Navigating Digital Change: Insights from Kelly Stover of Ride Connection

In this episode of Health Nonprofit Digital Marketing, we explore the topic of nonprofit digital transformation through the story of Ride Connection, a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide transportation solutions to older adults and people with disabilities. Our guest, Kelly Stover, the Development Director at Ride Connection, shares her unique journey of overseeing marketing for the organization and taking the lead in a much-needed website redesign. We explore the signs that prompted the website revamp, internal alignment, and the critical role of storytelling in nonprofit digital marketing. Join us for an insightful conversation on bridging the gap between development and marketing to create a digital presence that effectively communicates the mission and impact of a health-focused nonprofit.

About the guest

Kelly Stover is the Development Director at Ride Connection, a non-profit organization providing free, accessible transportation options to older adults and people with disabilities in the Portland, Oregon area. Before joining Ride Connection, Kelly worked as the Senior Event and Sponsorship Coordinator for a local health system, Legacy Health, raising funds for six foundations over ten years. Kelly’s work in the nonprofit space began as an event assistant with the storied Portland Rose Festival Foundation in 2005 and has never looked back. Kelly is a graduate of Portland State University, with an Arts & Letters degree with a focus on Communications. While not a marketing professional per se, Kelly’s experience has led to her work in the marketing aspect of nonprofit work, and has been taking on and overseeing more and more marketing projects the last several years. 

Kelly lives in Vancouver, Washington with her husband, Charles, daughters, Sophie and Amelia,  and lab, Autzen.

Resources

• The People’s Nonprofit Accelerator: https://thepeoplesnonprofit.org/

 

Contact Kelly

• kstover@rideconnection.org 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ride-connection-inc. 
• Twitter: @Ride_Connection
• Facebook: RideConnection 
• Website: www.rideconnection.org

 

Full Transcript

 00:04

Welcome to Health Nonprofit Digital Marketing, a podcast for nonprofit marketers in the health space. Join us as we discuss how to use the web to drive awareness, engagement and action for health causes. This podcast is part of the thought education of Brooks Digital, the web agency for health nonprofits. Now here’s your host, Spencer Brooks.

Spencer Brooks 00:26

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Health Nonprofit Digital Marketing. My name is Spencer as always, and today I’m joined by Kelly Stover. Now Kelly is the Development Director at Ride Connection, which is a nonprofit that provides free, accessible transportation options to older adults and people with disabilities in the Portland, Oregon area. Before joining Ride Connection, Kelly worked as the senior event and sponsorship coordinator for a local health system, Legacy health, raising funds for six foundations over 10 years, I decided to bring Kelly on the show today to talk about digital transformation and the story of Ride Connections website revamp. So, Kelly, welcome on the show.

Kelly Stover 01:12

Thanks so much. Spencer, great to be here.

Spencer Brooks 01:14

Awesome. Well, let’s, let’s kick off by maybe having you share Kelly a bit more about Ride Connection and your role there and then. Could you also share a bit after that kind of the story of how the website redesign process started at your organization?

Kelly Stover 01:37

Absolutely. Yeah. Ride connection, as you mentioned, we provide free, accessible transportation options for primarily older adults and people with disabilities. We also have a number of programs and services where we provide fare assistance, travel training, community connector shuttles, door to door is kind of our classic service, but not always, you know the best fit for everyone. And if people are able to be independent and use public transportation, we want to encourage them to do that as well. We also are able to provide travel training for not only older adults and people with disabilities, but we’ve been able to update our funding to include English language learners. We’ve found that people who are new to the area, who maybe English is their second language, were having a hard time navigating the public transit system due to signage and just kind of a change in how things are done here, as maybe opposed to where they came from. So, we’re really proud of being able to expand that service as well. As far as our website redesign, just prior to COVID, we were granted funding for a marketing survey or assessment, I guess I should say. And part of that assessment was to not only look at our printed materials, but also to take a look at our website, and the marketing firm or consulting firm that we were paired with out of Los Angeles, they had big plans for these in person focus groups, and we were so excited to get the project underway when COVID hit, and we thought, we’ll take a pause, we’ll wait till things get back to quote, unquote normal, and then we’ll proceed well then, as we all know, things didn’t get back to normal for a while, and we took a look at, should we just move forward? So we decided we should, and we should use the virtual space, these platforms we are now all too familiar with, and provided the opportunity to really hold some incredible focus groups with not only funders, community leaders, our partners, government officials, our customers, our volunteers, our board members, to really take a look at our brand, our marketing materials and our website. And the thing that came out about our website was people were confused, even people who are really familiar with Ride Connection, when they would visit our website, we have so many programs and services. We’re a very complex organization, and it was really hard to navigate in getting to where they needed to go to find the information they needed. So, there’s that. People who actually know our services and know our programs and know our organization, we’re having a hard time. What does that mean for someone who’s new to the organization and coming and looking for services for themselves, maybe looking for services for a loved one, or our funders, after we apply for funding, they’re probably going to take check out our website. So we realized that we weren’t being very clear in not only communicating our message, but the navigation of our website was a little clunky and just not really conducive to the user experience.

