March 7, 2025 • 25 mins
How did Dani Vachon, once immersed in the vibrant world of music and events, become a trailblazer in the nonprofit sector? Join us as we uncover her inspiring journey from orchestrating grand events to founding Beacon Collective, driven by her unwavering passion for activism and environmentalism. Dani shares the pivotal moment that sparked her career transformation, along with the unique challenges she faced in rebranding and establishing her company in a new arena. We also explore the dynamic role of design in creating compelling nonprofit campaigns. From the intricate dance between visual language, content, and user experience, discover how these elements attract and engage supporters while staying true to organizational values. Listen in to learn how her innovative concept of empathy stimulation has led to meaningful collaborations with organizations like the City of Vancouver and Oxfam Canada, and find out how her team's approach is reshaping the way nonprofits connect with their audiences. Gain insights into identifying key audience personas and ensuring that content remains inclusive and impactful, ultimately driving the growth and success of nonprofit initiatives.
Dani Vachon's journey into activism began in high school when she joined the Green Club, diving deep into issues like climate change and waste management. The club's initiatives included creating a school garden and implementing a recycling program, driven by a desire to effect change in their community.
Raised in small towns across British Columbia by two hippies, Dani was immersed in a lifestyle of farmsteading, hunting, gathering, and a deep connection with nature. One parent, a musician and log home builder, instilled a love for music, craft and cultural heritage, while the other, a caring and artistic entrepreneur, nurtured Dani's creative spirit and entrepreneurial drive.
Simultaneously, Dani pursued her own passion for art and design, which culminated in opening her first business straight out of high school: a record store in Vernon, B.C. Though the venture proved a dire failure, it fueled Dani's entrepreneurial spirit and cemented her determination to follow her passions.
Dani’s foray into graphic design commenced in art school in 1999, where she discovered Photoshop. Encouraged by an instructor, Dani embarked on a career in graphic design, laying the foundation for her future endeavors.
Following design school, Dani spent a year at a small agency before transitioning to freelance graphic design, primarily serving clients within the music industry. This led to an unexpected 11-year career in music, during which Dani undertook various roles, including starting a record label, organizing and promoting hundreds concerts, managing bands, founding and directing an arts festival, and launching four live music venues. Throughout this period, Dani used her design skills to create impactful promotional materials, earning recognition within the music community.
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Non-profit professionals are motivated to
make a difference, but theminutia of non-profit operations
can get in the way of themeaningful work you set out to
do.
That's where MonkeyPod comes in.
Monkeypod helps non-profits getback to their mission by
eliminating busy work.
Their all-in-one softwareincludes a CRM, non-profit
accounting, email marketing,online fundraising and grant
(00:23):
management.
Email marketing, onlinefundraising and grant management
.
Nonprofit Hub listeners can get15% off the first year of a
MonkeyPod subscription byvisiting monkeypodio slash
nonprofithub.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast.
I'm your host, megan Spear, andjoining me today is Dani Bichon
, who is the CEO of BeaconCollective.
So excited to hear from her andall the wisdom that she's going
to bring.
So, dani, welcome in, glad tohave you here.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's wonderful to be here.
Yeah, I'm very excited to diginto our topic for today, but
before that, let's talk a littlebit about you.
(00:57):
Tell me, tell the audience, alittle bit about yourself and
kind of your journey in thenonprofit space and what got you
to Beacon Collective.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Sounds good.
I'll start where chapter one ofmy life ends off, which was
leaving the music business.
I had been in events and tomake money I had been taking
bigger and bigger, morecorporate events and I was
planning things like the luxuryand supercar weekend at Van
Dusen Gardens and like thecelebration of light I mean not
the only planner but one of ateam of planners for the
celebration of light, whichwelcomes a quarter million
(01:33):
people for a series of fireworksevents.
And I've always been a bit ofan activist and like
environmentalist myself and Irealized I was doing this for
money and I was on site for 18hours long.
I was the longest person onsite at the the celebration of
light and I watched a quartermillion people leave the beach,
uh, with like a seven or eightinches worth of plastic waste,
(01:57):
uh, just all of it.
We had a team of volunteers toclean it up, we had a recycling
program in place and all of thatstuff.
But it kind of broke my heartand it kind of made me go.
This isn't, this isn't what Ishould be doing with my life.
So it was at that time that Istarted the Beacon Design
Collective and basically atfirst we were really like
(02:18):
muddling our way through thingsand not really sure what, like
how to attract the rightaudience and, um, you know, my
network was all music, businessand events world.
So I had to kind of reestablishmyself and my network and so it
took a took a lot of years tokind of get our foot in the door
.
I think I think it was 2015.
(02:39):
When we secured a contract withthe city of Vancouver working
on the bright green citycampaign, and that was our foot
in the door with them forcampaigns with them, and then
from there we did the zero wastecampaign and I was like, oh,
this is it, it's happening, thisis so like, how do I get more
(03:00):
of these?
And I and it took a lot of likeexperimentation with marketing
and and positioning andrebranding ourselves and all of
this stuff.
