¶ Student Organ Donation Advocacy and Journey
Lots of people are touched by organ donation . There's over 100,000 people in the United States waiting for a life-saving transplant And so many of those people and their family numbers are searching things like what is it like to wait for a transplant Or how do you share your story about organ donation ?
So we've shipped our strategy a little bit , where we're trying to focus more on those general topics that the general public might be searching for , but we still sprinkle in some of our sort of news in our blog . But we're trying to make that shift . So there were more again easily found on Google search .
I'm going to start , i'm going to start , i'm going to start , i'm going to start , i'm going to start , i'm going to start . Hey , there , you're listening to the Missions to Movement's podcast And I'm your host , dana Snyder , digital strategist for nonprofits and founder and CEO of Positive Equation .
This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world . We're ready to learn the latest trends , actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed . Let's transform your mission into a movement .
Hello , hello everybody , we're back with another episode of the Missions to Movement's podcast , and this is a really fun one , because I get quite a lot of pitches that come through my email And there's ones that stand out , and today's guest , nicole , definitely stood out when she came to me specifically talking about SEO and the incredible work that she's done , and
so immediately I said yes , it took a while to get a schedule because you're going through all of the maternity leave and coming back and figuring out coordinating schedules , but I'm very excited to welcome Nicole to the show . Oh , thank you for being a listener And thank you for being here .
Thank you so much for having me . I'm really excited for our conversation today .
Yes , And Nicole is the program director at . do you call it SOTA or S-O-D-A ? How do you normally We say SOTA .
OK , perfect , that's SOTA , which is Student Organ Donation Advocates , and I think what's really cool about the program is it kind of reminds me of my story and how I started in philanthropy through doing a dance marathon in college with Children's Miracle Network Hospitals .
So I love your journey with SOTA and from being involved in college very similar to kind of how I started , and now you're their first paid employee . Can you explain , give everybody an understanding , what is SOTA and how did that evolution happen with your career ?
Yeah . So SOTA stands for Student Organ Donation Advocates , and our mission is to inspire and support student-led organization advocacy on high school , college and graduate school campuses . And what that means in practice is we have 50 chapters on high school , college and graduate school campuses across the US that plan events to promote organ donation .
Our national nonprofit provides those students with free resources like mentorship , event-funding , supplies and how-to guides so that advocacy is easy for the students .
Since 2014 , the year that SOTA was founded , our students have educated over 77,000 people about organ-eye and tissue donation and registered nearly 6,000 people as organ donors , which is super important because there are over 100,000 people in America right now waiting for a life-saving transplant .
Wow , that's incredible . How did you first hear about the organization ? Were you a college student ?
Yes , exactly , our stories are very , very similar . Sarah Miller , who's our president and founder , founded SODA in 2014 at Washington University in St Louis . She is a donor sister , so her sister saved the life of a special education teacher through working donation in 2009 .
And , like many donor families , sarah was very passionate about the cause after experiencing the power of working donation as a donor family , and when she went to college , she was looking for a way to advocate on campus . But there wasn't really any structure already existing to advocate for working donation .
So she created that structure with two other students And I was here behind her in school . So she founded SODA as a freshman and then I was a freshman a year later And my first few weeks on campus , the sort of chapter was hosting an event . At the event , i met Sarah and I heard her story .
I didn't realize how important organ donation was for reading donor families . I only knew how it saved lives . But Sarah's story really sparked a passion in me and organ donation became the cause I cared about . So I was part of my SODA chapter all throughout college until I graduated in 2019 .
In 2019 , i started career in nonprofits right out of college And I was really lucky because my first employer invested in me . They enrolled me in a five day course all about fundraising And that sparked an interest in me again . I wanted to apply that knowledge and become a leader in nonprofits .
It was kind of hard to do it in that current role because it was an entry level role . Other people were doing the big stuff , obviously Sarah I think that's happening at all levels .
Don't discount that , sarah .
That's true . That is true . But there are some things I just wasn't able to do in that role that I wanted to stretch my wings a little bit Experience .
So I reached out back to Sarah because SODA was front of mind for me , because it made such a big impact throughout college to me personally And I experienced organ donation firsthand personally by the time I graduated up to this point .
So Sarah was focused on expanding SODA to other campuses because SODA just became an official 501c3 nonprofit at the beginning of 2020 . And I reached out in June of 2020 . And I told her I wanted to help her fundraise , which was perfect timing because she really hadn't fundraised before .