Spencer Brooks 04:49

So how do you think you got to that point, Kelly, because I know obviously that kind of stuff usually doesn’t happen overnight. I mean, sometimes legitimately, you know, it’s a website can have bad navigation and be confusing from the get go. But do you have any thoughts about how you think you got to that point?

Kelly Stover 05:07

I don’t really know. I think you know this the current website, where I should say we’re knock on wood, launching our new website next week. So, the current website was, you know, before my time. And I think it really is a matter of the complexity of our organization. And sometimes I think we get bogged down and just we want to make sure we’re putting it all out there. And I think the navigation part got lost, and how people are going to find you know what they need, the information that they need. Because we are so complex. We have so many programs and services, sometimes getting to even understand what’s all available to you as a possible customer is just kind of lost in, like the chain of how, you know, clicking through different pages, it might be buried under something that wouldn’t necessarily make sense. So the logic and the flow of the site, I think was the biggest problem.

Spencer Brooks 06:03

Yeah, yeah, makes, makes a lot of sense. And that problem, by the way, you know, as someone who kind of comes from the world of making websites, right, like, that problem is, like, it’s so common, yeah, I think it’s especially with nonprofits, at least from my perspective. I’ll share my two cents here, because I’m not gonna be able to shut up. But, yeah, no, I you know, I think that because there’s something special about nonprofits in the sense that they typically have, if you compare it to like Bob’s widget company, right as a for profit company, that’s we are selling these widgets to these people. And the site is very straightforward. It has one job, sell widgets. You know? It may have a, usually a single audience that they’re speaking to straightforward, right? And then, if you compare that to a nonprofit, usually has so many more audiences. It’s very varied. There’s the people who receive programs or services, there might be donors, which may or may not have any overlap, or some overlap, with the people receiving the programs and services, or volunteers, or, you know, just if the list goes on and on and so, you know, and then communicating to all those people, also with a complex organization. I don’t think it’s really a surprise that that the default state of most websites is just a big mess, because it’s, unless you actually take the time to think through it. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen by accident. So anyway, waxing poetic about that, but you know, so that’s good.

Kelly Stover 07:40

I agree. And I think with nonprofits too, you know, it’s all that the best of intention. We want to get out as much information as we can. We want to share as many stories as we can, and sometimes, then some of the meat of the matter gets buried a little bit. And, you know, we’re kind of a unique organization too, and I’m sure we’ll get to this as we talk more about the website redesign but recognizing too that we want to provide as much information on the website as we can. But at the same time with our organization, we really still are kind of old school, and that we want people to give our travel options counselors a phone call, because that’s where those the needs assessment is done, and it’s really able, the people are really able to assess like, what are your goals? What are your like, physical capabilities? What’s your willingness, you know, to learn something new, making sure that we’re providing the customer the services they need, and meeting them where they are. So, we’re not just saying everyone gets door to door ride, because capacity just doesn’t allow for that. But if you’re willing and able, or you just need fair assistance, we can provide bus tickets for you, or, you know, max tickets. So we kind of want to, don’t, not get too bogged down in our website, because we still want people to call and have that personal connection as well and get that travel options counseling.

Spencer Brooks 08:58

Yeah, that’s a great point. Because, yeah, not all sites, you know, maybe the goal of some sites is not to have people entirely self serve, but to get that personal connection. And so, yeah, I think that’s really cool. In fact, we, you know, we’ve worked with, like, a social service agency, for example, that has a crisis hotline. You know, if you’re, like, if you’re having suicidal thoughts or something like that, this, you know, you need to have a phone call option right there at all times. And so, yeah, I think that’s a good point about just understanding what are the actual goals that we’re trying to get towards with the site, and then how do you structure that site to achieve those goals I think it’s a good that’s a good way of thinking about it.

