Nicole Nidea · Program Director, SODA | After seeing how SODA has been able to scale through awareness, Nicole Nidea is a champion of "findability" in fundraising. Hear her tips to embrace this trend in 2024.

It’s that time of year—the time that we’re all focused on new beginnings and upcoming trends, brimming with hope that there’s some groundbreaking tactic, tool, or trick on the horizon. (Unless you’re listening to this in August, of course.)

Nicole Nidea, Program Director at SODA, has lots to say about a trend that’s been sweeping 2023 and is poised to change the face of fundraising in 2024: What Nicole calls “findability”. We’re talking AI-assisted search experiences, long-game scaling strategies, social mixing tactics that target specific audiences, and more.

For example, using specialized SEO has made Nicole a champion of integrating awareness as a goal into every aspect of fundraising—and increasing that awareness, or “findability” allows SODA staff to focus their energy on the things that matter.

While Nicole brings to life a wonderland of awareness, that’s not all she shines a light on—listen in to hear all about SODA’s scale and scope, partnerships and peer-to-peer, and findability as a fundraising need.

Hello and welcome to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit!

It’s that time of year—the time that we’re all focused on new beginnings and upcoming trends, brimming with hope that there’s some groundbreaking tactic, tool, or trick on the horizon. (Unless you’re listening to this in August, of course.)

Nicole Nidea, Program Director at SODA, has lots to say about a trend that’s been sweeping 2023 and is poised to change the face of fundraising in 2024: What Nicole calls “findability”. We’re talking AI-assisted search experiences, long-game scaling strategies, social mixing tactics that target specific audiences, and more.

For example, using specialized SEO has made Nicole a champion of integrating awareness as a goal into every aspect of fundraising—and increasing that awareness, or “findability” allows SODA staff to focus their energy on the things that matter.

While Nicole brings to life a wonderland of awareness, that’s not all she shines a light on—listen in to hear all about SODA’s scale and scope, partnerships and peer-to-peer, and findability as a fundraising need.

David Schwab Thank you for joining me today. As I jump into a conversation with my new friend Nicole Nadiya. She is the director of program at SOTA, and she's coming here today to share her wealth of knowledge in fundraising, delivering programs growing organically. I'm really excited about today's conversation, Nicole. Thanks for joining us.

Nicole Nidea Thank you so much for having me here today, David. I'm really excited for our conversation.

David Schwab Me too. Well, Nicole, can you tell us how you got started in the nonprofit world?

Nicole Nidea Yeah, of course. I truly believe my nonprofit journey begins with SODA in 2015. In 2015, I was a first year student at Washington University in Saint Louis, and at the time I thought I wanted to go to medical school. So I was really excited to see that the first ever sort of chapter was hosting a tour of our local organ procurement organization, Surgical Suite. At the time, I didn't know that the event was going to be about organ donation. I didn't know much about organ donation, but at that event I met service founder Sarah and Sarah. Sister was an organ donor. Once I learned more about Sarah, Sister Laura and organ donation, I became an organ donation advocate. So I helped Sarah lead that original chapter at Washington University in Saint Louis until I graduated. But before I graduated, I started an internship at a local nonprofit here in Saint Louis, and I felt really well prepared for that internship because I practiced a lot of skills that I use at that improv ship throughout my time as a sort of chapter leader. So I did things like though partnerships are marketed, programs are like a team. So I was like, I had really well prepared for that internship. And that internship actually turned into a part time job and then a full time job. When I graduated, I moved from intern to an assistant development and marketing coordinator. I remember sitting in my first staff meeting and saying, This feels like SODA. And I was really lucky because that organization invested in me. They put me through a five day course all about fundraising, and I was really eager to apply that knowledge to my role. But it was little bit hard because I was coordinator and my development manager and executive director were the ones strategizing and planning and leading relationships. So I reached back out to Sarah, and Sarah at the time was leading the national nonprofit that Sara is today. But they just became an official nonprofit in 2020. And so her and I worked together to build that fundraising program from the bottom up back in 2020. And then we raised enough funds to hire on the first ever full time employee, which ended up being me. I became that as program director in April of 2021. So that's, well, synopsis of my nonprofit journey so far.

