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.

Migrating from Volusion to Bigcommerce

The Beginning

In March 2012, I stepped into the ecommerce world and launched a Volusion store for my non-profit, Stupid Cancer. I understood the basic functions of ecommerce, and felt like I could figure the rest out as I went. My expectations were pretty accurate, and found that navigating the unknown was a lot of fun. I picked Volusion because a colleague of mine had found success with their platform, and like any other digital software vertical, there were so many options. The sales started, issues that popped up along the way were remedied, and before I knew it, I had a successful online store.

Remember when you learned how to drive? That sense of confidence that followed? Before you knew it, you wanted to go faster.

Enter Bigcommerce: I received a solicitation to take a tour of their product by a Bigcommerce sales rep. I found myself building a carbon copy of my store on their platform within the first hour, and noticed the little things that were different than what I had been used to. I found myself building out shipping rates by weight, and entering those pesky sales tax rates by county. (Thanks a lot for that, by the way, New York State. #sarcasm)

I have to insert here that Volusion did get me off the ground with a very generous 80% discount. So, while Bigcommerce was unable to offer the same discount, I felt like I was getting much more in personal back and forth e-mails with their team, along with some on-boarding conference calls.

So here I am, with the holidays approaching rapidly and a steady flow of orders coming in, planning to abandon ship with Volusion and start on a new course.

I had everything pretty much built out on BC when it came time to flip the DNS. I say pretty much, because you’re never really ready when it comes time to go live.

Going Live

To my surprise, my new store was online about two hours later, and the orders resumed. A critical step here is to put your old store into maintenance mode, and have your provider restore it back to its original(demo) URL. Luckily, I was headed to a conference for the days following, so I had some downtime to watch the fallout, which ended up being related to the following:

301 Redirects

This is arguably the most important thing you will need to do. With a new ecommerce platform comes a new URL structure. For example, http://store.com/productname could end up being http://store.com/product-name. Anyone who searches for your product and clicks on your old URL will get a big old “Page Not Found.” Bigcommerce makes it easy to point potential customers in the right direction.

Shipping Rates

You probably set these up once and then left them alone, right? With Bigcommerce, I had an issue where I capped off my shipping rates at 2 pounds, without a price for anything heavier. This resulted in customers not being able to proceed with checkout. Make sure you test everything thoroughly, and let customers get in touch with you easily. (Install a “Contact Us” tab.)

Payment Processor

I was operating under the assumption that I had a relationship outside of Volusion with Authorize.net.  I plugged in my payment gateway info into my new store, and subsequently learned that it would be a breach of contract if I moved forward with that setup. I investigated my options, and found that PayPal Pro is a very nice solution if you're already accepting PayPal payments in your web store. It's a seamless application, and you get the great service that PayPal provides. (It's important to note that you can use a new Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce. You cannot use your Volusion Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce.)

Moving Forward

Once I had everything pretty much straightened out, I focused on getting my product offering back up to 100%. A new store offered the opportunity to audit my product images, descriptions, etc.

Having been live on Bigcommerce for a few weeks now, I am much happier with the mobile version of my store, and am seeing a lot of mobile checkouts. I was also happy to see that a lot of my favorite tools integrate just as well, if not better, with Bigcommerce. Check them out on the Bigcommerce App Store.

Making Sense of Business Metrics via Dashboards

If you're in an operations role at your company, chances are you're bombarded with business metrics information all day long. If you're like me, you probably keep multiple tabs open, or have bookmarks that go directly to various report pages. Pie charts, bar graphs, spark lines, gauges, meters, maps, and tables fill your day as you try to make sense of it all.

In a recent strategic planning meeting, my good friend Roni Zeiger referred me to a company called Klipfolio. This wasn't my first time looking at dashboard services, but definitely the first time it made sense. I had previously sat through a demo of Domo at eTail West. While there isn't anything inherently wrong with Domo, for $20 per month per user, Klipfolio is at the price point my NPO budget can afford.

So...where to start, right? In order to get started with building my dashboard, I first had to understand what I wanted to track. Suddenly, the possibilities were endless. I made a mental list:

• Social presence. Facebook insights are relatively easy to connect, and instantly rewarding. Below, you'll see I've created a chart that tracks 3 dimensions of insights: impressions, new likes, and engaged users. This mimics the standard view on Facebook. But hey, you don't have to go there anymore.

• More social presence. I quickly found out that the best part about social media API is that it's rich data and it's reliable. I have several panes on my dashboard that give me two dimensions of any given social platform. For example: Facebook followers and people talking about us; Twitter followers and number of tweets; Mailing list subscribers and open rate.

• Distribution. We have a growing eCommerce store, as well as a literature supply chain that goes out to cancer centers around the country. It's great to visualize which states and countries they're going to, and in what frequency.

• Event attendance. Exactly the same as distribution, but flipped, and with human beings.