Spencer Brooks 09:40

I wanted to ask you a bit about, just to dive into the process, a bit of how you started this project. There’s so much that goes into these things. I wanted to talk about the process of getting alignment right? Well, this is something. I think, is the it’s towards the front end of the project. But one of the things that I’ve observed is that either projects don’t get off the ground, because not everyone is on the same page about this is what we need and this is what we want, or a project is off the ground, but people are internally, they have different goals and different things that they’re sort of angling for, and so getting everyone on the same page, all pulling together can be, can be a little tricky. So could you tell listeners a bit more about the process of how you went about that during your website redesign project? How did you wrangle people and try to get them on the same page as much as possible?

Kelly Stover 10:46

 Absolutely, I think, you know, once the need was identified, the next step was and how are we going to pay for it? That was everyone’s biggest concern. You know, as a nonprofit, we know that website rebuilds are a very costly endeavor, so that was kind of our first battle was, how are we going to, you know, find funding for this? And luckily, we were able to secure funding through two different revenue streams. So that was kind of the first hurdle, as far as some of the maybe concerns within the organization. So, we were able to answer that concern, which was great. And then, you know, we’d had selected a few key people throughout the organization to participate in evaluating the RFP and the in the different proposals we got from different vendors. And once we selected our vendor, you know, it’s a it’s a balance of not having too many cooks in the kitchen, but also feeling like people’s voices are heard, their concerns are heard, and also tapping into their kind of, their expertise within our organization. So, we communicated a lot that, you know, we have a key group of people who were going to be kind of, you know, evaluating our current website. So rather than just dressing up exactly what we have and making it prettier, we really wanted to assess the usability, the functionality. And so we identified people within different organizations that could be, you know, really our experts, like I said, in evaluating, take a critical look at this from a user perspective, does this makes sense? Is this too complex? Is it not complex enough? Like, what are the, you know, really evaluating things and having those kind of offline conversations. So, we weren’t having committee meetings where, you know, everyone’s got an agenda, everyone has their own ideas, but we want everyone to be heard too. So I know sometimes those meetings, they’re just not super effective, because everyone’s just sharing their opinion, but no decisions can be made. So we were able to build some trust and just asking people, you know, what were their goals for the website? What would be their goal for a customer coming onto our website, what is their wish for that person? What would you want to communicate to them? And then being really honest about what we can do from a budget standpoint, and understanding that this is probably going to be a kind of a two phase process. So even if there were things that people felt like we weren’t able to do right now. We were really clear in communicating to them that that’s a great idea when we got to get the website, you know, kind of across the finish line, but here’s our parking lot for phase two, and things we’d like to utilize or expand in the future. So, I think that that helped, like people felt heard, you know, as we started building it out, we were sharing it with those key members and saying, can you take a look at this and then really tracking their concerns, their updates that they felt needed to be made? I mean, it was kind of a Pandora’s box of ideas that came out, and people had been holding on to these, you know, issues they had with our current website for a while, and it really gave them the opportunity to share how they felt it could be improved. And most of those ideas were great and actually really simplified, I think, our website and the user experience for our customers and people looking to learn more about Ride Connection.

Spencer Brooks 12:08

Yeah, it’s such an important step that I feel like if you don’t do that, what you just described, really is soliciting input from everyone who’s involved, then it’s such a risk to either have too many cooks in the kitchen or the wrong cook in the kitchen at the wrong time, right because, you know, speaking from experience, right, especially early in my career, it’s like, if you’re not getting input from all the right people early in the process, then what will happen is, you’ll go through all this work, you know, you’ll design a site, you’ll get it ready, you’ll show people. And then, you know, some important people will do the swoop and poop on it, and, you know, and then, and then you might be in real trouble, or you have to, you know, delay it and go back.