David Schwab That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that background. Nicole It's interesting to hear how many different people find their way to the nonprofit sphere in different ways. Like I myself, I finished college and fundraising just kind of fell into my lap and I realized I loved it and built a career around it. And now I get to sit here today with my friends at fundraise and talk all about fundraising and nonprofit leadership and management and do fun things like this where I get to meet people like you have really interesting conversations about being in the nonprofit world, So. Nicole As I was preparing for our conversation today, one of the things I thought was really interesting about Sotos is you do a lot of work with students. I believe you call them ambassadors, right? Student ambassadors.

Nicole Nidea Student leaders. Ambassadors.

David Schwab Student leaders. Yeah. So but it's all about activating students to tell the stories on behalf of your organization. So I thought that would be a really interesting place to dive in because there's such a big conversation in the nonprofit world today about reaching the next generation. And it almost seems like an organic part of SODA's growth. Can you talk to me about that a little?

Nicole Nidea Yeah, of course. We are totally bought into supporting the next generation of student leaders because that's really what we do. Our mission is to inspire and support student led organ donation, advocacy on high school, college and graduate school campuses. What that means in practice is we have about 60 chapters on campuses across the country that save lives through organ donation, advocacy and SODA. Our national organization provides those students with free resources so that advocacy is easy and fast for them.

David Schwab That's awesome. So I think a lot of our listeners are going to be really interested in this because everyone is is asking me and all the conversations. I was like, How do we activate the next generation? How do we get engaged with the next generation? And so does doing it naturally. What is it that has helped you reach students and reach the next generation of supporters? So naturally.

Nicole Nidea There are three ways that students usually find out about SODA, and that is working. Procurement organizations, word of mouth and online. I already mention organ procurement organizations, but they're also called opioid. It was in the organ donation world, and I opposed you as they coordinate transplants. But in addition to coordinating transplants, they're out there advocating for organ and tissue donation in their communities, which also means reaching students. They'll often go into health classes or driver's ed classes and educate students about becoming an organ donor before they receive their license. And they share SODA. And our mission at those presentations as a way for students to stay involved with organ and tissue donation and save lives on their own. The second way is through word of mouth, so an adult can encourage their children to start a solo chapter or a friend can encourage a friend to start a cell chapter. A great example of this is our chapter at Meredith College. In high school, the founders of our Meredith College chapter was friends with our founder of our George Mason University chapter. So once they saw Maddie at George Mason University doing amazing things and saving lives, they wanted to start their own sort of chapter. And like I said, the last way that students usually find us is online. So our organization invest a lot of time in making sure that we're visible. We post on social media a lot because that's where students are. Students love Instagram and TikTok, so we post frequently in social media and students find us there. But we also make sure that we're found easily through Google Search. We utilize SEO and make sure our website is thorough and we have frequent blogs so that a student searches something like organ donation advocacy or organ donation out of high school. SODA is at the top of their search results. They can get involved really easily with us.

David Schwab That's really interesting. And so much of that has to do with staying up to date on on trends. So my next question is for you is how do you stay up to date on trends and stay so relevant on the near speed of light changes that happen specifically on social channels like Tick Tock, but also the mundane things of SEO? And our listeners are going to be like, Well, that's great, Nicole, but I can't stay up to date on all of these things. Like I'm going to assume that you don't have, you know, an army of people behind you to do this research. So what is it? How do you stay up to date?

Nicole Nidea I think the magic behind SODA and what we do is that it's really easy to replicate, especially for a small team, because we're a small team. It's just me who's full time and then our engagement manager, Sophia. But we leverage either easy adoption of these types of techniques or we go on help. So in terms of social media trends, we have an intern who's in college that creates TikTok videos for us because she really knows what's best in terms of what's hot on TikTok and what type of trends to get involved with. But in terms of SEO, I and the rest of our team helps implement that. And I am by no means an expert in marketing. We just take a really easy approach by saying, Hey, what would a student be searching if they're trying to find us? They might try to search organ donation, they might try to search organ donation, college, and then we try to replicate those types of searches and boost our SEO ratings by just taking those phrases and using them a lot on our website or on our blog. So it's really simple. Not a lot of research goes behind it, but we do track ah, SEO efforts and we see boosts in key search terms. So even though we don't do research behind what terms we use, it's working because our students are reporting that they find this on Google or we see those boosts in certain rankings.

