Two Seconds to Trust: Brain Science for Nonprofit Communicators

A former brain injury rehab therapist, turned marketing and communications pro, Sally Mildren is the CEO and Chief Strategist at Commonwell Marketing, where she helps nonprofits, rural health organizations, and purpose-driven teams align strategy, story, and experience to grow impact. With over two decades of marketing, communications, and customer experience leadership in nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies, Sally brings both strategic rigor, scientific insight and creative focus to every client engagement. She is an author and a frequent speaker on marketing strategy, building belonging with communications, and human-centered leadership.

More information at https://commonwellmarketing.com/

Interview Summary

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou

Welcome. This is the Nonprofit Exchange, and I’m Hugh Ballou. This is the place where we explore leadership strategy and systems that help mission-driven organizations create lasting impact. Today, we’re talking about one of the most important issues facing nonprofit leaders, why our mission message is often ignored and even the mission itself, even when that matters deeply. Our guest is Sally Mildren. She and her team work with nonprofits, rural health organizations, and mission-driven brands to build connection through strategy, storytelling, brand clarity, and customer experience. Their work is grounded in the idea that marketing is both art and science, and that belonging, trust, and recognition are essential to standing out in a crowded and noisy world. Today, we will look at the brain science behind attention, trust, and action. Sally will help us understand why people may opt out of messaging subconsciously, why recognition is different from representation, and how Nonprofit leaders can communicate in a way that captures attention, touches emotion, and moves people to act. Sally Mildren is the CEO and chief strategist of Commonwealth Marketing, a strategy-driven marketing firm serving nonprofits, as I said, rural health organizations, and mission-driven brands based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and soon to move. To Montana, Sally helps leaders connect the dots of their strategy for maximum impact with focus on brand clarity and messaging, storytelling, customer experience, and sustainable growth. Sally is also the host of the Leadership Cafe podcast, where marketing leaders, nonprofit professionals, and small teams gather for industry insights, candid conversations, and practical strategies for leading with confidence and making real impact. Sally’s work brings together the art and story of science and how people respond to belonging, empathy, trust, and recognition. Sally, welcome to the nonprofit exchange today. So talk about this principle of why good missions still get ignored.

Sally Mildren

Well, thank you for having me here. I know that it’s not because your mission is the problem. It’s because people have not felt connected to it yet. And that’s often the biggest gap that we are addressing with clients and with folks we know in these fields is they’re talking in a way that is not reaching the people they want to engage and that’s what this conversation today is all about.

Hugh Ballou

So there’s a lot of data out there and people get flooded with information. So what happens in the brain when people scroll past or tune out a message that actually might be important?

Sally Mildren

Well, the brain, to start with, is sorting 11 million bits of information per second. So about 95% of the decisions that we make are subconscious. And much like the algorithms you hear about on social media, the brain is sorting what it sees based on your previous choices and experiences, what you have been paying attention to and have indicated as important to you, and to things that are relevant for you. So within two to eight seconds, your brain has processed this message and decided, nope, that’s not for me. or, oh, hey, that might be interesting. I’ll pay attention a little more. And it is something that we can’t control how people see and respond, but we can order our communication and our posts, our imagery, the use of colors, all of that in a way that gets the attention. And typically, that pathway is through emotion.

Hugh Ballou

So, what’s wrong with our messaging? How do we make it better?

Sally Mildren

Well, by and large, it’s true of healthcare and nonprofits. Most of our messaging is about us. It’s talking about our programs, our systems, our wins, our award, our me, me, me. And what the brain is looking for is, do I belong here? Is this message for me? Is this talking to me? And there’s this big differentiation between We know people kind of like you, we’ve got folks like you, and I know what it’s like to be you. There’s a big difference in the way we message things so that I recognize myself in your message. Now, that is really hard for people to come to, and honestly, simplifying what we’re saying is some of the hardest work in marketing. I think I think it was Edison or one of the big inventors who said, I would have written you a shorter note, but I didn’t have time. And I think that the quote is very poignant to marketing that we have to be able to dial our message in, to simplify, and to be looking in our mind’s eye at the face of one type or person in the audience rather than screaming into the masses, which our news is already doing. So you have no chance in that fight.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, that’s that. We did to both Mark Twain and George Mark Twain. Yes. So, you know, it’s out there. Also, the transit American transcendentalist Thoreau said to Emerson, simplify, simplify, simplify, to which Emerson responded. I believe one simplify would suffice.

