A Modern Nonprofit Podcast: Leveraging Media for A Good Cause

Welcome to the Modern Nonprofit Podcast! We are excited for our guest today, CEO and co-founder of Collidescope, Nick Lynch! 

Nick is an expert in digital marketing and this will be the framework for the conversation today. We’ll cover topics like leveraging corporations, and influencers to further the mission of organizations and bringing awareness to the cause. 

Nick’s story is also the driving force behind what he does and why he does it so well. He’s been based in LA for around 16 years with the mission of building solutions for advertisers to better target their audiences on digital and social media. 

On a personal note, he is a cancer survivor and has built a strong relationship with Make-A-Wish ever since they sent him to Disneyland when he was three years old.  

When his passion from his personal life and professional life ‘collided’, his business was born. 

Key Opinion Leader & Ambassadors 

Nick and Tosha discover more about the stigma around nonprofit organizations.  For example, there is a misconception that nonprofits are organizations that barely get by with little resources, capital, and are simply teetering survival day in and day out. 

Nick’s job is to create a new perspective around this by bringing awareness and leveraging resources, specifically on media,  to cause based organizations. 

In the Asia market, Nick describes to us that the term ‘influencer’ is actually referred to as ‘key opinion leader’. 

Ultimately, whether an individual has millions of followers or 12, we learn from the conversation that everyone has some form of influence. 

Nick frames this way of thinking and redirects it towards a nonprofit lens:  

“It’s really about how we can find alignment with people who have influence or have an audience that can help us build, sustain or grow our community. We think less about the size of a partner in the influencer or key opinion leader space and focus more on ‘is this authentic alignment that helps us either enrich our community, grow our community, or build our community?’ “

With this exceptional perspective in mind, it really begins to paint the picture of how using media and individuals with influence can help share a story to the right community. Ideally, this will compound on itself, people will support the cause, and the community continues to grow and sustain itself. 

When we put it all together, Collidescope is the vessel that will piece this puzzle together. 

Truly an innovative approach to ambassadors and key opinion leaders. 

Identifying Partnerships

Tosha raises a great question surrounding this niche of business: 

 How are these partnerships built? 

Nick shares that the opportunities around partnerships operate as a whole, not one influencer supporting one brand. Rather, it’s the conglomerate of corporate partners, influencers and the cause based organizations that ultimately work as a unit to create value for everyone involved. 

By searching for entities, influencers, etc that are already aligned with a cause, it creates synergy and authenticity for the cause.  In essence, it’s not a paid ad that seems inauthentic, but stimulating social awareness that is real and genuine. 

The corporate aspect comes into play as the sustainability train of the project. The corporate sponsors can underwrite the campaign, whether that be breast cancer awareness month or mental health week, and almost mold the foundation for the cause. Here, influencers that are already aligned with these types of social awareness events or the corporate sponsors themselves, create a way for the nonprofits to fulfill their mission by leveraging the resources around them. 

A win-win-win partnership. 

Three Tenets 

Tosha raises another great point around the use of social media for nonprofit organizations. The world is shifting in a way that makes the use of media an absolute for growth in any form of business. It’s simply the world we live in today. 

The question she poses is simple, ‘what if nonprofits don’t buy into this formula of utilizing social media for their communications?’ 

Nick tells us the timing of this question is impeccable. He states he is writing a book that breaks down three tenets of this: 

• Social Tenet 
• Partnership Tenet 
• Human Tenet 

Interestingly, the idea that the ‘social tenet’ actually has two parts to it. The social media aspect being the obvious one, but also the social paradigm of face to face interaction. This seemingly tends to be a lost art in today’s culture. 

With looking so deeply into the social aspect of nonprofits, Nick tells us that Collidescope sits at an interception of media marketing and measurement. Outside of partnering with the right people, there are many variables around data collection and ensuring that the right people are finding the right cause. 

The brand is something new in the 501c3’s, as Nick explains. It is truly the place where his personal and professional life collided and is now the extension of what he and his team strive to do daily. 

Once again, you can hear more from Nick at Collidescope.io or find him on LinkedIn. 

Check out the full story here.

You can also find Tosha and the Charity CFO team on Youtube or our website, thecharitycfo.com!

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