So her and I worked together to build the fundraising program It set up in the bottom up And we raised enough money to bring on the first full-time employee . I wanted to be that first full-time employee because I was doing so much as a 10 hour per week volunteer And I knew I could do so much more with 40 hours per week full-time .
So I was really happy to know that Sarah wanted me to be the first full-time employee too , and I've been in this role for two full years now .
That's amazing . That's incredible . It is literally so parallel in our tracks . Because when I learned about children's miracle network hospitals and I did dance marathon for three years yeah , three years in college , I applied for a national job at their office And went and interviewed And I was down to the final two .
I didn't end up getting the job as a regional dance manager , but it all worked out as it was supposed to And I became actually really good friends with the other person who was applying for the job in the process because we were there at the same time , which was kind of funny to look back actually at that experience . But I love that .
I want to go back to a part of that story that I think is so important , about how you were drawn to the organization . How did you hear about that event on campus ? So , Washington .
University and St Louis . They host a bunch of different events for freshmen , like their first few weeks on campus , primarily to connect them to the city of St Louis and no other causes are out there so that they can get involved throughout their college career . And at the time I thought I wanted to go to medical school .
So when I saw an event being hosted that talked about organ donation there was actually a tour of a surgical suite , because the organ donation organization , like the regional one here in St Louis , has a surgical suite at their offices and they were doing a tour This one chapter was doing a tour of the surgical suite I was like I'll bought it , i want to see
a surgical suite , i want to go to medical school so that I can be free of stress . But it turned out something different . When I was there , organ donation became my focus .
Then said I love that . That is so powerful For listeners . If you have I'm just thinking of this , i guess , on the marketing , fundraising angle if you have a way
¶ Understanding SEO and Scaling With Automation
to immerse yourself in the college experience for students .
I think it's such an important phase where we were learning about philanthropy , we were figuring out what we wanted to do in the world , and I always say to this day , children's Miracle Network has those balloons at Publix and Costco and IHOP and all these different partnerships that they have , and I will always donate to the organization from then until now , and
I always want to support the Danton-Tamara Thorn program at my university And so if there's a way that your organization can tap into colleges and have a student that's passionate about the organization startup groups like this I think it's a great way to amplify your mission and the work that you do .
So I want to jump into what you emailed me about and that was SEO , which I think is amazing . We haven't talked a lot about it on the podcast , actually , and you mentioned that SEO has really generated a lot of traffic for SOTA and it's resulted in a third of all of your student leads that have come in , and that's incredible .
So , at the very basic level . Will you explain what is SEO ?
SEO stands for search engine optimization , And in practice what that really looks like is deciding on a few keywords that somebody might be searching for and then using those keywords frequently on your website so that if somebody searches those phrases , your organization and your website is at the top of the search results on Google So important .
Thank you for that definition and understanding . I like how you say like in practice , what this means . That is totally what this show is about . is tactical information . Did you know about SEO before you started , or how did you become knowledgeable about it ?
Before I was in this role . I knew about it a little bit , but I never actually had done it . I will really put the two of those to Sarah , our founder and current board president , because she made sure this was a priority from the very beginning , when so to began expanding nationally .
So I didn't put my knowledge about SEO into practice until I was here at Soda .
Got it Okay . That makes sense . I think that's so important . We're always learning on the job and figuring out what makes sense to invest our time and energy into . What did Soda have ? I'm assuming does most of the SEO and the leads come from a blog that you have or is it overall the entire website ?
It's both , it's all our entire website , but mostly gets happened or done on the most frequent basis on our blog because we try to post twice monthly blogs that feature those keywords .
Okay , is there a certain length that you've learned works well ?
I would say nothing particularly . We try to keep it relatively short so it can be read in a few minutes . But they vary depending on the topic . We have longer blogs and shorter blogs , but that like 500 words or about a page and a half , usually works well .
When you're thinking through keywords . How do you do that research that guides you on what keywords to use and what blog topics you think people will click on and find interest ?
I want to preface this conversation by saying our strategy is not impressive technology-wise . The reason why I think it's so important and why the audience should learn about Soda strategy is because it's very approachable and easily managed by a small team .
That's what we're all about .
Yeah , exactly , It's nice to hear another like-minded organization doing something that you can adopt , and that's really what I think the audience is going to take away from this . But we didn't really do any formal research about keywords . We just thought , hey , what would a student be searching if they wanted to find us ?