Kelly Stover 14:20

So we actually had that happen. We had someone that had been involved in the process early on, and then just we, I mean, we just kind of missed, like, a key part of the website. And as we were going through, we’re like, oh, we probably should have our service center, you know, manager, take a look at this and make sure that that this, you know, one component of website is going to work. And she brought up a thing that we had not thought of at all, and it actually ended up leading to other discussion about some other technology upgrades that we need to make in the future as an organization. Again, like I said, kind of a Pandora’s box of like, oh, you know, we didn’t think about that because we’re not the ones doing the workday to day. And we totally missed, you know, getting her input on that one piece. And thank goodness we realized that we hadn’t, you know, checked in with her again, and she just pointed this, you know, very simple question that just spurred on, like, huh, yeah, you’re right, we totally missed that. So luckily, we were able to kind of quickly pivot and get a solution that didn’t, you know, delay us too much longer in the launch, but it was a learning lesson for sure, of like, we got to really make sure that we’re getting those key people who are doing the work, and it really impacts most closely to, you know, get their feedback. But again, like you said, it’s a fine line. The too many cooks in the kitchen can kind of paralyze you from actually moving forward. And I think we struck a really good balance this time around.

Spencer Brooks 15:13

That’s awesome. Yeah, thank you for sharing all that. I think that that’s like I said, it’s it’s just so, so important, and it’s quite overlooked. So, I’m glad that we were able to spend some time chatting about that. The other thing that I wanted to chat with you about Kelly is storytelling. So I know that that’s an important part for a lot of nonprofit websites is being able to communicate the importance of their mission and their services, which, again, are it’s often complex, communicate all that through the medium of stories, right? So, how has Ride Connection used storytelling on its website to better communicate and connect with its audience.?

Kelly Stover 17:22

Yeah, it’s so, so important. And you know, from someone who doesn’t come from a marketing background, per se, I realized it’s all storytelling, right? It’s all getting your message out there one way or another. So, for us at our website, you know, obviously utilizing photos the famous, you know, a photo says 1000 words or speaks 1000 words. So, photos are really important, customer quotes, we get amazing, amazing quotes that come in through our online donation portal. People often make comments, and we gather those. We get comments from our service center, people calling in with compliments about our drivers or our services. We share those, and we capture those, and we utilize those on our website as well as we do try and really connect with our drivers, our travel trainers and ask them, you know, what are some impactful customers that you’re working with right now. What are some stories that come to mind when you think about why you’re really proud to work for ride connection, and we’ve built a really good rapport, and in gathering those stories, getting photos, and then, of course, through our, you know, annual fundraising event, we always do an appeal video. So working with our our program managers and our again, our drivers, our travel trainers, identifying customers. Sometimes our customers self identify and say, hey, I want to share my story, and I want to do this. And so we do an appeal video that we, in our new website will be embedding our most current appeal video on our donation page. You know, it’s two to three minutes. It’s pretty brief. It just really highlights the way our services connect people to their community. So we’re trying to do more of that. We’re also in the middle of realizing that pre COVID, we had all of our photos, no one’s wearing a mask, and as you remember at the beginning of the pandemic, it was always a little jarring to see people’s naked faces, not wearing a mask. So we pivoted during COVID, and we updated materials and to include photos with masks and now we’re kind of on the other side of that, and we’re realizing we need to really rebuild that cache of updated photos that reflect a more current time and aren’t kind of like time stamped by COVID. So we’re in the process of evaluating how we’re going to get capacity to do all of that, but we’re excited to utilize those updated photos more on our new website. We have a few, but we definitely need to get some more. And I think just seeing those smiling faces when you know folks are getting off of a shuttle bus or getting out of one of our vehicles or travel training and have nailed their route, you know that sense of accomplishment really comes through in the photos too. So we love to share their words, but sometimes their faces and their joy and sense of accomplishment speaks volumes, too.