Sally Mildren

Yeah.

Hugh Ballou

So we tell people all about what we do, and we overload them with that, and they don’t really understand why it’s important first. So there’s an order to the details that we share with people, and also the amount. Can you speak to those two issues, the order of those and the amount of data?

Sally Mildren

Sure. I mean, just from a pure neuroscience standpoint, our brain responds to faces. It responds to simple images, to fewer words, which is difficult. And in some neuroscience studies, they’ve had some wearable EEG devices on, and they’ve identified that the posts or the ads that have a very simple image with faces, fewer words, outperformed others by 20%, sometimes more than that. And so it’s this idea of, and I think in an election year, we all can appreciate, it feels like more is more is more. In a world where there’s just so much noise, We need to be able to see that image and be, oh, wow, or see that headline and be able to that quickly know, oh, I want to know more about that. This is something important to me. And more doesn’t make that possible. It’s often that stripping away of the extra words. A billboard, the rule of thumb in marketing is seven words or less for a billboard. So I think we should do that on a social post too. Seven words or less, because now that fast, I know, oh, this is really interesting.

Hugh Ballou

And that’s my rule for PowerPoint slides. Six words is plenty.

Sally Mildren

Yeah.

Hugh Ballou

And we crowd it. So a good example of that is the technology companies give you all this supply and this fizzle and the sizzle. And Apple just gave you a simple message, sometimes just an image. I noticed you had an Apple on your website. But who’s the most valuable company in the world? Well, the Simple. And so we overcompensate. We want more attention. We create more content. That’s not really the answer, is it?

Sally Mildren

No, it isn’t. And I think one thing that nonprofits easily slip into is, ooh, okay, our endowment of the arts grants are gone. This is gone. Finances are scary. So now we just load at every outreach table you have out in the community. In your social feeds, in your emails, you have six calls to action. You’re just campaign after campaign after campaign with a new call to action. And it would behoove organizations to take a deep breath, to not panic, but to be really intentional about what is it that we need and who are the most likely people to engage. And what is the message that will mean something to them, not us? And there’s this kind of collective panic that we do. I used to work with my teams all the time. They’d go to an outreach fair or whatever or a community event and set up a table and they’d have every brochure for everything we ever did and some poor soul would wander to the table and they would get a word vomit of everything from 1492 forward And it’s this desperate off-putting energy to it that really, if we are there and we know this event is about women’s health maybe, we’ll just pick something. So I’m not gonna bring anything but women’s health. And I’m gonna have one thing they need to know about what we can do for their health. And when we made that switch with our team, we saw like, We went from almost nothing to nearly 60% of those leads that we captured ended up converting into customers of the organization, which is huge. We weren’t spraying them with the fire hose. We were giving a light mist of what applied to them.

Hugh Ballou

So there’s something to learn from the book, The Art of War, in it, know your enemy. So you want to know your customer, you want to know your donors. Our donors, our customers, they’re people who buy what we’re selling, which is transforming people’s lives. So, and in my experience, a confused mind says no.

Sally Mildren

Right.

Hugh Ballou

100%. Good luck. You talk about recognition versus representation. Would you explain that?