David Schwab Well, I mean, first of all, congrats, because that's not easy work to do. And the fact that you're doing it all in-house is is very impressive. So pass on my support to the rest of the team because I know there's a lot of effort that goes in behind it. And as I'm hearing you, you talk about it. One of the things I hear is the passion behind activating students for the cause. And I'm sure it's near and dear to your heart because you were part of starting a one of the first chapters. Right. And as you're talking, I'm hearing so many connections to what one of our our co-founders, Justin, when he talks about an organization he worked with called Invisible Children. I'm sure you've heard of it. I'm going to age myself here a little bit, but when I was graduating high school and going into college, Invisible Children was doing a huge push to bring attention to what was happening around warlord named Kony. And he tells the story of how the average age of their donor was 16 because of the way they activated that up. And coming generations like these were my peers at the time. Right. And that's a wild way to be able to activate because they were active on channels like Facebook and Instagram was just starting again, aging myself here. But they were active and relevant and communicating with the next generation of supporters where they are. So with that. Context, I kind of want to shift a little into thinking about fundraising, because one of the things that helped Invisible Children grow so much is they took on a strategy called peer to peer fundraising, which was relatively new at the time. Now it's, you know, a tried and true practice. But I'm curious, Nicole, if you guys have, you know, dabbled in peer to peer fundraising at all, if you've had any success And what's that like working with supporters and activating students and the next generation of supporter on social channels like TikTok and other organic networks?

Nicole Nidea Yeah. So at SODA, we actually don't ask our students to fundraise for us ever. We know that fundraising can be scary and not everybody wants to fundraise, so we never require chapters to fundraise for us because that goes along with the philosophy that advocacy should be easy for students here at SOTA. However, we do utilize peer to peer advocacy with adult champions for SODA. Right now we are doing a peer to peer fundraising campaign that's raised over $30,000 in memory of an organ donor. And what we did is we supported a couple who wanted to fundraise for SODA, and we helped them craft an email to send to all their friends and family. And now we are processing the donations and acknowledging donations on our end. But it has been so much more efficient for us to utilize this peer to peer fundraising campaign versus me trying to make connections and fundraise over $30,000 because those warm connections and a friend telling a friend to donate to SODA is so much more meaningful than a staff member telling a person to donate a SODA.

David Schwab Yeah, it's one of my favorite things as a fundraiser. When I think about peer to peer fundraising is that you basically have a warm introduction to your supporters network at that point and you're going to reach you know, you talk a lot about being discovered right through SEO and TikTok and other social channels, but there's no better way to be discovered than a warm introduction. And so much of peer to peer is that it's it's someone saying, you know, I choose to support SODA because I believe in their cause and I want you to know about it. And that first connection builds so much trust when it's a warm introduction compared to trying to introduce yourself like you're talking about. And so that's why I love peer to peer as a strategy, but also why it's so successful. I mean, you talked about the astronomical you raised $30,000 for this campaign, which is awesome. We did a study right at the end of last year about the value of peer to peer. And I was, you know, astounded by the results. But, you know, what we found was the average result of a fundraiser, a peer to peer fundraiser. So if I were to do a fundraiser for SODA, the average values over 1200 dollars per fundraiser compared to the average gift online, which is, you know, $120, which is still really good. But the average value of a fundraiser is ten times the value of a gift. And so one of the things I recommend all the time to organizations that I talk to and fundraising leaders that I work with is to focus on peer to peer because you're going to tax your investment. And could you imagine the work it would take to raise $30,000 organically compared to doing that through the warm introductions of this organ donor couple? So I think that's, you know, that's a great way to utilize that fundamental strategy.

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David Schwab One of the things  interesting about SODA's model of delivering services and awareness is your chapter based specifically through like local grassroots style communication. A lot of organizations that I talked to that have a similar like local chapter based delivery model of their programs. They have to be really intentional with the way they communicate about themselves. Can we spend a couple of minutes talking about that side of the way you deliver programs and communications? How do you clip your chapter leaders to speak on behalf of SODA and make sure that the core message is coming through, but also allowing them to speak organically and naturally to where they are and why they advocate for SODA?

