Scott Billows (00:01.751)
Alright, welcome back to the podcast. I am excited to have one of my colleagues with me today, Lana Lincoln, who has been on our team for a number of years and just does an amazing job with our customers. Lana, thanks for being on the podcast. Excited to have you. How's your day going?

Lana Lincoln (00:20.334)
Thanks for having me. That's pretty good. Sunny in Vancouver, so it's a win. Yeah.

Scott Billows (00:24.983)
There we go. That's always a bonus for those that aren't from Vancouver. When you hear somebody from Vancouver say it's sunny, you should celebrate with them because Vancouver doesn't get as many sunny days as other parts of the world. awesome. Well, I know thanks for doing this and.

I'd asked you to join the podcast, I guess it was maybe a week and a half, two weeks ago, and you agreed to do this. So thanks for agreeing. One of the things that we're trying to accomplish with this form of content really is just to create an opportunity to share our ideas and our voice with the community. I know that we get...

people that check these out and want to learn more about us. I think today really is a great opportunity to focus in a different area that we haven't focused on. so I'm really excited to be doing this with you. So maybe before we go too far, why don't you introduce yourself, give people bit of background in terms of who you are and what you're all about.

Lana Lincoln (01:26.84)
Sure.

Lana Lincoln (01:30.848)
Sure. I'm, my name's Lana Lincoln and I live in Vancouver. And I, at Bellemare, my role is to support all of our Canadian nonprofit clients across the country. So I work with nonprofits of all shapes and sizes and sort of help detangle what their challenges are and help us find a tech solution for them. So it's been a really cool.

organization to be a part of because before this I was a fundraiser for about 10 years and I had no idea that tech consulting for nonprofits was really a thing and never expected to be in that world. So it is kind of very full circle and you know to be doing a podcast about nonprofit technology now. But yeah I had the opportunity through know fundraising to move over to the

the consulting side and it's been pretty awesome working with the Bellmar team to just talk to so many different organizations, learn about the incredible work everyone is doing, so many of our clients and nonprofit friends just doing such incredible things and for us to be able to be a tiny part of making that better is just, yeah, it's been a really, really amazing few years working with the Bellmar team for sure.

Scott Billows (02:49.641)
Well, that's awesome. So one of the questions that I had for you was to talk a little bit about your career path. so this is probably a good segue into that. I've been on numerous calls with you when you've been communicating to either a prospective client or one of our existing clients, and you've shared a little bit about your story.

And I'm paraphrasing this greatly, but you've communicated that you've been in their shoes. You know what it's like in the trenches and you're now, I guess on the other side of the coin, now providing services through our team back to these organizations. But why don't you just unpack a little bit of your background? Like what is fundraising? How did you get into it? And maybe a little bit about your experience as a fundraiser.

Lana Lincoln (03:43.874)
Yeah, for sure. So I always wanted to work in mission-driven work. And when I started, I had been living and working in Tanzania for a while and came back to Canada and really wanted to work in impact and having an impact specifically for women and around women and children's causes. So I had the opportunity to work with Children's Hospital and Ronald McDonald House and

several other nonprofit organizations before that, mainly supporting with fundraising events, as well as, which sort of leads into everything else, major gifts and sponsorship and social media, marketing, your strategic initiatives, working with your board. So you really become this sort of hub when you're working within a nonprofit. And as we know, people wear many hats.

So I did a lot of different things in the nonprofit world as I was working there. And I ended up running sort of process improvement side projects off the side of my desk, bringing in new technologies to make things easier for donors and for our team, reworking the way we did things, asking a ton of questions, which was probably really annoying, but everyone was very patient with me and open to trying new things. So I was lucky to work with some incredible teams there.

And yeah, and I loved it. was an incredible, incredible organizations doing such great work and just connecting our donors and stakeholders with a cause that was important to them. You really are a conduit as a nonprofit. You're giving people the tools to have the impact that they want to have in the world. And it's a pretty, yeah, pretty inspiring thing to see the snowball effect that these organizations create. Yeah. And so as I was working in the nonprofit space, I was, I loved my job, but I was

always kind of confused and frustrated about why is it so hard for us to do this good work? You know, there's this group of unbelievably passionate people working for such incredible causes, but there was a lot of challenges in terms of administration, just to pull a list, to send out an email to someone. You know, why is that so hard? Why are we pulling from five different systems? You know, we have, you know, there should be an easier way. Why are...

