. In a crowded market, it’s important to make smart decisions early on before finding yourself with multiple brands of smart home products.

If you are feeling helpless, help someone

I am traveling from Austin, TX, to New York City for Stupid Cancer’s 2019 annual fundraiser, Toast. Hello from 35,000 feet.

At 15, I worked as a Pharmacy Technician for the local mom-and-pop Islip Pharmacy. A job at CVS followed, then our community hospital. I loved it. However, I knew I wouldn’t be a Pharmacist when I got a 62 in high school chemistry. Even my failing grade had a bit of creative curving upward. It was obvious that my pharmacy career would have a ceiling and an eventual stopping point. Luckily, I was pretty good at the computer, and tech became my primary focus.

In the fall of 2009, I had a chance encounter with a guest speaker, Cyndy, in my undergrad Grant Writing class. I was in my 5th year, without clear direction on what I would do the following May when I graduated. Cyndy spoke of an organization called the “I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation,” aka “i[2]y.” Having been directly impacted by my father’s diagnosis in 2005, I was intrigued. I got in trouble for looking at the website during her talk. I was emailing the CEO about an internship.

Around the same time, I applied for a Community Coordinator position for the hospital system where I was working in the pharmacy. It was a marketing job to make the hospital seem more cheerful than it actually was. Despite it being a very junior position and my pending Bachelors's in Communications, I did not get the job.

On January 23rd, 2010, I started my internship at i[2]y with founder Matthew Zachary. I was able to use my paid time off at the hospital to work most Fridays at the i[2]y office in lower Manhattan. It was exciting leading my double life as a pharmacy tech and putting a foot in the door at a nonprofit startup. Around April 15th, two weeks before Matthew's twins were due, I received a full-time job offer. I quickly accepted.

I would characterize 2010-2011 as building years for the organization. We knew what we wanted to do. We had a plan to get traction. We just needed everything to click.

In mid-2011, we changed the organization's name from I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation (2007-2011) to Stupid Cancer (2011-Present). Upon doing so, we immediately saw an uptick in Facebook page growth. We also deployed a creative ad that got hundreds of thousands of Facebook likes. (Read more about that here.)

All of this intent we were putting out into the universe was amplified by us taking our patient conference, the OMG! Cancer Summit for Young Adults, to Las Vegas. We solidified a partnership with Volkswagen and me, and John Sabia piled into the tiny coupe and drove west to the coast, and circled back to Las Vegas. We would do this a total of five times after for a total of 5 road trips, 35,000 ground miles, and a lot of cancer center tours. (Thank you to GM/Chevy and Michael Savoni for believing in us.)

With limited warning, the Stupid Cancer train was rolling, and we did not stop for anyone in our pursuit to deliver our mission of empowering young adults affected by cancer.

Between 2013 and my departure in mid-2016, I enjoyed a lot of personal growth in building out unrealized areas of the organization. I grew the Stupid Cancer Store from a sub $5,000/year revenue stream to over $150K in revenue. Not only were we making money, but our apparel was getting out there. Even on TV. (Thanks, Italia!)

Did you spot the @StupidCancer logo in last night’s #ChasingLife? Here’s @italiaricci modeling a #StupidCancer tee! pic.twitter.com/KVNueba9PV

— Chasing Life (@ChasingLifeTV) July 3, 2014

MZ and I also sat through hours of choppy WebEx meetings with our offshore development company and created Instapeer, a mobile app for survivors and caregivers to connect and chat about their experience with cancer. It was the first of its kind.

When I think back to just how different life was from 2010 up to my departure in 2016, there are so many watershed moments for the organization. It was an incredible ride to be on.

Tonight, I am receiving the “Stupid Cancer Recognition Award” from the current Board of Directors and staff. It’s an honor that I could not have imagined receiving when I started out in the non-profit world 10 years ago.

When I think back to my motivation for inquiring about the internship, the feeling of being a helpless caregiver prevails most. Watching dad go through surgeries and chemo. We were bound to the process. Helpless.

If you are feeling helpless, help someone.
– Aung San Suu Kyi

I love this quote.

My Supercharged Email Management Strategy

Managing multiple email inboxes has become all too real in 2019: personal email, school email, work email, your project, your other project. For years, the Gmail app was my go-to. Flipping between inboxes seemed like the best there ever could be. The thought of a native app with multiple logged-in email accounts plus efficiency?

No way.

2015 said “yes way,” in a big way, when Spark hit the app store and the next iteration of email management was finally here for both mobile and desktop. At long last, something intuitive that wasn’t the Apple Mail app. (Disclaimer: I’ve never used it. It gives me anxiety.)

Spark makes it easy to start, with a great onboarding experience to add your email accounts. Once complete, you’ll notice the emails you just saw in your other mail app roll in. This is when panic will set in, and you realize you should have never signed up for that daily horoscope newsletter ten years ago.

Fear not; I am about to break down Spark into a few easy, actionable steps to get going and make sense of the private email hell you’ve created for yourself.

Start by focusing on the core features

1. Signatures

2. Smart vs Classic inbox

3. Looking at all your emails vs sorting by inbox

4. Short and long swipes on mobile

5. Snoozing emails

1) Signatures

Every good email author needs a really cool signature, right? Right. Once you’ve added all your accounts, go in and create the variations of your signature.

Here is what that experience looks like:

To reiterate, you can create multiple signatures for multiple accounts. When replying, Spark knows which signature to add to the bottom of which email. It enables you to roll through emails like a champ without having to mess with how you sign the email.

2) Smart vs Classic inbox

Sometimes when you are presented with more than one option in life, it can make it hard to settle on just one, right? Recently, this was a usability issue in Spark with Smart vs Classic inbox. It was less than stellar to flip between the two, then they introduced a really nice on/off toggle.

Smart inbox off – Showing all emails

Smart inbox on – Showing emails that have been seen at the top. Would normally be broken into important, notifications (aka promotions), and then seen. At the time of writing this, I don’t have any new emails.

This is a super helpful mobile experience for when you’ve just woken up, come out of a long meeting, or any other time you haven’t looked at your email and are looking to cut through the fat.

3) Looking at all your emails vs. sorting by inbox

Before you get overwhelmed thinking you’ll be bombarded by all your emails, you can look at them in their entirety (all of your emails, from all accounts) or by individual accounts. This is accomplished by using the menu on the left side. It’s a helpful mechanism to focus on whichever headspace you’re in.

4) Short and long swipes on mobile

I can dominate my email on mobile with short and long left and right swipes. Here is how I have them set.

5) Snoozing emails

This is my favorite part of Spark and my motivation to share this information with you. Snoozing emails has become the key to my success as an adult who sends emails.

Whether you’re on mobile or desktop, snoozing could not be more simple. When I am at my computer, I use my ⌘+D shortcut, which instantly pulls up a similar pop up to the one below.

