DSM Startup Impacts Marketing for Faith-Based Nonprofits

Chad Williams’ passion is faith-based nonprofits. From his time as a webmaster with a ministry nonprofit to his jump to startup owner bringing marketing services to faith-based nonprofits, Williams keeps his mission front and center. Five Q provides solutions that lead to higher website engagement, improved donations and an overall greater digital impact. 

Journity

Journity, Five Q’s ministry impact platform, allows for website personalization, creating custom messaging by remembering website visitors and personalizing content to those visitors.

By helping an organization map out the journeys of their users, organizations can encourage them to take the next step of engagement or involvement. Williams says the great thing about Journity is that it can work with any website platform. Organizations can take the API onto their content management system in order to drive their call-to-action or homepage content. Personalization can be done poorly, but Journity’s success stems from its ability to do personalization well. 

Journity started out as an analytics product, taking many pivots to get to the software platform as it stands today. Because Williams managed everything from spreadsheets in the beginning, they were able to test things prior to building the software. Once they were ready to build the software, they started with how they were providing value instead of immediately creating the interface dashboard, moving to that after they already knew what customers wanted. 

Marketing Five Q

Since 2004, Five Q has focused on relationships. More recently, that focus has shifted to partnering with associations who are able to provide resources to their memberships. By growing the relationship with the association, Five Q generates leads and connects by providing valuable content. One example of this is how after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Five Q held a virtual conference. Afterward, they took that conference content and built a podcast to make an impact within their ecosystem, bringing Five Q and Journity top of mind to potential customers. From the podcast, Williams says they get additional content out through blogs, social media, etc., repeating messaging in an effort to drive sales.

Nonprofits and COVID-19

Williams says since the COVID-19 pandemic began, it has forced nonprofits into the digital space. Organizations have had to put serious thinking into adopting digital work-from-home tools and finding their digital strategy as in-person events go away. Williams is looking at building what for-profits are currently building, knowing the nonprofit space is five to seven years behind, including integrating with marketing automation systems, personalization systems, CRMs and more. In the end, Williams says this will help Journity be primed to be a valuable hub of data to assist larger organizations. 

Small Business and Startup Stories DSM was a podcast previously produced by the Greater Des Moines Partnership. For more information on small businesses and startup resources, sign up for our Small Business Resources Newsletter, read DSM Success Stories or check out our blog posts.