Lana Lincoln (06:06.892)
you know, reconciling finances. There was a lot of things where we were spending a lot of time and effort, maybe not necessarily on things that needed to get done, but maybe not necessarily on the things that were going to grow and impact our mission. And so when I learned more about technology and, and the opportunities and other ways that you could simplify some of these processes and streamline things for organizations that are, that are doing such important work.

I got very nerdily excited about it, learned everything I could and ended up moving over to the consulting side really as a translator between nonprofit challenges and vision. And how do we get from those challenges to executing that vision? By leveraging, you already have great people, we bring in process and technology to help fill those gaps so that you're spending less time on admin and more time.

delivering your mission. So I got very excited about that and then that was when I made the switch over to the tech side to support nonprofits in that way.

Scott Billows (07:14.203)
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, well that's really cool. I mean, we get to work with fundraising organizations all the time and as I shared a couple minutes ago, I've seen you interacting with these folks and it's just like, it's like family to you. At least that's how it comes across to me when you're communicating.

Lana Lincoln (07:31.82)
They are, yeah.

Scott Billows (07:35.671)
And I think it's so interesting because in our organization, you come from a fundraising background. We have others on the team that have come from similar paths. And then we have a cohort of people that are very technology focused, that are really good at implementing these tools. Some have, as you described, have that mission driven.

background. Others don't, but it's what I find really interesting to observe within our team is those that haven't come from that background, they're here for a reason today. And maybe that wasn't always the reason they were here, but it's this very infectious.

community to work with and it's just really cool to see the melting pot within our own organization of people with all different backgrounds and interests and we're all pulling in the same direction to help these amazing organizations to fulfill their mission in a more efficient way than what you described your experience was working.

Lana Lincoln (08:23.724)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (08:41.075)
in some very large organizations and I find it, you know, I guess I find it so fascinating that we get to have these incredible conversations with organizations that reach out and are looking for help.

And I guess maybe as a good sort of transition point into talking about some of the challenges that you're seeing today, and maybe they're the same challenges that you experienced, but within our current, call it prospective customer base that we're working with, for somebody that's listening to this that may fall into that category, what are the challenges that they're facing?

And are they any different today than they were when you were in the shoes of a fundraiser?

Lana Lincoln (09:32.557)
Yeah, well, think I feel for our nonprofit clients today because I think the world has evolved so much since I was in fundraising, but that also means there are better tools, but they're also expected to always do more with less. And that can be a lot of pressure for an organization, nonprofit or otherwise, if you set your team up for success, you'll do well, you'll be able to deliver on what you want to, but nonprofits are...

challenged by this triple bottom line where there's this expectation of just spending less on what it takes to do your day-to-day work, even though their day-to-day work is so much in many ways way more important and more impactful than many of the companies around the world that have unlimited budget. So they have that additional challenge of budget, which has always been there, but I feel like more than ever teams are being

being pushed to just be more efficient and effective with not always being given the tools to get there successfully. And that's, yeah, that's not fair, I feel for teams that are going through that. And I'm glad that for the ones that do have the support of leadership, we're able to look at how to do that effectively. I think that's a huge win for their teams.

they're able to think strategically about where do we invest money to save ourselves time and energy so that we are stronger for for those really mission core mission based activities that we need to do. Yeah, so that's a big one. There's just a lot more for them to consider. And budgets are tight, as always. Yeah.