Spencer Brooks 20:20

Yeah, gives character, right? That’s a, I think that’s a very important part, especially, yeah, when there’s, there’s just a lot of, honestly, there’s a lot of great missions out there. And so sometimes, not just words, but pictures or stories, or, you know, even just personal words that aren’t, aren’t a, you know, carefully crafted marketing message, that’s so important. Kelly, another thing that I wanted to talk to you about, it’s sort of related a bit to what we were discussing before, which is pulling together a big group of people and getting them to pull in the same direction. I wanted to talk a bit about the needs of development and marketing, and maybe we can extend this question to really just a variety of needs, because I think in any website project, there’s different parts of the organization that do have unique needs. Marketing and communications might have specific things, specific calls to action that they care about. Obviously, development has their own programs, and program staff might have the things that they care about. And so, I think the classic example that always comes into my mind is sort of the times when there’s battle for homepage real estate is probably the best example of this, right? Where everyone wants their stuff on the homepage because they want it to be represented. And it’s sort of a, you know, in everyone’s mind, this is the place where, if it’s important, it’s here, right? Absolutely. And I think the reason why I asked this question is because when there is this battle for the homepage, or just generally, for priority on the site, or different needs than what you end up is this real hodgepodge of compromise that doesn’t necessarily, you know, it’s like a dog sled team with all the dogs running in different directions. You know, you’re like, Yeah, everything’s pulling, but it’s not pulling in one direction. And so could you talk to me a bit about that process of being able to balance different needs and inputs, and sometimes when those things actually might conflict with each other, how do you how do you handle that?

Kelly Stover 22:33

I think that’s a really good point. And you know, it kind of the end result for us in having those conversations was I kept coming back to what is the user experience and who you know, going back to our, what are our different audiences? And one thing that actually our CEO mentioned when we were kind of evaluating the initial designs and some of the layout, she mentioned like, I feel like part of our current problem is our homepage is kind of like a news dumping ground. And again, there’s that jockeying for, like, who gets to be at the top of the list of the news? Is it we’re hiring, or is it, you know, our upcoming fundraising event? Is it, you know, volunteer opportunities, all of these things are kind of jockeying for that top position. And she commented, and I thought it was such a great insight. And actually, what we ended up going with our web developer, is kind of picking a path. So when you come to our home page, are you a volunteer, either a volunteer who’s or someone a potential volunteer or a current volunteer. So there’s kind of like a path for you. Are you a donor? There’s a path for you. Are you someone looking for services for either yourself or a loved one, so you need a ride? Here’s a path for you. So we kind of created these paths, self identifying who you are, as an audience member, and what your user experience needs to be. So, I think that helped alleviate some of that, because it recognized we’re looking at who’s coming to our website and their priority, they can identify that and based on kind of what their need is, they’re going to go in the path that’s going to serve them best.

Spencer Brooks 24:12

Wonderful. That is, yeah, this is exactly what I was, looking for. There’s a lot of different answers to that question, but I like that one a lot because, you know, I think that a website that has a great user experience is able to pull off this balance where any particular audience can come to that site and be able to feel like this is made for me, whether you know you’re looking for program, or there’s a fundraising event that you can hit that and you know where to go, because I think it would be like, the analogy that comes into my mind is like, if you, let’s say you’re going to a conference, and at any time, there’s 20 different sessions going on about a bunch of different topics. If you go in, what would not be helpful is 20 different people who are speaking, trying to shove a flyer in your face at the same time, jockeying for who’s going to get you know, the attention of the attendees coming in, but rather good signage, so that people can self-identify what they’re interested in and then direct them down the appropriate path, right? And so I think that going back to what you’re talking about, which is thinking from the perspective of a user, and saying what is going to work for me, and how do we need to, as an organization, organize ourselves and organize the site so that when someone comes in that they’re overwhelmed. So clearly, I have an opinion about this, but it’s at the same time I’m really glad that you mentioned that, because I do think that’s so important.

Kelly Stover 25:58

Yeah, I agree.

Spencer Brooks 26:00

Kelly, moving on to, you know, another question that I had for you, looking back at this whole process of redesigning your website, I mean, I know it’s not technically done, hopefully you’re launching next week, right? Yeah, not, not technically done, but you’ve, you’ve gone through a lot already to this point. Is there one key takeaway or lesson that you would like to share with listeners, especially for other folks that might be in a similar position of having to lead a website redesign?

