Contributions with Andrew Mosawi and Kevin Kreamer

Andrew Mosawi   

Kevin, great to see you. How are you?  

Kevin Kreamer   

I'm doing well, we're keeping busy here in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Andrew Mosawi   

And the families well, has the heat hit yet? 

Kevin Kreamer   

No, actually, we are in the low 60s this morning, which was absolutely beautiful. We haven't gotten high heat, but it's inevitable here. 

Andrew Mosawi   

It's inevitable. I was saying in the intro, how you and I have known each other for a long time. You were one of the first connections I made in the space when I first joined it back in 2003. I think you and I spoke in 2004. And you'd been at Blackbaud for a while before then. You've been in the nonprofit tech sector for over 20 years. I think everyone would be fascinated to hear your journey. If you could just share with us, that'd be great. 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah, I feel old when I say that I've been in the sector for 20 plus years, because that also says I've been around for a while. I've heard all these nice terms of "Oh you're experienced," and yeah, I've been in around the space for a long time and absolutely love it. I found my way into nonprofits from a young age, I've always been involved with community and always wanted to help and my career path, just sort of by luck, brought me here to Charleston, South Carolina. I wanted to stay here and found a few different jobs, met some friends through soccer, of all things. There was a company here in town - Blackbaud - that was in the nonprofit sector, and some friends over there recruited me. I found my way there, joined as a salesperson early on, learned my craft and the fundraising side on what was the Razor's Edge six in the first of Razor's Edge seven. Then migrated into product management, that's really where I learned the business across the board. Because we get into marketing, product development, and really get into customer needs and stories and understanding folks at that level. At this point in time, that's when digital was coming on board, so I was involved with a lot of the early digital products that Blackbaud was putting out. For example, what was then Net Community and those types of things. Gosh, what was the online...? 

Andrew Mosawi  

Net Solutions?  

Kevin Kreamer   

Net Solutions! Yeah. That's where we crossed paths. 

Andrew Mosawi   

That's right.  

Kevin Kreamer 

Back in the day having a donation page, it didn't matter what it looked like, it was ahead of the curve. That was earth shattering stuff. Yeah, I went from there back into account management, managed a number of national organizations, Habitat for Humanity, YMCA, Make a Wish, were primarily my brands. And that sort of took me to the end of my Blackbaud career. I jumped over to Omatic Software, which is a systems integrator in the nonprofit space, which we got involved with hundreds of technologies to do integration. So that expanded my network beyond just that one ecosystem and seeing all of the technology that was out there was really compelling. Most recently, I jumped over to Virtuous and have been there since last November. That's a synopsis of things. I've run the partnership program over a Virtuous and have a very diversified and wide-reaching network of folks that serve in the space. When you talk about change, one of the things that jumps out to me is just the number of folks that are serving the nonprofit sector. It's a booming business, and there's pros and cons to that. But innovation and just having a need out there for people to serve creates opportunities for specialists in the space. With peer to peer and DIY events, and now live stream fundraising, people need to build technology to support that and there's lots of options these days. When I started, there were a couple of players and now there's a lot of options. And that's a good thing in my mind for the for the nonprofit sector. 

Andrew Mosawi  

Absolutely. Choice is always a good thing. I'd love to also get your perspective on organizations, nonprofits themselves, have you seen their needs and their requirements, and their desires change as it relates to technology over the years? 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah, there couple of things there. One, you have the other folks that are really early adopters of technology that are really trying to move the needle and be the disruptors on the early curve. And then you have folks that sort of come along a little bit later. And then you have the ones that are really at the tail end. I think what's been interesting most recently is when you think about your daily experience, specifically your phone and what you have access to, this has changed the donor experience - expectations are different, and organizations are having to adapt to that. What I mean by that is, when you go to Amazon, or your Netflix or anywhere, it's hyper personalized. There's an expectation that comes from that, when you think about a donor journey, and we've always said this in stewardship, you need to make sure that they feel heard, they need to feel like you know who they are, because they're important, they're supporting your cause. Fast forward to where we are now, the expectation of hyper personalization is everywhere. From what's changed and how organizations have had to adapt, especially when it comes to technology, leveraging that in a way where they can give that donor experience, that type of donor journey, is something that we've seen that across the sector. If you're not doing those things, it becomes really apparent because everything I do on my computer, everything I do on my phone, is telling me 'Hey I know who you are, you're important to me.' If you're not getting that experience, it really stands out. I think that's been a really big change over the last three, four or five years for sure. 