Scott Billows (11:06.747)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Billows (11:14.447)
Yeah. So doing more with less has always been a theme. Now it's doing even more with less and in arguably a much more challenging environment. mean, the need out there today is great. there's certainly over the last few years, there have been constraints in terms of funding. so organizations are just having to be very creative in terms of how

Lana Lincoln (11:20.083)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (11:43.639)
fund themselves, but also fund improvement within the organization, which is an interesting topic. I guess when I look at you, Lenin, when I think about the role that you have with, you know, taking our message and our capabilities to the market and communicating that to our customers and to our prospective customers, you know, I think of you really as an advisor.

to that community because many of them, they don't know how to solve these problems. They know they have the problems, but they just don't know how to go about solving them. They have maybe a desire to solve them, but just like what is the best way to do that? so.

You touched on something that was interesting to me, is just even around leadership and how to, if somebody who's listening to this is experiencing these challenges and is wanting to bring something forward within the organization, what are some ideas you have around how they can be a champion to see change and innovation take place within their organization?

Lana Lincoln (12:56.425)
Yeah, well, I think, yeah, you mentioned leadership there. And I think that is a big thing we see with our clients who are really successful with digital transformation is they have leadership buy-in and support not only for change, but for their team, know, trust in their team to choose the path forward and support them however they need to as they navigate that. And then they also have our supportive of hiring

the experts they need to pull in where they don't have that expertise. So you don't need to be an expert on all things technology related, you're an expert on your mission. And if you can find a great partner who can translate what your needs are into a solution that supports your team, that's where they see a ton of success. And so I think that leadership buy-in and championing a

change is really important because change management is a challenge of any project, but especially with technology. It's new, it's scary, you know, we don't understand it. We're comfortable with what we had before. But it doesn't mean what you had before was not great. It just means that it served you really well until now. And now there's the world is changing. Now there's a different approach going forward. So I think having leadership that understands that and sees that has been really

to some of our clients who have seen great success. so getting and bringing that in at all levels of your organization as well, having board members who understand and are passionate about innovation and change within an organization and bringing that in throughout all the layers of your organization will make it easier to work together as a team. Yeah, and then finding a partner you really trust, like just as good people, but also

Scott Billows (14:47.373)
Yeah.

Lana Lincoln (14:53.533)
experts in their field, someone, a team that you feel comfortable working with that you can have really open, honest, transparent conversations with because that's where the good work gets done. There's no point in putting up walls when you don't need to because it makes it easier for everyone to work collaboratively. yeah.

Scott Billows (15:13.261)
Yeah, yeah, well, and you've actually addressed something that's that we've been talking about internally for the last number of weeks and we've even put out some content regarding how to pick a partner and so check out our website. We've we've actually just released a guide for some things you need to think about for picking a partner because

In conversations that I've had with customers over the years that have been looking at making a pretty significant investment in their future, I've heard from them directly describing it like this, like, we only get one shot to do this. We only have so much money that we can spend and this is not going to become available for another decade. So,

Lana Lincoln (16:00.523)
you

Scott Billows (16:07.96)
We need a partner who we can trust, who has the experience and understands our industry and understands our mission.

So just as a plug, we've created a guide to help nonprofits really go through that selection process and identify a partner. And that could be for, you know, a technology transformation. It could be for, you know, replacing some other system within your organization. But it's, you know, go check it out. And if you want to learn more about it, you can reach out to Lana or myself and we'd be happy to point in the right direction. in terms of in terms of direction, I look at the industry

Lana Lincoln (16:42.795)
Yeah, definitely.

Scott Billows (16:48.736)
that we're in, look at just the trends that we're seeing. And of course, here in 2025, the big topic right now is AI. we hear from our partner Salesforce, all of their innovation and all of the things that they're doing. And then we have conversations with some of our...

Lana Lincoln (17:00.619)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (17:11.397)
clients and at least to me, we've got groups that are at different ends of the spectrum. But this is a topic that is here to stay and is just accelerating faster and faster week by week. And so I'd love to talk about AI with you and get some of your insights into where you see AI impacting a nonprofit organization.

And so why don't we start with that? I've got a few other questions that I can ask you, but let's sort of take it from the top and you'll have to hear what you have to say about it.