Nicole Nidea Yeah, so I have mentioned that we provide our students with free resources. Those free resources include mentorship, event funding, supplies, how to guides and more. I think those really those resources really unify our chapters because they're all either wearing sort of chapter T-shirts with our logo on it or they're hosting similar events because we provide them with the best ideas. But another really key part of unifying our chapters and making sure that they are accurate when sharing information about organ and tissue donation is because of our OPO partners. I've mentioned our OPO partners so many times already in this interview because they have played such a key role in our growth and. Our day to day work. Every single sort of chapter works with their OPO and their OPO provides them with organ donation training through the opio of existing volunteer training program. And this ensures that all the information that they share on campus is accurate.

David Schwab It's awesome. And I think it's so interesting. This trend I'm hearing is, you know, as we continue to talk and how you've helped Sota grow, everything comes back to what sounds like a very fundamental commitment to grassroots growth through authenticity and relationships. But along that growth, I'm sure you've had a lot of opportunities to say yes or no to a lot of things. So one of the things that I know fundraisers and nonprofit leaders face every day is decision fatigue. You have so many things you have to do, so many things you have to decide so many things. You have to push forward that by the end of the day, you're just you're exhausted. And it takes a strong commitment to a cause and a North Star to combat that fatigue. So. Nicole, can you talk about how, as you know, it was program director at SOTA and other leaders that sort of how have you and your team focused on your grass roots growth? What have been some of the exciting things you've been able to say yes to, but also what have been some of the hard things you've had to say no to to make sure you stay focused on your cause and delivering the way that you believe is the right way to deliver?

Nicole Nidea Yeah. So one of the most important things that has helped me make decisions has been having a very focused mission and focused programming. So at SODA, we know we're really great at supporting students, high school college and graduate school students in the U.S. And when we're able to say yes, it means that a partnership aligns with that very focused mission. And when we say no to things and often means it does not align with that very focused mission. So some examples of this have been in our national chapters and middle school chapters. A few months ago I was approached by a Canadian student who wanted to start a Canadian chapter, and even though it would have been really exciting to say we have international chapters, we knew it took us a long time to understand the organ donation system here in the United States, and that it would take a lot of time to understand the Canadian organ donation system and understand how it could best support students there in terms of middle school chapters opened, came to us and said, Hey, can we start a chapter at a middle school? Well, it would have been really exciting to say, Yeah, we have a way for you to engage younger students. We ended up saying no because our resources are catered to teens and young adults. Middle schoolers are less mature than teens and young adults, so all of our programing materials would have to be revamped for a younger audience. We were focusing on a younger audience then we wouldn't be able to focus on our current audience. Those high school, college and graduate school students in the US. So that very focused mission has helped us say no. Also, just knowing it's okay to say no has been really helpful. Our founder instilled a culture of it being okay to say no, and so I try to continue to that now that I manage all of our staff and also make big decisions.

David Schwab I had a conversation one time with a nonprofit executive and the thought of it being okay to say no. Stuck with me from that conversation. We were talking and he said, You know, we had a I think you said it was an eight figure gift, the largest gift the organization had ever potentially received, but it was contingent on them opening up a new program and a new way to deliver it. They had to ultimately come back to the donor and say no because they didn't know how to deliver services that way. They didn't know if they could deliver services that way. They didn't have the staff and they it wasn't a core part of their mission. And I'm sure like talking with that leader, it was the hardest decision they had ever made as a leadership team. And I'm sure you've had to make a lot of those hard decisions along the way, because no is a really hard word to say, particularly when you're talking about helping people. I guess my where I'm going with this, I have a question, what would your encouragement be to other nonprofit leaders who are facing a tough now? They know what they're being asked isn't necessarily core to their mission or who they are, but it's also a really attractive offer, like you said, you know, would be really cool to say we're an international, we have chapters internationally, or it'd be great to serve even younger students, but that's not core to who we are. How would you encourage those leaders facing decisions like that?

