In this episode Josh interviews Tim Kachuriak, the Chief Innovation and Optimization Officer and Founder of NextAfter, a fundraising research lab and consultancy aimed at helping nonprofits generate more giving. The goal of this “for cause” company is to create the most generous generation the world has ever seen. Using a data driven systems and behavioral economics, Tim and his team aim to de-code what drives people to give. NextAfter has ran over 12,000 marketing optimization experiments that are publicly sourced for other companies to use freely. Tim shares where his passion for helping nonprofits began. He talks about creating his own ad agency right of college, which ultimately led to doing some marketing work for his church. Tim noticed the excitement in himself that was generated for doing work for a cause that he genuinely cared about. This promoted a sale of his business and a career pivot to go work for a nonprofit faith-based organization in Fort Lauderdale, Fl. Some turbulence accompanied the transition and his digital marketing job suddenly included helping the company generate money via fundraising. The journey of an entrepreneur is one of peaks and valleys and Tim provides some awesome nuggets of wisdom for fellow entrepreneurs based off of his own experience. The power of contentment, not always acting on emotion, and having the fore sight to not make change too abruptly are some of the topics that he expounds upon during the podcast. He also shares thoughts on planning out financials before venturing out to start a business, the power of becoming a known commodity in your field, forming relationships with competitors, and becoming indispensable in your current company to leverage leaving when the time comes. As Tim’s career continued to morph, he had a break through at a conference that was geared towards for-profit companies to optimize their marketing efforts. Tim had a light bulb moment and realized that these same tactics could be applied to the nonprofit world. Tim implemented the ideas on an email campaign before he even got back to the office and saw immediate results. This was a game changer, and the ultimate genesis that would become NextAfter. What Tim loves most about optimizing in the nonprofit world is the ability to help shift the culture and thinking of nonprofit companies and originations. To go from a poverty mind set to one of growth and doing more with less is an extraordinary change to help produce. NextAfter is about doing more good, not about maximizing profit at all costs. Tim explains, it’s not about the money, it’s about how they can we seriously influence change in the entire nonprofit sector. Tim and his team are trying to answer this question... WHY DO PEOPLE GIVE? We’re obsessed with answering that question. That’s why we help nonprofits turn the web into an online fundraising research lab and discover how to… Reach more people Acquire more donors Raise more money About NextAfter We aren’t exactly sure who first decided that charities and caused-based organizations should be given a label that expresses what they are not (i.e. nonprofit, non-governmental organization, not-for-profit), but since these are whom we serve, we decided to follow suit. NextAfter is a non-agency. We’re also not a nonprofit. But we very much are a cause-based organization. Our cause is to unleash the most generous generation in the history of the world. To do that we have constructed a new type of company that combines the perpetual learning of a marketing and fundraising Research Lab with the practical application of a Consultancy. NextAfter works alongside nonprofits to develop research as to why their donors give and put those learnings into practice to help them reach more people, acquire more donors,