So I kind of been through allof this as a for-profit
organization to try to figureout, like, how to attract the
right people to the business andso yeah, so eventually it was
(03:23):
just a matter of continuing thenetworking, clarifying our
Canada Oxfam Canada, bcChildren's Hospital, the
(03:48):
University of Vermont, like alot of different organizations
to in different capacities, andso, in short, you know this has
been happening for 13 years, andthe last, maybe 10 of those,
has been with a focus ongovernment organizations and
non-profits.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I love it.
So then we jumped into chaptertwo.
Here you are, you're doing it,crushing the game.
Very exciting.
One of the things that I'veseen recently is a blog series
that you guys put out around theidea of empathy stimulation,
which really caught my attentionbecause it's not a phrase that
(04:28):
I think I've ever heard before,but some really interesting
content around that.
So, as a jumping off point,help us understand the idea of
empathy stimulation.
Let's kind of baseline, makesure we're on the same page
moving forward, and helpeverybody kind of understand
what that looks like and whatthat means to you all.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, yeah, sure.
So empathy stimulation kind ofcame about when we were
workshopping some stuffinternally around our
positioning and who our clientswere.
And at this point we'd beenworking with nonprofits for a
long time and we're like why isour work with our clients
successful?
Like, how are we getting themthere?
What makes it what we're doingdifferent from your average
(05:09):
creative offering?
And so we sort of workshoppedaround that and what we realized
is because we have strategists,designers, illustrators, web
designers, copywriters, etc.
So there's a bunch of us andwe're all collaborating together
on the work.
And so we collaborated togetheron this exercise and realized
that it's really three keycomponents that work together
(05:30):
and overlap to create empathywith the user.
So those three categories arevisual language.
So when I say visual language,I'm talking about like
attraction, desire and alignmentwith the target audience, and
content, which is storytelling,results, evidence and
transparency.
And then user experience, whichapplies to more than just
(05:53):
websites.
It applies to annual reportsand campaigns and everything.
It's ease of use, a clear userjourney.
The user knows what their nextstep is meant to be.
And then, of course, testing itto make sure it works.
And accessibility, which issomething we've been leaning
heavily into, since 11% of thepopulation are either visually
or cognitively impaired orotherwise impaired.
(06:15):
That affects the way that theyconsume digital media.
So, yeah, so it's visuallanguage, content and user
experience, and those threepillars of work all overlap and
work together to createrelevance, drawing power and
shared understanding, whichultimately leads to conversions.
So usually the conversions thatour clients are looking for is
(06:38):
more money.
We need more donations, and sowe would then like the user that
we would then design theprocess for would be a donor and
we would kind of design thevisual language, content and
user experience to that donor toin order to increase the
donation rate.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I think and it's interesting we've had a series
of folks on the podcast so farthis season who are very focused
on data as, like, use the datato tell your story, use the data
to tell your story.
But there is a whole group ofpeople for whom, like, yeah, the
data might be interesting, butI am going to be motivated by
the empathy and compassion thatI feel for your cause, for the
work that you're doing, and so,to me personally, that would be
(07:26):
my camp.
So I find this wholeconversation very refreshing, as
opposed to, like, the just dataside.
So I'm very interested to diginto that.
So talk to me a little bitabout let's start with the
visual language part.
There was a quote in one ofyour blogs that said visual
language is more than aesthetics.
It's about meaningful connection, and I feel like sometimes, as
(07:51):
non-profits, we have thistendency to like over design,
all the things right, which islike we're vastly under designed
or vastly under design it orwe're and I'm not knocking but
like or we're using a Canvatemplate that 17 other
nonprofits are also using forthe exact same social media post
(08:12):
right, sometimes the design isso it's just lacking one way or
the other.
But I love this idea that it'snot about maybe, the aesthetic
necessarily, but about theconnection that that brings.
I guess let's start with canyou have meaningful connection
with poor design, or do theyhave to go hand in hand, like
(08:36):
visually?
What's the goal there?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, visual language does a few things to attract
the right person, right they.
It's kind of like when you arein high school and you are
walking down the hallway and yousee the goth group and you see
the jocks and you know and youwant to fit in with one of those
groups and you decide which oneyou want to fit in with and you
start presenting a little bitmore like that person.
(09:00):
So you can signal visually towhom your organization belongs
or like to whom you want toattract by lining up your visual
language with the values ofthat person and their
preferences and so on.
And then you also want tosignal what your organization
actually does with the visuallanguage.
(09:22):
So if you were distributingfood, for example, you would
have a different visual languagethan if you were in
conservation.
Probably you want to use somecolors and textures and images
and things to signal what you'redoing, so that someone doesn't
have to read every word in orderto understand what you're doing
(09:44):
.
I feel like I'm veering way offtrack of what the original
question was.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
No, I love it.
Keep going, you're good.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I think you were asking, like, can you attract
people with bad design or a lackof design, or can your work be
effective without good design?
And I would say that I feel like, to a degree, you can have some
level of success without gooddesign, like with somebody your
aunt put a website together.
(10:12):
It's going to be limited right?
People have been engaging withthis young kid right out of high
school who's just started hisown business and he's got an AI
receptionist that he was tryingto sell me and he's got no
website.
He sent me a PDF that wascompletely undesigned and a
legal document that hadn't beenreviewed by a lawyer.