Nicole Nidea I would encourage those leaders to keep in mind that no can mean to growth. And like I said, we just said no to international chapters and middle school chapters. But saying no has allowed us to grow new chapters for our existing audience and enhance the resources that we provide them, so that saving lives is easier for them. I also found that sometimes when making these tough decisions, it can help to be transparent about why you're saying no, and that can help other people understand why you're making a decision you're making and really be able to see how focused your nonprofit is.

David Schwab So we've covered quite a bit of ground already. I think it's so cool to hear how SODA has grown organically through many different channels, how you've been able to build partnerships and grow into this really dynamic leader at an organization that is going through hyper growth and such valuable words to other leaders who are facing tough decisions, whether to say yes or no to cool opportunities, but maybe not mission focused opportunities. But I wanted to take a little bit of a strong a little bit stronger of a pivot here away from from SODA. And talk a little bit about your career, because, Nicole, you've built a really dynamic career already. I know your you're still relatively early in your career, but you're doing some phenomenal work with SODA. You're you're delivering programs, you're leading fundraising, you're managing staff. This is you know, most people don't get to be where they're at in your career. And one of the things I have seen you talk a lot about is is mentorship and being part of a mentor program. So one of the things that I'm really committed to this season on the nonstop nonprofit podcast and just generally is helping other nonprofit leaders and other nonprofit people build a nonprofit career. Is there so much from a resource in conversation about building careers in the corporate world or building careers in the agency role? But no one talks about building a nonprofit career, and we should, because it's the most rewarding career to build. So my question to you is, as we start to wind down here, is what is this mentorship and like, how valuable is it and how do you see yourself paying it forward?

Nicole Nidea Yeah, so I saw the value of having a mentor really early on in my career. That first organization that I worked at, one of my first mentors actually learned about the organization through her mentor who is a board member. So after hearing that, I was really eager to find a mentor of my own. So I went to a local professional development group here in Saint Louis, and I signed up for their mentorship program. That made it really easy because I didn't have to go out and network and ask the really scary question of will you be my mentor? One was paired to me and that mentor was really great because she instilled self-confidence in me when I was just like a year or even less into my career. And she also encouraged me to take on more leadership roles. So thank thank you to Amy for helping me get to where I am today. Amy talked about how she had such a wonderful mentor and that's why she wanted to be a mentor. So in the future, I definitely want to keep my eye out for opportunities like that, where I can be part of that professional development group and serve as a mentor for a professional who's looking to follow a similar career path to mine.

David Schwab It's really exciting. I also expect to see a lot of great things for the staff that you're building at SODA, being able to take advantage of mentorship opportunities like this, and having a leader who's committed to not just their what they can do for the organization, but to their development as well. So Nicole is as we wind down our time to final questions for you and I want to ask, what is your number one tip for success this giving season?

Nicole Nidea Unfortunately, I think my tip is not super applicable right now. I think it's something to good to keep in mind in January when you begin planning for the following year's end of year giving, because my advice is to begin making moves for end-of-year giving early. Way earlier than you think. It's necessary because a year full of touch points can lead to lots of generosity at year-end. One thing that I'm doing right now to increase those touch points for SODA supporters is transitioning from quarterly updates from me to weekly updates for me. I've been in awe of how many people are clicking on our wings and replying to my emails now and I can't wait to see how that pays off at year end.

David Schwab That's awesome. Well, Nicole, this has been such a rich conversation and I'm really excited to continue watching SODA grow. Watch you continue to direct the way that your organization moves and engages the next generation of supporters all through these, you know, grassroots organic growth efforts. And I'm excited to watch as you start to layer in some of those channels and mediums that allow you to accelerate that growth even faster.

Nicole Nidea Well, thank you, David. I really appreciate your kind words and encouragement today, but also just for having me on the podcast so we could have this conversation.

David Schwab Absolutely. If anyone from our audience wants to connect with you any further. Where would be the best place for them?

Nicole Nidea You can find me on LinkedIn. Give search my name, Nicole Nidea. Or if you want to send me an email, you can send me an email at nicole@sodanational.org.

David Schwab Awesome. Well, thank you for your time today, Nicole.

Nicole Nidea Thank you, David.

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