Kelly Stover 26:33

Absolutely, I think that you know, our process has been particularly long, I think because of just some turnover, not on only on our side, but also our web developer side. So, I think it’s sort of like building a house. It’s always going to take a little longer than you think it’s going to, or your contractor tells you it’s going to. So having patience, and I think really taking the time to get it right. I think, you know, again, back to that, you know, comment I made earlier about kind of missing the mark, and not including someone, and not, like, almost launching our website with a very key thing missing, which would have been disastrous, really taking your time to make sure that you are involving stakeholders, that you are getting those you know, your subject experts, their buy in, their you know, their eye on it. Because I think especially having worked, it’s like, when you work on anything for too long, you can’t see it anymore because you’ve just been looking at it all the time. I think I’ve had the comment when I look at our you know, test site, I’m like, I feel like I’ve we’ve had this site for already, for so long, because I’ve been looking at it so much that when it actually launches, I’ll be like, Yeah, that’s the site we’ve been working with the last six months. But I think just the having the patience and understanding and really taking your time to assess, kind of like what we talked about before, who is your audience, and what are you trying to accomplish for them, making that user experience as seamless as possible, and sometimes getting some outside perspective too, of someone who hasn’t been in the trenches and digging through all the, you know, the data and the material, to take a look at it and just see, like, does this work? Does this makes sense? Yeah, it’s really important, because I do that all the time with things I’ve written, you know, I need you to read this because I’ve, I’ve been working with it too long. I can’t even see it anymore. So definitely, in the website space that was needed for some people who hadn’t been as involved in the process. Like, can you just look through this? Look for things that don’t make sense to you? Does this the flow work? Does, you know, is the information accurate? All of that, what’s missing, what’s too much? Just really getting, you know, getting help, asking for help, because it’s only going to improve the end result.

Spencer Brooks 28:45

Yeah, that’s wonderful advice. I had a thought, something I wanted to ask you about, because I know, obviously, with part of this, you’re, it’s not just your organization doing this. You’re also partnering with, you know, an outside company, an outside firm, to do the work. Do you have any advice or thoughts about finding and selecting and the qualities that you’re looking for in a good partner, or any other advice for folks that are looking to hire a good, you know, contract partner, web developer, whatever it is to help with their site?

Kelly Stover 29:18

Yeah, I think there’s something to be said for especially in the nonprofit space. You know as someone who kind of gets your mission and understands mission driven work, the vendor we ended up going with works a lot with different nonprofits, and so definitely take a look at the work that they’ve done for other organizations and see how they represented that organization. It gives you a little bit of insight into how they might represent you, and kind of build your website out and making sure that that storytelling is kind of front and center. And sometimes it’s kind of a vibe check, you know, like, like a lot of things, we met with, I think three or four, and we ended up going with, Think Shout, and they just, it was kind of just felt right, and a lot of assessment of their portfolio, and just respecting a lot what they had done for other nonprofit organizations. And then just, you know, once you get that contract signed, it’s just the communication and building that rapport too, and really having someone who’s going to invest in your mission too. They’ve done a really amazing job of kind of a deep dive into our current website and learning about our organization so that they felt really educated on kind of what our needs were, and asking us a lot about our different users, our different customers, our different audience segments so that they could really cater to that as well.

Spencer Brooks 30:45

I think honestly, having someone who is really invested in that is is quite important, just because, as we’ve been talking about, right? These are big, complicated, complex projects that take a lot of communication and time and effort. So even you mentioned a vibe check, right? And I think that’s, you know, I wouldn’t look past that, because at the end of the day, you know, this is not just like a company that’s going to, you know, you click Buy now, and they ship to the package, and that’s the end of the day.

Kelly Stover 31:15

This is a long-term relationship.

Spencer Brooks 31:17

Yeah, it is a long-term relationship on a very highly complex project. And if you don’t feel like these are people that you could work with and that are really coming to the table, trying to work with you, it gets so much harder when that relationship feels like two people sitting on opposite sides of a conference table,

Kelly Stover 31:37

Absolutely.

Spencer Brooks 31:39

Because that’s it’s really hard to make a successful project when that collaboration is required. So, thank you for that advice. Kelly, I wanted to move into some of the standardized questions that I like to ask every guest that comes on the show. The first question that I always like to ask is, what’s one thing in digital you’re working on right now. I guess we kind of know what’s one thing, but yeah, big one, you know. So one thing you know, maybe besides the website redesign that is consuming a lot of your brain space. What takeaways can you share with listeners that might encounter that same challenge?