• Cash flow. Donations, sponsorships, store revenue. You can do all sorts of fun things from creating thermometer like gauges with goals, as well as pie charts to see how your different campaigns stack up along side each other.

After two months of tinkering, that's where I've landed, but it's not exactly the end of the story. There are a few other aspects of creating your dashboard.

• Audience. Who are you showing this to? In my case, I can drag and drop different panes easily. If you plan on using your dashboard as a tool during a sales pitch, you will definitely need to modify and cater it to each specific meeting. I have also contemplated creating a "read only" version. Luckily, with Klipfolio, you can choose to share different panes with other users. This is great if you have people under you who might need to see only bits and pieces of information rather than everything under the hood.

• Data sources. API, XML, CSV, or JSON? (Who came up with these crazy acronyms, anyway?) In terms of data sources, API is ideal. As I mentioned, social API is up the majority of the time. I do have a pesky data source that is in and out. I really never know if my charts and graphs will populate. XML reports are static, but easy to work with. CSV files are also static, but a bit more customizable for specific reporting purposes. The data source will determine how efficient your dashboard is vs. how much manual updating it will require. Always shoot for API/JSON first.

If you're using a dashboard service or thinking about using one, I'd love to hear what you plan on tracking in the comments below.

Nonprofiteer of the Year 2013

In June, I found out I was a finalist for the Young Non-Profit Professionals Network of New York City's Nonprofiteer of the Year 2013 award.  I was stoked to be nominated for my first professional award. As soon as I found out, I had several colleagues forward me the newsletter YNPN-NYC had sent out, along with the 4 other finalists.  Quite an impressive list of people:

John Hellman (@JuanEstebanNYC) Director of Advocacy, Latino Commission on AIDS

John Moreno (@JohncitoMoreno) Founder, Latino Youth for Higher Education Program

Tara Pokras (@tpokras) Program Assistant, Project Sunshine

Mon Yuck Yu Chief of Staff, Academy of Medical & Public Health Services

The event was held in at the Center for Social Innovation on June 27th.  It was a nice intimate gathering of like-minded individuals.  The winner was named towards the end of the event after the 5 of us offered up some career advice.  I was honored to have been selected and thankful to everyone who nominated me!

Zendesk, a Non-Profit's Dream.

I’ll generalize a bit: most nonprofits just aren’t set up to experiment with their tech stack. That’s not a knock—it’s just the reality. They’re busy doing the work, and let’s face it, most aren’t super nerdy.

As I write this from a JetBlue gate at San Diego International Airport, I find myself daydreaming about... closing tickets. The kind that get triaged to my team and me through our helpdesk. It's second nature now. Any time I check my iPhone, I might see a Zendesk notification waiting for me.

Wait—what’s Zendesk?

Back in 2012, when our team doubled from two to four, I pitched Zendesk as our helpdesk solution. It's simple: an inquiry comes in, a ticket is created, we get notified, we respond, and eventually, we resolve it. It also doubles as a powerful FAQ platform—customizable and user-friendly—with the added bonus of blog-style conversations at the bottom of each article.

But can’t we just stick with a shared Gmail account?

Sure, you can. We did. In fact, we had multiple shared inboxes and aliases, all leading into a messy Gmail catchall. If that sounds familiar, you’re not doing it wrong—but you could be doing it better. Zendesk brings structure, clarity, and scalability to your inbound chaos.

And if your setup is even more duct-taped than that... well, you might already know you need help.

So, why Zendesk?

Here’s what I was hoping for when we signed up:

• A single inbox to rule them all. I wanted a central place for inquiries that wasn’t my personal or work email.

• Smarter routing. No more time-wasting email threads—just reassign a ticket to the right person with a click.

• Better service. We run an online store and get plenty of “Where’s my order?!” messages. Zendesk helps us respond faster and with fewer dropped balls.

• A real, dynamic FAQ. Finally, a place to post policies and reduce repetitive questions.

And here’s what we’ve learned:

• It’s worth the investment. Zendesk isn’t free, but it pays off.

• You still have to drive. It’s not a magic wand. You’ll need to create macros, set rules, and stay on top of it.

• Know your users. Some people won’t love getting a ticket number. Legacy folks might be confused. Communicate the shift clearly.

• Don’t overuse it. We once tried scheduling a meeting via Zendesk. Ten messages later... we switched to email. Know when to step outside the system.

• Use the feedback. Zendesk can automatically send follow-up surveys after tickets are closed. Critical feedback helps us improve fast.

• Crowdsource your FAQs. Don’t write them in a vacuum. What seems obvious to you might be confusing to others.

• Make your FAQ pages fun. They don’t have to look like a dusty helpdesk relic.

• Track performance. Zendesk gives great data—who’s crushing it, who’s not, and how fast your team responds.

Bottom line: Zendesk isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s been a game-changer for us. Like anything else in your tech stack, you get out what you put in.