Andrew Mosawi  

Yeah. Are you still seeing that a lot of really great innovation and creativity is actually coming from the customers that are demanding the solutions as well as coming from the technology providers? I mean, how are you seeing the birth of that creativity? 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah, that's a really good question. Because you see things bubble up. One of the things that happened back when I was in product management, so this would have been mid 2000s. My boss at the time, Jay, said 'Hey, there's this new thing I want you to go check out, it's called Facebook. We don't know how it's going to impact the nonprofit space and fundraising.' At the time you would have thought there's no way this is going to have an impact on fundraising, right? Unless you were really looking 10 years out and had a crystal ball. But think about where they are now. They have people, they have eyeballs, and now it's raising a lot of money. Live stream fundraising, same kind of thing. To me, I think there's a couple of things there - technology, advancement and innovation that's happening outside of the sector at a much faster clip. What I see is that nonprofits are going to have to look at that and adapt that quicker. I think that's where we're getting to with the personalization of communication. Thinking about donor pages, we mentioned Net Solutions, there was no way to change that experience when I got to that landing page. Now the landing page itself has impact on the donation experience, people will drop off quickly, if it's not up to snuff. You can further personalize that as an example, that's available today. If you're not doing those things, it has impact on your bottom line, it has impact on your fundraising, which has impact on your mission. I think what's happening is, innovation isn't always within the sector but it's being adapted at a quicker pace, if that makes sense. 

Andrew Mosawi 

Yeah, it does make sense and I think it's also a responsibility of the providers to the sector, to educate and to share what is working, what isn't working, to help organizations prioritize because we know that organizations don't have resources just waiting around. They are they are incredibly overworked and under resourced, for the most part as a generalization. 

Kevin Kreamer 

100% 

Andrew Mosawi  

So then how do we do that? And how do we prioritize? I think it's our responsibility to at least inform that to some degree. Would you agree with that? 

Kevin Kreamer 

I would agree. One of the things to note is the fact that the nonprofit sector is now a big business. There are some companies that serve the nonprofit sector that have a genuine approach, they want the sector to be successful, they want to increase generosity as a grander scale of the GDP because it's going to drive better things to happen in the world. Not everybody is like that, which is unfortunate. But for those of us that are, I think we take that seriously, a lot of that comes from thought leadership, education, opportunities, supporting, organizations like AFP, that are doing things in the community around those educational opportunities. The other piece, which is part of the technology advancement, you think about what's happened over the last year with so much happening virtually, this is the norm. That's opened up a lot of educational opportunities. There was always Virtual Learning before, but we've had the privilege to be involved with local AFP chapters over the last year making our technology available, hosting sessions and webinars. And now people that might not normally come to an in-person session have accessibility to learn about how other organizations might be adapting technology, or how they're doing things that are more modern. That then becomes really compelling from how you get folks up to speed, to adapting technology. Outside of what we're doing on the software side or as a technology provider, that piece alone has opened up so much opportunity for sharing in the space. I think it's awesome. We had a summit this week with over 2,400 registrants over two days. I was blown away - we had participants from all over the world - UK, Asia, Jamaica, Canada, it was just unbelievable.  

Andrew Mosawi 

You had Vancouver! Your comment is really interesting, because you're right it's almost as though there's been a democratization in two elements. One, which is it's not about which organizations can afford to send people to a conference in San Francisco or whereever to do fundraising training, it's about, how can you deliver that knowledge across as broad a distance as possible. And that accessibility is fantastic. Another question I had for you is about accessibility of technology. Because again, when you and I started, the profile of investment was very different than it is now. Can you speak to that? 

Kevin Kreamer 

Yeah, that's a great comment. I'll comment really quickly on the accessibility of information. The other piece we have is that all of that content is now recorded and available on demand. It's a large, somewhat daunting, amount of information. But the point is that it has been democratized and the accessibility to learn is like no other time that we've been around. It's amazing on that front. From the accessibility of technology. Gosh, yeah, we were still on discs, shipping out CDs back in the day. Think about that. That's mind blowing. We used to physically send discs that had to be loaded locally. Now we're all SaaS based, web based, and you can get access from anywhere that you have a connection. It's amazing. From a cost perspective, when there's competition in the market you find options and choices all over that spectrum. For the startups that don't have any resources, there are free options out there now. You can start fundraising online without dropping a dime, and that's a wonderful thing. From an accessibility perspective, the other piece, and especially over the last year, I've seen more and more organizations that have a dispersed staffing group. There is an organization out of New York and they had 100% of their staff in New York, and then COVID hit, and folks didn't want to be in New York anymore. And I was talking with somebody and I said 'Oh how's New York?' and she responded "I don't live in New York." I pointed out that she worked for an arts and cultural theater in New York, but she said, "Yes, but I live in Florida, it's okay, I can do this for me." That's amazing. So, if you think about the talent that you could get, I don't have to look my backyard, I can get somebody in Vancouver to come work for an organization in Charleston as an example. 

Andrew Mosawi 

Yeah, that's right. And I do want to touch upon the work that you're doing in virtual. I'd love to hear about some of the great stuff that Virtuous is doing right now.  

Kevin Kreamer 

Yeah, I'm still relatively new over here at team Virtuous, so a little bit of outside eyes  coming in. But a lot of folks asked me why I changed and shifted, and joined the team. And I met the team from Virtuous two years ago, at a conference, I had the chance to talk with their leadership and the CEO and founder, and was just enamored. He gets the nonprofit space. He walked away from that meeting and my colleague and I looked at each other and said, he gets it. He understands the space and he's invested in it. It's always stuck with me. Some of the things we're doing is around trying to modernize that experience and the whole concept of personalization, at every angle, at scale, which is really important, especially for smaller organizations. To think about personalizing communication, and making sure you're treating your donors in a way that they feel heard, they feel known, it's really important. And that drives us. The other piece that's outside of the technology, which drives our company, is impacting global generosity. That doesn't mean impacting global generosity only through Virtuous, it's something we're bought into as the sector. A lot of our content is put together for that. From a technology perspective, that's what drives us - the user experience. It's meant to be simple and adaptable; people should be able to use it right off the bat. And it should be doing meaningful things. We're really driven by that. Much of our team and staff come from the nonprofit sector. We love it, we're invested in it, we want to see our customers succeed. And I think we're doing that and that's driving our innovation. It's exciting times here and the sector.  

