Insights From a Communication Innovator
Insights From a Communication Innovator
Faigy Gilder defines what the Product Community means to her
Who are you and what do you do?
Hi! I’m Faigy Gilder, a nonprofit communications consultant.
I’ve been doing this work at a number of places in the nonprofit sector for about a decade now. I also have a Master of Public Administration.
Most recently, I was the communications director for more than four years at a national association for disability representatives. It was a really great experience and now I’m branching out on my own.
I have my own small business working primarily for small staff organizations and local businesses. I help places with small staffs and small budgets communicate their impact effectively and achieve their goals.
Here’s a recent example: I volunteer my skills in my town with our community relations advisory committee. We had our first annual Pride event this past summer, and the committee really wasn't sure how to get started.
We started talking about it in March, and I developed a plan alongside other committee members. I helped develop a plan, which started with finding the right sponsors.
It’s important not to put the cart before the horse. You really need to have the right sponsors because part of what you're giving them is exposure when you start rolling out the event.
I researched email options for the committee, and I found a really good email platform for them. It allowed us to get people to sign up for the event online and capture those emails. The committee wasn’t doing any email capture before this - and now our email list includes more than 600 people! For context, when I joined the committee, sharing the event on their Facebook page was a key part of event promotion.
I’m very strategic in my work.
I help everyone take a step back. If you want to reach people locally, Facebook pages are not great for reach without putting money into it. I helped the committee refocus its efforts. I said ‘Let's get on Instagram. Let's build our email list. Let's work on getting sponsors first and tap into that network.’
At the end of June, we had our big, now-annual Pride event and there were over 500 people there! We got press coverage. We got photographers. There was even a big protest happening that day for reproductive rights, and they chose to do it outside the Pride event because they knew half the town was going to be there.
It was just amazing, and it was really cool to see it all come together. After the event, the organizing committee did a debrief, and they were really blown away by the power of communicating effectively and thinking beyond the Facebook page
I was just listening to someone the other day talk about owned media versus rented media. Your website and your email list are what you own. What you rent are platforms and your profiles on the platforms. So, a part of being strategic is often thinking more deeply about what you own.
What is your definition of Product Community?
I'll take a step back before I describe the Product Community.
Associations are having a really hard time right now. I saw this at my own association and I’ve also seen this across the board.
At the moment, everything we consume is pay-to-play. Everything is a subscription, and everyone wants to know what they're getting for that subscription. Netflix, HBO Max, your grocery delivery- everyone is seeing things in that light now.
Decades ago, people would join associations or at least would more easily have memberships solely because they believed in the organization.
It wasn't a transactional relationship.
It was ‘I believe in this association's mission and vision. I'm going to pay my dues every year or every month because I believe in what they do, and I want to invest in the field.’
Most associations, if you look at the data, have declining membership because it’s just not the way people are doing business now.
So, a part of what the product community does is it really addresses the way people are thinking about membership nowadays, which is ‘What innovation are you bringing me? What products are you bringing to me? What value are you adding to my business? What ROI does my membership get me for me or my business?’
A lot of associations are insisting that prospective members have the ‘wrong’ mentality and push back on it. The Product Community says ‘This is the way it is. Let's add value.’
The Product Community can build a community of innovation in your association by looking at the resources you have.
Associations have so many resources: people, ideas, research, and years of experience. They have all the tools they need to create things people really value. Perhaps those will be the entry products to people seeing value in being a member in general or perhaps people will continue to see membership in a transactional light.
I don't know if it matters all that much.
By tapping into the power of community and design thinking, you leverage what you have and create value together. I think it can really reinvigorate an association and membership.
People will think, ‘I see the direct value to my business right now. This membership is a no-brainer.’
For any organization, big or small, when you have a staff and you all have to move together in a direction, it just takes longer. The process of upgrading technology, the process of refining your processes - all of these things take time.
In the business community, there's more incentive to speed it up because you see the impact on your bottom line. I think there's a lag in the nonprofit space, including associations, because there's a lag in seeing it in your bottom line, but I think now we're catching up now.
I think associations and organizations are really understanding that you must upgrade your technology and infrastructure to stay relevant. When joining an association, for instance, people expect an experience similar to making any other purchase in their life: it has to be easy, it has to be online, and you have to take the payment methods people are using. Nobody wants to take out their credit card. Nobody does that anymore to buy anything. You have to really make it seamless.