When snoozing emails on my phone, I am presented with the question of when I want to see the email again.

Snoozing is perfect for situations where the ball is in someone else’s court and it requires a follow up to see if the action happened and what the outcome was.

Scenario A: If I send a request out and can wait until the next day to hear back, I immediately snooze the email for tomorrow morning.

Scenario B: If I get an email that is important but not more important than what I’m doing in a given moment, I will likely snooze it for a few hours or until 6 pm when I have completed my most important tasks, emails have slowed down, and I can think about something with a clear head.

Scenario C: If I get an email that I need to follow up on, but it’s not pressing, I will snooze it until the weekend.

Scenario D: Snoozing is also great for things that aren’t relevant for days or weeks. Those emails that start out so well-intended by saying “Just putting this on your radar…”

Sorry, radar is full.

Here is how my day unfolds

7 am – Smart inbox toggle on, swiping to quickly archive junk mail.

9:30 am – Emails prioritized by immediate action, snoozing for 2 hours later, the evening, the next day, Saturday, or next Monday. Occasionally, I set a date/time for emails to reappear in the distant future. (Helpful for those “let’s touch base in a month” emails.)

10 am – Prior day snoozed emails roll in.

Mid-day – Less important morning emails reappear and are dealt with.

6 pm – Lowest priority emails roll in.

Evening – Inbox zero!

That’s it. That is my email secret sauce which keeps me rolling fast through newsletters, promotions, and solicitations right on to the real emails.

---

Ready to get started with Spark and become the master of your own email destiny?

Nurture Fundraisers Using CauseVox, Zapier, and ConvertKit

Fundraising is a crucial part of a non-profits existence. The biggest opportunity for a non-profit is leveraging its community to fundraise on its behalf. The hardest part is maintaining the attention of community members and empowering them to feel confident in their efforts.

For a year now, I've been using CauseVox as my primary fundraising tool for the Testicular Cancer Foundation. I really enjoy CauseVox because it puts a lot of the controls on the admin side, rather than having to go through an account manager or some other contact on the provider side.

Exploring CauseVox Zaps on Zapier

About 6 months ago, CauseVox began teasing their Zapier beta integration. As a Zapier lover and full-blown nerd, I'd been waiting for the integration to go live to see what kind of pathways I would have access related to fundraisers. A few weeks ago, the news came through that the integration was live. Excitement ensued.

The CauseVox options are simple and to the point. Did we A) Get a new fundraiser or B) Get a new donation?

With this info, I can do a lot of cool things.

One of the main features that really (I mean really) expensive fundraising platforms up-charge for is communicating with fundraisers within the platform. Campaign updates, direct emails, drip emails, etc. There's a ton of options.

My first Zap using CauseVox is to bridge the gap between a lack of communicating with fundraisers and using an email marketing platform I live in all day long, ConvertKit.

Using ConvertKit

With ConvertKit, I can create drip email sequences to walk my fundraisers along a series of emails that convey important information, emotion, and reinforce why they are so important to our organization. (Fundraisers...if you are reading this, we love you!)

CauseVox has the ability to send a welcome email, which is fantastic. I haven't yet decided if I will keep this email active or send them all to ConvertKit for the entire email series. (On one hand, it's a safe bet that the email will always send, but on the other hand, I would love to have the open rate and click metrics that ConvertKit provides.)

Creating a Drip Email Sequence

Currently, our email series is broken up like this:

Email 1: Welcome to Fundraising

Email 2: More about CauseVox and tactical points around fundraising (includes link to proprietary PDF about fundraising)

Email 3: Where the money goes / why this is so important

Final Thoughts

I am curious to see how the response is to our new series of emails. With all communications, the last thing you want to do is be over communicative and have someone lose interest entirely. By looking at my ConvertKit open and click rates, I'll see which emails are most effective and which need some fine tuning.

My Top Influencers of 2016

Over the past year, I've accumulated several different types of email subscriptions. From Seth Godin's daily musings to Nathan Barry's drip email about his book, I've read and enjoyed them all.

Email is a tricky medium. In recent years, I've become so accustomed to unsubscribing from newsletters, that it has become second nature to skip the content and go right to the footer. GMail has gone so far as to give you the option right from the inbox.

As social media has grown and evolved over recent years, the necessity to focus on well-crafted email has declined.

There are, however, individuals doing email and doing it well. Without further ado, here are some of my top influencers of the 2016:

Nathan Barry

Get Nathan's Email

Nathan is a designer turned writer turned email software aficionado. I am in awe of his mini-empire and enjoy watching him and the company he founded, ConvertKit, grow.

In Nathan's drip emails about his book, Authority, he takes you on a wild journey which ultimately sold me on signing up for his $29/mo email platform. See my last post about it.

Paul Jarvis

Get Paul's Email

Paul Jarvis is intelligent as he is entertaining to follow. He is a veteran web designer who shares knowledge, insights, and has carved out a nice little corner of the Internet for himself. His emails span from direct marketing to step-by-step guides.

Jason Zook

Get Jason's Email

If the Internet was a candy store, Jason would be the kid in it. I am consistently impressed with his ability to get shit done and do it in creative & innovative ways. As I pen this blog post, he is writing his next book live daily on WatchMeWrite.

* Sometimes Nathan, Paul, and Jason come together to form course-making Voltron and put out some really great stuff.

Tobias Van Schneider

Get Tobias' Email

I can't recall how I came to find out about TVS, but I am glad I did. Tobias has an eye for the finer things in life and shares this through his channels. His weekend emails are interesting commentary on design, technology, pop culture, work, and productivity. As a world-class designer, everything is put together rather elegantly.

Seth Godin

Get Seth's Email

Seth Godin has been around almost as long as the Internet itself and needs very little introduction. Seth has been blogging every single day for many years now. His morning emails offer inspiration and prompt introspection. It's a great way to start off your day and can help you make decisions in life and business.

I would be remiss in failing to mention the evolving good stuff that Gary Vaynerchuk puts out every single day, seemingly on every platform. I have also enjoyed watching Casey Neistat chronicle his life in his daily vlogs.

Let me know if the comments who you subscribe to!

3 Automations to Make Year-End Fundraising a Breeze

It's that time again: year-end fundraising and the race to December 31st. While this can be the most wonderful time of the year, it's also the most tedious, data-intensive, drive-you-to-drink time of the year. Unless you have the right tools in place.

Luckily, there are options when it comes to funneling all the data your donors are generating. Enter, Zapier automations.

If you're unfamiliar, Zapier is a subscription service that connects different online apps to one another using API and other means. With a few simple clicks, you can connect the majority (read: relevant) of your apps and be on your way.

The Approach

For me, architecting my Zapier arsenal is a problem-first approach. What do I need in the future and where do I need it?

