Why I'm Investing in Structured Data (And Why You Should Care About Schema Markup)
This week, I took a hard look at the structured data on my website. Not because I'm chasing some technical SEO checklist, but because I realized something important: if I don't tell search engines who I am, they'll figure it out on their own. And when there are two other people with my exact name competing for the same search results, I can't afford to leave that interpretation up to chance.
Structured data, specifically schema markup, is how you give search engines the context they need to understand your identity. It's not about gaming the system. It's about clarity. When someone searches for Kenny Kane, I want Google to know exactly which one I am. The CEO and author in Austin, not the comedian in Los Angeles or the rapper in Memphis.
I Asked Lindy AI to Write My Wikipedia Page
This week I asked Lindy AI to generate a Wikipedia page about me. Not to publish on Wikipedia itself, just to see what it could create from my public footprint.
The result looked surprisingly real. It built a full article with an infobox, clean sections, and a references list that linked to my site, Forbes articles, and even my books. It read like something that could actually live on Wikipedia.
Initially, it wasn’t perfect. A few dates were wrong and some sources were thin, but that was the value. It showed me what the internet already says about me, how consistent my story is, and where I could improve the trail of verified information behind it.
I used it as a checklist to tighten my own online narrative. If an AI can build a convincing profile in seconds, it’s a good reminder that your digital presence is always being written, whether you’re involved or not.
Beyond the Platform: What GoFundMe Taught Us About Nonprofit Tech Ownership
This week, headlines broke that GoFundMe quietly created fundraising pages for 1.4 million nonprofits across the U.S. Most of those organizations had no idea the pages even existed. It’s a perfect, if uncomfortable, illustration of where nonprofits stand today in the digital landscape. Tech platforms are moving faster than most organizations can keep up with, and if you don’t actively manage your digital presence, someone else will.
That’s not a dig at GoFundMe. Their intent was to make it easier for donors to find and give to nonprofits. But it highlights a bigger truth: digital transformation isn’t optional anymore. It’s not just about adopting tools; it’s about owning your identity, your data, and your narrative in an increasingly automated world.
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.
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.
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.
Creating opportunity through self-service
By transforming a manual process to a self-service solution, job posting conversion rates increased dramatically.
Why We Switched to Recurly at YNPN-NYC—and How It’s Already Paying Off
Learn how migrating YNPN-NYC from a static one-time membership checkout to a recurring payment provider, gamified conversion, and created a foundation for long-term, sustainable revenue.
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 platforms that do exist 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 it to other solutions. (San Francisco, feel free to help us out here.)
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.