Sally Mildren

Sure. So in a well-meaning intention of showing diversity and inclusion or whatever, whether it’s racial, whether it’s gender, whatever. We have taken to this idea of one African-American, one Asian, one person in a wheelchair, one old, one young. And we try to represent everybody. And healthcare’s notorious for this as well, but nonprofits do it as well, where you’ve got one of every color, size, shape, and age in the photos, and That is a well-meant action of inclusion that I see everybody here. But a message to everybody does not allow me in those first few seconds to say, oh my gosh, they understand what it’s like to be a woman my age, and they have health services for me, as opposed to a 13-year-old or a man or whatever. And so this idea of recognition is within two to five seconds, can someone see themselves in the image you’ve chosen, in the words you’re using, in the tone of it, or the, you know, humor or not humor, in the colors, whatever. So it’s important that And it’s hard to do because your resources are already threadbare. So you want to make everything work extra hard. But when it comes to marketing and messaging, each one needs to have one audience group in mind. Those no longer are the days of I had a health client that’s a nonprofit that their tagline literally for their marketing was, for any woman, any age, any stage of life, we’re here for you. So I roar worthy. Yes, exactly. But as a 50-something-year-old, I’ve got a different need than a 20-year-old. Or, you know, I’ve had my kids. I’m a grandma now. I don’t need, I don’t, I’m not going to relate the same to a labor and delivery ad as the needs of me. So we changed their ads, and their one image is a gal holding her hair up with a fan, fanning herself. No caption needed. No caption needed. If you’re a woman, or have lived with a woman, or paid attention to your mother in your 50s, the fan with the hair up. No caption needed. I see myself. I recognize myself in that image.

Hugh Ballou

So I’ve done keynote speaking, and the bigger the group, the quicker they turn on you. So how do you know when people are either consciously or subconsciously opting out of your messaging?

Sally Mildren

This is getting harder and harder to do. I will caveat that. The lack of engagement at all with any of your content. There are a lot of people who will just observe and follow you. So no engagement on social media does not mean you should shut it down because it is one of your search results. But I think that the engagement or traffic or eventually if there’s any conversion happening, if you have a million impressions and zero conversions, you have a message problem. It’s not narrow enough to help people move the needle. It may be that you have way too many apps, to your earlier point, you know we talk we joke about oh at some point our brain just goes it really does it’s actually scientifically proven that if there’s just too many options your brain will just go i’m sorry i can’t because your brain processes and burns 20% of the calories you eat every day just to function. It’s a very energy-heavy, resource-heavy instrument to be running. Now that there are so many other options easily available, if your website loads too slow, out. If I don’t see myself in your message, out. I’m going to go look for something else. So really high bounce rates might be an indication. Your lack of conversions, lack of engagement. is also another thing that I would look at from the digital standpoint. If you’re not getting donations from any of your campaigns, it’s possible that your storytelling is off and you need to find a better way to connect emotionally with your audience. you feel before you think. So in that first few seconds, if there’s something that gets you your attention, and usually one of the things that really gets attention is something unexpected. So if A 89-year-old grandma rolls up on a Harley with all her leathers on, that’s something a little less expected than maybe a 30-something-year-old male. So that juxtaposition or something that’s a surprise is what gets the attention of the mind. And then you get curious, or you feel an emotion, or whatever. And that’s the first hook. Then you’ve got to have a message that will go, oh, yes, I really do care about this cause. Or, wow, that was me. I wish I’d have known.

Hugh Ballou

Yeah, yeah. So the title that people see when they came on here, this spot here, is Two seconds to trust, brain science for non-profit communication. So let’s hone in on this two seconds to trust. What happens in those first few seconds when a person encounters our website, social posts, email, or appeal, or in that important time when we’re face-to-face talking to people?