We thought of a few keywords like org-a-donation , org-a-donation nonprofit or org-a-donation high school , and we just try to repeat those phrases again and again across our blog and across our websites . I know you have a second part of that question . I'm forgetting now the second part of that question Oh no , i'll get the topics .
So how do you come up with like what you're going to write about in your blog ?
So at the very beginning we would post a lot of blogs about internal news about Soda . But people aren't searching for internal news about Soda . So we got the advice to make sure that our blog topics were applicable to the general public . And lots of people are touched by org-a-donation .
Like I said , there's over 100,000 people and I had states waiting for like some transplant and so many of those people and their family numbers are searching things like what is it like to wait for a transplant or how do you share your story about org-a-donation ?
So we've shipped our strategy a little bit where we're trying to focus more on those general topics that the general public might be searching for . But we still sprinkle in some of our Soda news in our blog . But we're trying to make that shift . So there were more , again easily found on Google search .
Yes , and I love that And that's so important when we think about SEO , and that's driven . We're looking for topics that people are going to be searching for on Google .
Seo therefore ranks your blog post to the top as , basically , an answer to a question , and then , on Google side , the more people that are clicking on your link and spending time on that page is telling Google okay , this is a quality response to this question that somebody had , so therefore , i'm going to continue to push that to the top of Google ranking
results . So it's not only if you decide to write about something , but is it a quality piece of content that people are spending time on , which I think is amazing . So I'm just looking through your blog right now and I think it'd be fascinating for people to go take a look .
But the one that you just mentioned this is what it's like waiting for transplants is a great post , right , and it looks like you have different writers who writes your content .
We have full-time staff , so it's me and one other person's full time on soda And then we leverage part-time contractors who work about five hours per week for soda . And we have a contributing writer and editor on our team who works about five hours per week for soda and her name is Zoe , so it's mostly her responsibility to write those blogs .
Everyone's gonna have a guest writer , but she is publishing the majority of them for us .
Amazing , and so how far in advance , like , how does the structure of ? I'm getting into the nitty-gritty a little bit So you do two blog posts a month How far in advance are you planning those ? How are they published ? How does that work ?
We have a running list of possible topics in our Google Drive , like certain Excel sheets , and so we will work from there . So we have a really long running list and I tell her it's one of the priority user what things need to be published faster So they could be planned of months and months in advance .
But sometimes it feels like we're working at very quickly when we meet somebody who we want to share their story And we want to interview them quickly . So sometimes it's like two week turnaround , sometimes it's a few months at . Those topics have been on our list and on our radar until they're published .
Awesome . That's amazing . I'd love to hear this . The other thing that I wanted to bring up that was really interesting , that you mentioned was that you have 50 chapters now , which is incredible . That's amazing . Automation wise because you mentioned your small team You're the first paid employee about .
I'm sure a lot of people listening can resonate to this , and scaling and that quickly is Incredible and having automation is really important when you're a small team . Where have you guys been intentional With the automation efforts for these , supporting the 50 chapters and hiring of support to help you ?
So we just reached our 50 chapter milestone in September of 2022 and at that same time , we made a goal for our cell . Thank you . We've got a goal for ourselves and we want to double it have a hundred chapters by the end of 2025 , and so scaling is . Have a mind recently as we think of how we're going to get to that goal .
And One thing that is concerning to us is our budget . Even though we want to double our programming , we don't want to double our budget And we can't do much about like chapter supplies costs , because those are gonna grow regardless .
But one thing we decided we can be lean about is staffing , and we rely on Automations and part-time support to make sure that our staffing costs are mean .
So , for automations , we use that beer to set up those automations and and We Tried to implement as many automations as possible so that those simple , repetitive tasks can be done automatically by technology Versus manually .
So an example of that would be any time a student goes on to our website and submits a form to tell us They're interested in starting as a chapter , their contact information is automatically Automatically updated in our customer relationship manager and emails are drafted to them about with more information on how to start a chapter , so that's done automatically .
In the past We've done that manually , and so if you have our student engagement coordinator or other full-time staff member had to do that all manually and that was taking hours and hours every single week because it's a lot of work . But now we have it done manually and so hours are being saved every single week Thanks to automations .
That's awesome . I wanted to ask what are the tools that you use as your CRM and your email provider ?
Yeah , so we use HubSpot for our CRM and it's not made for nonprofits , but we found that it's really helpful to manage our chapter , since we have so much chapter data . I'm gonna have to manage if they're active or if they fold it or they're in the application process , so it's really helpful to manage that .