Let me pause here and give you a word of caution. With too much automation, you can enter a data redundancy wormhole, wherein you have exhausted your monthly Zap limit and reached the task limit. If you have no idea what I am talking about, great. If you're as nerdy as I am, you will be at 80% of your task limit in no time.

Without further suspense, here is my list of essential automations to get from here to listening to U2 on January 1st.

Stripe to Slack

Stripe is currently my primary payment gateway. Using the direct Slack integration, I send payment success, payment fail, and daily deposit information into an #incoming-money channel. On the Zapier side, I send customer and transaction metadata to the same channel. It's duplicative, but helpful for providing donation context in the moment. The input and output looks something like this:

If I donate $5, there will be an #incoming-money message that says "Kenny Kane (kennykane@gmail.com) has donated $5 to campaign x."

By including the customer email field in my Zap, I can very quickly send a new email, instantly, from Slack to thank or learn more about them. I also use it to look them up on social media and try to get background info on them. I typically do this for donations larger than $250. If it's an interesting email domain, I will do it for less.

Stripe to Wunderlist

One of the places you can set yourself up for failure the most in donor cultivation is the process of thanking them. For me, a Slack notification can fly by and be lost forever. To mitigate this problem, I set up a handy insta-to-do list.

Using a similar formula to my Slack message, I create a new Wunderlist task for each successful Stripe transaction. At certain time intervals (instantly – 24 hours), I check my 'Donor Thank You' Wunderlist and clear out the donations less than a certain amount. From there, I prioritize biggest donations first. This integration helps me sort through the madness of my donation notification emails, Slack alerts, and any kind of reports Stripe might give me.

Stripe to Google Sheets

I use Google Sheets to create a running table of all donations. This is helpful in running some quick analytics around donations and drawing conclusions without digging through information from multiple sources.

As you may know/come to find out, things break and I don't expect this integration to work 100% of the time. If I am creating any sort of enduring report, I would go right to Stripe for an export.

In Conclusion

The year-end season of giving can be a noisy time. By leveraging the backend APIs of your platforms, you can create a nice system of checks and balances to ensure you won't have incomplete reports, or a donor who feels like they don't matter.

These are just 3 quick automations. If you were looking to get really automated, you could use Zapier's (relatively) new multi-step Zaps to access existing information and update it, such as adding lines to your CRM.

Good luck!

ConvertKit Makes Me a Better Non-Profit CEO

What makes a good marketing email? For years, I thought it was a combination of colors and images, font types and social icons. I remember when Mailchimp released their drag and drop editor in November 2012 and everything changed for the amazing.

Four years later, I find myself running away from what I once worked on so hard on. Sending flashy emails seeking to dazzle constituents. Don’t get me wrong, I still use said editor and send branded emails, but it is my belief we’re on the verge of a new communication style in the non-profit sector that compliments the main email list.

Last year, I stumbled upon Authority & Nathan Barry and immediately went down this author, creator, entrepreneur rabbit hole. (Shout out to Nathan, Paul, Jason et al) While entrenched in Nathan’s drip email sequence about his book, I found myself looking forward to the next email from him. It was a non-annoying batch of emails that added value to my inbox every few days. What I didn’t realize was that he was actually selling me on his product, ConvertKit.

ConvertKit strips away the fancy drag and drop editor and provides you with the ability to send personalized plain-text emails, fast. Gone are the days of the bulk BCC, replaced with the ability to let my network decide on how they want to engage with me, and the organization I run.

With ConvertKit, I can tag subscribers by donation tiers, campaign affiliation, etc. What’s more, I can change up who the email comes from quickly. If I want to send the email from a fellow staff member or Board Member, it’s a two second switch before the email goes out.

What I really love about ConvertKit is that I can create links within the email that allow people to tag themselves using automations. In the past, a subscriber would have to visit a preference page to do what they can now do right from their inbox. By giving people options on what they want to hear about on the front end, I’m reducing the number of people who might go right for the unsubscribe link in the footer. If they do unsubscribe, that’s fine. "Engage or die."

Uncle Ben said “With great power comes great responsibility.” He’s right. As your ConvertKit database grows in size, you have to maintain strict segmentation of messages and resist the urge to send to everyone at once. That’s what your other list is for.

Since implementing ConvertKit, I’ve seen a ton of conversion and interest from my outbound emails. With the built in analytics, I can see who is opening my emails and interacting with them. These insights are helpful when knowing which donors to pursue, or volunteers to activate. As time progresses, I am discovering new and exciting ways to incorporate ConvertKit into my day to day. With CK starting at $29/month, I can’t help but think back to all of the Salesforce add-ons, priced astronomically, to achieve something similar.

Creating opportunity through self-service

On January 1st, I assumed the role of YNPN-NYC Board Chair. It has been a great first month, taking a 35,000-foot view of the chapter and its operations.

One of the value-adds of YNPN-NYC in the past has been a job board. Previously, anyone could post, just so long as they were a member. This was a great funnel to grow membership, engender community, and create a cycle of brand awareness and retention among employer and employee.

At the start of the year, our Board roster was a little light. Part of the “steep” learning curves of assuming my role, has been to figure out band-aids to carry the organization until we’re whole again.

As I set out to reimagine some of our tech infrastructure, including how we billed membership dues, the job board was a priority to sort out. At the very least, YNPN-NYC must continue to support the nonprofit community which we aim to serve in this capacity.

Through a bit of googling, and some luck, I stumbled upon JobBoard.io. It’s a turnkey solution that allows employers post jobs, candidates to find employers, and board operators to collect a fee for the service. For YNPN-NYC, this is found money around-the-clock.

What really sold me on the platform beyond the customer service from its CEO was that it’s inherently self-service was and we could brand it. Now, jobs.ynpn.nyc is the place to start your nonprofit career in New York City.

Sure, there are other big names out there. How cool would it be, though, to start a job interview talking about your mutual connection through YNPN-NYC and doing good in NYC.

Since the implementation of the new job board, we’ve had 36 jobs posted. Postings begin at $25 for a 30-day listing. Employers have the option of featuring the post for an additional $25. To celebrate, the launch of the board, I utilized the embedded couponing functionality. Until the end of the month, you can save 25% by using coupon code “launch” at checkout.

I’ve enjoyed watching the jobs come through during the work day. I have an integration through Zapier that posts to my Slack channel in real-time. There’s another automation that tweets new job postings to @ynpnnyc.

Thus far, postings have translated into $820 in found revenue for the organization that will be reinvested into expanding our reach and programming for members.

I’ve learned from this experience that sometimes the best way to capitalize on opportunity is to put it in the hands of the person on the other end of the transaction.

Migrating your membership organization to a new payment provider

When I took over YNPN-NYC earlier this month as Board Chair, I immediately hit the ground running with a new recurring payment provider, Recurly.

At some point in 2015, I became a client of a SaaS company using Recurly to manage their billing. I was getting a discount from them, which made my experience with the platform all the more interesting.