Sally Mildren

Well, the brain, like I said, is sorting. Is this for me? There’s a part of our brain that is called the amygdala. It’s kind of our safety center. And it’s evaluating. People call it the reptilian brain or old brain or whatever. You know, back in the day, it was scanning for saber-toothed tigers or whatever, trying to attack. And in today’s day, it still has the same function, which is why people can feel a little bit less trusting, because our brain is primarily wired to keep us safe. So they’re looking. Is this legit? Does it feel right? Is this for me? Do they understand? Do they have what I need? And so in that first couple seconds when you’re face to face with somebody digitally or in person, you have that moment to get their attention. And then you have the next few seconds to indicate that this is real, this is trustworthy, this is safe. And you have about 15 seconds total to get them to want to learn more. And sometimes it’s as simple as that image with the, ooh, Okay, they get where I’m at, now I wanna hear more. That’s as fast as it can be. Sometimes it’s the headline or maybe it’s the surprise of your video, for instance. How many videos start with your logo and your URL or something about you? Okay, well now we’re eight seconds in and you’re done. But when you look at how Hollywood does movies or commercials or whatever, it starts halfway in the middle of a sentence of somebody speaking and you’re not even sure what it really is. And you’re like, oh, what is that? Then you wanna listen and then your logo can come later. But it’s just a moment of nuance of, is this relevant to the person I’m speaking to now?

Hugh Ballou

Is this relevant? Oh my word. It’s a lot of good soundbites to remind you that there’s a full transcript at thenonpropertyexchange.org. And you don’t need to take notes for all of these great tips that we’re getting today. So Sally, you have a website. What is the URL? For people on video, they can see it. People listening to the podcast can’t see it. So tell people what they’re going to find. What’s the URL and what will they find when they get there?

Sally Mildren

So commonwellmarketing.com, it’s like the community well, that idea of we all come together and work together to make this community better. So this has a lot of great resources. First of all, under our marketing toolkit, we’ve got handouts and white papers and webinars and all sorts of things. And it also explains our approach, our art and science approach to marketing and branding, to really helping organizations connect meaningfully and in today’s world with the generations of givers, Millennials and Gen A, those Gen Z, those folks are wired a little bit differently than the silent generation or the boomers who have been supporting nonprofits in this nation for decades and have been some of the biggest givers. I think three years ago, they were 70% or more of all giving to nonprofits in the U.S.

Hugh Ballou

Wow.

Sally Mildren

We have to come along and be relevant and meaningful to the younger generation. So we’ve got a lot of information. That’s exactly the kind of brand and messaging work that we do with nonprofits.

Hugh Ballou

That’s a really good website. There’s lots of resources. And if people want to talk to you, I’m sure you respond to the messages. Let’s have some fun. I’m going to give you a few rapid fire questions. Just short answers. One word nonprofits overuse in their messaging.

Sally Mildren

Now, this false scarcity or false urgency.

Hugh Ballou

What word should they use more often?

Sally Mildren

That’s a good one. Join us? Join or I don’t know.

Hugh Ballou

What’s the best test for whether your message is clear?

Sally Mildren

Engagement and the people who are showing up are asking for exactly what you intended.

Hugh Ballou

One sentence every nonprofit leader should be able to complete. It starts, people come to us because.

Sally Mildren

So I’m answering the fill in or the sentence.

Hugh Ballou

People come to us because, dot, dot.

Sally Mildren

Yeah. People come to us because they are looking for a place to connect and have impact themselves.

Hugh Ballou

So before we push send on one of our messages, what should we ask ourselves or somebody else before we send it?

Sally Mildren

Who is this for? One person, one face, one audience group.

Hugh Ballou

That’s the message that stood out to me today, Sally. Thank you so much for helping us understand that communication is more than information. You know, the relationship part to this too, and trust building is an important act of leadership. In this short time, you’ve given us a lot of gems, a lot of things to think about, a lot of takeaways that we can act on. So be sure, and I think I misspoke your name, it’s Commonwealth. I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, so I might have said Commonwealth. Commonwealthmarketing.com. And it’ll be on the platform that you’re listening to this or watching this on Commonwealth Marketing. So Sally, you’ve helped me today reframe my whole communication thinking. And I’ve been doing this a long time. So you’re not too old or new. So thank you for the gift of knowledge and reframing today.

Sally Mildren

You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. It’s been an honor to be here.

Hugh Ballou

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.