Lana Lincoln (17:45.833)
Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I get that question all the time, too, from nonprofits. What are we supposed to do with this AI thing? Where do we go? And I think it's really important to remember we are like the tiny, tiny tip of the iceberg and there is so much more to come. You know, it's going to be part of our part of everything we do and in part of our lives in so many different ways that we can't even picture yet. So again,

Organizations don't need to be an AI expert today. You're an expert on your mission. Rope in the people you need to help you use AI to your advantage and so that you can amplify your impact. But I think there's a lot of anxiety about missing the boat on AI and there's much more to come. It's just, we're just starting here. And I think some of the things we're seeing already are relatively, you know, small tweaks like

estimating donation amounts and things like that, know, directing program inquiries to the right person, things like that. Those are sort of the surface level automations that can, you know, can free up some time and create some extra opportunity for organizations. But I think

You don't have to have it all solved right now. We don't know what's yet to come, but what organizations can do in the meantime is prepare for the ongoing evolution of technology within their organizations. So, and that means really looking at your team, know, where are, what are the things that are taking up your time that don't need to be? What are the things that you would want to have handled, you know, automated?

versus the things that are really valuable to have your team working on. And I think one of the challenges in nonprofits, and I was guilty of this, is that there's a ton of unpaid, unrecognized work because everyone is so passionate in what they do. But I remember staying up till like 4 a.m. working on a seating plan. No one sees that. That's not accounted anywhere. It's important for the experience. But are there ways that you can...

Lana Lincoln (19:58.283)
fill some of those gaps with AI in the future, even if we don't have the solution today, just identifying those gaps so that as technology evolves, you're ready to go, okay, now someone's solving for this. This is a thing that would free up our team to actually be in the field doing their best work or talking to donors. So I think there's, yeah, that sort of preparation, like that needs assessment internally, identifying those gaps. And then another thing we are

you know, see with our clients is that you really AI runs off of data. So all of the AI we have now is running off data models. So it's really more important than ever to make sure you have accurate, clean data in your system. Because if AI is going to learn about how you who you are and how you work, you want them to learn from the right information. So I think those are sort of two steps that people can take organizations can take to be prepared, but also just

remembering you don't have to solve for everything today. And again, going back to what you said about partners, ask your partners who you trust, where they're seeing growth, where they're seeing opportunities, there's organizations doing really cool things, doesn't mean you need to do that thing, but it might spark ideas about where you can deliver more value internally for your team and just enable your team to have a greater reach. So I think there's a lot more to come.

And I'm not an AI expert either. That's just my thoughts.

Scott Billows (21:26.538)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting. You described through the example of an iceberg, like we're just at the tip of that, which I totally agree with. And I think there's there could be the sort of the angst of like, not doing, know, like, have we missed the boat? And if you've communicated, nobody has missed the boat as of yet. This is so, so early.

And maybe just to sort of pick up a couple of pieces that you've described. you haven't missed the boat. at the very start of this. Data is important, which I totally agree with. And I would say most of our...

If not all of our Salesforce customers, if they're Salesforce, mean, they're probably doing a better job of data in Salesforce than they would have been with desperate systems that are not connected. you know, getting information in Salesforce, if you're already there, that's a great starting point and just continuing to enforce good practice around using the tools that you have so that your data quality remains high. But some other ideas

that I've thinking about are just even to nibble around the edges of what AI can do. you know, I've had conversations with leaders within some of the organizations that we're working in and, you know, they're looking at it from the perspective of, you know, because this is so early.

we're not in a position to make a big investment because we don't know if that investment is going to be in the right tool. So they're looking at addressing just the low-hanging fruit, the things that are easier to address. And I'll use one example is.

Scott Billows (23:23.242)
through an agent that somebody can visit your website and they can start a conversation with an agent. And that agent is able to ingest a bunch of information about your organization through your website. Maybe you've got written documents, maybe you connected to Salesforce, but it's able to absorb the information about your organization and get into a conversation with.

with a client or a contact. And that's a really low lift to get something like that up and running. But you can pilot these and test them out and see what impact it has in the organization without investing a lot of time and dollars. again, we can and we would love to have conversations with anybody that's out there that would love to just get into a dialogue about what are some of those low hanging.

they can pick off the tree to increase the experience that their staff but also their clients are having. A couple of other questions I had for Eliana in terms of just some recommendations. So we work with clients that

Lana Lincoln (24:36.74)
Okay.