(10:34):
And I'm not going to give youmy money, no.
So you know you want todemonstrate a certain level of
success, and not necessarilysuccess, but like competency
through visual language, becausecompetency, like demonstrating
your competency, builds trustwith people.
(10:58):
They are more willing to giveyou their money if they know
that you're going to use it welland you've been running your
organization for a while andit's organized and that kind of
thing.
Yeah, so I think you have aceiling if you don't do good
design and then you can raiseyour ceiling once you have good
design.
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Speaker 2 (12:06):
Let's say somebody is listening, who maybe runs
marketing or comms for anon-profit.
As we know a lot of times,especially on what marketing
tends to fall in that overheadright that no non-profit wants
to talk about, because that's awhole different, whole different
fight.
But I feel like what I see mostoften is that the
(12:28):
organizational will be like yep,we already have a visual brand
guide.
Here's the three Pantone orHexcode colors that we work with
and here's our logo.
That's our visual guide.
If you are working with someoneand you're saying, okay, let's
say I'm new to this role, I'mmarketing for this nonprofit.
Okay, let's say you know, I'mnew to this role, I'm marketing
for this nonprofit.
(12:49):
What elements do you guys thinkof when you think of a visual
identity for a nonprofit?
I'm assuming it goes beyond.
Like you know, here's our threebrand colors and here's five
different versions of the logothat you can use in various
manners.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
That would be a very bare bones visual language that
sounds not very developed orwell thought out to me.
Usually I mean one of ourclients brand guidelines,
documents that we've beenworking on and iterating.
We're on version 5.0 because wekeep going oh, we need more
rules.
Granted, they're anorganization, but it's got
everything from likeillustration style to certain
characters that are illustratedand when they can be used and
(13:33):
what poses they can be in, andthere's like fonts for different
audience types, because theyhave, like, some materials that
are for children and somematerials for that are for
adults, and so there's rules onwhen you can use those different
things.
Photo treatments all of thatstuff goes into visual language.
We have textures.
Each program within theorganization that we work with
(13:55):
has its own texture, its own dotpattern and its own color, so
that way they all feel part of afamily, while being
distinguished from one anotherand giving a little bit of
flexibility to or for theaudience to be able to
differentiate between oh, isthis a resources program or is
this the childcare program?
And so so I mean it can it, itcan be a little thing or it can
(14:17):
be a big thing, but but I thinkthat, more importantly, the work
that should go into branding atthe beginning, before visual
language is brand strategy.
So it's like who is theaudience?
Let's create some personas ofwho it is that we're trying to
talk to.
Usually there's the communitymember that you're serving, and
then there's your big checkdonor, and then there's your
(14:41):
grassroots donor and, while mostof your money is going to come
from your foundations or yourbig check donors, those
grassroots donors are actuallylike, if you can get a good like
system of monthly recurringdonors going, that shows the big
check donors and thefoundations that people support
what you're doing and it canreally snowball into more big
(15:04):
check donors.
So, while the thing that wemeasure when we're doing work
assuming we're doing a work thatincludes website for somebody
and the branding the objectiveis to increase the online
donation rate, but that's justbecause that's the thing that we
can measure and attributedirectly to our work Really what
we see with a lot of ourclients is it's not just those
(15:28):
grassroots donors that increase.
It's kind of like everyone'sunderstanding of the
organization improves, including, like, all of the staff and the
volunteers and those big checkdonors increase as well.
Holy, I veered off track again.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It's so good.
These are my favorite types ofconversations.
I love it.
I want to zip back to somethingthat you talked about, though,
with the different pieces of allof conversations.
I love it.
I want to zip back to somethingthat you talked about, though,
with the different pieces of allof this, and that's around the
accessibility piece, because thestatistic that you used was 11%
of the population, which is onethat I don't think that I have
heard before, but that is not aninsignificant number of people
(16:04):
who have some sort of limitationwhen it comes to engaging with
that content, whether it'svisually or the ability to
access online sites that way.
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you help folks think through
some of those accessibilitypieces of this.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well, a lot of it comes with, just like our
experience, because we've allbeen in training for
accessibility, design andwriting.
So there's considerations thatgo into it, just by simply
working with an organization oran agency that knows how to do
this stuff.
But some things that weconsider when we're, when we're
building our materials, iscontrast.
(16:39):
There has to be a certain ratioof contrast between the
background and the foreground.
If there's text, all imagesneed alt text, and that you know
.
In the past people would usealt text to just like load in a
bunch of their keywords, butreally what you need to be doing
is describing what is in theimage.
Because what happens is what,if somebody needs a screen
(16:59):
reader because they're visuallyimpaired, it will read out the
alt text in place of them seeingthe image.
And so if it's just likekeywords, keywords, keywords,
then it's offensive to somebodywho's impaired.
So, and then when it comes toweb, there's you need to be able
to tab through the website.
(17:20):
So some people only have use oflike one finger or like a stick
or you know, like they can't,they can't mouse, for whatever
reason, and so they have to beable to use the keyboard to tab
through the menu items on awebsite, and yeah, so those are
some considerations that weinclude in accessibility.
