Unscripted Green & Non-Profits

Paul Pape is the barkeep and game master at Gamify Business, where he turns strategy and operational problems into role-playing game mechanics. It started when a stuck CEO's love of gaming turned into a four-hour session, and that session became a consulting method. His framework splits people into linear thinkers and cloud thinkers, and his claim is that conventional planning documents fail roughly half of them. If you have ever watched a strategic plan die in a drawer while the people it described kept working, that will land. What he covers Linear thinkers versus cloud thinkers, and why one planning format cannot serve both The authority machine problem, building recognition is not the same as acquiring support Ride the dragon of passion, on why chasing recognition directly tends to starve it Working with neurodivergent clients rather than around them Why we are running it here. Paul makes the point directly in the episode that this can be run as a nonprofit version or an outreach programme. For an organisation whose planning day has to hold staff, volunteers and a board in one room, a format that works for more than one kind of brain is worth a look. Originally aired on Unscripted Small Business. Cross-posted here for the nonprofit audience.

David Wilson, executive vice president at Zozimus, has been doing this since AltaVista. His argument is that search engine optimisation has become search everywhere optimisation: being findable wherever a decision gets made, rather than ranking for its own sake. The part worth a nonprofit's attention is his point about defensibility. His example is a tattoo shop working with veterans' groups, where the partnership creates something a competitor cannot copy by spending more money. For a cause organisation, that is the case for corporate partnership stated in the partner's own language. What he covers Findability over rankings, because only one of those places has a rank tracker pointed at it Turning Search Console into a gap list by comparing expected against actual click-through Internal linking, still one of the most reliable tactics and the least fashionable Digital PR and brand carrying the load as unbranded search erodes Your About page as the thing an AI model reads to decide whether to trust you Why we are running it here. Nonprofits compete for attention against organisations with far bigger budgets. Findability and genuine community partnership are two of the few levers that are not purely a spending contest. Originally aired on The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast. Cross-posted here for the nonprofit audience.

Mike Montague of Avenue9 draws a line between two ways to point AI at a problem. The Terminator approach builds an agent and sends it out alone. The Iron Man approach wraps a person in the technology and sends the person. His whole practice is built on the second one. He has also done the work in a nonprofit context that most agencies never touch: teaching questioning skills to border-crossing agents for an anti-trafficking charity in Africa. It is a short passage, and it is the clearest example in the episode of the method surviving outside a sales floor. What he covers AI reliably earns a C plus, useful, and not the part anyone was paying you for Bad strategy plus AI is just faster failure; it amplifies in both directions Keeping your online reputation matched to your real work rather than inflated past it Degenerative engineering, using AI to distil what you already are instead of generating more of what you are not Why we are running it here. Nonprofits are being sold AI harder than almost anyone right now, usually as a staff replacement. This is the counter-argument, from someone who sells AI services for a living. Originally aired on The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast. Cross-posted here for the nonprofit audience.

Benjamin Behrooz of Branding Los Angeles builds brands for blue-collar and home-service businesses, and one of his most consistent recommendations is the one most marketers treat as a nice-to-have: show up in your community, repeatedly, on the record. His own firm runs an NYPD toy drive, donates to Shriners, and organises Santa Monica beach cleanups. He is candid that this is both genuine and good for the business, which is the honest version of a conversation nonprofits rarely get from a corporate partner. What he covers Empathy as a practical tool for finding what a customer, or a donor, actually cares about Holding authenticity while you scale, and where most organisations lose it Where AI helps marketing and where it flattens the voice you built Using community involvement to build visibility that advertising cannot buy Why we are running it here. If you have ever built a corporate partnership and found the company wanted a logo placement and nothing else, this is a useful look from the other side of that table at what makes a partner stay. Originally aired on The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast. Cross-posted here for the nonprofit audience.

Rebecca Prejean of EBGC advises nonprofit leaders on accessibility, and her argument reframes it: stop selling accommodation as compliance and start selling it as productivity and retention. For an organisation running on volunteers and a thin payroll, that is the version of the pitch that actually moves a board. Her route in was personal. Her son has autism, and the advocacy she learned for him became the work she now does for organisations. What she covers Why structured meetings are the cheapest accommodation most organisations never make Self-advocacy after a late diagnosis, and why so much of the workforce is arriving there now Framing accessibility in terms leadership already budgets for, productivity and retention Where AI genuinely helps, and where it is being oversold Why we are running it here. Rebecca works with nonprofit CEOs, and she is speaking at Cause Camp on the accessibility gap in nonprofit organisations specifically. The episode is about workplaces generally, but the volunteer-heavy, under-resourced org is where these ideas bite hardest. Originally aired on Unscripted Small Business, hosted by Zaneta Chuniq Inpower. Cross-posted here for the nonprofit audience.