Ask the Egghead founder Steven May Jr. talks stumbling into the nonprofit IT niche, why he gives his cell phone to clients, and when guilt is good for your website.
You’ve worked with many nonprofits on WordPress sites, email marketing, and web development, but you weren’t initially focused on nonprofits. What changed?
In 2019, we were in shotgun advertising mode: firing everywhere we could and taking what we could land. Then, two nonprofits responded to the same LinkedIn ad on the same day. Soon after, the city of Washington, D.C. called with a healthcare project. Those few weeks helped us hyper-focus on nonprofits. We found our niche.
What’s a difference you’ve discovered about working with nonprofits?
The less e-commerce-driven the nonprofit is, the more open they are to opening up to us. They pour out everything. It’s like meeting an old lady sitting on a park bench, and she tells you her whole life, grandchildren, everything. We take all of that data in for our work. The more they can share about successes and failures, and what they’ve tried already, the better we can help them succeed moving forward.
The more e-commerce-driven a nonprofit is, the more they feel like they’ve got a secret recipe they’ve poured their life’s blood into, and they’re terrified of losing it. It’s harder to get that group to open up.
What’s a ‘win’ for nonprofits if they’re not chasing sales?
Up until about 18 months ago, it was numbers for everyone. Every site wanted more unique visitors, impressions, and engagement. The market has drifted away from quantity.
Now they ask: what revenue or donations have we actually generated? Who’s the new audience, and what are they doing? It’s measurable results instead of just amassing numbers.
That’s a lot of potential website goals. What gets tricky for nonprofits trying to achieve their mission and grow their presence?
The way things work for SEO, the more consistent brand messages are, and the more that they’re the same message sent across all platforms, the better off you are.
It can’t be six months of good posts on Instagram and then silence, followed by six months on LinkedIn. That can actually hurt you more than it helps.
And most can’t afford in-house web developers or graphic designers. So before us, a lot of their websites were like a Yellow Pages ad that never got changed. That hurts them, too.
Why do you think that hodgepodge happens?
The hardest part for a lot of founders is that they’ve got one thing they really enjoy doing, but it isn’t necessarily helping. Posting 15-20 times a week on just Facebook, instead of posting to their site and pushing to every social media channel from there, means you’re ultimately just doing something for fun. It’s not actually doing something for the success of their organization.
Those are some of the hardest conversations because it can feel like you’re taking this fun thing away from the client.
How do you help keep leaders focused after those tough conversations?
I follow all my clients on Facebook and Instagram so I can keep an eye on them when they’re falling out of line. I grew up Catholic, so I use guilt quite a bit. And I have their cell phone numbers. So, I might text a client and say, ‘I saw that beautiful post! That should have gone on the website first!’
And I always hear back, ‘I know, I know, I knew you were going to text me the minute I posted it.’ The grass is always greener on the easier thing, the more fun thing. I’ve got to help people stay in the new behavior.
It’s like that for all of us. I enjoy design work, so I’ll work on that when I’m frustrated or have a mountain of work.
We want to do the fun stuff first, and sometimes it keeps on until exhaustion sets in, and that realization usually helps people let go and start following those new procedures and best practices.
If you’ve got your client’s cell numbers, do you give them yours?
My cell phone is in the signature line of all the emails I send. I get people sending me articles on a Friday night that they want posted over the weekend. That’s a behavior we cultivate with them so that their websites don’t become static or something updated only once a year.
When people find us, they realize there’s a different way to do things, and they can have a partner firm that is a part of their organization. I want it to be easy for a client to come in and say ‘here’s what I need to be successful’ at any time. I recently had a client call me on a Saturday night when they needed to talk about something. I enjoy that style of relationship with my clients.
Do the late-night calls ever get exhausting?
It happens so rarely that I almost don’t even think about it. Realizing that it isn’t taboo is a hard part for a lot of our clients. They worry they shouldn’t reach out on a weekend when a site has crashed, and they’re scared to death. Once they know we’re available and we will respond, they relax but still rarely call. If anything, they’ll say, ‘You could’ve just texted,’ when I call them about a problem I see.
Late nights are when a lot of people turn to AI. What’s your take on AI usage for nonprofits? Is Skynet coming for donor lists?
In the nonprofit sphere, you’re always trying to do more with less. You don’t have enough volunteers or man-hours, or there’s not enough of you. Have a conversation with AI to see where it could improve your organization, suggest time-saving automations, or catch things before they slip through the cracks. But number one rule: you should not give AI the keys to the kingdom. That means give it read-only access.
My team runs a weekly, AI-led review of our servers to catch missed patches before they become emergencies. I also use AI to generate a to-do list from my emails and calls. It catches something about 30% of the time; something I forgot to write down or on a Post-it note that fell down.
What’s one secret that keeps you on track?
My desk is in this house that used to be a psychologist’s office, so I’ve got a bookcase, computers, and a chair on the other side that I can’t see because monitors are in the way.
But there’s this small gap between the desk and the monitors, and every morning, a little before eight, I see this nose, and then a black-and-white face slowly come up over the desk. It’s my dog’s way of saying he’s hungry and making sure I don’t let him fall through the cracks.
He’s better than Claude, honestly. If you could take the energy of that dog and put it into AI, you’d be a billionaire.