(17:41):
But for what other people ourclients need to know, is that
once so this, this comes up themost with pdfs, but it also, uh,
can become evident withwebsites as well it's like, once
it's considered, done, likeclient approved, everybody's
happy, the work is done.
There's still more work to do.
We have to go in and doaccessibility testing and
(18:03):
remediation.
So we have to go in with ascreen reader, make sure like
nothing that's not supposed toread is read out and that
everything there's no glitchesand everything flows smoothly.
And so we do find sometimeswith our clients like we need
this PDF out like right away,and we're like OK, we just need
like one and a half more days toremediate the PDF.
(18:26):
Otherwise it's not going to workproperly for audiences with
accessibility concerns.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And that's such, I think, because I think a lot of
our focus tends to be on thosehigh check donors, thinking even
about our grassrootsconstituents or the community
members that we serve.
Yeah, I would love to know thestatistics on how many
nonprofits who serve communitiesthat need accessibility help in
(18:52):
some way have not done the workto make sure that their
resources are accessible in thatmanner.
It's definitely something thatI hadn't thought about before.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
I've seen a lot of nonprofit websites, as you can
imagine, both for our clientsand for non-clients and
prospects that we're trying todo work with, and I have noticed
that if the, if the communitiesthat somebody is serving are an
impaired audience, that usuallythey have that stuff figured
out.
Okay, fantastic, I'm actuallyvery glad to hear that it's the
(19:25):
everybody else that doesn'treally know about it, because if
you're not impaired yourself,you're not approaching things
like how can I make sure that mykitchen works for someone in a
wheelchair?
You don't.
You just don't think about itbecause you're not having anyone
in a wheelchair there.
But when you start talkingabout massive numbers of, like
thousands of people right, if so, if it's 11, since it's 11 of
(19:49):
of the Americans who are livingwith visual, cognitive or
physical impairment that meansthat out of a thousand people,
there's 111 or 110 people whocould potentially be visiting
your website and have animpairment, and if they get
frustrated and leave, that's apotential donor that isn't going
(20:11):
to be taking the user journey.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Interesting, and so it's funny if you go back to the
idea of empathy, right, it'snot only that we want them to
feel empathetic towards ourcause and be moved by that
content, but also that's areciprocal relationship, right?
If I want you to feel that,then I need to be empathetic to
the situation in which you findyourself, right To begin that
(20:34):
journey.
So I think a lot of times it'sso easy for us to sit in the
non-profit seat and just thinkof, like, I'm blasting out these
messages, it's a one-way pieceand then I want someone to feel
empathetic back.
But this is an amazing way tothink about it in a two-way,
reciprocal kind of relationshipwith your constituents.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, I think that feeds into some of the donor
experience work that we do aswell, which is like when
somebody gives you some of theirhard-earned money, it's like
really important that they getthanked like sincerely and a
number of times so before youask them for money.
(21:11):
I know I feel like a lot ofpeople probably on this podcast
know all of this already.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
It's amazing, though, like the idea, it doesn't
always translate, because it'slike yes, on some sort of level,
I understand that I need tothank my donors and then, oh
yeah, we don't really have apolicy for that, we don't have a
program for that.
So it's oh yeah, we don'treally have a policy for that,
we don't have a program for that.
So it's always worth repeatingthat donors are in fact humans,
right and need to be treated assuch, and that includes
(21:37):
appreciation.
So, yeah, that's a drum I willcontinue to beat.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, and like empathy for them, right?
So this donation that I maderecently it was sizable by my
budget and I gave it to anorganization that didn't thank
me at all, and then they closedthe organization right
afterwards.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Oh man, I was just like where did my money go?
Yeah, so like there's just so.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Oh my gosh, there's a lot there, right.
There's a lot to consider.
When you're making big changesor whatever, keeping your donors
in mind is a good idea.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Because donors are human, yeah, they're not just
ATM machines, right, and so,yeah, to start from a place of
empathy, I think is fantastic.
Okay, so we only have a coupleminutes left, which is crazy.
This went by so quickly becausethe conversation has been so
fun.
But if somebody wanted toconnect with you, dani, or learn
(22:36):
more about Beacon Collaborative, how do they find you?
What's the best way to reachout?
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Yeah, how would they connect with you?
Beacon Design Collective andyou can find us at
beaconcollectivecom.
If you want to reach out to mespecifically, you can email me.
My first name is Dani D-A-N-Iand this is Dani at
beaconcollectivecom.
I also have a great sales guy.
If you're like, how do I hireBeacon John at
(23:03):
beaconcollectivecom?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yes, he's fantastic, yeah, Fantastic, I love it.
Okay, so, as we wrap up, if youwere going to give somebody one
piece of advice when it comesto this idea of kind of empathy
stimulation, what is the onetakeaway or one piece of wisdom
that you would share, as, like,here's a place to start, or make
(23:27):
sure this is the one thingyou're keeping in mind as you
are working on this visualidentity?
What is the piece that youwould give to somebody?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
I think it's more than visual identity.
It is the advice.