Andrew Mosawi 

Yeah, it really resonates with me. I listened to a podcast a few months ago. What they were saying is, there's two approaches to growing a business. One approach is to see it as a scarce market and try to compete and win against as many different competitors out there. And then the second way, which is what you're saying, is an approach to make the whole sector more successful, richer, having the best technologies. A rising tide lifts all boats and with that methodology. Going back to what you said, which is folks like us that have been in here a long time - and it's encouraging to see there are a lot of us - we tend to have that attitude. Meaning if we can find ways for our organizations, our charities and the nonprofit sector in general to grow, everyone is going to benefit. I think it seems to be the right approach for the sector and it seems to work for both our organizations at least. 

Kevin Kreamer 

Right. I think nonprofit organizations know that, feel it, sense it, just from a relationship perspective, and that gets into how you support your customers. When they talk to your staff, do they have an understanding of the sector? It's important. And I will share this as well, when I was interviewing for Virtuous, and I was talking with our CEO, and I asked him a question about what's really driving you just at a personal level. He got into global generosity and said, 'What gets me up in the morning is I want to see the percentage of fundraising to GDP grow. It's been very stagnant for a long time and even though the dollars are going up, the percentage has been very, very small. If we make an incremental change in that, by 2%, that's an amazing feat. Think about all the good that would happen if that occurs.' The piece that really hit home was when he said, 'Because nonprofit organizations deserve that. They deserve better.' And that's what drives us from a tech perspective. How can we fit into that picture? Allow organizations to succeed in that way? 

Andrew Mosawi  

Oh, I love it. I could talk about this for hours and hours, but you just that is the greatest place to end off on. So, I'm going to finish on the Quick Six. You know the drill; we're going to run through them really quickly. This is going to be difficult for you because I know you're displaying your love of music, so I have no doubt this is brutal for you. Let's Go! First, least favorite app on your phone? 

Kevin Kreamer  

Oh, least favorite. I thought it was my favorite. Least favorite. Ah, I'm going to have to say Facebook.  

Andrew Mosawi 

Okay. Favorite song?  

Kevin Kreamer 

This was a hard one. People Get Ready. I think originally it was a Curtis Mayfield tune but it has been covered by lots of people. 

Andrew Mosawi 

Favorite movie?  

Kevin Kreamer 

I'm gonna go with Hoosiers.  

Andrew Mosawi 

Oh, okay. All right. If you could live in one place, other than where you live in Charleston? Where would it be?  

Kevin Kreamer 

I took this to be out of the country just for fun, Copenhagen. 

Andrew Mosawi  

Oh, wow, good choice. What is the first nonprofit that ever really resonated with you, that you can remember? 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah, a food kitchen in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I don't know the name of it but my Aunt Mimi ran that. She would let us come and help serve there. I have memories of that, that I will never forget. 

Andrew Mosawi  

My team are going to get mad at me because I'm only supposed to ask the six, but I have to say, you get involved in some fantastic charities personally, and I know you're involved with MUSC. Can you quickly talk about that? Because I think that's fantastic. 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah, happy to. I could talk about all day. I started a program about 12 years ago, to go in and play music for kids. This started at the time my one-year-old had a viral infection. We were in the hospital for a week, which in the grand scheme of things is not a big deal, but it was very eye opening. My kids were accustomed to me playing music every day and it was just quiet. I thought this would be really easy, I could come in and play music. It took me two years before they even let me come in and play a note, to get over that hump of red tape and figure that out. For most of that time I've been going room to room, every room is a little bit different. I have come across the most amazing people. Patients are amazing. Families are amazing. If you ask me, me nurses make the world go round. I mean, they're absolutely incredible what they're asked to do on the front line. But yeah, that's been going on for 12 years. It's been the most amazing experience. I could go on and on. 

Andrew Mosawi  

That is that is fantastic. Okay, last question. If you could try and attempt one other profession, other than the one that you've been, what would it be? 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah, this was a hard one as well. It's between being a guitar luthier or a vintage motorcycle mechanic. 

Andrew Mosawi  

Love it. 

Kevin Kreamer  

Yeah. 

Andrew Mosawi  

Well, you can get two choices. I love them. 

Kevin Kreamer  

I have two vintage motorcycles that I tinker on all the time. It's fun. 

Andrew Mosawi  

Cool, Kevin. Really appreciate. It's always fantastic to chat. We could go on for hours, I know you've got stuff to do. So great to see you, speak soon. Thank you.  

Kevin Kreamer  

Likewise, Andrew, best to you. Thank you so much.