Kelly Stover 32:16

Yeah, I think, honestly, our social media space is taking a part of my brain space. We have, I’m very lucky to have hired a marketing manager who’s kind of taken over the lead on the website, so I’m able to be have a little more brain space and capacity for that. But I think with social media, really, you know, taking a look this is something, as I’ve said, I don’t have a marketing background. I think through osmosis, living with a marketing professional for 15 years, some of it has seeped in, and just being a consumer, I’ve caught on to a couple of things. But really, taking a look at social media, how much capacity we really have to spend with it right now, I’m working really hard to get my team expanded so I have really an expert that can use more of their capacity to really create engaging content. So with the limited capacity I have, I have to really kind of buckle down and think about what are the posts, what are the things that are getting the most engagement, that get the most traction and surprise, surprise, it’s customer stories. It’s the those quotes from our customers. It’s the impact that are really getting the most engagement with our online, you know, community. So it’s something that’s never something I thought I’d be doing, really but here I am in the nonprofit world, that’s pretty common. We’re taking on other duties as assigned, but it’s been enjoyable, and it’s been fun and kind of a puzzle. You know, we’re only posting a couple times, three times, maybe a week, but it takes a lot of time and energy to plan out, like the month, and flexibility to be able to pivot, you know, when something comes up. The other part of that too, and looking at it from like an equity lens, is the complexity of assessing what’s appropriate for us to share as an organization, while also making sure that we’re recognizing, you know, culturally significant holidays or dates of recognition in a way that’s not performative. Looking at our partners that we work with and how we can amplify their voices has been something that we’re really trying to focus on, too. So it’s just a really complex space, and I think that there’s, I haven’t even expanded into, you know, TikTok or Threads or whatever, but I’m not really looking forward to doing that, but it’s a it takes a lot of time and energy, really, to make engaging content there. So that’s something that’s been on my mind, and it’s something that, you know, I’m having to really carve out time to dedicate to, and probably, you know, I could definitely hire someone that is much more versed in creating that content, and have more time to be, have more engagement, like with our partners, in our in our online community. So, I’m looking forward to hopefully expanding my team soon to do that.

Spencer Brooks 35:08

Yeah, fingers crossed. I hope that you get someone to do that too. You. I’m sure, like many other people listening, you know, wearing a lot of different hats is not always fun. So yeah, thank you for sharing that, and hopefully you’re able to find that person.

Kelly Stover 35:21

Fingers crossed.

Spencer Brooks 35:23

Yeah, that’s right. Kelly, what are a couple resources, two or three resources that you regularly use to keep up on news and trends in your work?

Kelly Stover 35:31

Yeah, I think the one that comes to mind in particular, for just the development side of my work is it’s now called the People’s Nonprofit Accelerator, formerly Willamette Valley development officers, just a really great resource of for nonprofit workers in our area. And then, other than that, I mean, honestly, I mentioned I have an in home marketing consultant that I can turn to when I need help. And then I think I’ve, you know, been working in the nonprofit space in the Portland area for 20, oh, gulp, 20 years, and I’ve made a lot of connections. I have a lot of friends who are working in, you know, different nonprofits or now, have worked, now working for profit companies. And I have a really great network of folks who are always willing to let me bounce ideas off of or ask kind of what’s best practice do you think in this situation, because, again, my marketing background is learning on the job, so it’s really great to have those resources and in the community that I’ve built here in Portland.

Spencer Brooks 36:32

Yeah, thanks for sharing those, Kelly, and for listeners, as always, any links, I’ll make sure and put in the show notes so you can access those. Don’t have to Google around and try and figure it out. So Kelly, I only have one last question for you, which is, how can listeners get in touch with you if they’d like to learn more about your work?

Kelly Stover 36:47

Absolutely, I am open to email. My email is K, Stover, K, S, T, O, V, E, R, at rideconnection.org,

Spencer Brooks 36:56

Wonderful. Well, that wraps up our show today. For listeners, if you like this episode, as always, it’s hugely helpful if you rate and review the podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to this so that other folks who are working in the nonprofit sector can find episodes like this. This show is also a part of the thought leadership of Brooks digital we do website design, development and user experience for nonprofits in the health space. In fact, we’re the only company actually that is at that intersection. So if you like this podcast, go to our website at Brooks.digital, and you can find more of our insights and learn about our work. But with all that said, Kelly, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing all of your insights and wisdom.

Kelly Stover 37:41

Thanks. Spencer,

37:48

Thanks for listening to health nonprofit digital marketing. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform, and don’t forget to check out the Brooks digital website at e Brooks dot digital, where you can find other resources like this podcast, learn how we help nonprofits like yours, and get in touch with our team. See in the next episode you.