Really, I think the big thingis around the content itself,
and this is somewhere where,even if you were to engage
Beacon, you need to be thinkingabout content, because one thing
we find when we visitorganizations, existing websites
(23:58):
, before we help them, is likeit can be very unclear what you
do, who you're helping, whyyou're doing it.
And then I also want to seesuccess stories of, like, the
people that you've effectivelyhelped in the community.
So a lot of people's websitesare very just like here are our
programs.
You know and is missing thatcomponent of like that humanness
(24:19):
to it, that here are the peoplebehind it and here are the
people we're helping.
And it's all about the peoplereally.
All of us are nothing withouteach other.
I love that.
It's all about the peoplereally.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
All of us are nothing without each other.
I love that Definitely.
Man, if you could come from aplace where that is the filter
by which we look at your websiteor your social content, I think
we would have made greatstrides today.
Awesome, dani.
Thank you so much.
This conversation has been sofun.
I really appreciate your pointof view and you taking the time
to come on and share with ustoday.
So thanks for being here.
Yeah, point of view and youtaking the time to come on and
(24:50):
share with us today.
So thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
It's been a blast.
Thanks for listening Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
This has been another episodeof the Nonprofit Hub Radio
Podcast.
I'm your host, megan Spear, andwe'll see you next time.
Non-profit professionals are motivated to
make a difference, but theminutia of non-profit operations
can get in the way of themeaningful work you set out to
do.
That's where MonkeyPod comes in.
Monkeypod helps non-profits getback to their mission by
eliminating busy work.
Their all-in-one softwareincludes a CRM, non-profit
accounting, email marketing,online fundraising and grant
(00:23):
management.
Email marketing, onlinefundraising and grant management
.
Nonprofit Hub listeners can get15% off the first year of a
MonkeyPod subscription byvisiting monkeypodio slash
nonprofithub.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast.
I'm your host, megan Spear, andjoining me today is Dani Bichon
, who is the CEO of BeaconCollective.
So excited to hear from her andall the wisdom that she's going
to bring.
So, dani, welcome in, glad tohave you here.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's wonderful to be here.
Yeah, I'm very excited to diginto our topic for today, but
before that, let's talk a littlebit about you.
(00:57):
Tell me, tell the audience, alittle bit about yourself and
kind of your journey in thenonprofit space and what got you
to Beacon Collective.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Sounds good.
I'll start where chapter one ofmy life ends off, which was
leaving the music business.
I had been in events and tomake money I had been taking
bigger and bigger, morecorporate events and I was
planning things like the luxuryand supercar weekend at Van
Dusen Gardens and like thecelebration of light I mean not
the only planner but one of ateam of planners for the
celebration of light, whichwelcomes a quarter million
(01:33):
people for a series of fireworksevents.
And I've always been a bit ofan activist and like
environmentalist myself and Irealized I was doing this for
money and I was on site for 18hours long.
I was the longest person onsite at the the celebration of
light and I watched a quartermillion people leave the beach,
uh, with like a seven or eightinches worth of plastic waste,
(01:57):
uh, just all of it.
We had a team of volunteers toclean it up, we had a recycling
program in place and all of thatstuff.
But it kind of broke my heartand it kind of made me go.
This isn't, this isn't what Ishould be doing with my life.
So it was at that time that Istarted the Beacon Design
Collective and basically atfirst we were really like
(02:18):
muddling our way through thingsand not really sure what, like
how to attract the rightaudience and, um, you know, my
network was all music, businessand events world.
So I had to kind of reestablishmyself and my network and so it
took a took a lot of years tokind of get our foot in the door
.
I think I think it was 2015.
(02:39):
When we secured a contract withthe city of Vancouver working
on the bright green citycampaign, and that was our foot
in the door with them forcampaigns with them, and then
from there we did the zero wastecampaign and I was like, oh,
this is it, it's happening, thisis so like, how do I get more
(03:00):
of these?
And I and it took a lot of likeexperimentation with marketing
and and positioning andrebranding ourselves and all of
this stuff.
So I kind of been through allof this as a for-profit
organization to try to figureout, like, how to attract the
right people to the business andso yeah, so eventually it was
(03:23):
just a matter of continuing thenetworking, clarifying our
Canada Oxfam Canada, bcChildren's Hospital, the
(03:48):
University of Vermont, like alot of different organizations
to in different capacities, andso, in short, you know this has
been happening for 13 years, andthe last, maybe 10 of those,
has been with a focus ongovernment organizations and
non-profits.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I love it.
So then we jumped into chaptertwo.
Here you are, you're doing it,crushing the game.
Very exciting.
One of the things that I'veseen recently is a blog series
that you guys put out around theidea of empathy stimulation,
which really caught my attentionbecause it's not a phrase that
(04:28):
I think I've ever heard before,but some really interesting
content around that.
So, as a jumping off point,help us understand the idea of
empathy stimulation.
Let's kind of baseline, makesure we're on the same page
moving forward, and helpeverybody kind of understand
what that looks like and whatthat means to you all.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, yeah, sure.
So empathy stimulation kind ofcame about when we were
workshopping some stuffinternally around our
positioning and who our clientswere.
And at this point we'd beenworking with nonprofits for a
long time and we're like why isour work with our clients
successful?
Like, how are we getting themthere?