In the past, YNPN-NYC managed recurring membership dues with PayPal. After a site redesign, a new member was processed via SquareSpace purchase with a Mailchimp auto-subscribe. It was a seamless transition and kept you on the site. To be honest, I wasn’t involved back when PayPal was the primary payment solution.

So, here we are at the end of 2015 with members in low triple digits recurring annually on PayPal and a few hundred with SquareSpace purchased memberships.

With this great divide, I knew I would need something that would be self-managing, with a low barrier to entry. It also had to be elegant by today's standards. I didn’t know a ton about Recurly, but I knew I had to test it.

What sold me on Recurly was the ecommerce-like nature of it. Customers come, checkout, and then are processed annually. It’s blatantly simple.

Another huge sell was the twice daily sync of active subscriptions with Mailchimp. I wouldn’t have to manually export. Even if this integration wasn’t built in, I could have used Zapier. The icing on the cake is that if someone cancels their membership, it removes them from the list.

Implementation

I recently launched a new CRM for Stupid Cancer. With the CRM, I took the approach of “today is the first-day” type of mentality. I knew I may be disrupting things for legacy members, but that new leads would be unaffected. My hunch was correct.

Once our Recurly account was set up (About a 15–30 minute process of fully customizing and setting up payment processor), I pulled down the old membership form.

After I was confident it was set up correct, I waited for the new members to show up. Luckily, a launch in January meant that I could leverage people's resolutions with clever marketing.

Once the process was set and I saw how the Mailchimp sync worked, I compiled all of the active legacy members with their name, email, and anniversary date. I uploaded them into this new “active member” list.

Migrating Legacy Members

One important note about Recurly is that it adds two private fields to Mailchimp. Since we offer one plan, these fields are always populated with the same info. With a quick sort on MC, I can see who is a new 2016 member and who isn’t.

Using Mailchimp segmentation, I can email the people whose Recurly fields are blank with an anniversary before the date of that communication. This is how I figure out which members are expired within the new configuration. I haven’t decided how many times legacy/non-Recurly members will receive a renewal prompt before I migrate them to the non-member list.

Obviously, it’s in my interest recapture as many of these legacy members as possible. For some, they may not even realize their membership has lapsed. Using coupon codes, I can spice it up a little bit and play around with how much of a discount it takes to have people come back aboard as a member. Since people move or transition careers, it’s no surprise that we won’t have 100% return. That’s not a realistic goal, anyway.

Customer Service

The best part about Recurly is the self-managing nature of it. As a consumer, subscriber, member, human, I want to be in control of what’s going on, especially when it comes to paying for things. Why shouldn’t we grant the same to our members?

Recurly sends an email 7 days prior to a member's anniversary letting them know in one week they will be billed. A member then has the option to cancel, update billing, or sit back and let it happen. As I mentioned earlier, if they cancel, they will be removed from the Mailchimp list.

If their billing fails, magic within Recurly will try to resolve an issue such as a bad expiration date without automatically reaching out to the subscriber. If Recurly is unable to automatically sort it out, subscribers will receive a few nudges.

Moving Forward

Migrating an entire membership base can seem like a daunting experience. As with most things in my day-to-day life, I try to approach a problem and see if there is a modern solution for it.

While it is widely known that the cost of retaining an existing customer is far less than acquiring a new one, it can also be costly to spend time on the things that Recurly will handle for me.

Reception

The move to Recurly has been a really great one for the organization. We've had over 75 members sign up in the first 18 days.

13 Things I Wish I Knew Upon Graduation

My fall semester graduate friends have me feeling nostalgic. Here is a list of things I wish I knew before entering the real world.

1. Be self-aware The world knows everything about you. Be in control of crafting the narrative by being savvy with what you share.

2. Your career started 4 years ago Maybe 5 if you were like me in college.

3. Emotional Intelligence Google it. Practice it.

4. Create an about.me page Here is mine for reference. Don’t have much to say? Take a hi-res picture of yourself somewhere interesting. Fake it until you make it.

5. Create a vanity LinkedIn URL Don’t try to reinvent the wheel – First name, last name. If taken, use first name, middle initial, last name. Worst case scenario, add a number.

6. Delete all your terrible tweets This wasn’t so much of an issue for me in 2010, but I recommend running an advanced search and pruning profanity, politics, and anything that could be misinterpreted.

7. Delete allllllll your terrible tweets Sorry that your aspirations to be the next highly opinionated Internet celebrity didn’t work out. Use this to start from scratch without losing followers.

8. Claim your personal branded assets yourname@gmail.com, yourname.com, linkedin.com/in/yourname (really trying to drive this home), twitter.com/yourname, facebook.com/yourname, instagram.com/yourname. You get the picture.

9. Consider making all your social accounts private Or maybe don’t. For me, my personal/professional life blurred very quickly right off the bat. This led to a lot of cleanup of old, useless posts that I thought were funny but probably no one else would. There is a thin line between being authentic and being too transparent.

10. Stay in touch with friends and classmates, but keep moving forward Your alumni network of peers is a great thing to consider spending time on, but it will probably not help you attain success or wealth right out of school.Bonus: Keep in touch with professors and let them know of your successes. College newspapers are great PR early on in your career and your alma mater will want to brag about you.

11. Instead, join a professional society For example, if you’re looking to work in the non-profit field in any major city, you should join YNPN.

12. Don’t run right back to school A Masters degree is nice to think about, but think about how you can rise up through the ranks without one. Instead of embarking on a journey that might be costly and unnecessary, try taking a class or two at a specialized training school, like General Assembly.

13. Keep learning…you’re never done.

Productivity Apps that distract me all day long

I’m always fascinated when I read what apps people use on a regular basis in different industries. Here is my list:

1. Sunrise Calendar I’ve been using Sunrise for almost two years and it has really changed everything, starting from the moment I wake up. Honestly, though. The email digest in the morning is fantastic and gives me an idea of what I’m up against. I have several calendars shared with me, which I hide on the desktop and mobile app. I get it all in the email which limits alerts.

2. Slack Slack, my Slack. If you’re reading this, I’m preaching to the choir. Maybe we could have a brief discussion below on how terrible the Ryver ads are on Twitter.

3. Trello Organized. Elegant. Slack integrated. Nuff said.

4. Calendly I wear a lot of hats. Calendly is the first solution that lets me put scheduling time in the hands of the other person. Saves so much time and is great for new clients.

5. Appear.in Love Google Hangouts but hate needing to login and invite someone with a Google account? Try this. It’s lovely.

6. Curated.co Curated.co is a email service provider that helps you build elegant, roundup emails. You can use a submit stories via email or bookmarklet. Compile collected stories for distribution at will. (Currently getting 50% open rates consistently with the list we’ve built.) Check it out

7. TripIt Helping me organize travel plans for years. Also has tracking metrics on distance and what not. Forward your itineraries to plans@tripit.com to get started.