Scott Billows (24:41.418)
were at one point struggling with their technology. Maybe they had systems that were disconnected. Maybe they were on old legacy systems that were no longer supported. Whatever the situation, we helped these organizations to transform. I'd love to just hear from you advice that you would give to...

organization that's considering this and some things that they can do today that will help prepare them for a potential transition to a modern tool like Salesforce.

Lana Lincoln (25:17.617)
Yeah, I actually I love this, this part of our work, even though it's not, you know, the ideal way we don't want any client to go through that. But I was somewhat of a fixer in my past fundraising life as well, inheriting, you know, relationships and teams and issues that needed to be, you know, turned around and brought into a positive light and sent forward for success. So I actually really love working on these projects. And I think, yeah, clients, if you have been

burned by a technology project before, it can be really scary to go into another engagement. And so to work with a new partner, you can have a lot of fear around that. And I think, again, it goes back to what you saying earlier about finding the right partner. I am very much, there are lots of incredible people doing great work in the sector. I am very much a route fit.

you know, you have to find the right fit, a partner who you feel like you can say anything to and you can be a friend and honest with because as soon as you start getting that feeling, you know, you need to be able to say that to your tech partners. So I think finding the right partner is key. And also starting, you can start with smaller manageable things. there are, if there's a smaller project that you can do as a trial run or we have a lot of clients that work with us on a sort of managed services.

engagement approach where you have a few hours a month just to feel how the working relationship goes, make sure everything is the approach is going to work for both of you, and then you can expand from there. So you don't always have to jump in, you know, full on with a big project that's going to be scary for your board and your leadership to get on to get on side with. That said, we have other clients who come over who have like, we need, this is a disaster, we need help right now.

We need our whole system reworked and we need to find someone to do it. And I think, you know, when you're going through that, just go in with an open mind. It can be hard that this is a new partnership and be really clear with the new partners, you know, what didn't work in the last engagement and what was missing for you and why, what got to this state because

Lana Lincoln (27:32.421)
Any team is going to want to hear, okay, we don't want you to go down that road again. How can we make this better and be clear on what those challenges were and what success looks like for your team? Yeah. And again, having that executive alignment, having your executives connect with the new partners and understand their approach can just ease that fear going into those projects. Our team works very collaboratively. So I find

You know, as soon as someone meets our delivery team, my job is much easier because our delivery team is so brilliant and wonderful. So if that's helpful to meet your, meet your consultants and get to know what your, who you're working with, I think that's the most important thing for your success. yeah, identifying where you work and where you want to get to and finding the right people to help get you there. Yeah. And I feel like fundraisers and nonprofits understand that because it is so relationship based across the sector. So.

Scott Billows (28:16.22)
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Billows (28:21.8)
Yeah.

Lana Lincoln (28:30.812)
Yeah, you want to work with good people doing good work, right?

Scott Billows (28:35.1)
Well, I think that's great way to cap this off is you've got to love who you work with and you've got to have this chemistry because we often say the easiest part of the project is kicking off the project and all of the hard work follows and

Lana Lincoln (28:54.664)
Thank

Scott Billows (28:57.968)
through that maze of getting from start to finish, there's highs and there's lows. so what I'm hearing you say, is customers need to be able to trust and have hard conversations with their technology partners because they need each other to get from the start to the finish. so...

Again, another great opportunity to plug this guide that we've put together, because really that is the goal. It really is to help organizations make the right decision and find a partner that is going to fit their culture, fit their team, and fit the goals that they have.

Lana Lincoln (29:24.485)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (29:40.587)
With that, Lana, think we'll wrap and I want to say thanks again for doing this. I really appreciate it and excited to share this content with the community and hopefully those that listen get some value from this. So thanks for doing this.

Lana Lincoln (29:46.024)
Okay, thanks for having me. Great to chat.

Lana Lincoln (29:56.274)
Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Scott.

Scott Billows (30:00.583)
I'm gonna just hit stop to the recording.