What makes it what we're doingdifferent from your average
(05:09):
creative offering?
And so we sort of workshoppedaround that and what we realized
is because we have strategists,designers, illustrators, web
designers, copywriters, etc.
So there's a bunch of us andwe're all collaborating together
on the work.
And so we collaborated togetheron this exercise and realized
that it's really three keycomponents that work together
(05:30):
and overlap to create empathywith the user.
So those three categories arevisual language.
So when I say visual language,I'm talking about like
attraction, desire and alignmentwith the target audience, and
content, which is storytelling,results, evidence and
transparency.
And then user experience, whichapplies to more than just
(05:53):
websites.
It applies to annual reportsand campaigns and everything.
It's ease of use, a clear userjourney.
The user knows what their nextstep is meant to be.
And then, of course, testing itto make sure it works.
And accessibility, which issomething we've been leaning
heavily into, since 11% of thepopulation are either visually
or cognitively impaired orotherwise impaired.
(06:15):
That affects the way that theyconsume digital media.
So, yeah, so it's visuallanguage, content and user
experience, and those threepillars of work all overlap and
work together to createrelevance, drawing power and
shared understanding, whichultimately leads to conversions.
So usually the conversions thatour clients are looking for is
(06:38):
more money.
We need more donations, and sowe would then like the user that
we would then design theprocess for would be a donor and
we would kind of design thevisual language, content and
user experience to that donor toin order to increase the
donation rate.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I think and it's interesting we've had a series
of folks on the podcast so farthis season who are very focused
on data as, like, use the datato tell your story, use the data
to tell your story.
But there is a whole group ofpeople for whom, like, yeah, the
data might be interesting, butI am going to be motivated by
the empathy and compassion thatI feel for your cause, for the
work that you're doing, and so,to me personally, that would be
(07:26):
my camp.
So I find this wholeconversation very refreshing, as
opposed to, like, the just dataside.
So I'm very interested to diginto that.
So talk to me a little bitabout let's start with the
visual language part.
There was a quote in one ofyour blogs that said visual
language is more than aesthetics.
It's about meaningful connection, and I feel like sometimes, as
(07:51):
non-profits, we have thistendency to like over design,
all the things right, which islike we're vastly under designed
or vastly under design it orwe're and I'm not knocking but
like or we're using a Canvatemplate that 17 other
nonprofits are also using forthe exact same social media post
(08:12):
right, sometimes the design isso it's just lacking one way or
the other.
But I love this idea that it'snot about maybe, the aesthetic
necessarily, but about theconnection that that brings.
I guess let's start with canyou have meaningful connection
with poor design, or do theyhave to go hand in hand, like
(08:36):
visually?
What's the goal there?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, visual language does a few things to attract
the right person, right they.
It's kind of like when you arein high school and you are
walking down the hallway and yousee the goth group and you see
the jocks and you know and youwant to fit in with one of those
groups and you decide which oneyou want to fit in with and you
start presenting a little bitmore like that person.
(09:00):
So you can signal visually towhom your organization belongs
or like to whom you want toattract by lining up your visual
language with the values ofthat person and their
preferences and so on.
And then you also want tosignal what your organization
actually does with the visuallanguage.
(09:22):
So if you were distributingfood, for example, you would
have a different visual languagethan if you were in
conservation.
Probably you want to use somecolors and textures and images
and things to signal what you'redoing, so that someone doesn't
have to read every word in orderto understand what you're doing
(09:44):
.
I feel like I'm veering way offtrack of what the original
question was.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
No, I love it.
Keep going, you're good.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I think you were asking, like, can you attract
people with bad design or a lackof design, or can your work be
effective without good design?
And I would say that I feel like, to a degree, you can have some
level of success without gooddesign, like with somebody your
aunt put a website together.
(10:12):
It's going to be limited right?
People have been engaging withthis young kid right out of high
school who's just started hisown business and he's got an AI
receptionist that he was tryingto sell me and he's got no
website.
He sent me a PDF that wascompletely undesigned and a
legal document that hadn't beenreviewed by a lawyer.
(10:34):
And I'm not going to give youmy money, no.
So you know you want todemonstrate a certain level of
success, and not necessarilysuccess, but like competency
through visual language, becausecompetency, like demonstrating
your competency, builds trustwith people.
(10:58):
They are more willing to giveyou their money if they know
that you're going to use it welland you've been running your
organization for a while andit's organized and that kind of
thing.
Yeah, so I think you have aceiling if you don't do good
design and then you can raiseyour ceiling once you have good
design.
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Speaker 2 (12:06):
Let's say somebody is listening, who maybe runs
marketing or comms for anon-profit.
As we know a lot of times,especially on what marketing
tends to fall in that overheadright that no non-profit wants
to talk about, because that's awhole different, whole different
fight.
But I feel like what I see mostoften is that the
(12:28):
organizational will be like yep,we already have a visual brand
guide.
Here's the three Pantone orHexcode colors that we work with
and here's our logo.
That's our visual guide.
If you are working with someoneand you're saying, okay, let's
say I'm new to this role, I'mmarketing for this nonprofit.
Okay, let's say you know, I'mnew to this role, I'm marketing
for this nonprofit.