For our email , hubspot is kind of built into that as well , but we use Gmail to manage our daily inboxes .
Got it Okay , understood ? No , that's awesome . So that's extremely important for automation and I think that's very important too from the standpoint of The person getting a fast response . We don't want to fill out a form and then not hear anything forever . I'm really what form did I fill out ?
like I don't even remember doing that because of our lizard brains , like going off and being so busy on other things and then Hiring of support . So when you look to think about Doubling essentially your efforts with a small team , what are those important roles that are crucial to you guys ?
Zoe is one of our part-time contractors who works about five hours per week for soda , and we have about three other people on our team who serve in similar roles . When we think of who is going to be your next part-time contractor , it's kind of thinking of like , how are we going to save the full-time staff members sometime ?
So , for example , we are having a finance contractor come on to our team and he is going to help us manage our quick books , because I do that right now and it's not my favorite task , so it's more than happy to say goodbye to it and pass it along to somebody else .
So that kind of guides her principle in terms of who we're going to be hiring next for part-time help .
I love how you distinguish that , as what can we take off of a full-time person's plate ? And especially if it's not your jam And , like I know , finances is not mine either when I was doing my quick books , i would spend hours and hours and hours just because I didn't know what I was doing , and that's not good .
Where I was having to , like , always ask quick book support for help or watch a bunch of YouTube tutorial videos . That is time not well spent for me .
So I hired a fractional CFO , which has made a game changer , and a bookkeeper that does all of that for me , and having an accountant And those are things that they are experts in that realm and absolutely should hire off for that . So I love that example .
I want to dive into a section called We Must Know And I , as I started off at the beginning , thank you for being a listener of this podcast and for sending me an email reaching out about this case study , because I think it's awesome that you guys have been able to grow your chapters and have a bunch of student leads coming in through your blog content ,
through SEO , and I wanted to ask you what are you reading or what other podcasts are you listening to , for fun or professional development ?
I'm a big listener to audio books and podcasts so that I can multitask with whatever I'm doing . So , personally , i just finished listening to Pushinga , which is a book ,
¶ Connecting and Sharing on Social Media
and the book was about a family who immigrated from Japan-occupied Korea to Japan , and it was a very powerful story about overcoming challenges . There's actually an Apple TV series about the book , so I'm excited to dive into that now and would highly recommend anybody check out the book .
And , in terms of podcasts , one of my favorite things to listen to is the podcast How I Built This . And it's also an oddball for a nonprofit leader to learn things from because it's about big for-profit brands . No , but it's all slow , relevant . I totally agree .
Yeah , there are tons of different episodes for anybody who's not familiar about Cray and Barrel or Culver's , so you can learn about a brand that you really love and use on a daily basis .
But the episode I listened to most recently was about LMO Draft House , which is a chain of movie theaters , and the founders founded their first movie theater a few years out of college And they were very honest in the episode about how they didn't always know what they were doing or have a strategy .
And , being a young leader , i feel like I'm making things up sometimes , oh right , but knowing that other people have felt similarly but experience success is very helpful and promising to me , so I loved that one .
Yes , no , it's so good . Look , nicole , we're all making it up , we're all figuring it out . Listener , let us know if you agree , send me a note . What are you trying to figure out right now ?
I always love to ask that question and shoot me a note on Instagram or on LinkedIn to let me know and see if I can send you some resources your way , nicole , i wanted to wrap this conversation up with asking you my favorite question , and that's what do you need help or support on right now ?
If anybody listening knows a student who's interested in a medical career or interested in sharing their passion for Ori and I into Hu Donation , please let them know about SOTA . We would love to help them save lives and your help in helping us reach our 100 chapter goal by 2025 .
Yes , love it . Is there a list somewhere of all of the schools that you're in ?
Yes , if you go to SOTANationalorg slash students and scroll to the bottom of the webpage , you'll see a chapter map where you can see all the schools that we're at .
Okay , amazing , perfect And Nicole , where can listeners connect with you ?
If you're looking to get connected with me personally , search my name on LinkedIn or you can send me an email at nicoleatsodenationalorg . If you're looking to learn more about our organization , check us out on Instagram at SOTANational or go to our website , SOTANationalorg .
Beautiful Nicole , thank you so much for being here today and thank you for all the work that you're doing with SOTA .
Thank you so much .
Can you tell I love talking all things digital To make this show better . I'd be so grateful for your feedback . Leave a review , take a screenshot of this episode , share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with 1e so I can reshare and connect with you .