8. Zapier Wade and his team have helped me professionally in ways they will never know. Zapier is the ultimate GSD app.

9. IFTTT If This Then That could be viewed as a competitor of Zapier, but it’s more of a Coke and Pepsi relationship. They are both super helpful.

10. LinkedIn

11. iDoneThis This quirky app has changed things at Stupid Cancer. With a cool Slack integration, employees can type /done xyz and have it logged. IDT pings you at 9am and 5pm with what’s happened recently among the staff in a email digest format.

12. Mint Hit recommend if checking Mint to see how little money you have is a favorite pastime.

13. Bigcommerce What’s to say. The only game in town. Love BC. Love the people. Shoutout to Mitchell, Ron, Tracey and everyone else on Medium.

14. Skubana Skubana is an all-in-one cloud management platform for all things e-commerce. It helps me manage my Amazon seller account.

15. Inventory Planner Oleg has built something amazing here. It’s a Bigcommerce bolt on that has helped me more than I would have thought since enlisting the services of a third-party fulfillment company. It’s my window into the warehouse.

16. BaseCRM Base is relatively new for Stupid Cancer but works with Zapier (duh) and helps us funnel everyone into the app. Have it connected with just about every entry point to the organization.

17. Confluence We use Confluence for document retention. I wish we used it more, but we’re a small staff. Adoption has been difficult versus Google Drive or Dropbox.

18. Zendesk Gone are the days of responding to inquiries via shared gmail account. Zendesk helps us help people and fast.

19. Iconosquare Perfect Instagram desktop browsing tool. Love tracking our hashtags on it.

20. SumoMe I just rolled this out on my personal site to grow my list. I am optimistic it will help me beef up my email list.

21. Google Analytics

22. FileZilla Free FTP client. I’ve been using it since I converted to Mac in 2010.

23. BBEdit The perfect notepad/html editor. Keep up the good work.

24. Email Permutator Want to email the CEO of a company but don’t know their email address? Use this.

25. Assembla We built a mobile app with an India-based dev company. We use Assembla to track app functionality requests and bug fixes.

26. SquareSpace

27. iTunes Radio

28. Google Docs

29. Google Forms

30. Google Sheets

31. Facebook

32. Tumblr

33. Twitter

What I Wish I Had Known About Email Marketing

Over the past 6 years, I’ve had the honor of shifting and adapting our tech infrastructure at Stupid Cancer. With a nimble team, I’ve enjoyed quick deployments, and minimal consequences if things went awry.

In 2009, I was given a contact list and keys to the email service provider we used back then. Our list was a catch-all of friends, family, and stakeholders. This list was the export of email contacts from our CEO. Knowing what we collectively knew about email back then, we didn’t blink twice when uploading them and sending out our year-end donor appeal.

This particular communication was a blatant ask for donations and not what would be considered a “transactional” email. The email was sent out and several things happened that ultimately led us being booted off the service.

Email Marketing 101

Success in email marketing can be measured in a number of ways, which are sequential in nature. First, you have the percentage delivered. If every single person on your list receives the email, you’ve got a 100% delivery rate.

Let’s say you send the email and an email address has been deleted. This happens when someone changes jobs and the company removes them from the system. This is called a hard bounce. Most, if not all, ESPs automatically remove hard bounces from your list since there is a very slim chance they will be reinstated.

The other issue that can affect deliverability is called a soft bounce. A soft bounce is when an inbox is completely full, the recipient email server is offline, or your email is very large in size. Too many soft bounces can trigger an ESP to consider that address a hard bounce.

When someone opens an email and clicks, that’s known as a click-through. Ideally, the majority of subscribers will open and click. If this number is really low for you, keep reading.

What Actually Happened

In hindsight, we were horrible email marketers. We took a list of emails that we passively accumulated and used them without proper permissions. The contact list had been accumulated over a decade, and many of the work e-mails on the list came back as a hard bounce. This was the first step towards being booted from the service.

For the emails that did make it into our the inboxes of the list, many of them were surprised to get the email. People get defensive about their inbox. Think about it…what was your reaction the last time you got a random email? Ultimately, we skipped a series of communications, known as a welcome series, that would have properly set us up for a donation ask.

The best case scenario when someone receives an unexpected email is that they will take a moment to review look at where it’s coming from. If it’s a person or company they know, they’ll likely open it. For many of the people who received our email, they knew our CEO, but didn’t know why they would receive an email from the organization. It’s easy to think that just because you’ve had an exchange with someone, that you’re welcome in their inbox.

If you email someone who is loosely connected, chances are they are going to take the path of least resistance and hit the spam button. Ideally, they will unsubscribe and honorably discharge you from their lives. If they’re familiar with receiving emails from companies, they could possibly update their preferences page. (This is the best best case scenario)

What We Should Have Done

In our case, we went from a guy with an idea to a company. When the organization came to fruition, we should have started fresh with a blank slate. The mindset of “we should start with something” was the wrong one to have. By implementing readily accessible signup forms and driving traffic to them, we’d have been better off in the long run.

When building out your email program, think of the roles your subscribers might fit into. For Stupid Cancer, we typically use Cancer Survivor, Caregiver, Healthcare Provider, and Advocate (or other). By putting people into four different buckets, we can segment and communicate with each vertical more relevantly. This segmented approach will engender a more focused relationship, and people won’t feel like they’re just a newsletter recipient. If customer roles are well identified, you can go crazy with allowing people to self-select what’s most important to them.

Once you’ve got people on your mailing list, make sure you empower them with the ability to decide how much or how little they hear from you. Your preferences page is an important part of your email program as it can be the difference between someone unsubscribes or not. More and more, I’m seeing companies offering the option to receive less emails.

Moving Forward

Once you’ve got some momentum in your email marketing campaign, you can really begin to leverage the data within it. As people open your email, their Geolocation is stored. You can use this to segment to people in a certain location. At Stupid Cancer, we use this to promote local events. If it’s a New York City event, we will promote within 5 or 10 miles. If it’s a Cody, Wyoming event, we’ll promote within 200 miles.

By taking a responsibly curated and more segmented approach (vs the traditional batch and blast), you’ll have higher open rates, more click-throughs, and happier subscribers.

What You Can Do

If you’re somewhere in between where we were and having issues. You may want to consider having your list cleaned. Depending on the size of it, you can pay a fee and have the list scrubbed of hard bounces, as well as role-based emails. Role based emails are bad because they aren’t attached to a person, and can drive down your open rates.

If you’re looking to increase overall deliverability, you can utilize the services of an ESP like Kevy, who ensure that you are properly set up that Internet Service Providers like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail know that the email is sent from a trusted source. Using ESPs that have less checks in place will result in your emails ending up in the spam folder.