Once people are in what are the emails they're getting? Do they feel like they're oriented? Do they feel like they're welcome? Do they feel like they've joined something? Are you onboarding them with easy wins through things your association is offering them?
Let's say you develop products in the product community. Are you emailing them three months after they join to make sure they know about this really cool thing that’s part of their membership? All of these pieces are things I think a lot of associations are working on now.
Why start your own business?
It's something I’ve thought about on and off for a long-time. I also worked for a consultant years ago, so I got to see a little of what it’s like. After almost a decade of experience and a lot of learning, I felt like I finally have enough experience. I really have something to offer.
I also now understand my niche.
What I do best is really being scrappy. I'm kind of a Jill-of-all-trades. I'm tech-adept. I can look at your profile overall, and I can say here's what I’ve seen in the past. Here's where I can get you. Here's how you make things. Here's how you stretch a dollar. Here's what you need, and what you don't need, when you're a small organization. A lot of tools are built for businesses at the enterprise level.
It's a completely different skill set to understand what you can do on a budget, and also the tools you have when you're building community.
I think nonprofits also have a lot of advantages, especially small ones. A lot of times they're local and have a sense of place. A lot of times they really know their people. I realized that I can help a lot of places stop trying to mimic what they see brands do right and instead embrace their own strengths. It’s a different perspective to start from a place of ‘These are the resources we have, and these are the goals we have. The advantages we have are different.’
I think what I’m trying to say is this: I finally realized after many years of work here's what I’m good at, and here's what I have to offer.
I also realized that a lot of smaller places don't need someone like me for 40 hours a week. That is a waste of their money and a waste of my time. What they really need is someone who can help them for a few hours a week on an ongoing basis. Maybe coaching just
for a few months, or maybe some long-term staff augmentation and deeper expertise. Really it depends on the place. But I realized there was probably a really big market for places that wanted some help but didn't want to expand their team yet or at all.
How has actually owning a business has been different from what you thought it would be?
Something really different that I didn't realize before I started a business is how important it is to constantly be having conversations and networking. I have had so many virtual and in-person coffee dates, lunch dates, and brainstorming sessions with friends.
I’ve really loved it. It's actually one of my favorite things.
You get to meet so many interesting people. But you really have to constantly be meeting people learning and growing, and that's completely separate from consult calls. It’s peer meetings. I've also been doing it locally with a lot of local business owners in completely different fields.
The social part of being an entrepreneur has surprised me in a good way. The old-school stuff is still important. At the end of the day, it’s still about connecting with people.
It's not just about emails and social media posts. Absolutely not. The old-school stuff is always the most important, and that's part of what it means to be strategic. There is always another person at the other end of every metric you see: every engagement, every click, every post, every open. Keeping that at the top of your mind is what helps you succeed.
There's one smaller organization I’m working with in Staten Island, and we've been working a lot on embracing the sense of place. If someone opens your email, and you're talking about the same landmarks, that can make a huge difference. That's part of being strategic. Understanding that the old-school stuff doesn't go away. These are just new tools to meet people where they are.
How do you define product and innovation?
Product to me is about how you offer value. It doesn't mean you're getting something in the mail.
What your product community at your association might come up with is something like this: ‘We've been publishing a newsletter for years and years. People love the advice column. Why don't we make that an archive that you can access with membership? A searchable, indexed archive you could pull up anything from past newsletters at any time.’
That would be a product even though most people don't realize it. Here’s another one: ‘We're an education organization. People want to learn. What if as part of your membership you got one-on-one sessions with one of our experts?’
These are the sorts of things that people in a product community will brainstorm and create. Your products are based on value you offer from your unique position in the market. It doesn't require anything other than what you have. It's just thinking about what you have in new ways - those are your products.
Innovation is thinking about what you have in new ways. Just because this is the way you've always done it, that doesn't mean it’s the way you always have to do it. Your innovations are going to be based on the things you've been doing forever.
But you really need a community, an internal culture shift, to take the time to look at what you have. To look at what you offer, to look at the way people interact with you now, and think about
‘How do we innovate? How do we pivot? How do we offer what we do best in a way that resonates?’
Now that's really where the innovation is.
Product-led growth fuels connection. Join the product community and flip your destiny.
About the Author
James Young is founder and chief learning officer of the product community®. Jim is an engaging trainer and leading thinker in the worlds of associations, learning communities, and product development. Prior to starting the product community®, Jim served as Chief Learning Officer at both the American College of Chest Physicians and the Society of College and University Planning.
Please contact me for a conversation: james@productcommunity.us.