(12:49):
What elements do you guys thinkof when you think of a visual
identity for a nonprofit?
I'm assuming it goes beyond.
Like you know, here's our threebrand colors and here's five
different versions of the logothat you can use in various
manners.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
That would be a very bare bones visual language that
sounds not very developed orwell thought out to me.
Usually I mean one of ourclients brand guidelines,
documents that we've beenworking on and iterating.
We're on version 5.0 because wekeep going oh, we need more
rules.
Granted, they're anorganization, but it's got
everything from likeillustration style to certain
characters that are illustratedand when they can be used and
(13:33):
what poses they can be in, andthere's like fonts for different
audience types, because theyhave, like, some materials that
are for children and somematerials for that are for
adults, and so there's rules onwhen you can use those different
things.
Photo treatments all of thatstuff goes into visual language.
We have textures.
Each program within theorganization that we work with
(13:55):
has its own texture, its own dotpattern and its own color, so
that way they all feel part of afamily, while being
distinguished from one anotherand giving a little bit of
flexibility to or for theaudience to be able to
differentiate between oh, isthis a resources program or is
this the childcare program?
And so so I mean it can it, itcan be a little thing or it can
(14:17):
be a big thing, but but I thinkthat, more importantly, the work
that should go into branding atthe beginning, before visual
language is brand strategy.
So it's like who is theaudience?
Let's create some personas ofwho it is that we're trying to
talk to.
Usually there's the communitymember that you're serving, and
then there's your big checkdonor, and then there's your
(14:41):
grassroots donor and, while mostof your money is going to come
from your foundations or yourbig check donors, those
grassroots donors are actuallylike, if you can get a good like
system of monthly recurringdonors going, that shows the big
check donors and thefoundations that people support
what you're doing and it canreally snowball into more big
(15:04):
check donors.
So, while the thing that wemeasure when we're doing work
assuming we're doing a work thatincludes website for somebody
and the branding the objectiveis to increase the online
donation rate, but that's justbecause that's the thing that we
can measure and attributedirectly to our work Really what
we see with a lot of ourclients is it's not just those
(15:28):
grassroots donors that increase.
It's kind of like everyone'sunderstanding of the
organization improves, including, like, all of the staff and the
volunteers and those big checkdonors increase as well.
Holy, I veered off track again.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It's so good.
These are my favorite types ofconversations.
I love it.
I want to zip back to somethingthat you talked about, though,
with the different pieces of allof conversations.
I love it.
I want to zip back to somethingthat you talked about, though,
with the different pieces of allof this, and that's around the
accessibility piece, because thestatistic that you used was 11%
of the population, which is onethat I don't think that I have
heard before, but that is not aninsignificant number of people
(16:04):
who have some sort of limitationwhen it comes to engaging with
that content, whether it'svisually or the ability to
access online sites that way.
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you help folks think through
some of those accessibilitypieces of this.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well, a lot of it comes with, just like our
experience, because we've allbeen in training for
accessibility, design andwriting.
So there's considerations thatgo into it, just by simply
working with an organization oran agency that knows how to do
this stuff.
But some things that weconsider when we're, when we're
building our materials, iscontrast.
(16:39):
There has to be a certain ratioof contrast between the
background and the foreground.
If there's text, all imagesneed alt text, and that you know
.
In the past people would usealt text to just like load in a
bunch of their keywords, butreally what you need to be doing
is describing what is in theimage.
Because what happens is what,if somebody needs a screen
(16:59):
reader because they're visuallyimpaired, it will read out the
alt text in place of them seeingthe image.
And so if it's just likekeywords, keywords, keywords,
then it's offensive to somebodywho's impaired.
So, and then when it comes toweb, there's you need to be able
to tab through the website.
(17:20):
So some people only have use oflike one finger or like a stick
or you know, like they can't,they can't mouse, for whatever
reason, and so they have to beable to use the keyboard to tab
through the menu items on awebsite, and yeah, so those are
some considerations that weinclude in accessibility.
(17:41):
But for what other people ourclients need to know, is that
once so this, this comes up themost with pdfs, but it also, uh,
can become evident withwebsites as well it's like, once
it's considered, done, likeclient approved, everybody's
happy, the work is done.
There's still more work to do.
We have to go in and doaccessibility testing and
(18:03):
remediation.
So we have to go in with ascreen reader, make sure like
nothing that's not supposed toread is read out and that
everything there's no glitchesand everything flows smoothly.
And so we do find sometimeswith our clients like we need
this PDF out like right away,and we're like OK, we just need
like one and a half more days toremediate the PDF.
(18:26):
Otherwise it's not going to workproperly for audiences with
accessibility concerns.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And that's such, I think, because I think a lot of
our focus tends to be on thosehigh check donors, thinking even
about our grassrootsconstituents or the community
members that we serve.
Yeah, I would love to know thestatistics on how many
nonprofits who serve communitiesthat need accessibility help in
(18:52):
some way have not done the workto make sure that their
resources are accessible in thatmanner.