Final Thoughts

Sending mass emails is a big responsibility. If you lose the trust of your subscribers, it is nearly impossible to regain it. Furthermore, personal contact information should be highly guarded and never considered to be leveragable for third-party financial gains or frequent and poorly planned communications.

Non-Profits: Technology is The Biggest Donation You Aren’t Leveraging

Any non-profit COO or CTO will tell you that finding the technology that appropriately addresses their needs is tough to come by. The existing platforms with the non-profit in mind often cost upwards of $25,000 to engage. There are several problems with this situation. First, it is impossible to know that a CRM/donor database/360° fundraising platform will meet your needs long-term. Second, these platforms will lock you in for a year at least, and the much-needed updates will never come. Lastly, these platforms are insular systems without API or any means of connecting them to other solutions. (San Francisco, feel free to help us out here.)

I’m lucky to work in a non-profit vertical that spans from the tiny side-project to the multi-million dollar behemoth fundraising machine. In a space where we’re all working towards the same goal, it’s interesting how organizations leverage technology to carry out their mission.

Over the past six years at Stupid Cancer, we have stopped and started with so many different platforms my staff now cringes any time I tell them I’ve found something new. It’s true that I’ve probably worn out my welcome by having them help me test new things, but old habits die hard. When it was just Matthew and myself, we had to compensate for the lack of staff. It was the wild west of free trial exploration, and I learned a lot from it.

As we’ve grown over the past few years and hired staff to help us, my instinct remains to take a tech-forward approach.

I am also a big believer in putting automated systems in place where appropriate and removing the human element. There is no reason to try to do things better than computers. I see it way too often in this community of limited resources. It will only reduce your capacity for upward growth.

We recently did an internal exercise where we measured how much time each staff member spent on their respective duties. While they mostly landed as we thought they would, there were some instances where outside forces were pulling us away from getting out jobs done. In any company — especially a growing one – this is bound to happen. Ultimately, we took a look at the results and have begun to figure out how to mitigate these distractions by adding articles to our Zendesk FAQ, for example.

In this world of highly scrutinized non-profit budgets, there is so much time and money that can be saved by utilizing low-cost platforms like Zapier or IFTTT (Which doesn’t cost anything at all). I actually find most SaaS-based companies are willing to give deep discounts just based on your merit.

Google and Slack are two examples of companies that reward 501(c)(3) organizations with a lifetime subscription to their platform for free. If a platform doesn’t offer free or discounted services, offer to create compelling content for them that will be mutually beneficial.

We recently received a lovely donation from a platform we had used in the past that was in transition. The temporary separation was a mutual agreement, as they changed their core product offering. When the dust settled on their end, we jumped right in line to sign up.

As the maturation of Stupid Cancer continues from a tiny startup non-profit to million dollar organization, I remain vigilant in making sure we stay nimble and unburdened by the unnecessary.

How a Rebrand and Paid Facebook Ad Yielded Over 340,000 Likes

In the beginning

Getting people to pay attention to you is hard on any platform. For the I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation (aka i[2]y Cancer Foundation), growing the social footprint didn’t have a clear path.

Back in 2009, well before Facebook Pages rose to the level of significance they have now, i[2]y had a very modest showing. The page URL wasfacebook.com/stupidcancer and the page title was i[2]y Cancer Foundation.Obviously, this configuration was problematic from the get-go.

In April 2010, Facebook converted Fan Pages into Like Pages and brands began ramping up their efforts to engage with Facebook users.

It wouldn’t be until 18 months later that we decided to rebrand I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation/i[2]y from its dual persona to a much more resonant and less syllabic “Stupid Cancer.”

This was an exciting change for us but posed a question. Should we continue on with the ~15,000 likes on the page as is or should we reboot?

With some serious luck, we were able to get in touch with someone at Facebook who changed the page name on our behalf. We felt like we had won the social media lottery.

The Catalyst

Once the name was changed, we hit the ground running. Through another instance of serendipity, Dr. Brad Love’s University of Texas Integrated Communications Campaigns class had chosen to do their class projects with Stupid Cancer as the focus. The class was fully aware that we had just rebranded and this was a blank canvas opportunity for them to come up with some really great work for us to utilize moving forward. We offered up a few verticals, including helping with our newly minted Facebook strategy, offline outreach, etc.

Honestly, we weren’t sure what to expect from the students. What they came back to us with at the end of the semester was nothing short of genius.

Like us to give cancer the bird.

Deployment

The ad was simple, yet effective. Their presentation was straight out of a Mad Men episode. As soon as they said it, we looked around and nodded our heads. The more we thought about it, the more we fell in love with it.

Being the nimble organization that we are, we put the ad into rotation right after the Skype call ended. We were thrilled when Facebook approved it. Not knowing much about advertising on Facebook, we set a $10 daily limit and watched to see what would happen.

We could have never predicted what would ensue. Not only did we have a more ‘likeable’ Facebook page, but now we had a killer ad. It was the perfect one-two punch we didn’t know we needed.

The Results

• 4/28/2011–11,500

• 5/20/12–22,000

• 7/8/12–30,000

• 9/30/12–40,000

• 11/11/12–50,000

• 1/8/13–60,000

• 4/6/13–70,000

• 6/2/13–80,000

• 7/8/13–90,000

• 8/12/13–100,000

• 5/14/14–160,000

• 7/7/14–200,000

• 11/7/14–250,000

• 10/9/15–310,748

Over the past 3.5 years, we’ve turned the ad on and off periodically. Once we began to gain traction with paid likes, the organic ones followed. We planned a ‘100,000 Like’ party for a Friday night and had to throttle it up when we stalled at 98k the day before.

To date, it’s the only real ad spend we’ve had. For the majority of the ad campaign, we’ve spent $.10 per like. This has equated to about $1,250 per quarter since Q2 2012.

We halted the ad this summer. There’s no telling if we’ll turn it back on anytime soon. We are typically motivated to do so by being close to the next 25/50/100k interval.

Drinking from the Data Firehose

When I started with Stupid Cancer in late 2009, the organization had just invested in a SugarCRM database to manage relationships. I had used pharmacy management software since ’02 in my former life as a Pharmacy Tech, so I was familiar with the core functionality. SC had just hired a dev company and spent a considerable amount of money on what was then a worthwhile investment.

Being new to the organization, I didn’t want to rock the boat by accelerating development in ways I knew it could go. I also knew that at any given moment something could happen that would result in some kind of database related disaster. I didn’t have the keys to back up the database regularly. I probably didn’t think back then that I should have been.

Long story short, our self-hosted CRM wasn’t the right fit. We could have made that instance of Sugar work for us, but it was kind of doomed from the start. Before long, we landed on Mailchimp and our Sugar lead forms were replaced by Mailchimp signups. Our contacts became more valuable as subscribers and their journey with us carried on as such.

