Why subscribe?

There are a million places to get ideas, news, ‘listicles’ and tell you how to do your work, grow your fundraising, and perfect your marketing. A lot of is good, some of it great, but much of it is crap. It’s clickbait drivel that creates content for content sake without much to say and without a POV. It’s not really meant to help… it’s meant to drive clicks, leads, and hit marketing KPIs.

But not me. Or at least not until I need to really monetize the sh!t out of this thing (kidding). This is a place where ideas, thoughts, and concepts are being processed and shared with two goals: help you and help me. That’s all I’m trying to do here.

If you like it, great! Subscribe, read, and share until you don’t. And if you don’t like it? No sweat. Move on or unsubscribe at any time (ideally with a bit of feedback as to why on your way out).

You’ll get a fresh thought with no agenda other than to help you in your work. I may include some handy link collections, neat job and learning opportunities, and or other interesting things in there but they’ll never be because someone paid me to do so or I get any sort of kickback. Ever.

So subscribe to make sure you never miss an update and ensure it goes circuitously to your inbox. Kidding of course it goes directly to your inbox but I don’t know why we always have to say that. like every other email but for some reason, we marketers say that but I digress… please subscribe.

Who am I?

I didn’t want to be there.

I was tired. I just got back from a trip. It was late. It was cold. But I decided to go anyways. It was January 2015 and the school I was attending was having a special service in response to the death, destruction, and devastation of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that tragically took the lives of over a quarter million people in Southeast Asia. I cried.

And as the service continued they showed pictures of people, regular people, amazing people, local people, and people not from the region… helping. Carrying people. Picking up debris. Setting up medical clinics. Searching for people. Connecting kids to their families. I cried. And I decided right there in the back of that chapel on the Northside of Chicago that this is what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to help.

I changed my major to focus on business and nonprofit management and then accidentally/intentionally went to grad school (long story) to further study nonprofit management. And I got to work.

I started as the first full-time employee for a startup nonprofit doing development work in Zambia. We had no budget. They could only pay me for 9 months. But we had to raise money. So I did the cheapest thing I knew how to do… focus on digital.

Helping. Nonprofit. Fundraising. Digital. That’s essentially my story so feel free to stop reading if you want.

But if you’re still here (thanks mom), I continued on this journey by moving back to Canada aka the motherland to do ePhilanthropy (was never nor is now ‘a thing’) and then oversee all marketing for the Canadian arm of a multi-national microfinance NGO.

I loved it. And I hated it.

The work and people were amazing but I felt trapped. Felt like I couldn’t try or do new or cool things. Felt like I had to have all the answers when I didn’t. Felt like there was nowhere to really go from here. So I got out and I got into startups.

First with a digital agency servicing nonprofits and then with a technology company that would become Canada’s fastest growing Donor Advised Fund. I loved it. But there was something I needed to do. After a healthcare (encephalitis anyone?) and a few months to muster the courage, I started my own company. The Josephson Group.

What. An. Ego.

Through this adventure I actually started a few ‘companies’. I had a digital agency working with a dozen or so nonprofits in Canada and the US. I had a Google Ad Grant services company working with a couple dozen organizations. And I had a blog and podcast that kind of fueled them both. I loved it. And I hated it.

I was spending less and less of my time on the things that I loved and was good at (strategy) and some of the things I did love and was good at (writing) were a burden more than a joy. My partner and I were starting a family through adoption and the emotional and financial roller coaster of entrepreneurship coupled with the emotional and financial roller coaster of adoption was one too many rollercoasters and I needed a change.

Enter NextAfter.

They were looking to expand and wanted someone to help lead marketing, research, and training to reach more and equip more nonprofits with digital fundraising knowledge and skills. It was perfect. I sold the agency, advertising services, and blog and went to work for NextAfter.

I even moved my family (with son, Hendrix, dog, Melly, and cat, Thor) from Vancouver, British Columbia to Dallas, Texas… during COVID… to be closer to the amazing folks at NextAfter and help better grow the newly formed NextAfter Institute. It was amazing. We created 7+ online courses and trained thousands of digital marketers all over the world. We cranked out 8+ original research studies analyzing digital fundraising in 9 different countries. I loved it and thought I’d be there for a long time until one day, maybe, I’d go back to an international nonprofit and try to take all that I had learned and apply it with one organization. That day came a lot sooner than I’d thought.

Someone from charity: water reached out about joining their team to help lead marketing and growth. I was pretty sure they had the wrong person, got their wires crossed, or were trying to get in touch with someone else at NextAfter but it was me they wanted to talk to. And so began the easiest most difficult decision I had to make in my career (FWIW, the decision to adopt was by far the easiest most difficult decision of my life).

At charity: water, I had the chance to lead a team of storytellers, creatives, and marketers responsible for growing, supporting, and celebrating the charity: water community and their impact. I also had get to fight imposter syndrome each and every day. But in the 4+ years where I oversaw marketing, we raised more than $400M dollars.

We did some really cool work along the way winning some awards and reaching millions of people with the charity: water story and inviting them to join us on the quest to provide clean and safe water to every person on the planet faster.

I now head up Growth & Innovation where I get to lead experimentation and testing, own our paid and acquisition program, and invest in future looking innovation projects.

Anyways, that’s my story so far.

Well, most of it and the short version. I don’t know what brought you here or if you read all of that but I’d love to hear from you so please feel free to email me or connect on LinkedIn.