It's definitely something thatI hadn't thought about before.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
I've seen a lot of nonprofit websites, as you can
imagine, both for our clientsand for non-clients and
prospects that we're trying todo work with, and I have noticed
that if the, if the communitiesthat somebody is serving are an
impaired audience, that usuallythey have that stuff figured
out.
Okay, fantastic, I'm actuallyvery glad to hear that it's the
(19:25):
everybody else that doesn'treally know about it, because if
you're not impaired yourself,you're not approaching things
like how can I make sure that mykitchen works for someone in a
wheelchair?
You don't.
You just don't think about itbecause you're not having anyone
in a wheelchair there.
But when you start talkingabout massive numbers of, like
thousands of people right, if so, if it's 11, since it's 11 of
(19:49):
of the Americans who are livingwith visual, cognitive or
physical impairment that meansthat out of a thousand people,
there's 111 or 110 people whocould potentially be visiting
your website and have animpairment, and if they get
frustrated and leave, that's apotential donor that isn't going
(20:11):
to be taking the user journey.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Interesting, and so it's funny if you go back to the
idea of empathy, right, it'snot only that we want them to
feel empathetic towards ourcause and be moved by that
content, but also that's areciprocal relationship, right?
If I want you to feel that,then I need to be empathetic to
the situation in which you findyourself, right To begin that
(20:34):
journey.
So I think a lot of times it'sso easy for us to sit in the
non-profit seat and just thinkof, like, I'm blasting out these
messages, it's a one-way pieceand then I want someone to feel
empathetic back.
But this is an amazing way tothink about it in a two-way,
reciprocal kind of relationshipwith your constituents.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, I think that feeds into some of the donor
experience work that we do aswell, which is like when
somebody gives you some of theirhard-earned money, it's like
really important that they getthanked like sincerely and a
number of times so before youask them for money.
(21:11):
I know I feel like a lot ofpeople probably on this podcast
know all of this already.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
It's amazing, though, like the idea, it doesn't
always translate, because it'slike yes, on some sort of level,
I understand that I need tothank my donors and then, oh
yeah, we don't really have apolicy for that, we don't have a
program for that.
So it's oh yeah, we don'treally have a policy for that,
we don't have a program for that.
So it's always worth repeatingthat donors are in fact humans,
right and need to be treated assuch, and that includes
(21:37):
appreciation.
So, yeah, that's a drum I willcontinue to beat.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, and like empathy for them, right?
So this donation that I maderecently it was sizable by my
budget and I gave it to anorganization that didn't thank
me at all, and then they closedthe organization right
afterwards.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Oh man, I was just like where did my money go?
Yeah, so like there's just so.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Oh my gosh, there's a lot there, right.
There's a lot to consider.
When you're making big changesor whatever, keeping your donors
in mind is a good idea.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Because donors are human, yeah, they're not just
ATM machines, right, and so,yeah, to start from a place of
empathy, I think is fantastic.
Okay, so we only have a coupleminutes left, which is crazy.
This went by so quickly becausethe conversation has been so
fun.
But if somebody wanted toconnect with you, dani, or learn
(22:36):
more about Beacon Collaborative, how do they find you?
What's the best way to reachout?
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Yeah, how would they connect with you?
Beacon Design Collective andyou can find us at
beaconcollectivecom.
If you want to reach out to mespecifically, you can email me.
My first name is Dani D-A-N-Iand this is Dani at
beaconcollectivecom.
I also have a great sales guy.
If you're like, how do I hireBeacon John at
(23:03):
beaconcollectivecom?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yes, he's fantastic, yeah, Fantastic, I love it.
Okay, so, as we wrap up, if youwere going to give somebody one
piece of advice when it comesto this idea of kind of empathy
stimulation, what is the onetakeaway or one piece of wisdom
that you would share, as, like,here's a place to start, or make
(23:27):
sure this is the one thingyou're keeping in mind as you
are working on this visualidentity?
What is the piece that youwould give to somebody?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
I think it's more than visual identity.
It is the advice.
Really, I think the big thingis around the content itself,
and this is somewhere where,even if you were to engage
Beacon, you need to be thinkingabout content, because one thing
we find when we visitorganizations, existing websites
(23:58):
, before we help them, is likeit can be very unclear what you
do, who you're helping, whyyou're doing it.
And then I also want to seesuccess stories of, like, the
people that you've effectivelyhelped in the community.
So a lot of people's websitesare very just like here are our
programs.
You know and is missing thatcomponent of like that humanness
(24:19):
to it, that here are the peoplebehind it and here are the
people we're helping.
And it's all about the peoplereally.
All of us are nothing withouteach other.
I love that.
It's all about the peoplereally.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
All of us are nothing without each other.
I love that Definitely.
Man, if you could come from aplace where that is the filter
by which we look at your websiteor your social content, I think
we would have made greatstrides today.
Awesome, dani.
Thank you so much.
This conversation has been sofun.
I really appreciate your pointof view and you taking the time
to come on and share with ustoday.
So thanks for being here.
Yeah, point of view and youtaking the time to come on and
(24:50):
share with us today.
So thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
It's been a blast.
Thanks for listening Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
This has been another episodeof the Nonprofit Hub Radio
Podcast.
I'm your host, megan Spear, andwe'll see you next time.
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