In 2011/2012, we began to see an uptick in traction across the board due to a corporate rebrand. Suddenly, our lists were growing. In March 2012, we launched an online store and began down an interesting e-commerce journey. All of a sudden, we had rich customer data. For the first time in organizational history, we had an influx of physical addresses. We had real people, spending money and willingly giving us data.

Mailchimp, along with Volusion, were our first two SaaS engagements. We were able to negotiate non-profit pricing which was in the 20–25% off range or sometimes free.

Very quickly, we faced another dilemma. Our email marketing platform and online store weren’t communicating with one another. Luckily, I caught wind of a cloud connector called Kevy. Up until this past summer, Kevy functioned solely as an integration platform. It moved large amounts of data from one cloud-hosted platform to another via API. They have since discontinued their integration service to focus on email marketing. We look forward to utilizing their service at the end of our current ESP contract.

Before we knew it, we were generating a ton of rich data every single day, from all sides. So much so, we couldn’t keep up with it. We had analytics and longitudinal information but were only in a position to glance at it and move on. With a small staff, there was no sound way to compile reports and make informed decisions, for the most part, other than from 35,000 feet up.

Last Summer, Slack was brought to market and changed everything for Stupid Cancer, and team communication everywhere.

Slack isn’t the first team communications platform that our organization has ever used. We were loyal users of Yammer, before it was acquired by Microsoft and the platform didn’t keep up with our needs. We put our best effort into Bitrix24, which only lasted until we caught wind of Slack.

Slack was new and interesting. It came with a lot of bells and whistles that we didn’t know we needed. Slack pointed me in the direction of Zapier, an integrations company. By this point, I had already experimented with IFTTT (If this, then that). Zapier connected Slack with platforms we didn’t even know it could.

Slack became the soul of Stupid Cancer overnight.

A year ago, I wrote this post about Slack. Since then, Slack has helped us refine a lot of our internal processes by making us take a tech-first approach. Throughout our work day, we track projects, finances, social media, customer service, customer feedback, event registration, and more.

After 7 years of creating data, we’re relaunching a traditional CRM on theBase platform. Using the same workflows that we have with Slack, we’ll be able to focus less on the minutiae and have a tool that serves us well.

INspired Insider Interview

My 1.0 at Binghamton is among the best things that have ever happened to me.

I was recently asked by an interviewer for a fun fact that people might not know about me. Typically, I opt for “I ride a motorcycle.” On this particular day, I went a little deeper into the archive and referenced my 1.0 at Binghamton University in the fall of 2006.

A 1.0 is not something you really brag about. I remember back then feeling like I had just filed for educational bankruptcy. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, let alone the path in front of me.

In my teens, I didn’t really focus on being invested in the school. I started working when I was 14, and the influx of money and feeling of being semi-self-sufficient was something I wanted more of. Some classes came easier than others, balancing the scales and leaving me with an 83 average upon graduation. I did just enough to get by.

My college application process was a form on Suffolk Community College’s website that asked for my name and address. There were no essays. There might have been a letter of recommendation.

My freshman year was great. Making new connections at a new school was fun. I found that I missed seeing people from high school and felt a bit of schadenfreude when I saw people in the second semester who had gone away but wound up returning to Long Island. Back then, you could pretend you were still at your first choice school on Facebook when you were really living back home with your parents.

Many factors led to my lackluster performance in the fall of 2006. Ultimately, it amounted to several issues that were both in and out of my control.

I had visited my sister for graduation weekend after my freshman year of college and thought, “I could do this.” I applied to the Binghamton School of Management and was denied over the phone. Not to be deterred, I asked if they would consider me for the liberal arts school. Moments later, the same person who delivered the bad news greeted me with a happier tone. They were willing to let me come after all.

As it turns out, there’s nothing advantageous about deciding you want to attend a university two months before classes begin.

I remember being among the first to move in. Like most schools, Binghamton takes pity on the transfer kids. I unloaded my ’94 Ford Bronco and called it a night after a long day of running around campus. That’s when the fun began. You see, I was tripled in a double. Roommate #3 hadn’t arrived yet, but the room was already unnavigable.

I woke up on day 2 at Bing to my first on-campus communication:

Kenny — Campus police were trying to contact you. You missed the sign that said “don’t park here” and they towed your car across campus to the events center.”

I took the mile walk from College in the Woods across campus to collect my displaced car, which now had a $150 ticket under the windshield wiper. Next up was class registration.

Somewhere in between losing and reacquiring my car, I picked classes out of a print catalog. Back then, the Internet was a work-in-progress, especially in academia. The course management website was a step down from Suffolk, but I rolled with it. I picked out 5 classes, including Microeconomics, in which I got a D in my first year of school.

As we passed the 45-minute mark of registration, tragedy struck, and the server crashed. Cautious optimism filled the room. Surely everything would be fine. Moments later, we were greeted with a login screen. Our schedules were gone; what’s more, my selections were now full. Hope turned to panic as we had to find alternatives on the fly.

At this point, I began to find humor in all of this.

The semester began. I was able to change one or two classes and get back towards a course trajectory that made sense. I was more than happy to part with my ENG 300 Globalization class.

It’s amazing how our environment can contribute to success and failure. I did well in my early morning classes but had poor attendance because I couldn’t sleep in my noisy suite. I also learned that I didn’t do well in lecture hall environments.

The semester came and went. The holidays were mired in regret. I learned a lot about myself at Binghamton. I ventured into the unknown and hit some roadblocks. It costs time. It costs money.

I returned to Suffolk in the spring and landed at Farmingdale State University a year later. By that point, I had a better idea of who I was and who I wanted to be. I was on the 5-year plan and found a communications program that suited me.

In the fall of my fifth year, I was introduced to a small organization called the “I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation” and became an intern.

This tiny non-profit would eventually grow up to be Stupid Cancer.

My internship turned into a full-time job offer a month before graduation in May 2010. Today, I am the Chief Operating Officer at Stupid Cancer, the nation's largest non-profit that comprehensively addresses the unmet needs of cancer survivors in their 20s and 30s.

Funny how time sorts things.

Over the past 6 years, I have traveled to 39 states, made thousands of connections, and experienced financial independence. I’ve had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

Three years ago, I began dabbling with selling online. I’m currently paid to blog on the subject. Last November, I started my own boutique consultancy helping small business owners and non-profit organizations.

With so many people in my newsfeed going back to school, I can’t help but wish someone had told me how important that semester would be.

Last summer, I returned to Binghamton for the first time in almost a decade while I was out on Warped Tour. I was happy to see that it hadn’t changed.

Learn more about Stupid Cancer at http://stupidcancer.org.

How to Be Less Busy with Slack

The Beginning

In the early days of Stupid Cancer (formerly I'm Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation), we had two employees and a small team of "executive" volunteers. Everyone was spread out around the country, and keeping in touch was critical.

