Insights on Building Mission-Driven Organizations
Practical lessons from 15+ years of leadership across nonprofits, real estate, and healthtech. Topics include AI implementation, nonprofit operations, business systems, and what it takes to scale organizations without losing your mission.
From the Pharmacy to the Fundraiser: My Unexpected Journey to Stupid Cancer
At the age of 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 wasn’t going to 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 on the computer, and tech became my primary focus.
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?
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.
13 Things I Wish I Knew Upon Graduation
13 tips that could have benefitted me when I graduated college in May 2010.
Productivity Apps that distract me all day long
An ever-growing list of apps and platforms I use every day in my Chief Operating Officer role at Stupid Cancer, client work, and blogging.
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.
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.)
How a Rebrand and Paid Facebook Ad Yielded Over 340,000 Likes
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.
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.
How to Be Less Busy with Slack
In the early days of Stupid Cancer (Then called 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.