Former Ubank chief marketing officer talks about her customer and strategy game plan at the not-for-profit charity platform provider
Meanwhile, a major pillar in Kelly’s go-to-market strategy is strengthening and expanding partnerships. One example highlighted is with Communiteer, a social good network offering volunteering services that can bolt on to Good2Give’s platform offering.
Kelly noted setting up volunteering management within an organisation is quite a task. Yet it’s equally clear clients are looking for fewer suppliers to work with.
“The idea is we become the lead client partner but we’re still able to offer services a client is looking for,” she explained. “We’re trying to do client acquisition through less traditional ways.
“We may have other volunteering partnerships as well where we can be agnostic, such as those with human capital companies. For example, there are startups offering payroll services for medium-sized businesses where we could partner to offering the workplace giving element.”
This again ties into a wider effort to be relevant to customers. “One request I have with the board is for a company to help us do voice of customer, NPS [Net Promoter Score], and be able to measure that link between employee giving programs and engagement. The biggest challenge most CEOs have is this,” Kelly said.
From a marketing execution perspective, Good2Give is leveraging social media, PR and customer forums to provide more thought leadership around how organisations can approach and managing giving programs.
“Our marketing is all aimed at how to break the mould in this sector around value and ways of thinking differently that ensure people remember you,” Kelly said.
Kelly admitted the changes she’s trying to implement at Good2Give are disruptive.
“I know I’m causing a lot of pain in the business as I’m challenging things that haven’t been looked at for a long time. It’s not to say the business hasn’t been run well - it has. But when we put a different lens on things, it does create pain,” she said.
Yet bringing in process is vital in a world where Good2Give is dealing with sophisticated clients, Kelly said. She agreed having a ‘chief customer officer’ title has been helpful in achieving such a quest.
“I’m enjoying having control of this whole customer experience piece, rather than just being a participant in it, which I have been in many organisations,” she said.
“In our customer planning, we’re doing the usual things of looking at the top 20 customer pain points, prioritising them then solving for five first. And we’ll keep going until we solve them on. I’ve done that in other organisations, but I didn’t think it would be something I’ve enjoyed as much as I am. I feel in control of the timeline and process.”
Kelly is also well-aware she needs to inspire staff along the way with the many reasons why she’s implementing such change at Good2Give.
“Every time we get together I stress these things as a way to deliver something much better for our customers,” she said.
“There are a lot of complexities to this business, more than I’d first thought, and we haven’t looked as far ahead on what things means in the future. Externally, we have that emphasis on thought leadership, but we need to do more internally as well.”
Kelly added people often choose to work in the NFP sector as they don’t want the corporate pushes and drivers. “I totally understand that, but we are still a business, a cool one, and we have big aspirations,” she said, noting the goal to have a hefty $300m out in the charity sector by 2022.
“My goal is to get some of the people who choose to work in this sector to just think a little more commercially. For some it’s a hard shift, but… Unless we change things, we won’t get to our growth increase ambitions.”
And the opportunity is huge. Kelly pointed out participation rate across corporates for giving is just 5.5 per cent.
“Even if this increases to 10 per cent, that’s only 3500 people in an organisation of 35,000 staff engaged in some form of regular giving. The scope of the opportunity is huge, but organisations have to take some responsibility of doing the work themselves and motivate people by putting time and effort into it,” she added.
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