Back then, in 2010, Yammer was the gold standard of the emerging corporate social networks. The design took cues from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It was a great tool that ultimately became the backbone of the organization.

Yammer was eventually acquired by Microsoft, which is when the product kind of lost its way. Upgrades and tweaks became less and less, and the pricing structure also changed, for the worse. We made the decision to migrate platforms in early 2014, to Bitrix24.

Bitrix24 was fine for a time. It had the threaded posts, just like Yammer. It also had tasks, which was new and interesting. The team was underwhelmed by their mobile app, which wasn't as good as Yammer's had been. The search resumed.

Enter Slack

Slack is a communications platform, with an emphasis on chat, search, and integrations. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what I like most about Slack. Perhaps it's a 3-way tie between the custom emoji's, Slackbot responses, and custom loading messages.

I originally intended on making this blog post purely about how I use Slack (IE: Integrations), but I felt it was relevant to discuss where the team was coming from.

The initial kickback was that Slack didn't have the threaded chat view like we were all accustomed to. There was an initial flood of conversations that were disjointed and hard to navigate if you'd been away from Slack for a few hours. Keeping track of ideas was like nailing jello to a wall.

Upon further inspection, it was our Slack naivety that contributed to the mess. We suffered from what I would call "FOCC" (Fear of Creating Channels). Slack channels are essentially chatrooms that live in the left navigation of your Slack app. You can star the important ones, and they get pinned to the top of the list. DM's and private groups live under them.  You can learn more here.

Our watershed moment came when channels went from being just chatrooms, which is how our Internet brain works, to actually being channels. I will list below some of my channels and their purpose. (Keep in mind we're a non-profit that serves young adults with cancer.)

My Slack Channels

#discussion

We have broken conversation-based channels into buckets based on our programs and projects. There is also a channel to list items throughout the week that you'd like to discuss at the weekly staff meeting.

#development

This channel integrates with a Trello board. Any time a change is made on that board, it's reflected in this Slack channel. It's a great way of keeping everyone in the loop on a critical part of our operation.

#rss

I have tried several RSS-feed-based channels. They can be helpful in keeping you up-to-date on your favorite blogs and news sources. I have a channel that syndicates everything we post to our Tumblr, which is a syndication of our Facebook page via IFTTT. (Inception, anyone?)

#incoming-money

This channel is my favorite, for obvious reasons. We have a web store that uses PayPal Pro, and two incoming donation sources that send emails when donations are received. I send information from all three sources to #incoming-money via Zapier.

#outgoing-money

This channel lets the team know when bills have been paid. Using Zapier's email channel, we can capture bill pay notification emails from bill.com or Capitol One and have them post to this channel. It keeps information flowing and helps the finance and ops team in the loop.

#random

This channel syndicates all the inquiries into our Zendesk. It also shows Mailchimp subscribes, unsubscribes, and campaign activity. It should probably be called #customerservice.

#feed-instagram

Another great Zapier fueled channel is our Instagram channel. In this channel, we track images posted on IG with #stupidcancer. It's a great way to source content for our Facebook wall, and see what conversations are happening related to our brand.

#feed-twitter

Just like above, except this channel syndicates all mentions of @StupidCancer.

#feed-reddit

Reddit has an active /r/cancer community. With this RSS integration, we can see what kind of conversations are happening and source content for our FB wall.

#giphy

Slack has a great direct integration with Giphy that I've taken advantage of since we upgraded our Slack plan from free to paid. Once enabled, you can write things like "/giphy blogging" and get an image like this one on the right.

In Closing

This story has a happy ending. Slack has quickly become the pulse of the organization. It's our Death-Star-for-good, making us incredibly efficient. I'm told threaded conversations are in the pipeline, which will make my team members happy.

Case Study: How Stupid Cancer manages all the moving parts with Klipfolio Dashboard

I recently sat down with Klipfolio to chat about how Stupid Cancer uses their service.  This is a repost.

What is Stupid Cancer?

Kenny Kane: Stupid Cancer is a not-for-profit organization that provides a support network for young adults affected by cancer. When our founder, Matthew Zachary, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1995, he realized that there were actually very few resources available to the 15-35 age category. Stupid Cancer was founded in 2007 to address this gap, and has grown to include a vast support network that includes local meet ups, online forums, social networks and even an online radio show.

What is your role with the organization?

KK: I was Matthew's 2nd intern and 1st employee. Back then, we were called "I'm Too Young For This!" but decided to adopt one of our campaign taglines, "Stupid Cancer." I am a Co-Founder and Director of Social Media, eCommerce and Supply Chain.

Can you tell us a little bit about your data and reporting needs?

KK: There are a lot of moving parts here at Stupid Cancer. We have a large social footprint and need to track data from our various revenue channels and supply chain. For us, it's about centralizing data from all these channels into one place.

How are you using Klipfolio?

KK: Right now, I have about 8 or 9 tabs on my dashboard. I use Klipfolio to bring all the data together in one place, which makes it convenient when I'm talking to our board of directors and need to rattle off lots of facts and figures. Klipfolio saves me a lot of time and energy when I'm preparing for meetings and it's definitely nice to have it 24/7.

Could you tell us a bit about the metrics you are tracking on your dashboard?

KK: My financial tab tracks donations, revenue vs expenses, and campaign performance, while my store tab tracks revenue by month, shipping costs, number of order shipped by state and I have a chart that tracks sales tax and shipping costs. My operations and social tabs show metrics like number of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram followers, mail list subscribers, web visitors, and I even have a snapshot taken from Zendesk that shows opened and closed issues, as well as customer feedback.

My conference tab (pictured below) tracks the number of attendees to conferences over the past 4 years – it's actually really cool to see the growth of the conference. And the outreach tab tracks the literature we publish and send out to hospitals and shows data such as number sent, where they are sent to, and the frequency of sends.

Why Klipfolio?

KK: After checking out another solution, a friend referred me to Klipfolio. When I found out it was $20/mth, I didn't think it was real. *Laughs*

I have a basic knowledge of XML and what I like to call web accessible data sources. I've had a lot of fun setting up my dashboard and learning about the capabilities of the platform.

How has your experience been with Klipfolio staff?

KK: Yvonne is the best. Ever. She was absolutely instrumental in helping set up the dashboard and answering any questions I had.

What features would you like to see in the future?

KK: I'd love to see more data sources. I've definitely tweeted to Klipfolio to introduce you to services that I use. We'd definitely love to set up an integration with SoundCloud to get data about radio show attendees.

What's one piece of advice you'd give to a team preparing to deploy their own dashboard?

KK: Think of who you're sharing the dashboard with. A dashboard is only as good as the audience it's intended for. With all the information on my dashboard, I could pull open 8 or 9 chrome tabs in my browser and flip through them to get the same information. But think of how impressive it is to open the dashboard and have all your data flash, update and populate.